Baghead provides a diverting showcase for actors you may never have heard of but who deserve a shot at fame and fortune.

The movie is so tepid and inoffensive: It reminded me of a '70s Disney live-action product, with clean-scrubbed "hippies" like Johnny Whitaker chafing harmlessly under the wise ministrations of Suzanne Pleshette, whose job was to keep the kids in hand.

Despite some Cold War humor, the formulaic film is aimed squarely at the youngest of young children.

There is a difference between the importance of a film's subject and the quality of a film's execution. And the execution is lacking. The film just isn't, well, very interesting.

Pirouettes along a beguiling but treacherous line between horror and whimsy.

Traitor traffics in the cliches of the terrorist chase film -- including the usual stereotypes of Muslims -- while trying not to succumb to outright bigotry.

It's astonishing how much intensity and focus these two have lost, but the picture itself is not all that bad -- if you can get the collapsing-career thing out of your head.

May leave you longing for a story to make you care.

Though it has clever moments, it doesn't come close to the polished animation, wit and originality of the big green guy (Shrek).

A sometimes entertaining flick that makes a lot of noise but doesn't have much to say.

What really sells this three-hanky tear-jerker -- and there were a lot of women buying it during a recent screening -- is Lane's steely and vulnerable performance. Like Tinker Bell, she almost made me believe in fairies. Almost.

Morning Light, sailor's delight. All others be forewarned.

The movie is pulled along mostly by James Marsden's cheerfully over-the-top performance as Ian's homophobic older brother, but Josh Zuckerman does a nice job of keeping Ian likable.

An arresting, often riveting film that is fascinating to look at but not nearly so interesting to watch.

Despite a mysterious title, Changeling isn't a mystery. It is, occasionally, agony.

This was originally rated NC-17, and somehow, I'm thinking that version will survive on DVD.

It's lame, corny, Ed Woodishly amateurish -- all of which is as lovable as the big lug himself.

Although it's a far less objectionable Holocaust revision than, say, Roberto Benigni's "Life Is Beautiful," Herman's The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is yet another attempt to revisit a sorrowful event in history that should never be forgotten or used for entertainment.

Epitomizes the best and the worst of what animated filmmaking has become in an era dominated on the one hand by ever more sophisticated computerized imagery and, on the other, by the grasping, increasingly grating desire to be hip.

The only laughs come from Vaughn, a master of ingratiation. Witherspoon is no Roz Russell or Lucille Ball. But she fills space nicely.

It's a rousing, fast-paced tale, told with a modicum of verve and packed with colorfully flawed, occasionally heroic and even tragic characters. It also feels disappointingly bloated and too fast-paced by half.

Although the new version, which stars Keanu Reeves, is likely to make audiences pine for the meta-irony of "Mystery Science Theater 3000," it's not a complete failure.

The ensemble cast boasts some of the finest actors in the business. They do their best to breathe life into the stereotypes, but they simply don't have enough to work with.

The battles are boring and the jokes as flat as old 7-Up, but the film's color palette and creatures -- from teeny buzzing critters to a monster that looks like a giant dust mite -- offer a lot to see. It's just not enough to save the convoluted story.

As usual with these animated epics, much depends on the vocal performances, and it's a mixed bag.

Best of all is Keri Russell, who plays Adam Sandler's love interest and who brightens the tart rhubarb pie of her performance in "Waitress" with just a pinch of Disney sweetness.

There are three fine performances lost in this otherwise middling film. Alan Arkin makes a wonderfully gruff newspaper editor who does just about as much barking as Marley. Jennifer Aniston makes the most of the rather slender figure of Jennifer Grogan, creating a believably human picture of a career woman who gives it up for the kids. And then there's the dog that plays Marley.

Exerts an unmistakable appeal, thanks to an absorbing story and fine performances from Morris Chestnut and Taraji P. Henson.

Mediocre, unmemorable comedy.

After more than two hours, what we're left with feels like a Robert Altman movie on Botox. It has some real substance and heft, but it also might be a bit too glossy.

Rebecca may owe everybody for everything, but Fisher definitely owns the movie. She is the only one outside of Ritter who gives a bona fide performance.

