A dark-humored film about devastation, which makes Vodka Lemon's final rush into comedy in the truest sense all the more refreshing. Even in the wasteland, there might be humor other than the gallows kind.

It's a hard-won comfort, found here over a bleak stretch of days, but All Or Nothing makes it look like the best life has to offer.

Despite a shaky start and the presence of questionable elements throughout, by the time it arrives at its finale -- which copies Return Of The Jedi's triple-climax structure -- The Phantom Menace has won its place alongside the original Star Wars trilogy.

Essentially, the film stays at the party too long. But for a good stretch, its combination of twirling excitement and dry absurdity captures the spirit of characters too intoxicated to realize they're dancing over a chasm.

Deschanel and Schneider--who both give rich, funny performances--and everyone around them have inner lives that don't always translate into words. When they speak, it's usually in dialogue halfway between poetry and inarticulate fumbling.

The film works by putting the accelerator to the floor and never looking in the rear-view mirror.

That makes it hard to watch "Billy Elliot" director Stephen Daldry's adaptation without thinking of the one Almodóvar might have made -- which surely would have been warmer, less self-consciously tony, and less relentlessly arid than the one that did get made.

Mendes' second effort plays like a familiar song transposed to a minor key, a gangland fable soaked in portent and fatalism until its familiarity ceases to be an issue.

It may boil down to little more than a minor variation on Four Weddings' formula, but it's an interesting and entertaining one.

The story is well-told, but so familiar that it renders the surrounding film a bright, shiny, dispensible bauble, an amusing diversion but not much more.

The Dreamers is a universal story, one that captures the thrill of discovering culture, sex, and politics, and the painful twinge of learning that those worlds aren't enough.

Though Moolaadé doesn't shy away from the task of educating its viewers about the brutality of "purification," it works equally well as a tribute to righteous defiance wherever it surfaces.

In one of the film's most persuasive bits, Farley Granger talks about chucking a lucrative film career in order to tread the boards in New York. Maybe it's that kind of magnetic draw that makes an age golden.

What it became is essentially one long free-fall from destitution to despair.

While McKellen's sharp performance provides the main attraction, the film wouldn't work without both Fraser, who brings something extra to a character who could easily have been a mere lunk, and director Bill Condon's careful integration of larger themes.

A lot goes on, and it doesn't always make sense. But the cast embodies Rendell's ability to incorporate shrewd observations on human behavior into the framework of a crime story, and Miller has a great eye for the places on the Paris outskirts where the lives of haves and have-nots intersect.

Mostly, it's just a pleasure to watch Keaton and Nicholson learning new steps in an old dance, stumbling to grab at happiness before it's too late.

While fleeting moments from Pearce and Luis Guzmán (as Caviezel's loyal servant) suggest the film might have been even more fun had they been allowed to loosen up a bit, the finished product still offers little cause for complaint.

Carion and his gifted leads never take the easy way out. Instead, they let the characters get acquainted against the slow change of the seasons, taking their relationship along unexpected turns.

Perfectly in keeping with a series that began by simply putting a monster on a spaceship, then gave itself the creative freedom to explore what that monster and that spaceship really meant. [Quadrilogy]

Huo never quite finds the filmic vocabulary to tilt the film toward greatness-and the mawkish synth score does little to help-but Postmen In The Mountains ultimately succeeds.

Writer-director Tim McCanlies works in broad, kid-friendly strokes, and he's not afraid to lay on the sentiment, but his cast makes sure it's well-earned.

Though Smith loses many of his past efforts' familiar trappings--Jay and Silent Bob are now confined to the production-company logo--Jersey Girl plays to Smith's strengths like no film since "Clerks."

Trashy enough to envelop its sex scenes in aerobicized glamour (a Lyne trademark), so the fact that it takes itself so seriously almost counts as a daring move.

The film is unfortunately about little more than its potentially mind-boggling plot and structure.

When Friday Night Lights gets to the big games, the time it's spent creates an atmosphere thick with tension, one akin to the real-world experience of watching a favorite team play for its life.

As disappointing-but-worthwhile films go, you could do a lot worse.

Hoffman and Sarandon work well together, and Gyllenhaal, who's carved out a niche for himself as the new face of internalized conflict, fits nicely into a role Hoffman would have made a meal of 30 years ago.

Like Ang Lee's "Hulk," it's a fusion of arthouse and multiplex instincts, and though it seems unlikely to satisfy anyone, it's just as unlikely that anyone who sees it will forget it soon.

Though there's a formula at the film's core, Whale Rider still has the good taste to make that formula go down easy.

