Chris Kaltenbach

But the fine performances of all three leads rise above the cliches, giving the film a sense of reality that both impresses and inspires.

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

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

Painfully earnest, The Astronaut Farmer is, sad to say, a bunch of hooey. It's Frank Capra without the genuine heart, certainly without any sense of perspective.

Even a full week after seeing it, I'm still influenced enough by the film's many enchantments not to be overly concerned with its flaws.

There's way too much blarney in Evelyn.

There's a power to Woman Thou Art Loosed that transcends its limitations, a determined, heartfelt belief in the possibility of redemption.

The animals in Road Trip are pretty hilarious; as a five-minute short on cable TV's "Animal Planet," this film would be a stitch.

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

The result is a passionate, enthralling film that isn't afraid to take chances - even if it sometimes should be.

The cinematic equivalent of a beautifully wrapped gift box with nothing inside.

Spending more time with Downey's character would have benefited this movie no end.

The film ultimately is a letdown, leaving too many questions unanswered and ending in a gesture that doesn't really solve anything.

A pastiche of sadistic horror-movie cliches with minor traces of wit but major overflows of perversity.

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.

The real strength of Return to Me is Hunt, who knows just when to retreat from the film's overriding sweetness and inject a cynical moment or two.

The Bread, My Sweet is not for the cynical, who will doubtlessly find themselves gasping for air before the film's over and demanding a reality check of anyone who actually likes it. Their loss.

The film's impact and poignancy are undeniable.

Filled with delightful sequences.

In a cinematic landscape where truly original ideas are rarer than floating food, recklessness like this deserves to be appreciated. Not understood, but appreciated.

Tear-inducing feel-gooder that only a curmudgeon could find fault with.

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

Stars Juliette Binoche and Jean Reno give Jet Lag everything they've got. Too bad the movie doesn't better reward their effort.

What the film needs is more heart, humor and maybe some honest-to-goodness humility, not energy. And unfortunately, that's about all Gooding seems able to bring to it.

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.

Alpha Dog may well go down as the most dispiriting film of 2007.

Ella Enchanted is one cute movie.

Looking for comedy in Albert Brooks' Looking for Comedy In the Muslim World is a fool's errand. There's hardly any there.

Features lots of cool dialogue but doesn't provide much of a movie in which to showcase it.

A gritty, profane and profoundly disturbing look at the American drug culture.

Based on Palindromes, it's easy to see what Solondz is railing against but almost impossible to tell what he's railing for.

The result is a movie that inspires without pontificating and plays on the heartstrings without pounding on them incessantly.

A cautionary tale that's harrowing, heartbreaking and -- especially given the times, when Americans seem all-too-ready to once again judge people as a threat solely by their appearance -- disturbingly resonant.

Too bad it shortchanges the music and fails to provide much evidence for Wilson's appeal.

Eventually becomes cliched, predictable and crude. And that's a real sin.

Girls Will Be Girls thinks watching outrageous people acting outrageously is its own reward. It isn't.

The residents of Beauty Shop never quite gel. Instead of camaraderie, the feeling is one of bare tolerance.

Wilson, who has never made the film in which he convincingly played sincere, turns out to be a wise choice to play John Grogan.

Malibu's Most Wanted mines a well-worn comedic vein, but does so with a consistent good humor and surprisingly deft touch.

The Guardian is that rarest of cinematic commodities: an action movie displaying brains and heart and the opportunity for its stars to do something more than keep the narrative flowing between explosions.

Ben Affleck and Gwyneth Paltrow are so immensely appealing, and their chemistry together is so unforced, that their presence alone makes a movie worth seeing. Thankfully, Bounce has even more going for it.

So what do we have here? Lots of cars going very fast.

Tomorrow Never Dies is convincing proof that there's life yet in fiction's most famous cold warrior. In fact, because the film shifts the focus from Evil Empires to crazed terrorists, it's possible to walk away with a double good feeling: Not only does good triumph over evil, but countries of differing ideologies are able to work together.

Other than portraying Mary as an overwhelmed teenager, mystified that God has chosen her to be the mother of his child, it doesn't offer anything that hasn't been playing out in grade-school pageants for decades.

Even a superstar needs to surround himself with better material than this.

Almost sinks under the weight of too many red herrings, but is rescued by a skewed sense of reality and pervasive sense of dread that should keep audiences from dwelling on them.

A delightful and exuberant bit of romantic comedy and, as a bonus, it breathes new life into a pair of '70s musical chestnuts long off our culture's radar screens.

Spirit lacks that essential emotional resonance, and suffers because of it.

