Zakarin's semiautobiographical screenplay hits all the sitcom beats.

Sweet-natured, episodic comedy-drama.

Zack & Miri stand out as Kevin Smith's most thoroughly representative film -- both for better and for worse.

Though not as good as Terminator, the film has a better-than-usual script for this sort of thing and shows a lot of humor. Schwarzenegger isn't especially good as an actor, but his presence is impressive, and he is beginning to show some style, if not much substance. For action fans, one of the picks of the litter for the year.

Uneven tragicomedy.

The New Jersey locations and soundtrack help ground the story in a particular time and place, and Schroeder delivers a terrific performance.

Ramshackle as comedy and mundane as drama, this noisily energetic and splashily - literally - photographed hang-ten flick doesn't wipe out due to spectacular surfing stunts and the fun of seeing McGregor and Zeta-Jones in pre-stardom mode.

Phoenix gives a nice performance as a man caught between loyalties but blind to the realities all around him, but Gray's screenplay is filled with clunky, Dr. Phil-sounding aphorisms that stop the movie cold.

This isn't your usual kiddie fare: Beneath the initial glare and blare is a quietly literate script by first-time writer-director Zach Helm that deals directly with big issues like believing in yourself and living on after a loved one passes away. But is it heavy? Not really.

Deeply personal film that often feels more like an artfully produced home video than a documentary.

Unfortunately, the characters feel more like symbols than people, despite strong performances, including what might be Portman's finest work to date.

There isn't an original moment in the mix, but it's not as crass or vulgar as much of what passes for "family friendly" entertainment, and it keeps the precocious pop-culture references to a blessed minimum.

Between the gratuitous climaxes that seem to occur every 10 minutes, Kasdan parades a myriad of stereotypes before us and never develops them. In fact, he never really explores any of his characters but only provides them with enough motivation to justify the slaughter of dozens of people.

Sally Field's flawless performance as a mother whose imminent death reunites her four grown children elevates a fairly formulaic melodrama in the made-for-Lifetime mode into something considerably more memorable.

This likable adventure is basically "Lassie" with scales and should appeal to the books' large audience of adolescent boys.

To help break the monotony, Frost relies on relentless digital effects; there are so many shots of giant golf balls whizzing toward the screen it looks like the film was meant to be projected in 3-D.

Ask yourself this: Did the title make you laugh? If so, you're probably the target audience.

Ultimately, Tenacious D is a sight gag -- two unprepossessing, chunky dudes rocking out like wiry guitar gods -- supplemented by spot-on digs at the macho bombast and Dungeons & Dragons silliness that drives heavy-metal mania.

If only Reiser or director Raymond De Felitta had been able to resist the fart jokes and the sloppy male-bonding scenes, this could have been a terrific little movie. As it is, it's shamelessly manipulative shtick brightened by sharply drawn supporting performances.

The first half of Home Alone features the sugar-coated sentimentality that can usually be found in a Hughes film, while the second half is full of unanticipated sadism.

Yes, it's great that Goldie Hawn, Diane Keaton and Bette Midler -- all women of a certain age, though they've done their best to make sure no one's certain what it is -- get to carry a major motion picture, playing college chums reunited by the perfidy of men.

It's a pleasure to see the articulate, disciplined Telfair succeed where so many other young men have failed, but ultimately his path to success is so smoothly upbeat that there isn't much urgency to it.

A stylish but disappointing spoof which lacks the satiric gusto of director Pedro Almodovar's earlier works.

This didactic drama is set safely in the past and says nothing about the culture of conformity at all costs that hasn't been said before.

In the end, despite Williams' extraordinary, nearly wordless performance, it's impossible to fathom what this young woman is experiencing at her moment of crisis, because we never knew what could have brought her to such a desperate pass in the first place.

Written in the aftermath of a bitter divorce, Mamet's paranoid rant -- an explosion of middle-aged, white-collar, white-men's rage at losing ground to everyone, from women, hustlers, African Americans and homosexuals to the younger generation nipping at their heels -- is as bilious as ever, but time has overtaken and defanged it.

It's a handsomely mounted but poky thriller undone by a fatally miscast lead.

Compelling on a personal level.