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Even though this comedy has a tendency to dip into cartoonish silliness, it's anchored by a razor-sharp performance by Wiig as a woman forced to confront everything she hates about herself. The film is also packed with hilarious moments that keep us laughing, and it also gets surprisingly sexy and emotional along the way.

Wiig plays Imogene, who has done nothing with her career after winning a rising-star playwright award. Then she loses her day job as a listings editor just as her high-flier boyfriend (Petsos) leaves her. When she fakes a suicide attempt to get some attention, she's court-ordered to move in with her free-spirited mother Zelda (Bening) back home in New Jersey. There she struggles with Zelda's colourful boyfriend George (Dillon), who claims to be a top-secret spy, her goofy-inventor brother Ralph (Fitzgerald) and the smart, sexy and very young lodger Lee (Criss) who rents her old bedroom. But just as she's beginning to cope, a family secret shakes her to the core.

Even as the script strains to be improbably zany, Wiig holds the film together with a startlingly honest comical turn. From the start we knew she didn't fit in with her Manhattan friends, and her slightly out-of-control personality is much more suited to the Jersey Shore. Her scenes with Criss are very nicely played, as they develop an unexpected relationship. By contrast, Bening struggles to appear as dim as Zelda seems to be, while Dillon hams it up as her fantasist toy boy and Fitzgerald's Ralph is so nutty that he seems to be from another movie altogether.

Continue reading: Girl Most Likely Review

The original film takes Hinton's spare 1967 novel of young gangs in Tulsa and turns it into grand melodrama, with gorgeous CinemaScope sunsets, sweeping orchestral score, and teen scuffles that take on all the clashing importance of medieval battles. On the crap side of town live the working-class greasers, with their black t-shirts and slicked-back hair, always getting hassled by the socs, preppie bastards with family money and nicer cars. The film centers on the greasers, particularly the sensitive 13-year-old orphan Ponyboy Curtis (C. Thomas Howell) who lives with his older brothers Sodapop (Rob Lowe) and Darrell (Patrick Swayze). The surrogate family hanging around the Curtis' ramshackle house also includes Emilio Estevez and Tom Cruise, while their friend, born-to-lose Dally Winston (Matt Dillon) has just been released from jail. Almost as childlike as Ponyboy is his best friend, Johnny (Ralph Macchio), an angelically bruised kid from a troubled home who provides the film's most emotional moments.

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Lohan plays Maggie Peyton, the only daughter born into a family known for producing stock car drivers. Dad (Michael Keaton) calls the shots from the pits, brother Ray (Breckin Meyer) crashes cars on a weekly basis, and Maggie goes unnoticed until the day she comes into contact with a possessed VW Beetle that feels the need for speed. Together with her best friend and fellow mechanic, Kevin (Justin Long), Maggie starts entering local races, where she accidentally humiliates NASCAR Nextel Cup champ Trip Murphy (Matt Dillon) and sets the stage for a showdown race at the California Speedway.

Continue reading: Herbie: Fully Loaded Review

Something like The Big Chill meets Generation X, Beautiful Girls is one of those ensemble character movies that really defies description in terms of plot points. The ostensible main character is Willie (Timothy Hutton), who is ambivalent about girlfriend Tracy (Annabeth Gish) so heads back home to Knight's Ridge, Massachusetts to sort things out during his 10-year high school reunion. Here, he hooks up with old pals Tommy (Matt Dillon) and Paul (Michael Rapaport), each of whom is also flailing helplessly in his own romantic mess.

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Although, quite honestly, I don't have a particular problem with porn (it just isn't in the regular canon of films to be reviewed, that's all), that simple joke often proves true. One-too-many guilty pleasure flicks have been bashed by me on the account that they do nothing other than serve as a generalized platform for commercializing sex without any other cinematic value. And, although I am willing to give points in such a B-or-C-grade film for casting a woman with certain... assets... that suit the part, I find myself unable to otherwise turn off the "critic's switch" within me to the point that I can be guiltlessly turned on by the images in front of me on the screen.

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1998's remake of "The Parent Trap" showed a savvy sense of humorwhere the original was merely cutesy-poo. 2003's hilarious "FreakyFriday" expanded on its predecessor's body-swapconcept to hit the nail on the head of mother-daughter relationships. Nowcomes "Herbie: Fully Loaded," a witty and creative follow-upto the dumb but endearing "Love Bug" movies about a race-crazyVolkswagen Beetle that comes to life.

Lohan plays fresh college grad Maggie, a speed demon groundedfrom racing by her struggling NASCAR-driver father (Michael Keaton) aftera bad crash in an illegal street race. For her graduation present, Daddytakes her to a junkyard to pick out a fixer-upper car, and she reluctantlychooses a rusty 1963 Volkswagen Beetle with a forgotten history and waymore personality than Maggie bargained for. The moment Maggie turns thekey in Herbie's ignition, the little Bug takes off like an excited puppy-- with his passenger screaming her head off -- and the pair end up ata backwoods body shop where Herbie gets a make-over and Maggie gets a loveinterest (Justin Long).

While looking for parts at a car show, Herbie and Maggiefall into an impromptu street race, which leads to a nitrous-fueled desertshowdown for pink slips, then a demolition derby ("10 cars enter,one car leaves!" chants the crowd in a "Mad Max" tribute)and -- after some serious souping-up with a roll cage, fat tires, a spoiler,and passing mention of a rules loophole -- a shot at NASCAR glory.

Continue reading: Herbie: Fully Loaded Review