Although a thin premise endangers its credibility at times, Green Card is a genial, nicely played romance.

Throughout, director Joe Dante and writer Eric Luke load the proceedings with references to sci-fiers of an earlier day, such as War of the Worlds, This Island Earth, Journey to the Center of the Earth and many others, but this is nothing compared to what happens when the trio of youngsters finally take off into outer space and make contact with an alien race.

Balagov, however, remains the star attraction of “Butterfly Jam,” his fluent, adventurous command of sound and image keeping the film interesting even when not much is happening on screen, and tangibly atmospheric when the narrative pendulum swings too far in the other direction.

Despite its merits, is neither an art movie nor an out-and-out, propulsive actioner like "Shiri."

Economically deployed effects lend the gathering storm a genuine sense of anxious bluster, but tension and terror are harder to conjure in a narrative this sparse and emotionally one-note.

Ultimately it is in the design and engineering of cumulative sight gag situations that Thrill of It All excels.

In a sense, each new take on Chekhov sheds insight on the timelessness of the material, and yet, this one does more to reveal missed opportunities for the next team to explore.

A fabulously designed underground metropolis proves more involving than the teenagers running through its streets in City of Ember, a good-looking but no more than serviceable adaptation of Jeanne Duprau's 2003 novel.

Rogen’s zonked-to-insanity performance is the lifeblood of The Night Before, giving it the sort of joyous, madcap energy that comes from letting loose with one’s closest comrades, even to the point of potential oblivion.

It boasts snappy dialogue, memorable characters, and a gorgeously designed central location but doesn’t quite know what to do with any of the above.

With Undisputed, writer-director Walter Hill is back in contention as one of Hollywood's last defenders of the muscular, no-nonsense genre movie.

Slick, straight-ahead action-thriller that marks a small step back and two bounding leaps forward for toplined Jet Li.

Proficiently written and directed by newcomer Bart Freundlich, handsome pic brandishes traditional qualities in the areas of acting, character revelation and middlebrow seriousness, but operates within a familiar and narrow emotional range that provides little surprise or excitement.

Cheesy homage to a level of horniness Austin Powers could only imagine will be a dream movie for many a teenage boy.

This smooth inside job benefits from heightened bonhomie among the players, fab Euro locations and a diminished obligation to stick to the heist genre boilerplate.

A knockout documentary with a renegade personality ideally suited to its anarchic subject matter.

Timely and thought-provoking, if a bit rambling.

Blue Bayou holds little back as it rails against the cruelties and hypocrisies of American immigration law to stirring effect — though this emotional pile-driver of a film could stand to trust more in the undeniable power of its core story.

Hamill is not enough of a dramatic actor to carry the plot load here, especially when his partner in so many scenes is really little more than an oversized gas pump, even if splendidly voiced by James Earl Jones.

This frisky adaptation of the Steven Levitt-Stephen Dubner bestseller on human behavior by the numbers adds up to a revelatory trip into complex, innovative ideas and altered perspectives on how people think.

Emerges as an oddly sour, unappealing road-trip scenario.

There's more mood than matter here, but suspenseful atmospherics effectively distract from minor plot holes.

John Turturro brings sensitivity and intelligence to a subject that could have gone terribly awry in Fading Gigolo.

Escape From Tomorrow is a sneakily subversive exercise in low-budget surrealism and anti-corporate satire.

Kawase embraces nature worship and pompous philosophizing in her indulgently mannerist style, which, over the course of two hours, overwhelms a small yet potentially moving story of two teenagers dealing with separation within their families.

Slick enterprise buoyed by a Motown-flavored '60s soundtrack and an appealing ensemble cast.

What might have seemed a familiar if sad drama in live-action form benefits from this relative novelty of presentation, which lends a certain universality, as well as heightened viewer access, to Salomon’s story. But the rather pedestrian animation here also makes Charlotte a bit of a disappointment.

The expensive new version of Flash Gordon is a lot more gaudy, and just as dumb, as the original series starring Buster Crabbe. Sam J. Jones in the title role has even less thespic range than Crabbe, but the badness of his performance is part of the fun of the film. Jones, a former Playgirl nude centerfold whose only previous film role was the husband of Bo Derek in 10, lumbers vacantly through the part of Flash Gordon with the naivete, fearlessness, and dopey line readings familiar from the 1930s serials. Film benefits greatly from the adroit performance of Max von Sydow as Emperor Ming.

Anyone who has ever worked in an office will be able to identify with the antics in Nine to Five. Although it can probably be argued that Patricia Resnick and director Colin Higgins' script [from a story by Resnick] at times borders on the inane, the bottom line is that this picture is a lot of fun.

The story takes no outsize turns, no big surprise twists. Perhaps the only surprise is how touching it is: a tale that will caress you, and your children, in a way that speaks to something true. It reminds you of what it’s like to be moved by a kids’ film that’s driven by more than nonstop movement.

