Carrie Rickey

Although the movie intends to incite viewers to social action, it is just as likely to paralyze them with fear.

Throughout, Bergsholm's poker-faced performance creates the effect that we are watching the misadventures of an actual teenager. It may be a slight comedy but Turn Me On, Dammit! is enormously entertaining.

Has the confessional intimacy of a video diary and performances to match, particularly those of Kyra Sedgwick and Parker Posey.

The performances, of a higher order than the film's cheesy script and double-cheese direction, are the reasons to see the picture. A reason not to: the means by which parent and child trade bodies.

Unlike most other teen cautionary tales, Thirteen does not accuse merely one villain for the corruption of a minor.

Carion's cri de coeur is at once a historical chronicle, an ode to the European Community, and a not-so-veiled critique of a 21st-century war.

Overall, Matchstick Men, which is based on the novel by Eric Garcia, is more memorable for Lohman's naturalistic acting and Scott's mannerist direction than it is for its O. Henry surprise.

Unlike Gondry's previous features, Human Nature and Eternal Sunshine, Science lacks the sturdy armature of a Charlie Kaufman screenplay to support its eccentricities. The flood of delight in the film's first 90 minutes slowed to a trickle and, finally, a drip.

The film equivalent of Maya Lin's Vietnam monument, that collective gravestone to the fallen, in the way it employs abstract means to quantify the loss of life and elicit a profound sense of grief.

A keen observational seriocomedy, The Syrian Bride, like "Paradise Now," suggests that all residents of the Middle East, no matter their faith or their nationality, are more alike than not.

As efficient and zippy as its subject.

It is diverting but insubstantial.

Cinderella Man is not a movie about boxing, but about this boxer who personified the heart and hope of 1935.

With varying degrees of success, the filmmaker gets each musician to talk about the personal and musical roots that blossomed into his technique.

With the exception of one sequence, this PG-13 movie is so youth-friendly that I thought I might take my 10-year-old. But that sequence, upsetting for those of any age, makes the movie better suited for mature 12-year-olds and older.

For a movie loaded with ear-scorching profanity, oceans of booze, and illegal drugs enough to keep all of Cedar Rapids in high spirits for a month, there is something fundamentally decent about the film.

If Batman did nothing else but restore pulp-art shadow to the icon sanitized in his pop-art TV reincarnation, it would be an achievement. Tim Burton's Batman, starring a subdued Michael Keaton as you-know-who and a supercharged Jack Nicholson as the Joker, handily accomplishes that mission.

I was shaken, but not stirred, by Babel, a globalist melodrama that careens from Morocco to Mexico like a revved-up "Crash."

A one-of-a-kind experience that boasts a twice-in-a-lifetime performance from Nicolas Cage. The actor has not gone this deep into the abyss since "Vampire's Kiss" (1989).

When the tobacco is extinguished what comes between April and Frank Wheeler is bigger, colder and more formidable than the iceberg that sundered Kate and Leo in "Titanic": shattered hope.

In Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg, Kempner gives us a balance of artist and alter ego, introducing us to a woman we'd like to know even better.

Compulsively entertaining documentary.

If the filmmakers had a script half as good as their special effects, Night at the Museum would be a must-see.

Sunnier and sillier than most of Allen's recent work, makes its belly laughs heartwarming. It's a most winning movie about losers.

Hate, love, bigotry, empathy and chance are the uninvited guests at Monster's Ball.

What makes the new movie almost bearable is the byplay between Sandler and Chris Rock.

An elaborately presented feast that will taste familiar to the 'tween and teen audience for whom it is served. The four courses are love, war, faith and humor, served in no canonical order, and sometimes, simultaneously.

Amalric's performance is comically moving in the manner of silent actors, and the film is beautifully wrought with moments of enchantment. Alas, Chicken is a movie that begins with a crescendo and doesn't sustain its lyricism.