In the latest of a long string of memorable performances, Hanks balances wide-eyed confusion with innate shrewdness, finding a character who's both unfailingly sweet and nobody's fool.

Bridges turns in another remarkable performance, and he's well-matched by Foster.

Pretty much impossible not to like a little, but it's also hard to like a lot. There's a fantastic film to be made from this material, but now, the burden of making it falls to a sequel.

Years from now, Team America will better convey the political character of 2004 than a stack of Time magazines. Staying funny helps even more.

In this long, slow fall from grace, unceremonious nudity and half-hearted sex begin to look like a mockery of a paradise lost.

In McKay, Ferrell has found an unusually simpatico collaborator for the type of humor that's made him a comedy force: outsized, unexpectedly sweet, and unrelenting.

The film is a bit of a slog, but in the end, it's a slog worth taking, thanks to a strange, moving ending that reduces the samurai era's codes of warfare, class, and honor down to two men meeting face to face.

Handsomely shot by Brazilian director Walter Salles and beautifully played by the two leads, The Motorcycle Diaries would amount to little more than a minor, softly politically conscious coming-of-age story, if not for its historical context.

What it retains is a playful sense of style, that combines with an anything-goes spirit.

It's tacky and beautiful, sometimes both at the same time. Occasionally flatfooted even as it sparkles, the film suffers when Hogan lets the scenery do the directing for him, but he's chosen a cast capable of shouldering the film's weight.

Fast-paced and ambitious, it never bores, and Soderbergh proves himself interesting to watch in addition to being gifted behind the camera.

Freeway is full of nice touches—such as making the villain a psychologist— that play off the expectations of a familiar story. While also working as a conventional thriller, its many twists on the fairy tale make it work on an almost subliminal level.

As a morality play, it's a one-sided contest, because the question of whether power corrupts is never a question at all. As a queasily thrilling tour of a dirty little corner of the world, however, Trapero's film offers a memorable ride.

Sauret's approach isn't the most artful, but it doesn't have to be. Hearing his subjects speak for themselves is good enough.

For long stretches, Or is a dialogue-heavy kitchen-sink drama, but its naturalistic style and unselfconscious performances give it an intensity that only builds as it progresses.

its moments of greatness--and there are more than a couple--feel weirdly disconnected, stuck in a movie that doesn’t know how to put them together, or find a good way to move from one to the next.

The film lays on its politics-as-chess-game metaphor a little thick, however, and its refusal to leave the corridors of power to see the impact of its developments on the country at large makes it feel stuffy after a while.

The way-too-familiar climax feels less like a comment on destiny than like watching a finely crafted but soulless product roll off an assembly line.

Johnson sets viewers up for greatness, but ultimately offers much milder pleasures. The film isn’t an outright con, but it’s easy to feel a little misled by the end.

The film is much more intriguing in its dread-inducing opening half, when Moll's assured direction keeps suggesting that something horrible will be happening soon, then, when it does, that something even more horrifying may follow.

Which makes it all the more frustrating that the film doesn't quite work, and that it drags from episode to episode--some are brilliant, most merely intriguing--with little momentum.

One of the film's oddest aspects is the way the 2002 footage appears more dated than the scenes from 1978.

It's as subtle as a spinning kick, but some films aren't built for subtlety.

It's more haunting than it has any right to be, thanks to its love of long, lonesome highways and the way the violence of the past bleeds into the present.

There are formulaic moments aplenty in Pride, the "inspired by a true story" tale of Philadelphia swimming coach Jim Ellis, but in its first scenes, at least, it deserves some credit for doing the unexpected.

It's an imperfect film, but it's the kind of imperfect film of which it would be nice to have seen Shelly make more.

Hot Rod keeps a sweet tone that's filled with affection for its characters, and enough laughs to become this summer's most mildly recommendable comedy.

A better film would have matched Arnett's seemingly effortless intensity throughout. This okay film does merely okay by it.

It's a heartbreaking tale, a sliver of a tragic history still unfolding, but one that Braun largely leaves others to document.

Adams' winning performance and the light touch director Kevin Lima (a veteran of animation and live action) brings to scenes not tasked with advancing the plot all suggest that, silly as they may look once you take it apart, irony-free, romantic fantasy--animated and otherwise--still has a place on the big screen.

Anyone looking for handsomely presented, kid-friendly thrills need look no further.

Too much of Leatherheads feels like studied motions, and its charms never plaster over a story that takes forever to get going, and doesn't go too far once it does.

The Hulk himself looks more steroidal than superheroic, as if the expressive beast from the first film had been replaced by a WWE star.

Wanted is a queasily unapologetic power fantasy about becoming a better person through violence.

It's the journey that matters, however, and sometimes the film doesn't seem to know where it's going.