We Bought a Zoo is an odd bird, warm-blooded but largely lifeless.

For 150 uninterrupted minutes, the mood is one of despair, brutality, and little hope. The script is very good within its limitations, but there is insufficient identification with the main characters.

The story contains the usual surfeit of human massacre for the yahoo trade, as well as a few actual thoughts.

Émond obviously has deep feeling for Arcan, and “Nelly” is a sincere and respectful attempt to do at least partial, fragmentary justice to a troubled woman able to self-create any persona except a happy one, but it can’t put her back together again.

Monday, shot with a mostly Greek crew, has been made with some liveliness and skill, and the two actors really fuse. . . . But Papadimitropoulos treats most of the film as if he were making “Blue Valentine” or “Head-On”: a study in masculine narcissism.

It’s a familiar story of music-world success, failure and addiction, admirably but unevenly told by first-time feature director Jeff Preiss, who certainly knows the music and the milieu, but proves less adept at shaping the material into a consistently compelling narrative.

Julian Jarrold’s brightly performed exercise in speculative history scores as a frothier, more feminine bookend to “The King’s Speech” — though it’s no less engaging or accomplished.

Indian in the Cupboard is yet another example that Hollywood can make movies in which critics of sex and violence can find nothing to complain about. It’s also a reminder that family values can be, well, kind of boring.

Star Trek III is an emotionally satisfying science fiction adventure. Dovetailing neatly with the previous entry in the popular series, Star Trek II.

Les Coquillettes never comes off as an elaborate in-joke; instead it feels like a sincere attempt to convey what the very particular rush of a film festival, rarely seen onscreen, can feel like from inside the bubble.

That blend of action genre content and character study is a comfortable mix for Perlman, even if Asher doesn’t quite have the stuff to be truly memorable on either count.

The biggest single factor in making “Young Werther” an antic, pleasing gambit overall is English actor Booth. He channels a bit of the early Val Kilmer from “Top Secret!” and “Real Genius” in conjuring a hero who’s so nimble and amusing in his peacocking, we forgive him being his own biggest admirer.

Wood's powerlessness to break out of the emotive straightjacket hands the picture to his Russian costars on a platter, and they run with it.

Though nearly sabotaged by the ridiculous sexual subplot at its center, this soul-searching drama works best at the character level, couching insights about sin and forgiveness under the guise of conventional genre entertainment.

A routine memory piece about long-buried family secrets that bubble back to the surface to wreak havoc.

Waltrip’s earnest and forthright narration lends Blink of an Eye its intimacy and insight.

The Gateway moves quickly enough to hold attention, if not to cover up its ill-matched individual elements, let alone meld them into a coherent vision.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is a dutifully eager but ultimately rather joyless piece of nostalgic hokum.

Stephen Dorff's powerhouse perf as an ordinary Joe trapped behind bars with warring ethnic psychopaths propels Felon well ahead of its expose/exploitation brethren while still avoiding the pious learning curves of Frank Darabont's prestige prison dramas.

Whether you’re skeptical of Bloom’s abilities or have long been a believer, you can’t help but respect what the actor does with Retaliation. And the same might be true whether you’re religious or not, seeing as how the film promises revenge, while leveraging cinema’s most powerful weapon: empathy.

If in terms of narrative there’s not much new here, there is a freshness and an inhabited vibrancy that makes this painful coming of age story feel exactly its own.

The emotions are real; everything else is movie magic, representing where we now stand — at the apex of artificiality — for better or worse.

While it never tops the explosive hilarity of its first 20 minutes, The Invention of Lying is a smartly written, nicely layered comedy that, like last year's underappreciated "Ghost Town," casts Ricky Gervais as a mild-mannered schlub who manages, in spite of himself, to make the world a better place.

There’s poetry and soul here, but both are watered down by how much the movie seems to be multitasking. With Pixar, sincerity is elemental. The rest risks distracting from what really matters.

A potentially gripping legal thriller about what happens when Western Europe attempts to solve Central European problems ends up as dull entertainment in Storm.

Entombs its characters so thoroughly in a prison of palpably predestined tragedy that one knows from the outset that the very worst that can happen most certainly will.

Offers an occasionally fascinating look at the complex social, religious and political dynamics that help define the sacred city of Jerusalem.

An often compelling drama, marbled with dry humor and flecked with the supernatural, that provides food for thought but doesn't quite reach the brass ring.

The Pope of Greenwich Village, set in Manhattan’s Italian community, is a near-miss in its transition from novel [by Vincent Patrick] to film, setting forth an offbeat slice-of-life tale of small-time guys involved in big trouble.

Script, from an Ib Melchior story, makes its satirical points economically, and director Paul Bartel keeps the film moving quickly.

