It's a classic fantasy scenario, overflowing with creative possibilities, but Carrey's Nolan isn't charmingly misguided or comically loathsome enough to deserve the lesson; he's just a big, inconsequential crybaby.

While Grazia's story is too reminiscent of such films as "Blue Sky" (1994), which also draws an all too easy connection between mental illness and the oppression of high-spirited housewives, the evocation of provincial life in a tiny village that's wholly dependent on the sea is splendid, and recalls a number of classic Italian films.

Despite Schnack's half-hearted attempt to divide the film into chapters, his film is too unstructured to hold the interest of non-fans who might have appreciated a somewhat less hagiographic approach.

Takashi Miike's frenetic comic yakuza thriller embodies the best and worst this notorious Japanese genre auteur has to offer: It's endlessly inventive, consistently intelligent and sickeningly savage.

Though this frank documentary about extreme sexual practices comes with a cautionary message, it could perhaps use a stronger one.

Godard's third feature film and his first in color, A Woman is a Woman is one of the most enjoyable of all the master's works.

Though the film's fanciful premise seems more naturally suited to comedy, Bose exploits its more sinister implications surprisingly skillfully until the combined weight of narrative threads involving incest, suicide and murder eventually bog the story down.

Old family secrets and fresh entanglements snake through the intricate plot like the tendrils of a particularly poisonous strain of ivy that flourishes only in the hot-house atmosphere of tiny towns, whatever the outside temperature.

Dabbed with sentimental touches, the film nevertheless avoids facile victim psychologizing and pulls no punches.

Their mania might be funny if it weren't so creepy.

Given that most fans are very young, ignoring a key aspect of the Pokemon mythos is bound to confuse and disappoint them.

Serves as a powerful tribute to a group of heroes who gave those they saved something nearly as valuable as life: proof that the best of the human spirit can endure even through the worst of times.

The real stars of the film are Francois Emmanuelli's vibrant production design, Klapisch's flair with inventive optical effects and above all Barcelona itself, captured here in all its baroque brilliance.

More comic book-like and less intriguing than the original, the film's punch-drunk cyber-mysticism still has a darkly seductive allure that sets it apart from juvenile, Star Wars-style space opera.

Dracula fans will appreciate the witty ways in which Maddin has drawn Stoker's troubling racism and xenophobia to the fore, while making the most of the sexual ambivalence that helps make the story endlessly fascinating.

It aspires to a documentary realism and keeps the focus on the characters at all times. Though the results can't really be called enjoyable, the intensity that bleeds off the screen is undeniably effective.

The film seems longer than its 93-minute running time, but kids will probably enjoy its potty humor, many scenes of 4-year-olds getting the better of harried adults and the inevitable moment when a cute little girl kicks the fat guy in the nads.

A perennial favorite on college campuses since it first reached the screen at the height of the Vietnam War.

Combined with the Mamet-lite dialogue, a medley of all-too-deliberate pauses, smug literary allusions and calculatedly careless repetitions of the word "thingie" that obscure the meaning hidden in supposedly meaningless prattle, the result is a chic, vitriolic polemic that's as irritating as it means to be provocative.

Not surprisingly, the film is strongest when its characters are simply hanging out, shooting the breeze and venting their feelings, while moments of high drama occasionally fall flat.

Most of the music is as fine and fierce as you could want.

The film is juvenile when it should be adult, coarse when it ought to be bubbly, and upfront when witty circumspection is indicated. The result feels a bit like a drag show, a camp blend of pitch-perfect mimicry and anachronistic raunch.

Ten tumultuous years in the history of the gay rights movement serve as the backdrop for this warm, engaging romantic comedy.

The excellently translated subtitles retain the wit and flavor of the brisk, at times even hardboiled, dialogue.

Thick with sexual intrigue and characters who only reveal themselves over time, this subtle mystery unfolds like something a kinder Neil LaBute might have cooked up earlier in his career.

Casting a film set in Latin America with Spanish-and Italian-speaking performers acting in English misfires; the actors' diverse accents clash, some are clearly more fluent than others and the sense of relief when anyone speaks a rare line in Spanish is palpable.

Director Nancy Savoca's no-frills record of a show forged in still-raw emotions captures the unsettled tenor of that post 9-11 period far better than a more measured or polished production ever could.

Ironically, it's most engaging when the focus shifts to Hurt's matter-of-factly amoral enabler, whose glistening suits and jewel-colored shirt-and-tie combinations suggest a particularly poisonous tropical reptile.

