Chernick may not answer every question about this beguiling and enigmatic film, but you wouldn't want it to: Mystery is an essential part of the Barney experience.

Murphy is a revelation as James, and what American Idol castoff Hudson lacks in technical acting craft she makes up for in raw energy and a voice that could melt the rhinestones off a beauty queen. To complain that Beyonce pales by comparison is to fault her for nailing the essence of the infinitely malleable Deena.

But for all the profane language and sexual frankness, Soderbergh's film is no more cynical or world-weary than its inspirations, and in the end, it feels like a clever trick wrapped around a hollow center.

The story is complex enough to be absorbing, but its pedantic quality makes it -- and its lessons -- all too easy to forget.

No, it isn't as magically enchanting as the 1952 children's classic by E.B. White, any more than a museum-shop print of La Giaconda is as mysteriously beguiling as Leonardo's original. But this respectful, live-action adaptation of White's gentle tale about an undersized pig, a clever spider and the everyday marvels that too often pass unnoticed is a charmer nonetheless.

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

Far from proving the reality of the Horatio Alger myth it peddles, Chris Gardner's story is worth celebrating precisely because he managed to beat the odds stacked so high against him. Steve Conrad's screenplay is also curiously but insistently silent on the subject of race.

Starts with a bang and ends in a long, protracted whimper.

Carries an important and timely reminder about the fate of torture victims, so deftly wrapped within a touching and beautifully acted melodrama that the result is the furthest thing from a didactic message movie.

Odd but never dull.

Overall, this puff piece is shapeless, repetitive and feels much longer than it is.

The acting is flat, and the scientist's ideological speeches too bluntly designed to mirror post-9/11 rhetoric. But there's a dreamy fascination to the iconic images of machines fighting a perpetual war for the human creators they'll inevitably outlast.

Admitting that it's formulaic doesn't make it any less so, but it's enjoyable in a mushy, easily digested sort of way.

Edward Zwick brings unimpeachable good intentions to his film about the bloody underbelly of the international diamond trade, but when social conscience jockeys for attention with movie-star glamour, glamour always wins. The result is a rip-snorting adventure set against the backdrop of African misery.

Barbarously beautiful and gut-wrenchingly (literally) violent, it's a mesmerizing vision of the past refracted through the dark obsessions of the present.

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.

Philippe Diaz's controversial documentary about the legacy of the brutal 1991-2002 civil war in Sierra Leone -- widely considered the poorest country in the world, despite its rich mineral resources -- suggests that the rebel faction RUF (Revolutionary United Front of Sierra Leone) was not alone in terrorizing civilians and committing atrocities, most famously the amputation of limbs with machetes.

Writer-director Daniel Burman's dryly humorous, poker-faced comedic style is once again in full play in this funny and touching film about a young Argentine man and his aging father, both of whom happen to be lawyers.

Writer-director James Ponsoldt's first feature is a small, modest movie structured around a fairly simple situation that leaves plenty of room for some fine performances.

The Armenian-American quartet have taken it upon themselves to teach their fans about what happened to their families in that now-forgotten time, a deeply personal mission that has proven effective in politicizing their audiences.

On the list of WWII stories criminally ignored by six decades of combat movies in the past 60 years, the heroics of French colonial soldiers ranks pretty high. But Rachid Bouchareb's powerful drama -- which won the 2006 Cannes Film Festival's best-actors award for its superb ensemble cast and was nominated for a best foreign-language-film Oscar, went a long way toward rectifying the situation, both on screen and in real life.

Solomonoff cuts back and forth between 1984 and 1976, gradually revealing the truth of what happened, but the mystery is less important than the complex relationship between Natalia and Elena, which was sorely tested by events beyond their control.

In the end, it's best to make peace with the film's essential and deliberate inscrutability -- something Lynch fans have learned to do since Twin Peaks -- and to simply marvel at Dern's astonishing performance, which few actresses are likely to top anytime soon.

Slow, solemn going, despite its best efforts at thundering soldiers and comic-relief kings.

The laughs are low, the breasts are high, and the film is instantly forgettable.

After reminding us that the AIDS crisis in the West is far from over in "The Event," Fitzgerald widened his scope with this much-needed perspective on the global dimensions the disease has achieved. Despite the importance and seriousness of the subject, there's plenty of Fitzgerald's brand of sly humor on hand, particularly in the scenes involving the Quebecoise porn industry.

It all feels like an insubstantial short that's been stretched to the breaking point.

LaPaglia and Davis deliver top-notch performances that go a long way toward offsetting the material's didacticism.