Chuck Wilson

This filmed record is a musical bliss-out.

Refreshingly laid-back romantic comedy.

All of this looks great on the giant IMAX screen -- most things do -- but the filmmakers can't shake the sense that this is an inflated TV special.

A tougher, more experienced director may someday force Holmes to surprise first herself, then us.

Writer-director Richard Day, whose debut feature, the drag comedy Girls Will Be Girls, was shamefully neglected by critics and audiences alike, proves again that he's the new master of the catty one-liner, and he's also becoming a striking visual stylist.

Wordplay offers a running tutorial in how crosswords are created - lessons that are enhanced by the onscreen graphics of designer Brian Oakes, which, come tournament time, allow moviegoers to see the clues and grids the contestants are working on, theoretically allowing us to solve the puzzles along with them.

Watching this interesting, well-acted debut feature from writer-director Russell Brown, one begins to reason that what Nathan and Maggie have in common, besides desire, is a need for a partner who's not completely kind.

A career best for the daughter of Charlie Chaplin.

For his first feature in 15 years, Spanish filmmaker Eloy de la Iglesia has made a witty, unsentimental class comedy.

This is writer-director Hilary Birmingham's first film, and it's a lovely thing, as reserved and unfussy as its characters and, like them, full of surprises.

Despite his obvious passion, Long never fully ties together the human and animal footage, and so the film feels disjointed, as if two different documentaries are being fused into one.

Deep Blue runs just shy of 90 minutes, and this pathetic landlubber of a movie critic must confess to growing restless here and there, an example of how quickly awestruck wonder can turn to apathy.

Kinky Boots is diverting, but it's only worth shouting about thanks to Ejiofor' quietly subversive take on what has become a stock movie character.

For trashing a classic, Tunnicliffe and his writing cohorts deserve a Grimm-style fate -- perhaps a long, slow boil in the witch’s vat?

Full of shuttery jump cuts set to music cues so loud your heart can't help but convulse, Darkness should have been left to molder in Miramax's vast vault of horror-movie stiffs.

The Sisters may be worth a look, however, for the work of the magnificent Bello and Tony Goldwyn, who's never been better than as the married man with whom Marcia has an affair. Their final clench is pure, guilty-pleasure melodrama, which means it's not the least bit Chekhovian.

At its best, there's nothing gushy about Dennis Quaid's portrayal of Morris, and more than anything it's his beautifully modulated reserve that holds this film in emotional check.

The film is sporadically amusing, especially early on. But as the gross-outs dwindle, one is left to contemplate if Stiller has always been this neckless and to wonder just why Aniston wastes her summer vacation on junk such as this.

Baffling too is The Rock's choice to follow up his acclaimed performance in "Be Cool" with a role that requires him to do little more than widen his eyes and grunt lines.

A hit in Denmark, this impressive debut feature from writer-director Anders Thom as Jensen is decidedly offbeat, with Jensen contrasting moments of brutal violence with the emerging gentleness of Torkild and his friends.

The one saving grace is a sweet, affecting performance by Werner de Smedt.

While it's Dave's madly humming brain that propels the film, Davis, whose every glance is a short story in itself, makes Dana's internal crisis equally resonant.

Accomplished yet uneven feature.

Unexpectedly moving documentary.

In her charming debut feature, writer-director Alice Wu works hard to sidestep both pathos and antic comedy, an admirable ambition that makes for a relentlessly low-key film that nonetheless builds to a third act rich in surprising turns of character.

The film has spunk. Unfortunately, the gore comes with brutal regularity, so that, despite Farmer and Isaac's attempts to liven things up, the film still just wears you down.

Although parents of small children are advised to give the film an advance look, Holes may nudge older kids toward that most ancient of after-school distractions: reading.

Unfortunately, two separate screenwriting teams...send Cody away from kid-resonant environs and off to exotic locales, culminating in an overproduced mountain-lair finale.

A passionately told tale.

Maybe Brosnan is so shockingly good in this film because Kinnear gives him the sounding board and safety net that the actor never had in his sadly solitary spy-flick duties.

