It's a brilliant impersonation; Smith gets Ali's speech patterns and Louisville accent exactly right, and astonishingly convincing facial prosthetics complete the transformation. But he never quite finds the man under the enormous image; those quintessential Mann moments, during which Ali is left alone to brood, feel surprisingly blank.

Everything has a fusty, embalmed quality: Whatever gave the novel its vitality has been smothered.

Once it settles down, it becomes a star-making vehicle for Jackman, and a supremely polished example of the sort of swoony love story cherished by women who secretly hope that some day their prince will come.

Grownups who grew up on The Jetsons and children who, like the movie's heroes, aren't yet nine years old, should enjoy this film.

It's a good thing the two rappers are such utterly natural actors, armed with terrific comic timing.

A touching examination of the ravages of Alzheimer's disease, made even more so by the extraordinary chemistry between Swedish actor Sven Wollter and his real-life wife, Viveka Seldahl, who died shortly after the film was completed.

The success of this effect, which helps elevate the movie above a classy disease-of-the-week saga, rests firmly on Russell Crowe's performance, and it's a strikingly good and moving one.

That Carrey, who's a bit old for the part, always seems one facial muscle away from a smirk doesn't help matters.

The picture is nearly stolen, however, by co-star Greg Germann (of TV's Ally McBeal) in the role of Joe's company's resident corporate weasel. Germann's squinty-eyed insincerity is truly a marvel to behold, and it's an astringent corrective to the film's rather too frequent feel-good passages.

Wickedly funny, deeply disturbing, live-action retelling of an old Czech folktale.

Above all, Jackson evokes an almost palpable sense of the will to power trapped within the ring. Without this evocation of the ring's insidious ability to sniff out the potential for corruption and capitalize on it, the entire enterprise would be precious drivel.

Ichaso tells Piñero's story through a sometimes disorienting series of flashbacks and flash-forwards, fracturing the time frame to suit the film's internal rhythms, rather than any coherent time line.

It's a great achievement, quiet enough to allow room for her excellent supporting cast -- but strong enough to be felt over James Horner's omnipresent, typically overbearing score.

Thought-provoking but proceeding at a crawl, the film suffers from performances that are virtually all pitched to the same note of existential ennui -- thank goodness, then, for Rush, who's arrives like a wake-up blast of compressed air.

Precociously glib and never less than engaging.

Makhmalbaf shot this film under extremely difficult circumstances, and it sometimes shows; but it's still an important achievement.

This scattershot comedy (which might be called "irreverent" if anyone actually revered movies like AMERICAN PIE) features vulgar gags at the expense of recent youth-oriented pictures.

Crowe preserves the original film's plot twists and turns, but his version lumbers when it should be whipping along, daring you to keep up. The wall-to-wall pop music soundtrack eventually becomes oppressive, and Cruise's oily smile doesn't really constitute a characterization.

Salles is a master storyteller, and the film's pacing is flawless.

Earnest but unenlightening drama.

Actor-turned-director Campbell Scott handles this enigmatic science fiction mystery with such gloomy restraint that it barely moves. That said, it never panders to audience expectations and is exceptionally well acted. Bill Tyler.

Despite some strong performances, never rises above the level of a telanovela.

Each frame is exquisitely framed, the acting is superb -- Abedini deserves to be a star -- and the impermanence of the lives of displaced Afghans is hauntingly expressed.

This raw and raunchy drama from director Henrique Goldman offers what few feature films have ever bothered to attempt: a realistic, wholly sympathetic look at the lives of transgendered prostitutes.

Merits watching if only because it's a bracing corrective to the deeply entrenched image of Europe's Jews plodding, sheep-like, to their deaths in Nazi concentration camps.

Given the number of characters involved and the fact that the film flashes back and forth over a 40-year period, the film flows beautifully, thanks in large part to excellent casting and Kate Williams's fluid editing.

Ends on a cruel, cynical note that would surely make Billy Wilder snort with approval.

Sure, like cotton candy: It doesn't do a thing for you, but it's wickedly sweet as it melts on your tongue.