Dragon is noteworthy more for the martial arts action than for narrative, which is all its fans probably want anyway.

The cumulative assassinations begin to ache like a mysterious bruise, making the audience feel the psychic weight of living in fear. Yet, the style of the film is more teen soap opera than vérité miserablism.

For its first half, 7500 is briskly effective in a cold-sweat sort of way, carrying its audience from a smooth takeoff to the first signs of disturbance to swiftly cranked all-out terror with the kind of nervy efficiency you can admire without exactly taking pleasure in it. In more ways than one, however, Vollrath’s technically adroit film has trouble sticking the landing.

Johnny Depp and Mary Stuart Masterson render such startling performances in the romantic fable Benny & Joon that they almost overcome the trappings of an emotional tale that is not particularly well written or directed.

The helmer’s narrative dead end here registers not as a lack of nerve so much as a lack of imagination.

A melancholy actioner that shines a new light on film noir. A sort of "The Third Man" for the 21st century, chiaroscuro curio's level of graphic invention is exceeded only by its pleasingly mournful approach.

Director Penelope Spheeris, with her first major studio assignment (and eight-figure budget), delivers a colorful but uneventful picture.

The more the film implicates David, the more it distances itself and the viewer, playing out in the emotionally detached but sensationalistic, overripe manner of a tabloid freakshow.

Videogamers who've been itching for "Grand Theft Auto: The Movie" can tide themselves over in the meantime with Crank, a down-and-dirty actioner that follows a rugged antihero trying to outrun death by keeping his adrenaline flowing.

Summer of ’84 is only cute and competent enough to be diverting; it’s neither funny nor scary enough to leave a lasting impression.

The overkill and the underdone do it in.

A sure-fire audience-pleaser, Scott (son of Garry) Marshall's winning comedy bow could have been titled "My Big Fat Jewish Bar Mitzvah."

Leads Kapoor and Bhatt have an excess of charm and style that leaps off the screen and grabs your heart.

“Nobody” director Ilya Naishuller takes gags that have no business working . . . and milks them for laughs, adding original solutions to otherwise familiar action scenes.

Audiences may not care about this gang when the party starts, but once the dust settles, you’ve gotta admit, they made for pretty good company.

The Patsy's slim story line has it ups and downs, sometimes being hilarious, frequently unfunny.

A skittery, rambling but often absorbing portrait.

As neatly tailored, clean-cut, and visually appealing as a Savile Row suit. But audiences accustomed to more knowing fare are likely to find its twists and turns outdated while yearning for a little of the rebellious fun that made the genre gleam in the first place.

The script doesn't wring many surprises or much character involvement from the premise, and the brothers' helming, while slick, is short on scares, action setpieces and humor.

It’s an audacious feat to combine multiple genres into one compelling feature, but The Gorge does just that.

Easy on the eye but light on originality.

The film’s barely-hidden secrets float just beneath the surface of a pool with no ripples — without meaningful texture to complicate or disguise its themes, or turn their unveiling into an emotionally-driven experience.

Just when you thought nothing new could be done with the undead, “The Cured” pulls off a fresh take on zombie terrain.

Scotti's amateur camerawork proves strangely compelling.

If a dominatrix is one who takes total control of her passive partner, then R100 is the cinematic equivalent of a kinky femme fatale in black leather and stiletto heels, cracking a whip and a smile.

The script ... is practically all plot, all the time, which is plenty efficient for those simply looking to be scared but a little anemic when it comes to making audiences care about these people

Director Michel Hazanavicius finds a poignant way to address not only the horrors of the Holocaust, but the kindness that combated it, crafting an indelible parable destined to be watched and shared by generations to come.

Spielberg is such a talented director it’s a shame to see him lose all sense of subtlety and nuance.

A lightly engaging bilingual trifle that benefits greatly from the charm of lead player Jaime Camil, a Mexican TV and film star who evidences smooth self-assurance at the wheel of what could be his crossover vehicle.

Part bromance, part sci-fi spoof and all a bit disappointing.

A sly, enormously entertaining romp based on the antics of real-life Brit conman Alan Conway who rooked his way around '90s London posing as Stanley Kubrick.

Given that the story’s trajectory isn’t very surprising, it’s up to the character details and local color to imbue it with life, and in this the film largely succeeds.

A light, funny coming-of-ager set in the endearingly un-hip retirement community of Hollywood, Fla.

A sporadically amusing but ultimately very slight showbiz story about being married to a celebrity. Most of the jokes and situations are predictable, and the film is saddled with irritating supporting characters.

Original in every sense.

Comes across in muted fashion, with uninvolving characters and lack of genuine excitement or fright creating a second-rate, second-hand feel.

The most extensive interplay of live action and animation since "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?"

Devotees of folk and bluegrass -- and, of course, diehard Nickel Creek fans -- are the natural audience for this leisurely paced documentary.