Chuck Wilson

Captured extraordinary performances from a cast of non-actors, as well as magnificent images of a vast landscape.

Predictably, the jokes are raunchy, yet they're few in number, as if the writer's sleaze well is running dry. First-time director Mark Rucker has a nice feel for period detailing but fails to build on his star's rare flashes of high energy.

There's no denying the overwhelming force of the giant IMAX screen, as we're reminded that each of us is the coolest special effect ever.

A remake of the 2003 Korean horror film "A Tale of Two Sisters," The Uninvited is a Hand That Rocks the Cradle–type thriller that's been dressed up as a horror movie.

What's missing is any sense of why such a handsome man is afraid of women. That makes the premise hard to swallow, especially since Harrington is too commanding to be a believable dweeb. The actor does achieve moments of pathos, only to be undone by a silly script.

As with most of Toback's films, there are Big Ideas being bandied about that never quite coalesce, a failing that, this time at least, mirrors his hero's own hyped-out search for meaning.

Maintains a reflective, bittersweet tone that's almost tactile.

A truly dreadful sequel.

A well-made but emotionally scattered film whose hero gives his heart only to the dog.

Feast isn't the least bit artful, but it is gleefully gruesome, which may be all one can ask of a no-budget monster movie.

The superb ensemble never plays for sympathy, and the movie isn't as depressing as it may sound. Its hushed, contemplative quality is oddly affecting.

Accomplished and invigorating debut feature from Colombian-born director Patricia Cardoso that took both the Audience Award and a Special Jury Prize at Sundance this year.

Director Chuck Russell ("The Mask") keeps the computer effects to a minimum, emphasizing instead the essential ingredients of a Saturday-afternoon serial, namely, venom-tipped arrows, pissed-off cobras and a buxom babe.

Slow-starting but ultimately invigorating debut film by Craig Highberger.

No, this isn't an adaptation of Don DeLillo’s great 1985 novel, but a muddled talking-ghosts movie.

Initially amusing, ultimately wearying mock documentary.

For this violent yet gore-free film, clearly designed for horny teenaged video game wizards, writer-director Kurt Wimmer stages a succession of fight sequences that pit V against helmeted thugs who appear to have raided the Star Wars storm trooper costume closet.

Beautiful in its dark, contrasting blues and blacks, Underworld is nonetheless a remarkably humorless movie, and not even the adroitly hammy Bill Nighy, as the vampire king, can leaven the overwrought seriousness of it all.

Off sorority row, the movie goes flat for increasingly long stretches, with the filmmakers displaying so little understanding of or genuine feeling for the mentally challenged that they never advance past stutter-and-stumble humor.

Bad movies can be a hoot, but rather than campy, Ameer appears to be dead serious; and it's hard to feel anything but fury toward a filmmaker whose opening title sequence intersperses black-and-white flashbacks of his sexy young lovers with actual concentration-camp photos of stacked, emaciated corpses.

This film looks so good, thanks to some impressive production work (nice rainstorm) as well as Andrew Huebscher's vibrant cinematography, that one wonders, as one dull scene after another rolls by, why director Andrew Putschoegl - and co-writers Large and Kyle Kramer - didn't lavish half as much attention on the script.

A film free of political fury, but full of activist optimism, this tame but heartfelt documentary is a fine companion piece to a day at the science museum.

Strictly Urban Comedy 101, as if the filmmakers had neither the inclination nor the chops to move the genre past timeworn stereotypes.

Mountain Patrol: Kekexili is sometimes slow going, yet it builds in power as nature begins to take its toll on the patrol, and its cumulative effects are haunting.

The director and her capable cast appear to be caught in a heady whirl of New Age–inspired good intentions, but the spell they cast isn't the least bit mesmerizing.

Filmed in Iceland, Beowulf & Grendel is beautiful, grungy and a little too tasteful for its own good. You can practically feel the filmmakers yearning to have Beowulf and Grendel go all Rambo on each other.

(Emile Hirsch) a miraculous young actor.

Zoe is lively and an astonishing athlete, but it's Jeannie who gives this film resonance.

While Parker and co-writer Catherine di Napoli are faithful to Melville’s plotline, they and a fully engaged supporting cast — have made the old boy's characters more quick-witted than any English Lit major would have thought possible.

One feels sympathy for the ensemble, which, absent full-bodied characters to inhabit, mug furiously, as if big gestures conjure big themes.

Never-hilarious but often-quite-amusing film.

What they don't do often enough is battle anacondas. It's all tease and no payoff.

Wise and moving.

The only time the actors appear to have accelerated their own heartbeats is in two paintball scenes, as well as -- professionals all -- the fart-lighting contest. It's pretty pathetic.