Snappy and smart, the film gets surprisingly far on a fairly contrived conceit, proving that there's no energy quite like energy fueled by anger and disgust.

The combat visuals that follow are as powerful as those of any war film.

Fans may be disappointed that some of the show's secondary characters, like Lizzie's pal Miranda, are AWOL from this Prince and the Pauper-style escapade, and some of the scenes involving Gellman are disappointingly flat.

Moncrieff offers a rare, unromantic take on female adolescence as sharp as a razor: It cuts right to the bone.

An enthralling, suspenseful documentary about spelling bees.

The puzzle pieces are all there. But when you put them all together, the result is a bit of a gyp — neat but utterly forgettable.

The cast — a felicitous blend of character actors and up-and-comers — work together like a street-smart machine, and Hoffman's scummy turn as porn-peddler and all-around creep King is a reminder of just how sleazily funny he can be.

To an outsider, it's pretty thin stuff.

The real trouble is Jack: He's narcissistic and tough to like (Pontevecchio's fine, but a younger actor might not have brought an impression of arrested development to the character), and his crude sense of humor borders on the disgusting.

Dumb premises have driven some wonderful romantic comedies, but for all its vaguely mystical trappings, Prywes's film lacks the magic that makes them work.

Pacino's no-holds-barred performance is either the reason to see this tepid thriller or the reason to avoid it. His evocation of a Sidney Falco-style flack worn to a nub by decades of trying to spin this dirty town is nothing if not bravura.

The film doesn't really go anywhere, other than outside for endless games of basketball, and the group-therapy environment allows for far too many young-actor monologues.

Dillon makes an assured directing debut, neither indulging in unnecessary stylistic flourishes nor allowing scenes to run too long, a tendency in actors-turned-director.

On a miniscule budget, Ghobadi conveys the terror of war, while the beautifully edited sequence in which Iranian villagers make bricks resembles nothing so much as a choreographed dance number.

Undeniably entertaining.

An excellent introduction to the subject, and a movie buff's delight.

The quality of the CGI-heavy special effects is variable and Nomura's fey performance as Seimei gives his relationship with Hiromasa a distinctly homoerotic cast that may or may not be intentional, but the demon zombies and Doson's cackling familiar are crowd pleasers.

The film delivers some genuine laughs — Diggs and Anderson are a hoot throughout — and real rapper Snoop Dogg all but steals the picture with his brief voice turn as Ronnie Rizzat.

Simultaneously nakedly formulaic and oddly clumsy, particularly in terms of character introduction.

In light of the aesthetic of ugliness that informs von Trier's Dogme films, it's easy to forget how subtly beautiful his work once was.

Akinshina and Bogucharskij are remarkable together, and Moodysson once again demonstrates a sophisticated visual skill matched only by his innate understanding of the adolescent heart.

Its real liability is on the special effects front: The sub-par digital effects — particularly in the scenes featuring poisonous lizards — detract noticeably from the overall atmosphere.

Absolutely breathtaking documentary whose close-up shots of birds in flight are so freakishly intimate that the film is compelled to open with the statement they're not special effects.

So formulaic it starts to fade from memory before the last punch is thrown.

The energy is infectious, and while the female empowerment angle is no doubt sincere, the whole up-tempo construction jiggles a bit too much to be taken seriously.

Extraordinary documentary.

Exceptionally satisfying and enormously entertaining.

While the unfortunate epilogue strains the naturalism of what's gone on before and leaves a bit of a sour taste, this semi-improvisational comedy otherwise reaches Balzacian brilliance.

William Klein's film documents a turbulent time and an outsized personality, but the film's glories are in the details and its intimacy would be unimaginable in the rigidly spin-controlled atmosphere of 21st-century sports.

Jelski's screenplay, a finalist in the fiercely competitive Walt Disney Screenwriting Fellowship competition, is repetitive and stagy.

Story of small triumphs and everyday sorrows is never maudlin or sentimental.

But by the time the big not-so-surprise ending rolls around -- no, nothing that happened was exactly as it seemed -- most viewers will have long since stopped caring.

Writer/director Austin Chick falls into the timeworn trap of making an immature, irritating film about immature, irritating characters.

The end result is a series of stylish vignettes, some entertaining and all variations on essentially the same theme.

For all the technical wizardry that went into making the film, Paxton's reflections on the human tragedies of the Titanic and the terrorist attack of Sept. 11th, 2001, which took place while the crew was out at sea, provide one of the film's most haunting moments.

