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These two films with promising pedigrees fail to register as more than disappointing tweeners.

Jackson's film is as unwieldy and difficult as it is gripping and moving, expanding upon the exotic spectacle of the original while simultaneously steering the tale into the realm of tragic lament.

This film is keenly aware of the myriad meanings embedded in its cinematic myth and sets about re-contextualizing and commenting upon the implied politics while offering extravagant thrills and tragic, classic romance.

This month's "original" fare offers a take on a Sid and Marty Krofft classic, more battling seizure robots, and the retaking of '70s subway thriller. Everything old is new again.

This honestly confronts the shifting personas of a now legitimately famous band whose fictional identity once depended on a willful defiance of its own obscurity.

Like the gladiators of old, 2008 resembles a battle of formidable acting gods, especially when looking over the 20 choices presented below. Indeed, if anything, choosing a winner requires more of a leap of faith than any amount of critical skill - they all were that good.

A fun, occasionally brilliant satire of these Hollywood tropes that actually retains its comic punch after multiple viewings.

The problem with the (inexplicably popular) Tropic Thunder may be that Ben Stiller is just not a funny filmmaker. Not even remotely.

Tropic Thunder tells you that race and masculinity and class identity issues make men in this business mean and juvenile. And then it tells you again.

Uneven and a little muddled, Be Kind Rewind might be a prime candidate for the very fan remixing it portrays.

Big and bouncy, Kung Fu Panda is another powerhouse Family Entertainment that means to pummel its young viewers into adulation.

Talk about a crowded schedule. There are more offerings scheduled this month than in the previous two combined.

If May almost tent-poled itself out of existence, June will be even worse. After all, are audiences really ready for 13 major release in less than two months -- with more to come?

Vivid impressions that make us look closely into Baumbach's fascinating, semi-miserable world.

A set of relationships -- father and son, past and present, fiction and something like history -- forms the foundation of Be Kind Rewind, another gently antic film by Michel Gondry.

From Julian Schnabel's artsy The Diving Bell and the Butterfly to the legendary Coen Brothers splendid adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men, PopMatters counts down the 30 best films of 2007.

From the most sweetly nuanced performance of Jennifer Jason Leigh's career to Cate Blanchett's revelatory portrayal of Bob Dylan in I'm Not There, the women of 2007 were stellar.

The brisk 92-minute film explores the intensity of the women’s relationship, and how they are inherently tied to one another, whether they like it or not.

Margot at the Wedding doesn’t resolve as much as it devolves into a series of arguments and dire revelations.

'Ice Age' is not quite as liberal as it might appear on the surface.

Even though the nostalgic aspects are mildly graceful, the contemporary characters' every move is still riddled with cliché and schmaltz.

From solid single issues to amazingly complete film and television compilations, the works highlighted here argue for DVD's continued importance.

The Holiday pretends its happy endings are premised on the women realizing their capacities as leading ladies. Really, what they're doing is finding the "right" men.

On one hand another formulaic loutish white boy saga, it also undercuts that premise, at least intermittently, offering instead a vision of unregulatable, unanxious, unwhite masculinity.

While studios have often been accused of meddling in the creative end of moviemaking, the new DVD presentation of this 2002 blockbuster, illustrates how readily Fox pandered to the movie-going public -- and how eager the filmmakers were to follow the audience's test scoring lead.

Jackson's film makes Ann's admiration for Kong an earnest distraction from her eventual, proper coupledom with Jack (who, even with Brody's Men's Health coverboy abs, can't compete with the potent spectacle of Kong).

Oscar aspires to fame, wealth, and dates with beautiful women-fish.

Scheduled to open a year ago, Envy is as dopey, uninventive, and smug as you'd expect from a movie that's 'all from shit'.

'I'm always going 10 miles too far over the top, and sometimes I have a tendency to go crazy ham and cheese,' says Jack Black.

A welcome reminder that studio comedies need not be shoddy, dumbed down, vulgar, and impersonal, the movie is unimaginable without Jack Black.

More than anything else, 'Orange County' is mundane.