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.

The movie feels like a long-form version of the popular Nickelodeon cartoon series on which it's based, which probably won't bother Arnold fans.

If Sandler felt compelled to take on a role immortalized by Gary Cooper, at least it wasn't as "Sergeant York," "Lou Gehrig" or the sheriff in "High Noon."

This isn't the worst movie Warner Bros. has brought out this summer (Scooby-Doo, boo on you), but for it to work, you have to accept the irredeemable stupidity of almost every character. Time better spent: a Shaquille O'Neal film festival on video.

Sayles is clearly aiming to construct a multilevel character study and sociological portrait, but too often the film lapses into a lecture.

Stripped of all bravado, Cruise delivers a raw and probably detractor-proof performance. Spielberg does what he did right in creating a novel milieu for "A.I. Artificial Intelligence," but this time the writing is fresher and anything but unwieldy.

The soundtrack is mostly Elvis tunes, and Stitch even does an adorable impersonation of the King. As Elvis might put it, you can't help falling in love with Lilo & Stitch.

Capably made and certainly impresses by carrying its length, but it doesn't expand 60 years of World War II screen literature by very much.

Blisteringly fast, Bourne also has a strong or striking supporting actor around every corner: Chris Cooper, Brian Cox, Julia Stiles and Clive Owen in roles that range from meaty to amazingly small.

It's unclear why the writers bothered to update the cartoon, unless it was to expand the possibilities for quips and jokey ideas. If so, they failed in their mission, as the movie elicits few laughs.

Leaves a bad taste, not only because of its bad-luck timing, but also the staleness of its script.

The only character we get to know fully as she evolves from child to older woman is Vivi. Too bad the movie didn't also trace the lives of her "sisters." That might have been divine.

Mediocre terrorist melodrama turned even punier by real-life events, and that's before we scratch our heads at its lead-actor choice.

The soundtrack (which includes James Brown, Michael Jackson and The Commodores) is better than a K-Tel "Best of the '70s" compilation, and the broad physical comedy is as reliable as a brick house.

Too much. The hackneyed story about an affluent damsel in distress who decides to fight her bully of a husband is simply too overdone.

A perfect fit between filmmaker (Memento's Christopher Nolan) and material (Norway's same-name psycho-chiller from 1997), this remake gets all there is to get out of a peculiar premise with promise.

A poetic and lovely tale, told as a silent picture with music and narration.

About a Boy is a rarity in many ways. It's a well-written, witty film whose memorable characters grapple with the nature of family, love, friendship and despair. Even its soundtrack, by Badly Drawn Boy, is perfectly pitched.

As for the breathless 45-minute climax, no screen fantasy adventure in memory can match the showmanship.

Unfaithful doesn't push the melodrama the way "Attraction" did, but it lingers in the mind as much.

Woody Allen is good for his funniest screen romp in a while, thanks to a few evenly spaced standout scenes of laugh-out-loud intensity.

This is a rare twisted crowd-pleaser for longtime fans as well as novices -- or for those that don't know an arachnid from an insect.

Life is a crock -- or something like it.

The film is, however, almost inevitably wistful for the past, and many of its emotional touches come from juxtaposed then-and-now footage of the participants.