Chris Kaltenbach

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

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

An underlit, overlong, underwritten and overloud albatross of a movie.

Strings of four-letter words are a poor substitute for dialogue, and it's not until the movie is almost over that someone realizes there's no reason, other than assumed macho posturing, for Cube's character to go after these bad guys so hard.

Fortunately, this film doesn't have to depend on off-screen dalliances to prove its worth.

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

There's enough wit to keep audiences of whatever age happy.

A violent, dumb, offensive mess.

It's hard, bordering on impossible, to evaluate this movie without stepping on people's beliefs.

Offers a welcome continuation of what has proven a fascinating journey both for the film's 11 subjects (three of the 14 opted out of the project this go-round) and its audience.

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]