Reuters - Playing like "Juno" junior, the engagingly irreverent "Lymelife" is a period suburban rites-of-passage story with a pitch-perfect cast headed by Alec Baldwin, Timothy Hutton and not one, but two Culkin brothers -- neither of them Macaulay.

AP - "Rough Justice" (G.P. Putnam's Sons. 326. $25.95), by Jack Higgins: To call suspense writer Jack Higgins' latest effort two-dimensional probably does a disservice to the flat surfaces of the world.

AP - "Bumping Into Geniuses: My Life Inside the Rock and Roll Business" (Gotham Books, 320 pages, $26), by Danny Goldberg: Danny Goldberg might not be a household name, but many of the rock stars with whom he's worked are. His tale is the true Cinderella story of a kid who was in the right place at the right time, starting at the bottom of the rock business and eventually conquering it as the leader of several of the industry's biggest labels.

Reuters - The very high concept of "$5 a Day" -- good-for-nothing hustler Dad writes to estranged son to tell him he's dying of brain cancer -- immediately gives rise to fears of utter predictability and thus utter boredom.

Reuters - The current election season has brought with it many different, sometimes incompatible versions of the American dream.

Reuters - Hollywood can breathe a collective sigh of relief.

AP - There's something to be said for persistence, particularly when it's plied by actor David Pittu in his hilarious depiction of Jacob Sterling, a Broadway wannabe who has been "prominently up-and-coming for over 20 years."

Reuters - We've all seen this film before -- two hoodlum friends from the tough, violent streets of South Boston trying to cope with the lure of easy money and the offsetting threat of jail time -- but we've never seen it this well done.

Reuters - The first two days of "The Bonnie Hunt Show" make it instantly clear that Hunt was born for this deceptively difficult gig as a daytime talk-show host but may not entirely know it.

Reuters - A young American woman with a past invades an English aristocratic family already in the throes of disintegration brought on by World War I in "Easy Virtue," Australian filmmaker Stephan Elliott's impish reconstruction of an early play by Noel Coward.