This is efficient, soul-numbing moviemaking, diverting enough for blistering September afternoons when what's onscreen is secondary to how high they've cranked the air conditioning.

In the 17-million-copy land of "Twilight," the calling card isn't blood and fangs, but the exquisite, shimmering quiver of unconsummated first love. By that measure, the movie version gives really good swoon.

Marshall isn't exactly a cinematic poet, but he does a fine job delineating each individual dog's personality, as well as the shifting hierarchy of power within the pack, which is why it's so exasperating that he and first-time screenwriter Dave Digillo are forever cutting away to dull Jerry and his stateside quest for rescue-mission funds.

Screenwriters Melissa Carter and Erica Bell (Sleepover) have given Murphy -- perhaps the twitchiest actor of her generation --cutesy quirks to play in lieu of a character.

Powerful war satire.

Has there ever been a more inept trio of big-city caseworkers? Go ahead, Lilith. Unleash the hounds.

This is one of the few treatments of the macabre in animation that is authentically unnerving, rather than merely gross or campy.

To describe the novelist's final days, Bachardy opens a drawer and begins pulling out the magnificent deathbed drawings he did of Isherwood -- a fusion of art and love that's deeply moving.

That decade-spanning finale allows the three leads to age onscreen and demonstrate their impressive range, particularly Liu.

Madea's a riot, but what makes this richer, more textured follow-up to "Diary of a Mad Black Woman" so fascinating is the way Perry - a first-time director adapting his own hit play - shifts on a dime from a silly fart joke scene to one of intense, Sirkian melodrama.

Much meaner remake, starring Ryan Reynolds (quite good).

It’s hard to know what’s more depressing -- a senseless remake or the idea of a once-great director doing such shockingly slack work.

Gradually, and with a kind of inquisitive generosity, the filmmaker's scope expands to take in Casim's parents and two sisters, whose public shame and private despair at having the only son move in with a “goree” - a white girl - is made palpably, wrenchingly real.

After a first hour that plays like a bad TV show, Sommers hits his groove with an over-the-top Paris chase sequence that, in turn, leads to an underwater finale that’s absurdly overproduced, momentarily diverting, and then instantly forgettable.

Writer-director Mick Garris has a real feeling for the horror master's melancholy worldview - love is loss - but he's too reverent toward the original story, the ending of which, both on the page and, now, on the screen, lands with an overly elegiac thud.

Diaz and Collette are believable as sisters, but their performances rarely surprise -- in a more interesting movie world, they'd have switched roles.

Like the film's characters, the city of Paris has been made faceless, as if it too were merely the pawn in a representational hell where light and color and shading are forbidden.

The last-minute details of plot can't compete with the frightening intensity of Kiberlain's and Garcia's performances, which trace, with brilliant precision, the exhausting mix of brutality and grace inherent in the mother-daughter relationship.

The best news here is Adrienne Barbeau, the 1970s TV star and B-movie queen (Swamp Thing), who invests the role of Anthony's aunt with a worldly-wise sensuality that suggests a long-lost cousin of Tony Soprano.

Nearly drowns in languor, only to be saved by Milos and Isaacs, who are sexy, movie-star talented and, together, really good kissers.

As in all his films, there's a sense that honest human emotion bores Fleder, but he gets points for packing the trial with fine character actors.

The glitch, beyond the rote story, is that while she's an infectiously upbeat screen presence, Latifah is not, inherently, a major laugh generator, and neither, it would appear, is Fallon.

For the first time in years, De Niro digs deep emotionally, perhaps because he's been stirred by the powerful work of his co-stars, including a subtle Frances McDormand and a ferocious Patti LuPone, as well as the heartbreaking (and achingly beautiful) Franco.

The nonstop jumping around undercuts Meily's momentum, especially in the film's overly languorous final third. Still, there's a refreshing optimism fueling his take on working-class life, as if Meily views friendship and neighborly generosity as currencies equal to cold, hard cash.

Meandering.

With her long, black coat and midair karate-chop skills, Selene is more Matrix-y Neo than Count Dracula, which may explain why this movie is so brutally un-fun.

While it can't have been easy to find action points for a drama about vocabulary drills, Atchison comes up with a steady stream of plot-propelling business, including Akeelah's flair for jump rope, a skill that serves her beautifully in a clinch moment.

While Driving Lessons' writer-director, Jeremy Brock, sticks to the all-too-familiar template of such tales, he's given Walters her best role since "Educating Rita." Hamming it up with the precision of a master, she makes this somewhat plodding film a pleasure, as does young Grint.

A mindless muddle.

