Andy Klein

There are lots of elements that make no sense whatever.

Toback has taken a distinctly '60s-ish personal experience and done his best to transplant it into the current, vastly different, cultural milieu. Harvard Man is a semi-throwback, a reminiscence without nostalgia or sentimentality.

In the end, the performances and the basic strength of the premise make Shadow of the Vampire a relatively diverting ninety minutes. But there is the inescapable feeling that it is a shadow of the great film it might have been.

The only genuine surprises on hand are the few moments when the film defies the expectations that have been programmed into our collective neurons by the past 25 years of horror movies.

Unfocused. We feel cut adrift amid the various plot threads. This is exacerbated by some murky exposition. Characters, events, and the passage of time are not always clearly established.

While it's crucial to preserve and make available every bit of available footage of such an earth-shattering event, it must be said that Rosenbaum's film manages to become slack and uninvolving after a while.

Les Destinées has a leisurely, contemplative pace without ever growing boring. Still, at the end, we are left somehow empty. For all the time we spend with these people, we never really get inside of them.

It's hard to know just how much to trust Titanic Town.

The various talents on display aren't enough to overcome the sheer blandness of the material.

Two minor drawbacks: Onscreen IDs of speakers are sometimes omitted. And Kissinger's crimes seem almost paltry in comparison to current American policies.

Silva is a polished and sophisticated director who brings a surprisingly light touch to much of this apparently fact-based story.

Sad to say, the story is simply too slight to sustain the film.

Despite the few good performances, this Hamlet is not a keeper.

Pretty hysterical.

Worth watching.

It's unlikely that anyone will walk away unmoved.

The texture is reminiscent of last year's "Suzhou River," but the basic material isn't as rich.

The efficiency of his (Donaldson) direction renders the movie somewhat characterless, like a top-rank made-for-TV production.

Hu has crafted a charming and modest movie.

Thankfully, the final, long action set piece, which owes a debt to "The Manchurian Candidate" among others, is free of such problems. Shiri manages to go out on its most exciting sequence. There are worse ways to go.

It's nothing more than a very long movie about someone, literally and metaphorically, having to get back up on a horse.

Belongs somewhere in the low middle of Altman's output -- not up to "Cookie's Fortune," but way better than, say, "Beyond Therapy," which remains his worst film by some margin.

With no aspects of the personalities represented outside of their music, Grateful Dawg ends up feeling dry and incomplete; its two subjects are stripped of all other characteristics and come across as not very interesting.

In the end, it's all just too damned much. It's more exhausting than edifying.

The problem with Wendigo, for all its effective moments, isn't really one of resources. At its heart, the story seems confused, as though the director has given it one too many twists.

Star Jeremy Renner seems shorter than Dahmer, but is otherwise a look-alike and gives a convincingly intense and weird performance. Bruce Davison (as Papa Dahmer) and the rest of the cast also do nice work.

It just doesn¹t get very good until halfway through, in large part because the usually excellent Walston is miscast.

In terms of cleverly hidden exposition, this ain't "The Sixth Sense."