Wright is a find, while Rowe may surprise those who dismissed him as a Brad Pitt look-alike when he first came to attention in "Billy’s Hollywood Screen Kiss." Here, Rowe displays new authority and confidence, as if lately he’s been looking in the mirror and seeing himself, rather than that other, more famous blond.

Why the devotion to such dull material?

Kane believes in happy endings, but he makes his characters earn theirs, as each couple is forced, ever so subtly, to face its own inner nonsense. The filmmaker has divine actors at his disposal.

So dull, a road-trip movie that's surprisingly short of both adventure and song.

Formulaic but innocuous little movie's one clever moment, a sing-off between choirs standing on their respective church steps, trying to lure in Sunday-morning worshippers.

The purest of horror films.

In movies, the young are forever being taken back in time by the old, but what sets apart this low-energy yet ambitious debut feature by writer-director Rodney Evans is the complexity of the questions that journey raises.

Townsend and Aaliyah are sexy as hell, and clearly willing and able to explore the darker truths of villainy, but they can't compete against the unwieldy script.

This horror comedy is loaded with decapitations, bodies torn in two and spewing blood, and yet, unlike the grim, torture-filled gore-fests of late, Hatchet’s mayhem is so giddily over-the-top that you end up applauding the low-budget aplomb of it all.

Director James Wong and co-writer Glen Morgan seem, in this film's creaky first third, to be working on automatic pilot, but they gradually cut loose, staging one imaginative and gleefully gruesome death after another.

Devotes too much time to a shrill, unfunny security guard who's pursuing the girls, but he does stage some zippy sequences, from the red-clad Julie's skateboard dash home to witty bits involving an energy-depleted electric car.

Nair, who, in this film as in so many others, aims for the beating heart of the predictable movie moment.

Fascinating film, which tracks Éva's slowly dawning realization that she's being played for a fool, an insight that may be driving her mad.

Adam & Steve is uneven, but it's a relief to see a gay romance that isn't about ab-perfect 20-year-olds, and which features lovers played by two long out-of-the-closet actors. Wonder of wonders.

His is a valiant story, though it doesn't quite work as a nearly 90-minute documentary -- the Cadigans simply don’t have enough material.

This movie could have easily been shot as porn, a transition that would have given it a modicum of respectability and, better still, true social purpose.

On the surface, this coming-of-age tale feels slight and unremarkable, yet the director's final close-up of Frankie packs a punch -- a testament to the power of a gifted young actress happily lost inside her first big role.

Karen Black gives her sharpest performance in years as Bambi LeBleau, a roadside-dive karaoke hostess who invites the kids back to her house for a night of booze and lounge classics.

Phoenix, who initially seemed the kind of actor who was too cool, too angry, to appear in studio pap such as this, is a magnetic presence, despite the numbing pathos surrounding him, but isn't that what we used to say about Travolta?

It’s a good story, and Uekrongtham, making his feature debut, captures the camaraderie of camp life and the subsequent matches with the panache of a veteran studio hand, but the insights into Toom's psyche never extend past the fun he has applying powder and eyeliner.

Smart, goofy and endearing, Cho and Penn make a terrific team, and the fact that they're starring in their own movie suggests that, in the Hollywood comedy frat house, there's finally room for everyone.

One expects razzle-dazzle dance sequences to lift this movie above its clichés, but they are few and far between, which is not only disappointing, it's downright baffling.

Ghastly.

The director's work is suitably unnerving, but leaves one feeling beaten senseless by reel two. When the hero's well-earned moment of clarity finally arrives, most will likely be too numbed out to care, despite the best efforts of Brody, an actor too vividly alive to be wasting his time playing dead.

Von Trotta and co-writer Pamela Katz can't resist cutting, again and again, to Hannah and her airless musings on the story's meaning. These interludes stop the movie in its tracks and, counter no doubt to von Trotta's intentions, do a disservice to the Rosenstrasse women themselves, who shouldn't have to fight for screen time.

What's memorable here is the sparkling chemistry between Bates and Woodard, whose scenes together are a pleasure to watch, even as one thinks that their next outing should be to co-teach a master class entitled, "How To Rise Above Cliché."

