Carina Chocano

Black comedy becomes funnier as the action becomes darker and more perilous, but The Hunting Party fails to locate the absurdity in the central situations and goes for midget jokes instead. In the end, you're not sure if you're supposed to be watching "The Three Amigos" or "Hotel Rwanda."

A cast this charismatic is bound to make something of the situation. In short bursts, the movie is alternately sunny and charming, dark and weird, confounding and dull.

A technically inventive, thoughtful, but otherwise not particularly earth-shattering movie.

The result is at once familiar and disconcerting, meta-Keillor done in Altman's desultory, distracted style.

For a relentlessly violent and exploitive noir knockoff, Sin City is mystifyingly flat and static - cartoonish, even, if you want to get tautological about it.

Shot on grainy, often blown-out and distorted consumer-grade video, scored to a feedback distortion-heavy soundtrack that will be familiar to fans and tinnitus sufferers alike, and clocking in at one merciful minute under three hours, Lynch's much-anticipated follow-up to "Mulholland Drive" signals a hale swan-dive off the deep end, away from any pretense of narrative logic and into the purer realm of unconscious free association. I found myself pining for "The Elephant Man," but that's just me.

Lonely, bitter, insecure and clearly unstable, the women are meant to level the emotional playing field and add depth to what is, at heart, a story about the exploitation of poor nations by rich and powerful ones. But they wind up being too bitter and unstable to elicit much sympathy.

In bringing Heller's book to the screen, director Richard Eyre ("Iris," "Stage Beauty") and screenwriter Patrick Marber ("Closer") have tossed the book's subtlety out the window, along with its psychological complexity, its running theme of self-deception and its dark, extra-wry sense of humor.

There's something about professional comedians breaking down what's funny for civilians that gets annoying after a while.

To watch the film is to marvel at the cast's virtuosity at fleshing out the shallowest people in England, and the observable intelligence and talent of all those involved doesn't make Separate Lies any more compelling, or its characters more resonant.

Hokey and forced as it is, What Happens in Vegas eventually settles into a rhythm, maybe because Diaz and Kutcher actually look like they have fun together.

This is a conventional, well-acted, English working-class drama in the familiar realist style, but it does not attain anywhere near the level of artistry and imagination of a Ken Loach film.

The Painted Veil has all the elements in place to be a great epic, but it fails to connect, to paraphrase Maugham's contemporary E.M. Forster, the prose with the passion. It's impeccable, but leaves you cold.

If you're thinking of seeing it, and you're old enough to drive (or even read this), do yourself a favor and rent the original instead.

There are moments of beauty here, but not enough to make up for the mannered dialogue and hamstrung performances. Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative won't be prosecuted, but they'll probably be disappointed.

Despite all-around wonderful performances and excellent dialogue, the story never quite coheres narratively. Instead it moves toward a hopelessly bleak -- and I mean bleak -- climax that's more traumatic than dramatic.

As it is, Mrs. Palfrey seems to suggest the Claremont is located somewhere in the Twilight Zone. Where are the televisions? Where are the chain stores? Where are the immigrants? I see the buildings, but where is England?

The super-hip style is groovy but doesn't mask the fact that Son of Rambow doesn't really go anywhere special or say anything much. For a film about falling in love with the movies, its insights on them are next to nil.

The movie suffers from the same malaise Romero diagnoses in society. It's just too mediated to be scary, despite its zeal for gore. You can't feel the characters' fear, and they don't seem to feel it either.

Any glimpse of emotional honesty comes courtesy of the actors, who manage to do a credible job despite the material.

The problem with Sherry is that, unlike Ryan Gosling's Dan in "Half Nelson," whose humanity transcends his addiction and who is still capable, no matter how uneasily, to maintain relationships with others, she is a terminally uninteresting narcissist with a bad case of arrested development.

The appeal of the cast, the witty dialogue, the gorgeous costumes and production design, and the refreshingly grown-up subject matter can't be discounted. Maybe it is about compromise, after all, because though Married Life has its moments, it's bewildering as a whole.

In the end, his (Patrick) disaffection make him a singularly uninvolving character, and his disengagement makes him seem alternately shallow, selfish and perverse.

There are some blunders on The Road to Guantanamo. The movie front-loads its first-person accounts with a short list of facts to keep in mind as we watch, creating an imbalance that serves only to undercut the movie's overall credibility.

Sarah Silverman has a bright, toothy smile; a sweet, innocent demeanor; and the most outrageously impious sense of humor of any comedian working today. And I don't just mean she's dirty. (She's filthy.) She makes fun of things other comedians wouldn't acknowledge, let alone mock.

Dear Frankie's surprises are few and low-key, but the story wraps up nicely.

The movie is at once a flagrant piece of kitsch and an unexpectedly affecting story about an individual overcoming personal tragedy and brutally restrictive circumstances by talent and force of will.

By the time you've gotten through it, you feel spent, loaded down and more than a little disoriented. Part of the problem is that the movie's big concepts - violence begets violence, absolute power corrupts absolutely, everything is connected, my terrorist is your freedom fighter, etc. - are pithy, brief and irrefutable enough to embroider on throw pillows.