It's unfortunate that none of the principal actors is able to convey the passion the characters are supposed to have for each other.

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

Gracie is painfully earnest, which might be OK were it not also painfully trite, painfully cliched and painfully formulaic.

Latifah's performance and the film's gentle heart should prove enough to win over even the most churlish.

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

Cinema has once again proven its ability to incorporate every other mass-media art form. Director Zack Snyder and his computer wizards have made the best example yet of the movie-as-comic-book.

Nacho Libre enhances Hess' reputation as a gifted filmmaker and suggests there's more to Black than manic dementia. Both director and actor, however, need to find projects better-suited to their respective (and often impressive) talents.

Just don't think about what's going on, and you should be OK.

Delivers deliciously low blows at corporate America, office politics and the lengths people will go to avoid work.

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

Neither Grimm comes across as especially interesting to watch, and neither does anything in the movie offer much to get excited about.

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

See it to be reminded (if you need further reminding) of this actress' remarkable range. Otherwise, take a pass.

Refreshingly, the movie never wavers in the importance it places on friendship over just about anything else.

The final resolution is silly by just about any standard. A little grounding in reality and a larger effort to avoid the trite could have made Everyone's Hero fun and inspirational for everybody, not just the very young.

The one thing most sorely missing is movie magic.

Until the last 15 minutes, What Lies Beneath is a well-paced maze that earns every gasp from its audience.

Johnny English never builds any momentum, and Atkinson simply isn't a good enough actor to mine continued laughs from repetitive material.

Darren Aronofsky labors awfully hard to get across a pretty simple message in The Fountain. But his efforts are so ethereal and extreme, it's almost impossible to turn away.

It's deliciously warped, deceptively smart and undeniably funny. Isn't that enough?

Look, I love dogs. But this film tried my patience almost beyond endurance.

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

Conventional wisdom has it that the best Star Trek movies are the even-numbered ones. Nemesis may keep that streak alive, but barely.

As a narrative, it has serious problems -- holes so gaping that they're all but unavoidable.

It's plenty thrilling, and it appeals to the flag-waving patriot in all of us.

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

Too bad director Scott Hicks and screenwriter Carol Fuchs didn't look more closely at their source material, a 2001 German film called Mostly Martha. That film used the same basic premise but injected real conflict into the mix, in ways sexual, culinary, even ethnic. That film tried to do something, even while it was entertaining us.

Blethyn's performance belongs in another movie, not this bipolar comedy-drama.

As each male-female relationship works itself out in ways either contrived or predictable, here's betting you wind up more disappointed than enlightened.

It's obvious and stereotypical. It's leaden and unconvincing. It's not nearly as outrageous as it thinks it is.

If you expect anything more substantive from a movie - characters of more than one dimension, storylines that at the least play new riffs on old themes, plot developments that flow from the narrative - you'd best look elsewhere.

Is there anyone out there who hasn't seen this movie a dozen times before? Maybe even as recently as last week, since it's basically the same story line as the funnier, if less heartfelt, "Four Christmases."

A wonderfully understated work offering insights to a world where no emotion is simple.

Scores some serious points for its dance moves but does a lousy job of remembering there's a lot more to this big old world than moving your feet.

Allen's latest, his 42nd effort as a director, is the work of an artist devoid of ideas and energy. Perfunctorily staged and lazily written, it comes to life in only the briefest of spurts, usually when the ever-reliable Tom Wilkinson is on-screen.

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.

Unwaveringly predictable.

Paid In Full's performances - especially by the always-engaging Phifer -- are strong, its message worthwhile and its sincerity doubtless.

There's a lot of talk about sex in Sidewalks of New York, but precious little of it. And that's part of the point.

It's a blast!

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.

Undeniably charming -- a dog movie that's more lovable mutt than stately pedigree.

The only character with any personality in The Grudge is a Tokyo house, but not to worry - it's got enough mean in it to keep any horror movie afloat.

True, John Ford and John Wayne did this stuff a lot better back in the day, but they're not around anymore. John Singleton is, and it's nice to see someone caring enough to keep the tradition alive.

Gets the hell of war right and struggles to depict the unyielding passion of love. But the two sides make for an uneasy mix, one that not even the actors seem comfortable with.

Should sell its soul for a joke.

Heaven knows what the suits at Disney were thinking, for what they ended up with was a bland Jackie Chan movie and a lifeless travelogue.

Graeme Obree was a champion bicycler who, by all accounts, rarely took the easy way out. Too bad this movie version of his life doesn't follow suit.

Things may work out predictably, but The Ultimate Gift does not yank on the heartstrings so much as pluck them gently.

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.