Shock-rocker Rob Zombie's loving homage to flat-out nasty horror films of the 1970s will leave many post-"Scream" (1996) horror fans cold because of what it's not. It's not slick or glossy. It's not funny or self-referential.

If Griffin were a jowly Southern redneck, his mean-spirited rants would make him a pariah.

It's hard not to feel sorry for the high-profile cast, obviously working for brownie points in heaven -- they're so good, yet nothing they do can make the movie fly.

A piercing satire of Italian investigative techniques, and an interesting meditation on the relationship between class and guilt.

The results are a bit amateurish, but wholesome and achingly sweet.

Brisk, engaging story.

Warm and utterly beguiling fable.

Bynes is a charmer who adeptly straddles the line between romantic heroine and physical comedienne, while Firth is extremely enjoyable as a befuddled father.

The payoff doesn't quite equal the intensity of the spectacularly squirm-inducing premise, but Farrell takes his showboating star turn and runs with it.

The film works best when it's sticking to the guns and poses conventions of macho crime pictures. When it reaches for emotional resonance, the results range from unconvincing to ludicrous.

Propelled by a soundtrack as diverse as its international gallery of thieves, Jordan's cheerfully scruffy neo-noir caprice even lays on the religious imagery with a palette knife and sweetens Melville's ending without seeming terminally sappy.

Pretentious but gorgeously photographed.

General audiences will regret the absence of titles identifying various clips and interviewees, but Fellini fans will want to eat the whole thing up with a spoon.

A dark, brooding noir, with Widmark riveting as a hustling promoter who sinks into the quagmire of his own ambitions.

The similarities between this film and Michael Bay's overblown "Armageddon"are too numerous to ignore; the crucial difference is that this one is actually pretty good.

Nearly perfect.

The roots of Steve James's disturbing documentary lie in youthful idealism.

Duvall at his worst is still an accomplished performer; Pedraza is a modern-day Ali McGraw, lithe and beautiful but no kind of actress. For all her fluidity on the dance floor, she's a dead weight who drags the film down.

As the mismatched interrogators, Travolta and Nielson seem to be in two different and incompatible movies.

Toothless satire punctuated by the occasional biting gag.

There's a telling disjunction between the dismal lives of Jia's characters and the optimism of China's officially sunny advance into the 21st century, and their helplessness often becomes a pathetic pantomime.

The offbeat cast and gorgeous Barcelona locations can't quite make up for the thinness of the mystery and forced quirkiness of the characters and their tangled relationships.

Frankly, the film's nostalgia for the "coffee, tea or me?" era of flying, when stewardesses were fantasy figures in soaring heels and uniforms tailored for bust enhancement rather than utility, is retro in all the wrong ways.

Sprawling, gooey and profoundly juvenile, this derivative thriller piles on the cheese: aliens, male bonding, psychoanalytic gobbledygook, childhood secrets, military black ops, gross-out special effects, explosions, bodily function humor and a retarded boy with special powers.

The film is filled with the kind of choreographed carnage that became synonymous with Hong Kong action during the genre's heyday, but there's an elegiac self-consciousness to it all that acknowledges that while the best is behind us, there's still something to be said about its passing.

It's hard to imagine who would find this funny.

The original Carly Simon songs are well performed, but their soothing lullaby qualities may cause those with short attention spans to nod off.

Yes, the story is pure formula, though given less twinkle and lip gloss than Hollywood would have brought to bear on it; the film is so remake-friendly you can cast it in your head.

The performances are rough and sometimes amateurish, but that works in the film's favor more often than it doesn't -- there's none of the false slickness that comes with hot young actors playing rock 'n' rollers.

This strange and beautifully expressive film set in a remote Mexican canyon has nothing whatsoever to do with Japan, but its themes are as universal as they come.

A fantastic symphony of decay (Decay + Fantasia = Decasia), simultaneously heartbreakingly beautiful and exquisitely sad, pieced together from snippets of old films on the verge of oblivion.

Production-designed within an inch of its life, this remake's best conceit is the casting of Crispin Glover as its socially maladroit rat fancier.

While far from her best work, this accessible, emotionally involving domestic drama nevertheless serves as a welcome introduction.

You can't accuse the film of making speed addiction look glamorous, but the freak-show kick is too compelling for it to be called cautionary.

If your idea of a good time at the movies is watching two grown men go at it with fists and shivs and nasty wilderness booby-traps, then you're in luck.