Barbara Shulgasser

Strangely unmoving. So what went wrong?

It takes more than a few lines of clever dialogue, a hero who reads books, and an actor with British training and lots of dignity to keep a movie from going pretty much by the book.

If the idea is to teach us something about the 37th president of the United States, then you would think Stone would resolve to stick to what can be proven about the man's life, or at least indicate when he's speculating. But Stone is the Great Explainer, and facts have an annoying habit of mucking up his explanations.

While Blanchett glows with intelligence, passion and a quirky kind of beauty, the movie she is in fails her in a number of essential ways.

The cliches are all here.... Eszterhas works around these scripting difficulties deftly enough, but the real pleasure here is in watching Bacon and Renfro as idol and adorer.

Cop Land presents a fairly involved plot, and Mangold is not equipped to do more than blurt all the information onto the screen and let the nuances settle where they may.

The boredom of the temporary office workers of the title was nothing compared to the boredom I experienced as this movie dribbled on before my eyes.

Gray is more interested in hobnobbing with thespian greats than he is in making a good movie.

Scenes go on and on in endless, witless dialogue, ever accompanied by John Williams' hideously gushing music.

Be that as it may, the movie offers the uplifting news bulletin that life is not about being happy with how much you weigh but with what kind of person you are. This is where the movie starts getting sloppy.

They have created a strange document about the unmaking of young lives, but it is a movie made without comment. Clark has stepped back into objectivity so far that he has neglected his role as interpreter for us.

One of the most blithely, giddily ridiculous movies to come along in ages.

The disappointing ending aside, there is much to enjoy in The Game, a creation with a sheen so highly burnished that sometimes you feel you must look away.

Dern is nothing short of brilliant here.

More about having a good time with some interesting people than it is about watching a fine movie.

Aside from avuncular Lewis and two-bricks-shy-of-a-load Dunaway, this movie's greatest asset is Depp. With his scooped-out cheeks, flower petal mouth and an innately balletic approach to communicating with the camera, he is as natural a performer as film has seen in many years.

This is a Seagal movie without Seagal and a Jack Ryan movie without Jack Ryan.

Particularly because unlike so many other boring movies one sees, Jarmusch films require many more words to explain the boringness than less certifiably artistic films would.

Think of this as "Die Hard" in a suit, with an election coming up.

The movie is a big fumble.

The most refreshing performance is by Mortensen.

Amazing comic performances...give this comedy its lovely manic pace, kept just within the realm of sanity.

When the mystery is unraveled and the frame-up is revealed, I, personally, had no idea what anyone was talking about.

This bloated, self-important and logically absurd movie, made by the director of the equally historically hysterical "Forrest Gump," pretends to the thrones of Serious Thinking, of Important Messages and of Intellectual Provocation. If there were truly anything serious, important or intellectual about this movie, this planet would be in big trouble.

Hackman is, as ever, a master performer, an actor at the peak of his powers. However, he can't carry the whole movie.

This is one not to be missed.

Director Cassavetes may want to cut back on the slow-motion stuff, but he's unquestionably a talent.

Ransom is every bit as taut and expertly directed, and it's another in the emergency genre, one in which Howard excels.