Chris Kaltenbach

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.