In the end, like virtually every other remake that has been released recently, it's polished and predictable.

Tokyo, if anything, becomes more of a mystery after Tokyo! than it was before. That's the strength and curse of the film. If you can't find real connections between its disparate stories, you can always make them up yourself. But if that kind of film frustrates you, think twice before booking a ticket to Tokyo!

That none of the protagonists earns the audience's sympathy is more likely a failure of the real-life characters rather than the actors, who deliver fine performances -- especially Rhys, who seems to be channeling Richard Burton channeling Dylan Thomas at his most manipulatively loutish.

Malkovich has a role that coulda-woulda-shoulda been a sensation if he had had a different director and different co-stars.

Has bells and whistles, superb technical sophistication and dazzling visual effects, sound, fury and Reese Witherspoon. What it doesn't have is heart. Like so many vehicles that have popped out from the DreamWorks Animation snark tank, Monsters vs. Aliens is too clever by half.

Those who fondly recall "The Blob" would seem to be the target crowd for a fastidious pastiche that attempts to coax laughs by maintaining a poker face.

A handsomely made French musical that never really soars.

The singer-actress has screen presence to spare and a nice, rich voice. By the time her young fans outgrow her -- or she them -- she should have an excellent chance at a second career. Making, you know, real movies and real music.

Pleasant-to-watch, easily forgotten drama.

Cruel, unfunny and yet somehow perversely fascinating.

Engaging but pedestrian comedy.

It doesn't do much for the film's pacifist message that, as spacecraft zip across the screen and fire lasers into your popcorn, you may find yourself wishing that Tsirbas had replaced the movie's poorly written dialogue and implausible plot with more battle scenes. War! What is it good for? Awesome animation!

The complex story structure teeters between the revelatory and the absurd, depending on how much you buy the irritating-then-intriguing performance by Arsine Khanjian (Egoyan's wife, the Armenian-Canadian actor).

Beltrn, for his part, makes a solidly believable Garca Lorca. The problem is with the man with whom he's obsessed. In Pattinson's performance, we never see what Garca Lorca sees in Dal.

Enjoyable but forgettable.

It's cheap-looking (dinosaurs and other beasts here look like CGI loaners from Spielberg), deeply mediocre and predictable.

Blame the wafer-thin adaptation by Sheridan Jobbins and director Stephan Elliott. What might've been a scrumptious, chocolatey dessert of a movie -- a Noel Coward delite -- is instead a scoop of lemon ice, not filling, faintly sweet and mostly water.

Tetro has no internal tension and should have been a comedy.

Shrink is no worse than the average Hollywood comedy. But it shows, more obviously than most, the bankruptcy of standard-issue American pop narrative, circa 2009.

Yi's self-regarding, ironic tone makes the whole thing feel like a setup, designed more as an indie-chic calling card than a sincere inquiry.

If parents feel like they've seen much of Shorts before, its celebration of mayhem and restless, thrill-seeking vibe will absorb young viewers, especially as the boredom of late summer begins to set in.

A choppy and occasionally unsure film, one that doesn't achieve the superb tonal control of "The Ice Storm," but that certainly doesn't represent an unqualified disaster on a par with Lee's first attempt at the western, "Ride With the Devil."

It's delicious and ensnaring and easy on the eyes, but it can't give you the definitive truth about notoriously frosty Vogue editor Anna Wintour.

The most damning assessment comes from animator-historian John Canemaker, who concludes that Disney's ethnically neutered South American output "gagged it up so that the American influence overwhelmed the cultural" influence of South America.

Exhibits the weaknesses and the strengths of what has become a nearly foolproof formula for keeping viewers engaged.

This new Fame, whitewashed for the kids, leaps into a catchy rhythm at the start.

The hatchet-happy editor, ever-attentive to the transient attention span of the film's target audience, barely allows the hero time out from one virtuosic battle before he is flung in the face of a new enemy.

A fable that is by turns antic, scary, sweet and, in the end, slightly soulless. In other words, it's a heartwarmer that doesn't have much of a heart itself.