McCormick and screenwriter J.S. Cardone don’t have one original thought between them, but they do appear to share an obsession with characters opening hotel-room closets in which the steel hangers gleam ominously.

Rich with comic potential that goes unfulfilled, time after stupefying time.

There are all sorts of noteworthy people in this silly vampire epic, including acting greats Sir Ben Kingsley and Geraldine Chaplin, but the only artist this critic wants to heap praise upon is the regrettably unidentified Supervisor of Blood Splatter: Nice work, dude.

A film we hereby proclaim the finest fertility comedy ever made, in the faint hope that another will not be attempted.

Mahieux, who is superb, methodically paint Peppino as a man for whom solitude is torture.

If your cell phone vibrates while you’re watching One Missed Call, go ahead and answer, because even a wrong number will be more exciting than what’s happening onscreen.

More dispiriting than the caricatured Italian families is the sense that, by picture's end, the filmmakers have neutered Angelo, so that his sexual energy is dulled, made non-threatening -- the perfect son after all.

First-time director João Pedro Rodrigues' unwillingness to define his hero’s background or motivations becomes more and more frustrating as the film goes on.

This ensemble drama is passionately acted and nicely shot, but the storytelling of first-time writer-director Dan Kay is infused with an archaic naiveté.

Deadening comedy.

It's short, this movie, an attribute Sandler himself might take heed of, and if the teenagers in the back row are laughing harder and more often, you might at least find yourself smiling (guiltily) every few minutes.

Less about music than about the possibilities of the IMAX system itself.

Has surprising depth and charm, descriptors never before ascribed to a movie starring Ashton Kutcher.

Until its dismaying final 15 minutes, this baseball redemption movie sails along on the charms of cute kids and a star who makes up in bone structure what he lacks in talent.

In this serviceable remake of the fondly remembered 1959 Disney comedy (which starred Fred MacMurray), an impressively dexterous Tim Allen plays Dave Douglas.

The story may not be new, but Australian director John Polson, making his American feature debut, jazzes it up adroitly, with a nifty, staccato editing technique that suggests Madison's inner turmoil and, in the process, fills in some of the shading missing from Christensen's performance.

Those who can forgive the director's pretensions will discover some fine filmmaking.

The career of the lovably tense Zahn may benefit more from this movie than that of Lawrence, who’s funny, here and there, but who appears to be working at half speed.

Grounded by strong performances by newcomers Featherston and Sloat, who pretty much have the movie to themselves, Paranormal Activity, which demands to be seen in a crowded theater, is refreshingly blood-free.

Gibson and Good deliver such emotionally honest performances that we wish them a happy ending, no matter how many movie clichés have to be trotted out to get there.

Full of gumption, Clarkson and Guarini soldier on, seemingy unaware that the perfectly adequate singing voices that brought them to the big screen are being drowned out, on a half-dozen same-sounding songs, by an overlayered backup group.

Boring.

Mandoki's a pro, but a juiceless one, with only enough energy to reach the finish line, which becomes the viewer's goal as well.

There's lots of half-naked flesh on display, and an enticing sense of hot action afoot (especially between the two gay guys), but the directors seem timid about sex, and really, what's the point of being Spanish if you're afraid to show the good stuff?

Just lies there, poorly lit and tone-deaf.

How nice to see a new comic lead (Ferguson) with the confidence not to hog the screen.

The filmmaking is actually quite polished, and Ribisi is fascinating to watch -- his fluttery weirdness has never seemed more grounded and resonant, turning Gray's self-destructive egoism into near tragedy.

The movie deflates, but you still can't take your eyes off Gershon, who does her own singing, is fearless in the one girl-on-girl make-out scene, and is mesmerizing throughout -- an underused Barbara Stanwyck in a Gwyneth Paltrow age.

Even the director's flat-footed moves can't quell Martin and Latifah, whose combined energy is fearsome and sometimes most amusing.

Lee has heaped so many social ills on his heroine that it's difficult to buy any of it, especially when the story slips into silliness involving bad guys and missing drugs.