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THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING Pulling off a successful threepeat, director Peter Jackson wraps up J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy saga with a dazzling chapter guaranteed to please true believers. At 200 minutes, the movie is long but not necessarily overlong: The super-sized length allows many cast members to strut their stuff, and several new creatures, from an army of ghostly marauders to a gigantic spider in the best Harryhausen tradition, are staggering to behold. Ultimately, though, this final act belongs to the ringbearer Frodo (Elijah Wood) and his companions, faithful Sam (Sean Astin) and treacherous Gollum (the brilliant CGI creation voiced by Andy Serkis). This is a movie of expensive visual effects and expansive battle scenes, but when it comes to truly making its mark, we have to thank all the little people. 
1/2
MONA LISA SMILE An unlikely cross between Dead Poets Society and The Stepford Wives, this casts Julia Roberts as an art teacher who arrives at Wellesley College in 1953, ready to change the world to the chorus of "Carpe Diems." Instead, she's shocked to learn that her students plan to shelf their education and become housewives. So it's up to Saint Julia to save the stuffy college from itself, since no one else can possibly match her sheer fabulousness. Roberts is such a bundle of modern tics that she's as out of place in this setting as Bill O'Reilly at a Marilyn Manson concert; then again, almost everything feels artificial in this gathering of rigid archetypes and warmed-over speeches. Roberts' character may be presented as a breath of fresh air, but the movie surrounding her is the cinematic equivalent of halitosis.
MONSTER Anyone who's been paying attention knows that Charlize Theron is more than just a pretty face, yet her mesmerizing turn in writer-director Patty Jenkins' fact-based drama will finally allow the rest of the world to catch up. It isn't simply that Theron gained weight and thoroughly deglamorized herself to play the part of Aileen Wuornos, the prostitute who killed several men in Florida before finally being caught and executed. It's that she so completely buries herself in this woman's impetuousness, rage and vulnerability that she simply ceases to exist; it's a galvanizing performance in a difficult yet important film that manages to present Wuornos as both monster and victim. 1/2
PAYCHECK This futuristic yarn is adapted from a story by Philip K. Dick, but the result is less like Blade Runner and Minority Report (both based on Dick works) than just another run-of-the-mill action tale, directed in "hired gun" fashion by John Woo. Woo made the preposterousness in Face/Off exciting, but here he barely seems interested in putting a movie on the screen, showing no discernible style with this initially intriguing thriller about a genius-for-hire (Ben Affleck) who tries to uncover a conspiracy after his memory has been wiped clean. Instead of smartly building on its premise, this merely gets sillier as it unfolds, and Uma Thurman, killing time between Kill Bill release dates, is wasted as Affleck's love interest.
PETER PAN I've never been a fan of this classic tale in any of its numerous incarnations, so imagine my surprise as I fell victim to the rapturous spell of this live-action version, which rivals A Little Princess and The Secret Garden as a prime example of adding both artistry and adult sensibilities to a family project without placing it out of reach for the youngest viewers. Certainly, the small fry will enjoy watching Peter Pan (Jeremy Sumpter) sailing through the air or the slapstick shenanigans of Tinkerbell (Ludivine Sagnier), but this PG-rated adaptation of J.M. Barrie's original tale often adopts a darker tone that provides added subtext for older viewers. Kudos to director P.J. Hogan and his team for creating such an eye-popping world. 1/2
SOMETHING'S GOTTA GIVE Those of us who fell in love with Diane Keaton in Annie Hall now have an opportunity to rekindle that romance. She's simply smashing as a playwright not particularly fond of her daughter's new boyfriend, a 63-year-old bachelor (Jack Nicholson) who only dates women under 30. But eventually the pair find themselves overcoming their antagonism, leading to a rocky romance that's complicated by his womanizing ways and her burgeoning relationship with a boyish doctor (Keanu Reeves, never more appealing). For most of its length, this emerges as one of the premiere romantic comedies of recent years, but a disastrous, tacked-on ending hangs from the rest of the picture as awkwardly as a Florida chad.
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