Much of the film's humor hovers around crotch level. If jokes about mental illness, terminal disease and sex with orangutans sound funny to you, go for it.

Creation is fatally weakened by an excess of pathos; in a Darwinian universe, it would be quickly swallowed up by a leaner, fitter movie.

What's disappointing about The Crazies, though, is the lack of care that Eisner and screenwriters Scott Kosar and Ray Wright put into their film's atmosphere. There's little in the way of Romero-esque dread; Eisner substitutes a grim lack of humor and frequent splashes of gore.

The misapprehension about Brooklyn's Finest -- which was first shown at Sundance last year and has been heavily edited since -- is that it's a movie about police. It isn't: It's a movie about movies about police.

It's tasty enough, and probably good for you, but at 73 minutes, the film is hardly a very filling entree.

The daring mission by astronauts to repair and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope in May 2009 is the perfect subject for a brilliant, thrilling 3-D Imax movie. Such a movie, alas, has yet to be made.

Beginning to creak not only with age but with the strain of constant self-one-upmanship in giving us exotic locales, explosive geopolitics and unbelievable stunts.

Cradle Will Rock is left in mid-rock, as it were, its energy squandered, its sense of history confused, its sound and fury ultimately signifying nothing.

Despite drawing from one of the most powerful and true stories from the Cold War, K-19 is only moderately moving.

Its one-sidedness flirts with propaganda.

It resides in that cinematic middle ground of not-bad, not-great, just okay.

Everything has been modernized except for the characters, and that's this movie's tragic flaw.

The story moves episodically, almost painstakingly.

It's like a PBS version of a movie of the week about child abduction, complete with histrionic, spit-flecked speechifying in quaint Irish brogues.

Maybe it's me, but I find it difficult to dislike any movie that has horses, guns and big hats in it.

Despite amazing access to Seinfeld backstage, we don't get a peek into the real man.

It's a case of the heart being in the right place, but the script getting in the way.

It's too bad the movie's intriguing effect wears off (so to speak) about two-thirds through.

A coy seriocomedy distantly related to--but missing the sting of--"Kiss of the Spider Woman."

Shaft? Not in this splashy-but-empty remake he isn't.

Based on "Romeo and Juliet" the way a martini is "based" on vermouth.

If Quitting isn't worthy of affection exactly, it's worthy of respect.

So pleased with its own spoofy conceit it stays in annoyingly self-amused, predictable mode.

The movie's deeper problem and its primary disappointment: its unwillingness to deal directly with the issue of colonialism.

There is one reason, and one reason alone, to watch Cet Amour-La. It is Jeanne Moreau.

Provides a fascinating glimpse of how the human spirit struggles.

A great director's losing battle against a goofy script.

The topic certainly suits the times, but the director's approach is as alienating as it is old-fashioned.

If scriptwriter Byrum hadn't tried to cram every possible theme into this film -- hoping, no doubt, they would all add up to greatness -- Duets would be an entertaining, wryly observed slice of Americana.

A bittersweet duet convincingly, if unexcitingly, performed by Baye and Lopez.

Rollicks and rolls, thanks mainly to Roth's over-the-top depravity and Xiong's swingin', "Crouching Tiger"-style choreography.

Wants to be about life, death and the red liquid that flows beneath our skin. It ends up being more about stage blood and stupid plot tricks.

An instructive account of the perils of attempting to privatize decrepit public utilities in countries with stagnant economies.

Tries to cram too many ingredients into one small pot.

The result is a cross between a hurricane and a tornado as run through a movieola dialed all the way up to 10.

If you're looking to take your children to something harmless, that doesn't embarrass anyone, this light comedy (a gentle parody of those "Behind the Music" specials on cable TV) is your next outing.

This fairy-tale shtick, even when dressed up with a little class-war garnish, is hard to swallow.

Tends to speculation, conspiracy theories or, at best, circumstantial evidence.

The new Bond movie is pure nonsense art of the dadaist school; it follows the rules of the ridiculous as it turns narrative convention, thriller formula and special-effects set pieces into a manifesto of the purest gibberish.