Chris Kaltenbach

As they've proven before and doubtless will prove again, Soderbergh and his cast are capable of better, weightier, more substantial stuff. But for now, slumming has rarely seemed more appealing.

Lane gives the film her best shot; she's pretty much the only reason to see it. There's an intelligence mixed with ferocity that makes her performance compelling, far-more-so than anything else in the film.

Great book, great cast, average film: Les Miserables is all pedigree, no passion.

A love letter to the time, and the period, and the legend that has grown around both. Maybe it's all too wonderful to be true, but that's OK. If Taking Woodstock is a fantasy, then it's a most benevolent one, and more power to it.

Short on details and long on extreme, unflattering close-ups.

Save for Jesus' skin color, which he shares with some of his fellow Jews, little about the story is re-imagined or re-evaluated.

Entertaining, thrilling and honestly sentimental, it's an equal-opportunity crowd-pleaser.

Pointed and satiric. Best of all, one must hasten to admit, it's pretty funny.

Largely devoid of the usual Western histrionics, this 1957 film, thanks to the steady hand of veteran director Delmer Daves, represents one of the more sober depictions of the clash between chaos and order that has always been at the center of the movie Western. [26 Aug 2007, p.3E]

A thoughtful, bittersweet film biography of the Cuban writer that captures both his irrepressible spirit and his sometimes overwhelming melancholy.

The story line meanders and too many scenes drone on; Knocked Up is in serious need of a good editor. But the laughs are plentiful, and it's the rare movie these days where one doesn't feel guilty about finding the whole thing funny.

Children should enjoy Jungle Book 2 just fine. Adults will wonder why anyone bothered.

A snarling satire of Hollywood single-mindedness and its lack of any moral underpinning.

I know Empire is supposed to be a movie, but for a while, I thought I was listening to one of those talking books.

There are no surprise twists, no characters who rise above themselves, no cheap happy endings. There are just people struggling with emotions and situations they think are beyond their control.

Taken together, the sum of so many parts is too schizophrenic to be wholeheartedly embraced -- the movie is played for parody, but with a veneer of respectability that leaves the whole endeavor betwixt and between.

Chilling doesn't begin to describe Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple...But the film never gets behind the chill.

It's a tough slog, but worth seeing once. [08 Nov 2008, p.4C]

This would be an excellent movie from a first-time filmmaker, but from one of America's premiere directors, it's a disappointment.

The American writer and poet Charles Bukowski is certainly an acquired taste, and Factotum may be just the film for determining whether one wants to acquire it.

The film marks Braff as a talent to watch, blessed with the sort of natural, everyman appeal that audiences eat up.

Characters are manipulated and lives made whole in ways both satisfying and unexpected.

A pleasant little confection that leaves behind the sneaking suspicion it should have amounted to so much more.

A Dirty Shame is certainly dirty, and maybe it's even a shame. But this is the John Waters we've come to know and cherish, and that alone is cause to celebrate.

Baseball, Boston and Drew Barrymore. Certainly sounds like a winning combination.

Chicken Little is relentlessly cute. That's the good news, and those who consider the word cute anathema may want to look for entertainment elsewhere.

Passionately acted and grittily convincing.

A great cast can't quite pull City by the Sea out of the drink.

Sometimes sly and witty, sometimes dull and forced, Coffee and Cigarettes is Jim Jarmusch's testimony to the difficulties and delights of communication.

Like "Tango," Wang's film also seeks to uncover whether sex without emotion is really possible, or worth the effort.

If only all this wonderful talent wasn't in service to a story that pushes credulity beyond the breaking point, perilously close to the realm of farce. Too many coincidences, too much convenient timing, too little honest plot development.

In the end, this is a movie that doesn't respect its own power. Less of a stacked deck would have left Vera Drake to play a far more effective hand.

The best moments in Paper Clips - and there are plenty - come when it doesn't resort to mundane cliches or calculated emotions to make its point.

All about mood, and not one bit about action - which explains why it's at once both the most passionate film of the year so far, and the most determinedly inert.

Earns few points for originality, but scads for good-hearted exuberance.

There's a good heart beating at the core of Victor Vargas, one that belies its R-rating.

Like the particular brand of music Dewey espouses, this is a movie more concerned with exploiting rock than understanding it.

All this is out of the Haunted House 101 textbook.

Regrettably, Bones is what passes for horror these days: Throw a lot of graphic, gore-filled, darkly lit stuff on the screen, and see what sticks. Discerning moviegoers should pass on the opportunity.

This military courtroom drama is full of questions, but woefully short of answers.

A crackerjack thriller, laced with labyrinthine mysteries, moral quandaries and unspeakable evil.

Put simply, Mona Lisa Smile is too much of a stacked deck -- a movie too concerned with ensuring that audiences feel a certain way to risk anything like nuance or interpretation.

Kids will get antsy, wondering why their favorite characters disappear for long stretches of the film, while adults will wonder just when this scattershot approach to storytelling will congeal into something resembling coherence.

Hellboy is, to borrow a phrase, one helluva good time.

Filled with delightful sequences.

Shortbus is nothing if not over-the-top, replete with consummated sex acts, both gay and straight.

Those not familiar with Proust will doubtless feel lost. Unlike the printed word, film does not offer the chance to pause and reflect, or go back and re-read a passage.

