This genre-busting movie has the appearance of a love story but morphs into a thriller, told cleverly in a nonlinear style. Think "Sliding Doors" crossed with "The Sixth Sense," with a little "Memento" thrown in.

The star interplay and anachronisms recapture some of the surreal spirit of the Crosby-Hope Road movies, and the end-credit outtakes are funny enough to sustain that getting-hoary device for at least one more picture.

How to lose an audience in 10 minutes: Cobble together a predictable and forced romantic comedy that should have been funnier.

Agreeable and slipshod in equal fashion, The Guru illustrates the subtle distinction between stupidity and goofiness.

Though it's only 90 minutes, the film drags, making these not-so-easy riders pretty tough to watch.

A less-than-middling melodrama whose subject matter and talent never click as much as its credits portend.

That a group of creative people chose to direct their energies on this repulsive spectacle simply provokes disgust.

Amazingly, the film grows monotonous because Heller and Schmiderer can do nothing, via archival footage or even novel camera placements, to vary the program.

Actually is a bit of a hoot.

The picture is all Lawrence and Zahn, whose dynamics get something going, though not enough (please!) to spark a buddy sequel.

Jumps at chance to be silly.

This is one movie in which you don't feel the long-ish running time, in part because there always seems to be a surprise (as well as a new street guerrilla) around every corner.

Not without some stupidly funny moments.

May not be a straightforward bio, nor does it offer much in the way of Barris' motivations, but the film is an oddly fascinating depiction of an architect of pop culture.

Hoffman stores the plane fuel in his house and even enjoys sniffing it. The movie might be a lot more fun as a suspense pic were he to take on a roommate who chained-smoked.

More than any other example in recent memory, Chicago shows how much the element of surprise is missing from today's movies.

While compellingly watchable, it's as overheated as Cage-the-actor's 1991 soft-core (and direct-to-video) "Zandalee," also set in New Orleans.

With this 2002 Cannes Film Festival best-picture winner, Polanski skips the quirky flourishes and simply brings history to life.

The movie keeps you mildly interested all the way up to an elaborately staged final scene, yet it might give viewers the same queasy fooling-with-the-Holocaust feeling some felt for Roberto Benigni's "Life Is Beautiful."

This mid-19th century tale of survival after the death of a parent is still compelling today, and its message of strength and the importance of family continues to resonate.

Richly layered, deliberately paced, dealing with difficult emotions and life decisions, it feels like a moody wintry afternoon.

Catch offers mild fun but never as much as its animated '60s-retro opening credits portend. They're the cutest of the year.

The movie features a musical score aimed more at boomer parents than their tykes.

If anything, Grant seems to be getting funnier, and he now has the ability to elevate material the way another Grant -- Cary -- did.

This may be the most uncompromisingly raw police drama since "Across 110th Street," starring Anthony Quinn and Yaphet Kotto.

If Martin Scorsese's staggeringly ambitious one-of-a-kind finally has too many flaws to be great, it has as much greatness in it as any movie this year.

This is the kind of well-made movie you wish well but you don't particularly wish to see again.

Hour not only acknowledges the attacks -- they're a running theme. Lee opens his movie with a shot of the beaming blue spotlights that mark where the twin towers once stood.

Epic battles, spectacular effects and multiple story lines make The Two Towers a most excellent middle chapter in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy.

The powerful two-person drama gets watered down by documentary-style footage and voice-overs. But it's worth seeing just for Weaver and LaPaglia.

Were the material not so thin, it would be even more fun than it is seeing Fiennes get to be loose on screen for once. He's pleasant, but we never feel this guy could get elected. Whenever he smiles, Fiennes brings to mind the title of Disney's deluxe new DVD: "The Complete Goofy."

A simple, sentimental family drama for the holidays, Evelyn, alas, is also predictable and schematic.

Nicholson has at least three magnificent moments in Hour 2. The best is a wedding toast that comes after another that will painfully remind you of every banal wedding toast you've ever heard.

If it's conventional, it's also competent. Thanks to director Charles Stone III (of the famed "Whassuup?!" Budweiser spots), the clichés at least have a good beat.

As spent screen series go, Star Trek: Nemesis is even more suggestive of a 65th class reunion mixer where only eight surviving members show up -- and there's nothing to drink.

Stereotypical, banally written bloodbath.

Though the picture falls apart whenever the two leads aren't on screen together, you can argue that That isn't that inferior to its predecessor.

Whereas last year's exemplary "Sexy Beast" seemed to revitalize the British gangster movie, this equally brutal outing merely sustains it -- though with occasional twists that do linger in the memory.

Even at its best, Adaptation is one of the movie year's most esoteric outings -- more so than even Paul Thomas Anderson's far superior "Punch-drunk Love." Too smart to ignore but a little too smugly superior to like, this could be a movie that ends up slapping its target audience in the face by shooting itself in the foot.

The martial-arts sequences take this prosaic thriller to a higher level.

Myopic Whitey, continually passed over for a lifetime achievement athletic award, bears a passing resemblance to Columbia's all-time No. 1 animated star, the nearsighted Mr. Magoo. It's nice to think that if he ever went to this movie, he wouldn't be able to see it.

Soderbergh does a fine job creating a moody atmosphere of pervasive anxiety. The ending can be interpreted a few different ways and should ignite debate about its meaning.

Though the plot ends up taking some potentially compelling twists, its telling always feels manipulative.

Dead-on as entertaining eye candy, a bona fide guilty pleasure -- for the first hour. But the movie loses steam and the sequences that dazzled in the beginning get overshadowed by the excesses of later scenes.

Anyone who pays to see it will certainly feel as if he has been clipped.

