Stories We Tell is one of those movies you watch on a screen and replay in your head for days, moving between its many levels of inquiry and touched, always, by Polley’s compassion toward her relatives in particular and people in general.

What Maisie Knew flirts with sentimentality but mostly keeps it at bay until the very end, at which point the filmmakers and we realize the kid has probably earned it.

Creative, colorful, and unexpectedly wise, The Painting is the latest offshore animation to show to kids burned out on computer-generated Hollywood toons.

A chick flick of a particularly intelligent, ruthless, and loving sort.

Touches smartly and wistfully on a number of themes, not least the notion that the marginal members of society - the ones who get spit out on the sidewalk with no idea of how it happened - might benefit from a helping hand and a friendly kick in the pants.

It's a soapy, simplistic, but surprisingly affecting ambisexual melodrama that plays a little like Pedro Almodovar without the surreal frills.

I don't want to sell Like Mike as something it's not. It's a cash-in, all right - just better written, more tightly edited, sharply performed, and a little more heartfelt than most.

This wistfully charming slice-of-life comedy celebrates an elderly man defiantly thumbing his nose at old age.

This is the meatiest role Tautou has had post-''Amelie'' and she drops the zombie-pixie act for once, giving us a character who's caught in a daily dance between propriety and abandon, and who can only dance faster as desperation sets in.

The Cuckoo is smart enough to steer away from allegory and into the specific every chance it gets, though -- so much so that when the film finally does slip the mortal coil, you still hang with it.

Green unquestionably has a rare, intermittent knack for rapture.

Should be seen: It's a worthy ordeal, with flaws that, ironically, make grist for later arguments.

The actor is magnificent -- ravaged, desperate, aware -- and no more so than in a scene toward the end when Bob's cardsharp cool finally breaks. It's a risky scene, the one note of corn, but Nolte brings it home. Too bad the movie doesn't.

Would it be rude to suggest that your time might be better spent with your own children?

A tale of narrow talent destroyed by pop hubris, raging insecurity, substance abuse, and murder.

Without even trying, Coccio may have stumbled over the truest metaphor for Columbine yet.

Open Hearts, like all good melodramas, is ruthless in its insistence that people are dragged, uncomprehending, in the wake of events.

It is an honest, dumbstruck, not particularly deep demonstration of how insanely difficult it is to make a movie, any movie, no matter how blithe the end result may appear on screen.

Run the game, bow to the movies that did it better and before, keep the dialogue on the line between hard-boiled and hokey, and throw one last curveball before the lights come up. It's a con in itself, but the reward's in the playing.

As literary desecrations go, this makes for perfectly acceptable, occasionally very enjoyable children's entertainment. You'll forget about it by Monday, though, and if they're old enough to have developed some taste, so will your kids.

These actors offset the modern-day ordinariness of the leads -- Jackson, especially, seems as if he's just driven over from a mall tour -- and so, ultimately, does the exquisite moral dilemma of Tuck Everlasting.

It's Lopez who's the proper focus of this dream. So intent has she been on becoming a superstar in the past few years that many people have forgotten that, given decent material, she can act.

Love hurts in Secretary -- but not too much. It's not impossible to imagine adventurous young couples seeing this movie and rushing home to try out the handcuffs and paddles.

Its quirks are exactly what make Signs interesting, entertaining, and good.

Moves the franchise even closer to Indiana Jones territory, with bloodcurdling action scenes and a passel of climactic computer-generated slime beasties unparalleled in their potential ability to -- I'm quoting from both book and film here -- '' rip, tear, rend, kill. ''

This crudely powerful film is a throwback. Unfolding at an elliptical pace that feels like a revelation, or tedium, or both, Japon recalls the glory days of 1970s art-house filmmaking.

It's maddeningly chowderheaded, simplistic, pretentious, and not a little silly. You can't take your eyes off it.

Bloody and bloody funny, and Jackson and Carlyle make the best salt-and-pepper team since Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte knocked heads in ''48 HRS., '' but ultimately the movie can't find a way out of its own dead end.