Nothing in this film -- even Robin Williams, alas -- is funny.

Tightly scripted and intricately plotted, the buddy film manages the neat two-step of being simultaneously profane and engaging.

It was a time in history eminently worth celebrating on film.

All that artistry is surrounded by a hackish, paint-by-numbers storyline that makes the time between dance numbers seem endless.

About as good as the genre gets.

An awful film about an awful time.

Taxi's only saving grace is an inexplicable, though delightful, turn by Ann-Margret as Andy's ever-tipsy mom. She's a stitch, and about 100 times better than her surrounding material.

Unable to embrace the world he's seeking to depict, Cherot is left with a lifeless shell, a movie so preoccupied with being noble that it forgets to be interesting. The problem with G is not that it's unbelievable, it's just boring.

The story is a comic-book tale at its most basic level.

Unwaveringly predictable.

The Cell is eye candy - but it could give your brain a bad case of indigestion.

Go to enjoy the technical expertise, and take a first-grader (and not a particularly savvy one) along to find something of value in everything else.

Ella Enchanted is one cute movie.

Greengrass has a fine sense of pacing, keeping events moving. It's rarely hard to guess what's going to happen next, but events unfold with such gusto that there's barely time to notice that.

A slice-of-life where being gay is a fact of daily existence, not an excuse for existential dilemmas or grand tragedies.

This is a movie for genre fans only; there's not an aspect to it that should appeal to the rest of the world. It's neither original nor inventive, and while its young cast works hard, there's not even a standout performance worth recommending.

The film mixes the psychological with the supernatural, the profane with the ridiculous, the self-indulgent with the understated, and dares you to assume anything. It's all great fun.

Ghost Ship would have been so much better if they'd just let the ship do more of the acting.

Disney is creatively bankrupt and bereft of ingenuity -- especially in its live-action films. [25 Dec 1998, p.8F]

It doesn't take a genius IQ to figure out the movie's final twist far in advance, leaving the attentive viewer to wonder only about how Shyamalan will pull it off and to hope the movie doesn't turn silly.

Your basic Lasse Hallstrom formula-film, featuring people in dire situations who are redeemed when their basic goodness comes to the fore, elevated a notch by a pair of actors displaying sides we don't often see.

When it sticks to the subject, the movie is sad and affecting.

As great as the film looks, the story, adapted from a novel by P.D. James, never quite comes into focus.

Though lovingly crafted and beautifully photographed, the movie does little to make Jones seem compelling, or even all that good.

Gloriously retro, unashamedly celebratory of the joy of moviemaking and the love of old-fashioned heroism.

The result may not make for a great adventure, but it's sure a fun ride.

Best of all is Jeff Bridges as the voice of Geek, a laid-back philosopher-penguin who becomes Cody's low-key guru, mentoring him in the ways of the wave.

The result is a film that plays like a creaking melodrama, with good guys and bad guys and precious little in between.

Whatever spark the newer Precinct 13 has comes from its supporting players.

The soundtrack is guaranteed to send chills where they'll be most effective, and the ultimate resolution is a real shocker. While it doesn't explain away everything that's happened, it comes deliciously close.

Romanek does such a nice job of calibrating his film's squirm factor, it's possible to overlook some flaws that would sink a lesser film.

A hollow, relentless mess.

Well-acted, lovingly put together and heartbreakingly honest.

Those willing to overlook its emotional grandstanding will find much to admire and even more to think about in this Oscar-nominated Danish drama.

This may be the quietest addict ever to hit movie screens, as well the most disturbing.

A comedy that doesn't work if you think about it too much. Cut it some slack, however, and you just might have a good time.

An action-adventure flick that could turn into this generation's "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

Serenity may be short on exposition, but it's smart and fun.

Put the tango in "To Sir, With Love," and you've got Take the Lead.

There are times when his message threatens to overwhelm his story line, and the last 15 minutes or so of Blood Diamond demonstrate what happens when sentimentality wins out over style and grit.

It's also unclear just what Niccol wanted this film to be: a satire? a spoof? a black comedy? a pointed social commentary? Perhaps all of the above - way too many hats for a movie this slight to wear.

Meandering, forgettable trifle.

Offers a welcome riff on a well-worn horror standard.

The Sentinel moves quickly and never becomes a bore. It does become something of a cartoon, though, which proves a major letdown for a movie that aims for something far more intelligent.

The movie is so confused about itself that it comes across as toneless, a bunch of characters wandering around in a story no one is controlling.

Christmas with the Kranks is so calculated that it's pathetic, a warm-hearted holiday greeting card with not one scintilla of honest emotion inside.

It's possible that a smart, insightful, sharp-edged comedy could have been written around these characters, but Trust The Man isn't it.

Greenaway's film is about making people's jaws drop.

Four Christmases works because of some genuinely funny setups, a pace that never dwells on one gag (or even one family) too long and a careful mix of slapstick and bawdy humor. But mostly, the film works because of the astonishing acting talent the filmmakers brought together to make it.

A film that really has no idea what it wants to be, so it tries a little of everything, and does nothing very well.

Fans of anime probably will find Vampire Hunter D plenty thrilling. Non-fans, or those not familiar with the genre, will enjoy the film's gothic atmosphere, but may wonder what all the fuss is about.