I know this sounds like great fun, and some of it is, but there's nowhere near enough good stuff to fill the 114-minute running time.

A remarkably ill-advised remake.

Ms. Bening is the only reason to see the movie, but a compelling reason. Just like Julia, she prevails over lesser mortals with unfailing zest.

The devil had taken Reagan to the mountaintop and offered a world of spoils, from peace prizes to popular acclaim and a glamorous place in history. To reject it took more than guts. It took a man who put freedom ahead of his own glory. This is not a biography but the story of a man who faced off against the 20th century's "heart of darkness" and won.

As an evocation of English working-class life half a century ago, it feels utterly authentic, and is ennobled -- not too strong a word, I think -- by Imelda Staunton's performance in the title role.

For all its energy, fine performances and dramatic confrontations, Friday Night Lights substitutes intensity for insight, dodging the book's harsher findings like a dazzling broken-field runner.

Mr. Walken performs with a marvelously minimalist precision.

I haven't seen the original, but I can vouch for the clumsiness of the new version. As usual, though, Queen Latifah is an indomitable, if sometimes undirectable, comic force.

A little humanity can go a long way to make up for a movie's shortcomings, and there's more than a little in Ladder 49, a surprisingly stirring celebration of heroic firefighters.

The story leaves you snoozing with the fishes.

Huckabees is godawful, a mirthless, bilious bore in which the vividly focused fury of "Three Kings" has become free-floating anger at the follies of human existence.

Makes an eloquent case for John Kerry's courage, both during and immediately after his service in Vietnam.

It's not a great film, but there's something to be said for a cool-button treatment of a hot-button issue.

It's "The Sixth Sense" as nonsense, "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" without the sunshine. Or the mind.

A convincing, entertaining portrait of the revolutionist as a young man.

A sports movie with a quick wit, uncommon grace and a romantic soul.

The best way to see Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow -- if you see it at all -- is as an interesting experiment that failed.

Mr. Sayle's portrait is painfully unfunny, and the movie as a whole is a plodding polemic.

Reconstruction means to be confusing, and is. It also means to intrigue us, and does.

Built on such a goofy premise that your average soap-opera scriptwriter would laugh it out of a story meeting.

Despite the curry flavoring Ms. Nair has seen fit to add, this is a Vanity Fair without spice.

An excruciatingly embarrassing display of ego and ineptitude.

Rich in motion -- the very clothes of the characters seem under a choreographer's direction -- as well as imagery.

Unspeakably ghastly sequel to the merely ghastly original.

Directed by E. Elias Merhige, the film is never less than entertaining, but Sir Ben's portrayal of a sympathetic psychopath gives it a special zing.

Well, incredibly stupid is certainly what is delivered to audiences.

Earnest but deeply flawed.

As in most movies of this sort from "Rebel Without a Cause" to "West Side Story" to last year's "Thirteen," adults are marginalized, clueless or absent. I'm with them.