Intelligently acted but oddly stagnant adaptation of Brian Morton's acclaimed novel.

This is pure big-budget formula filmmaking.

Light and sweet, comfort food dressed up with a dash of exotic spice.

Odd, quasi-mystical movie that’s too silly for adults to take seriously and frankly too weird for kids.

Special kudos to Adams, who nails the distinctive body language of Disney's spunky good girls and manages to make Giselle's relentless optimism seem charming rather than a sign of mental deficiency.

This violent action is stylish but painfully formulaic, even by the undemanding standards of video-game narratives.

In the end it remains an academic exercise, though a dazzlingly ambitious one that’s well worth seeing.

The movie has a monster problem -- the more you see of them, the less scary they are -- most of the characters are standard-issue types, and Harden seriously overdoes the pious psycho bit.

Fast paced and engagingly acted.

Katzir's documentary is as much a labor of love as Spaisman's theater, and it's often rough around the edges.

First and foremost a showcase for the latest developments in motion-capture and 3-D technology.

Steeped in what may be the ultimate postmodern irony: Talen's impromptu, defiant piece of performance art with political undertones has actually taken on a spiritual dimension.

It's a shame to see such dedicated performers flay their psyches in the service of such fundamentally shallow material.

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.

The film is by turns strident, obvious, righteously angry and inspired.

Working from a script by TV actor Dylan Haggerty, Araki manages to capture what he's been trying to say all along about the lives of the stoned and indifferent with the kind of effortlessness those earlier attempts sorely lacked.

Huge in scope and beautifully shot on location in South America, this ambitious production is undone by terrible casting choices.

Delivers equal parts overwrought tedium and mind-bending beauty, spiked with brilliant throwaway images that more than make up for Kelly's heavy-handed hot-button pretensions.

The story vacillates between broad, kid-friendly gags and a series of oddly sour riffs on the theme of adult sibling rivalry.

The film's meandering narrative, melodramatic conclusion and underdeveloped characters overshadow the genuinely shocking abuses it condemns.

By the time Reilly's shaggy life story winds down, it's hard not to wish he'd been your friend, too.

In the end, it all remains a dramatically inert set of talking points, and not even the high-caliber cast can make much more out of it.

It's a hugely entertaining slice of sunbaked Gothic.

No two ways about it: The screenplay is derivative. But the location adds a little novelty to the standard-issue running and screaming.

The first full-fledged Indian musical coproduced and distributed by a major Hollywood studio, this fanciful love story takes its unlikely inspiration from Fyodor Dostoevsky's short story "White Nights."

Amazingly, many of Jack's and Ina's letters survived and -- read aloud by Dutch actors Jeroen Krabbe and Ellen Ten Damme -- serve as the thematic thread that runs through Ohayon's film.

Documentary filmmakers Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine found an ingenious way to tell their story in a film that is as unflinching as it is uplifting.

To call Christian's film unpolished is an understatement.