The all-Polynesian cast, many of whom developed this material as part of a theater troupe called "The Naked Samoans," bring so much energy and glee to the telling that one can only smile and hope they all profit wildly from the American remake that's reportedly in the works.

To their credit, screenwriter Dianne Houston and director Liz Friedlander (both making their feature debuts) go relatively easy on the urban-life clichés and instead stick tight to dance class.

LaPaglia is a fine actor, but not even he can redeem such bathos.

First-time screenwriter James C. Strouse (in whose hometown the film was shot) provides so few clues to the source of Jim's malaise, or that of his entire sad-sack family, that the movie remains rudderless and not the least bit believable.

With the supremely gifted Rudd as his point man, Peretz is often ruthless in depicting Americans abroad as deluded cretins; by film’s end, however, he finds their optimism useful for re-firing the defeated hearts of his characters, even the hope-leery French ones.

This low-budget horror comedy arrives via a lively trailer and a witty print ad, yet the film itself never quite takes off.

A sappy love story wherein nary a gun or action sequence is seen after the first 10 minutes.

A spirited re-creation of the series that once ruled Saturday mornings.

The women are terrific -- they know a thing or two about modulating pathos -- and watching them is a pleasure, even if the lines they're speaking sound like those of a world-worried, first-time playwright.

Creepy enough at first, this relatively gore-free film gradually becomes a stifling talk-fest in which superb actors drone on for so long about the nature of belief that one longs for a juror to spew a little pea soup.

Actress Amy Smart (Crank) has a knack for bringing a spark to mediocre movies, which she does again in this amiably dull dance drama.

There are funny moments -- a cameo from Debbie Reynolds, an Evita sing-along -- but the film grows progressively more dispirited.

The film moves in fits and starts, and is way too long, but it may prove memorable, if only for the sweet, marvelously inventive performance of Kevin James.

Running Scared is decently acted and divertingly brutal, but it's also a giant step backward for its maker.

Yes, this is another faux rock documentary, but one so dramatically and visually textured that it reinvents that decidedly worn genre.

Most of the animated sequences, capably mixed with live action, leave a bad aftertaste, particularly when the ultimate fate of one beaten and battered human bystander after another is left callously unresolved. In other words, parents beware.

The movie is a funereally paced downer.

Director Chuck Russell ("The Mask") and screenwriter Thomas Rickman don't need new agents -- they need backup careers.

This crazily ambitious film is saddled with a musical score that's often jarringly jolly and a screenplay so busy jumping from platoon to platoon that no single story ever takes hold. Yet, all is not lost. The photography and period detailing are excellent, and Taub, who displays real feeling for the innocent bystanders of war, finds the occasional small, surprising moment.

Perry has great casting instincts, and in Elba and Union he's matched two gifted, equally gorgeous actors, both of whom seem ready to make sparks fly. If only their director would let them.

Scenically beautiful, rhythmically uneven comedy.

Mostly, Shafer and co-writer Gregory Hinton lack a strong-minded viewpoint, or a sense of humor, about a world in which the DJ has the power to unify, if only for a night, men of godlike beauty and the mortals who worship them.

Audiences will probably be miles ahead of the plot, but may not mind, since the cast bring a committed, lived-in quality to their performances.

Surely the only thing more excruciating than being trapped in a car with a bratty child is having to sit through a road-trip movie that features two of them.

Beautifully acted film remains deeply intelligent and always fascinating.

Turns out to be that rarest of Hollywood creatures: a sequel that one-ups the original…These two smart, happy movie stars prove that silliness doesn’t have to be moronic.

Those expecting a reunion with Jackson, Travolta's “Pulp Fiction” co-star, should be prepared: They don't interact at all, which is a bit like casting Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and not letting them dance together.

This is a small, funny movie drawn from the radical notion that a love born of late-night lust can survive the glaring light of day.

In many ways, Marshall and Barrymore are an equal match -- while both have a flair for the small touches that build a good comic scene, each lacks the complex layering of motive and emotion that make a human life believably real.

Heartfelt yet overly schematic debut feature.

Parkhill's heart seems to belong to 1940s film noir, where a lonely man could be driven half-mad by the sight of a mystery woman performing a hot flamenco dance, a scene Parkhill stages here to unintentional titter-inducing effect.

Ardant gives in this film the performance of her life, lip-synching to the voice of the real Callas.

The cast of the original looks Shakespearean in comparison to Cook and her hapless cohorts, but to be fair, those first dead ducks had a real script to explore, which this bunch does not.

The final match stirs briefly, but when it's over, the movie's energy crashes right back down again. Disappointing.

This film is lean, tight and irredeemably vile. People are gonna love it.