After a compelling opening act and some shocking late-film developments, the film feels disengaged from the action at hand and the issues raised.

Ramona And Beezus has the undeniably nice, pleasantly uninspired feel of film designed to kill time with the kids on a rainy weekend.

It's a postcard-lovely movie that, in spite of its best intentions, ends up feeling a little touristy.

The film is at its best when it isn't afraid to be earnest.

It's a tender, but sometimes untended, portrait of the artist as a young man-and occasionally as a young asshole-that's handsome, dutiful, and finally, a little dull.

Offers a concise summary of Burroughs' life and works. Maybe too concise. At a mere 88 minutes, it feels a bit glancing. But as an introduction or refresher course, it gets the job done.

The best thing about Taymor's Tempest is also the worst: It's not stunning but it is sturdy, a handsome-enough showcase of a film that never really comes to life. It plays like a challenge politely declined.

The plot is only semi-comprehensible, but the nearly non-stop musical numbers-brilliant conflations of glam-rock and showtunes-and transgressive sexual energy keep things moving.

No Strings Attached isn't a BAD piece of formulaic product.

Though the film never balances the grown-up stuff with the gross-out gags, it suggests the Farrellys might be able to do mature after all.

Henson's characters maintained an essential innocence while sending up the very idea of entertainment. They put on a show with quotation marks around it, but the irony never felt cynical. When it isn't getting bogged down in unearned sentiment, The Muppets gets that right.

Spielrein's name is less familiar than the others, but the film suggests she deserves to be more than a footnote in the history of psychoanalysis.

An unassuming wisp of a movie, Midnight In Paris finds Woody Allen penning a love letter to the City Of Lights, albeit one whose sentiments could easily fit on a postcard.

Without "The Wire" and its like as a point of comparison, Texas Killing Fields might seem the natural heir to a gritty '70s cop drama. But with great contemporary TV around, it seems strangely incomplete.

Mostly The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel stays focused on the cutesy, low-stakes personal journeys of its English characters, characters it would be hard to care about if they weren't brought to life by actors who give the film substance and gravity it doesn't otherwise know how to earn.

How could someone so frail and terrified at the mere thought of acting in front of the camera become the biggest movie star in the world? And how could someone so unknowable become so familiar? Then the film makes the mistake of trying to answer these questions.

If only the emotions of the performances, the themes of the story, and Wright's cinematic virtuosity synced up more often. A lopsided abridgement that speeds through the plot doesn't help.

Made with affection and access but not enough structure.

You have to give She's All That points for unironically staying true to its genre in its purest form, one Kevin Williamson-like bit of dialogue aside.

When it unexpectedly shifts back into its initial thriller mode, Walk On Water loses in human drama what it gains in tidiness, revealing itself as a film that carries more weight in its light scenes than its heavy moments can sustain.

It's passably gripping and occasionally lively.

Brown probably captures enough to satisfy hardcore enthusiasts, but everyone else might end up wondering why he ignored the glory for the dust.

By the film's halfway point, the subplots have all started to head in the most obvious directions imaginable, which is too bad, since they all have real potential. Ferrera's story of spending the summer as an out-of-place ethnic element in the milk-white suburbs stays interesting the longest, in large part thanks to her performance.

Director Chris Terrio adapts Amy Fox's play with flashes of wit, moments of insight, and some fine performances. But Heights' characters move along such preordained paths and perform such familiar movie actions that they might as well sport antennae.

The drama loses shape before it really develops, but the sense of place--all wood paneling and animal knick-knacks--and the memorable performances keep it worth watching.

Mackenzie's film could almost use one or two lurid touches in place of its stately distance. Then again, a more stylized approach might have allowed less room for Richardson, whose unsparing performance makes other elements almost irrelevant.

As Ouimet, the always-terrific Shia LeBeouf is an oasis of depth in a film that otherwise can't pass up a sports-film cliché.

Only a truly great director can make a film of high artistic merit, filled with personality and memorable scenes, that's still a borderline disaster. (Think One From The Heart or 1941.) So the heartfelt and woefully miscalculated Elizabethtown may be the film that marks Cameron Crowe's arrival as a truly great director.

Though he (Jordan) directs with admirable skill, his usual touches don't drive the film--which occasionally threatens to lose its shape.

Pretty painless by kiddie movie standards.

Roberts' script and direction show sparks of wit, but the plot comes lifted from countless heist films.

After spending so much time letting the characters' deeds do the talking, the film veers into overkill, which comes as a letdown. But the actions linger longer than the words.

Though it's tough to find much fault with a film so sweet, Piglet's Big Movie never lives up to its title.