Amazingly, amidst the smutty silliness, there are some laughs.

Preposterous yet solidly entertaining.

Just about any golden age Hollywood hack could have made a zestier drama about one of the greatest rescue missions in U.S. military history.

A haunting and fascinating portrait of so much that is worth exploring: the implacability of nature, the hubris of human endeavor and the line between supreme dedication and madness.

It's for people who have always wanted to see Willie Nelson ("Uncle Jesse") lob Molotov cocktails on a freeway and smoke weed with Joe Don Baker, who plays Georgia's governor.

Flowers is smartly observational -- but a little screen heat would be worth a bouquet.

By the end of the movie, all we want is for Barrymore to give him the time of day.

The kind of well-acted, genuine heartwarmer that some people complain Hollywood doesn't bother making anymore. And in this case, Hollywood didn't.

This is precisely the kind of film that parents clamor for and rarely get: a substantive, stirring, Huck Finn-style saga that doesn't insult anyone's intelligence or mindlessly entertain with crass humor.

Junebug has the feel of a good short story or novella.

A breath of fresh air amid the superheroes, aliens and bombastic explosions of summer.

Sky High gets Kurt Russell back to his retro Disney roots, and he's still in good enough shape at age 54 to wear a supernatural hunk's cape.

A documentary that dissects the essence of comedy as well as showcases outrageous improvisational humor.

The best thing Hustle & Flow has going for it is Terrence Howard's powerful performance.

This frenzied fiesta of firepower is about cloning people for spare parts, but the movie is a clone itself. Possessing no new ideas, it reworks and borrows from such films as "Blade Runner," "The Matrix" and "Logan's Run."

The material is so solid and Thornton so tailor-made that the movie almost gets by.

A little of this will go a long way.

The glacial pacing may put some people off, but it also has a hypnotic quality. And some viewers might find it fascinating to be a voyeur into someone's tortured psyche.

Depp deserves kudos for fashioning an original and outlandish if occasionally menacing character.

A showcase for Vince Vaughn's rantings and Owen Wilson's standard but affable chum act.

The film is entertaining if contrived. It is not as cleverly structured as Roos' best ensemble comedy, "The Opposite of Sex," which also co-starred Kudrow. But it does have humorous moments.

Dark Water has more substance and a more interesting look than many horror films, but the familiar elements of the story disappoint.

There's nothing terribly fantastic about this ho-hum futuristic foray.

The Beautiful Country might be too slow-moving for some, but it has powerful performances and a multi-layered quality. It is an epic journey worth taking.

Murderball brilliantly captures the intensity of the little-known athletic competition, offering more intimacy and drama than most Hollywood sports movies.

A raw and powerful suspense thriller.

The players fall into recognizable stereotypes: the big and clumsy kid, the real talent who's also a showoff, the buffoon, the gross-out guy. But no one is more formulaic than the coach. He starts out smug with the kids and ends up smitten.

But expect a logical plot, and you'll walk out of the theater with a host of questions, mostly concerning procedural points of the alien attack.