It is at once warmly humanistic and boldly innovative, raising philosophical questions but not answering them.

This is intelligent grown-up entertainment on both a political and a humanistic level.

Has its moments -- and almost as many subplots.

Steven Seagal's acting style is so minimal that we can almost believe a script that tells us that his character's near-death experience left him flatlined for 22 minutes.

The rap sequences are shot and edited with the excitement of a crisply broadcast sporting event, which in a way they are.

Glossy or not, the movie is unflinchingly tough-minded, down to its Hollywood-weepy ending, which, if you think about it, may be the year's gloomiest.

It tries hard to be sexy, mysterious and dangerous, but ends up laughably inscrutable.

An innovative -- if only moderately entertaining -- spin on Robert Louis Stevenson's classic Treasure Island.

If you value your time and money, find an escape clause and avoid seeing this trite, predictable rehash. The 90 minutes could be better spent doing holiday shopping.

I cry for I Spy— or I would if this latest and laziest imaginable of all vintage-TV spinoffs were capable of engendering an emotional response of any kind. Comas are physical, not emotional.

The final third is slower until a somewhat contrived finale that's still the funniest thing in the movie.

It's too bad that this long-awaited movie didn't go further than faithfully re-creating Kahlo's artwork and her studied look. Her passionate and tragically short life (she died at 47) is ideal Hollywood material, but the audience is left wanting a more in-depth portrait.

Holmes, of Dawson's Creek, will be up the creek if she can't avoid movies like this. And so will you if you see it.

Grimly claustrophobic movies can make viewers put up a shield, yet Tim Blake Nelson (who directed O) invests this unusual Holocaust drama with dramatic intensity that in no way cheapens its subject matter.

Anything goes, though director Ronny Yu keeps the idiocy on a fast pace.

Too many threads are left dangling and the movie ultimately proves too implausible to put alongside those horror classics.

Sweet, family-friendly and philosophically complex, Tuck Everlasting is an unexpected delight.

Wilts under a weak, formulaic story.

Despite its title, Punch-Drunk Love is never heavy-handed. The jabs it employs are short, carefully placed and dead-center.

Heaven is saved only by the power of an occasional hypnotic image.

The main lessons Jonah attempts to teach are compassion and mercy. That's an unusual -- and welcome -- message these days.

The latest picture to give you the sense that Hollywood filmmakers simply plucked another old pop-tune title ripe for ripping off, then were shaken by the rude reality of coming up with a script to jerry-build around it.

The film drips with honest emotion and confusion.

Because Sarandon is such a good actress, she makes the movie watchable, and there are a couple of laughs to be had.

Kapur's stodgy style halts the momentum of young actors who have impressed in other movies.

Even without the surprise of seeing Spader going for laughs and getting them, Secretary is just too original to be ignored.

This is a movie in which you rarely know where you are or who's doing what to the next person.

Director Hayao Miyazaki treats his audience as imaginative and intelligent human beings, rather than catering to kids with rote displays of silliness, stunts and scares.

Genial but largely predictable ensemble comedy.

When the most notable thing a film offers is the sight of Dennis Farina in drag, you can't expect much.

It's a run-of-the-mill cop thriller but also a gripping family drama. It is in the moments spent untangling the threads of troubled relationships that the movie is at its best.

Drippy, derivative stalker flick.

Romantic screwball comedies are supposed to be at least a little romantic, but there's no chemistry between Perry and Hurley.

A worthy, if flawed, piece of entertainment.

It is a rare performance when one of the world's most recognizable stars can disappear completely into a character on the screen.

All you get here for paid admission is a long and terrific avalanche scene -- state of the art, no question. Then it's over and ready to melt away, much like memories of this movie.

Usually, I'm as slow as the pacing of a movie in figuring out who's done it. If you can't solve this mystery with an hour to go (as I did), better call for a transfusion so a better type of blood will start flowing to your brain.

A sharp-tongued, subtly nuanced tragicomedy starring Jennifer Aniston, who shows her depth as a serious actress in this dark tale.

Though slightly lacking in the warmth of the first, should no doubt please audiences.

These characters are interesting for their flaws and wounds, but the movie doesn't delve deeply into the sources of their pain. See this movie for its humor and talented cast and you won't be disappointed.

The comedian's braggadocio here is more wearying than that of the most self-absorbed rapper. And worse, it comes at the expense of humor.

The movie keeps you watching and, at times, even gripped for more than an hour. But, at the end, it leaves us feeling detached and underwhelmed.

Lacking even a hint of humor or a watchable story, Disguise has distinguished itself as the summer's worst movie.

The plot is predictable and the dialogue often sticky sweet, but at least kids will identify with Stuart's desire for adventure and exploration.

Though this saga would be terrific to read about, it is dicey screen material that only a genius should touch. With no genius in sight, K-19 might be headed for meltdown.

An irreverent and witty comedy in which the events aren't predictable but are well paced.

Isn't tough to take as long as you've paid a matinee price.

Though Walt Disney's Peter Pan once implored us never to smile at a crocodile, the Irwins' own home movie is worth a couple of chuckles. Shivers, too.

The story doesn't clarify why the dragons hibernated for hundreds of years, nor why they awakened. Clearly, however, the filmmakers might have benefited from more sleep before penning the script.

Impressive yet always self-conscious, Perdition has more class and less sass than any movie in a while.

Large budget notwithstanding, the movie is such a blip on the year's radar screen that it's tempting just to go with it for the ride. But this time, the old MIB label stands for Milder Isn't Better.

Pleasant but not more than recycled jock piffle.

Isn't much, it's just lively enough to placate its limited audience to make it an easy choice over "Scooby-Doo's" stale Alpo.