Chris Kaltenbach

Bolt proves a refreshing throwback to the animated classics of yore.

It's a top-notch action film, albeit on the bloody side, complete with decisive action, mysterious characters and a nobility and sense of purpose that allows its excesses to be forgiven.

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

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.

There's way too much blarney in Evelyn.

It's like a Harlequin romance trying to pass itself off as something deeper and more profound.

Alien, even with some scene tinkering that has left this "director's cut" one minute shorter than its original release, is still one of the creepiest, scariest, most shocking films ever.

Plot-wise, this is strictly paint-by-numbers stuff.

Caan is so good as a man who watches helplessly as everything he's worked for crumbles around him, that he steals the picture from both Wahlberg and Phoenix, the ostensible stars.

A story about unmotivated characters trapped in an ill-conceived plot.

Malkovich acts as if he's doing Shakespeare, pontificating, enunciating and generally overreaching.

A pleasantly lightweight confection.

It's not hard to imagine these characters in a straight-faced Hollywood blockbuster. And that's the source of Hot Fuzz's genius, pointing out the thin line that separates convention from farce when Hollywood starts throwing its special effects around.

It's a zombie flick that moves -- no stumbling, staggering living dead here -- in an atmosphere that feels like a Gothic docudrama, and it's freaky beyond all reason.

With Anything Else, Woody Allen proves himself an old dog capable of thinking up some new tricks.

Shark Tale is "Finding Nemo" with bigger-name stars, far less heart and, the guess here is, about one-third the staying power.

Like watching a 90-minute game of the video game Asteroids - all bang and no buck.

There's a ton of joy in The Legend of 1900 -- but it's laid on so thick that one ends up more numbed than stirred, overcome by one too many Hallmark moments.

Retro in a refreshing sort of way, a return to those sci-fi films of the 1950s, filled with cheesy special effects and over-the-top acting, but with a gem of an idea at its core, and all done with just enough wit and inventiveness to keep audiences in the cheap seats happy.

About as clunky as a movie gets. It lurches from scene to scene with no sense of narrative grace, gives its roster of prominent actors nothing to work with and screeches to a halt with all the grace of a sprinter whose shoelaces have been tied together.

Most of the fun to be had with Thr3e is to spot the movies from which it cribs. Beyond that, what one has is a conventional psychological thriller that cheats too often and depends on actors determined to play only one note.

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

Extreme Measures, a new medical thriller with Hugh Grant and Gene Hackman as doctors with differing views on medical ethics, is an episode of "Beauty and the Beast" grafted onto an episode of "ER" as directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

Probably the most sweet-spirited sex comedy ever made. It's pretty funny, too.

The images here are graphic and disturbing. But Miike somehow manages to stop just short of disgusting.

Method Man and Redman just don't have the comic timing to pull off 90 minutes at front-and-center.

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.

Long on style and technique, short on substance and plot.