Desson Thomson

Reprises all the tedium of slasher flicks.

As we vicariously participate in their daily rituals, we find ourselves at the ground level of spiritual worship. It's hard to recall a similar documentary that brings viewers so palpably close to that sacred experience.

There's no escaping the hackneyed plot or Mayfield's conventional hand. So don't go.

Here's my favorite part: It's only 87 minutes long. But for the most part, this movie is just another bland, fair-to-middling vehicle for two emerging, fledgling stars.

A percolating comedy. The laughs may not tear your belly up, but they're constant and they dovetail with the story.

An adolescent romance that isn't smart enough to mirror "When Harry Met Sally" or crudely amusing enough to get close to "American Pie."

Horror fans will twitch impatiently at those long stretches between killings. And audiences anticipating a feature-length "Girls Gone Wild" video will suffer withdrawal from the lack of loosened bra straps.

Has its funny moments, but all too often it's a corny, lackluster film in which humans pretend (not always convincingly) to interact with cartoons.

Part comedy of manners, and mostly gender warfare, "Something" is designed to get the partisan juices boiling. Screenwriter Callie Khouri, who wrote the marvelous "Thelma & Louise," has a gift for catching the oppression of women in everyday situations and putting a sanguine comic twist on it. But in her zeal to portray a world full of male scum, she creates a morally mismatched, pandering scenario.

The Piano plays itself with such contrapuntal richness, it resonates in you forever.

It may give many viewers a licentious flutter, but the highbrow ingredient -- although it desperately wants to be there -- is missing.

A twentysomething comedy with a brain-dead script, unflattering lighting and 16 performers in search of a scriptwriter...[It] feels like one-sixth of an idea stretched to the breaking point.

Wonderful images, hues, sensations and faces.

The film may employ the well-worn tradition of filtering African stories through the experiences of Europeans, but they use the conceit for some penetrating revelations.

Sometimes, the sincerest form of tribute is inferiority. Watching the Australian film Jindabyne, one soon embraces the conclusion: Robert Altman did this work better. And with fewer brush strokes.

Intended as a fuzzy family fable, "August" plays more to the gag reflex than to the heart, especially when our little orphan starts playing the guitar like a virtuoso after what seems like a three-minute tutorial.

Although the movie is slow-going at first, it gradually awakens, like Lilia. And then it dances.

Piquant, thoroughly engaging character drama.

Becomes a strung-together collection of interesting, semi-interesting, boring and sometimes embarrassing (seemingly improvised) moments from the cast.

What do we want in a sequel? Just a little taste of the original or a triple serving piled high? Dead Man's Chest opts for the latter. This Disney movie isn't a follow-up to the first "Pirates of the Caribbean" so much as its empty-calorie clone.

If you think of Sneakers as a slick, updated Mission: Impossible, it's a lot of fun. It revels in the excitement of breaking security codes, slipping past guards and getting to the prize.

Beam yourselves aboard Sunshine, set 50 years in the future. The voyage works, beautifully.

The suspense and technical wizardry are the only reason to watch Jurassic Park. In a summer movie, that's more than enough, of course. But screenwriter Michael Crichton, adapting his popular novel with David Koepp, slashes almost everything that made the book an entertaining read.

The humor works beautifully until Marshall decides to beat the comedy over the head and drum us, once again, with this relentless message: "Mentally challenged people in love say the darndest things!"

This is definitely for people who 1) love the video game, 2) think Slater and Dorff are eminently watchable, no matter what bad flick they're in and 3) are wearing industrial-strength ear plugs.

A gently stirring symphony about emotional transition filled with lovely musical passages and softly nuanced performances.

Dramatically and conceptually, the movie sits there, flat, naked and trying too hard with too little.

Well, the movie's dumber than a coop full of chickens, but Pauly Shore makes a funny barnyard animal.

Ultimately, Forces of Nature is more of a lull than a passionate storm.

This comedy, directed by Michael Caton-Jones, is as stalled as Fox's Porsche. It's too flat to be funny and too trite to be meaningful.

This Australian film by New Zealand director Jane Campion comes at you, and keeps coming at you, in peculiar, oddly enchanting bursts of detail.

The scenes of destruction-apart from being great to watch-provide much-needed relief from these people's unidimensional banalities.

The best heist flick since "The Usual Suspects," a perfect 10 of a movie.

I was hooked from beginning to end.

After introducing a provocative opening, the movie settles in for some pretty cheap scare effects, as well as by-the-numbers computer graphic imagery for the actual marauder.

Like most thrillers, from "Fatal Attraction" to "Basic Instinct," the ending can't possibly live up to the expectations it creates.

It's formulaic, yet edgy. It's predictable, yet full of surprises. How far you get through this tall tale of a thriller before you give up and howl is a matter of personal taste.

A movie of biting social observation. And it masterfully avoids Manichaean simplicity.

Thanks to the performances and the general looseness of the script, the movie is more appealing than it has any business being.

There's only one problem with Betsy's Wedding. It's Alan Alda. But since he's the writer, the director and the father of the bride in the movie, that's a big problem.

This is cinema as oral tradition. And one heck of a cheap-seat deal.

It's a warm bath experience, soap-sudsed with sentimentality, improbability and other storytelling misdemeanors.

But humans who live above ground, including horror fans, will find themselves only fitfully entertained and more consistently appalled.

Everything is tearful confessions, angry interrogations and breakups. But there's nothing underneath.

In Get Shorty, director Barry Sonnenfeld's spirited adaptation of the Elmore Leonard novel, Travolta's rebirth accelerates directly into adulthood.

This attempt to reproduce the old series still feels stilted -- a see-through marketing impulse more than a creative venture.

The actual movie is the cinematic equivalent of cheap Chinese egg rolls: all flour and cabbage shreds, maybe half a nibble of pork.

You realize this is a story about the life beyond this movie, about the great changes in life we never give ourselves time to consider. And for a moviegoing experience, that's a lot of bang for your buck.

After 9/11, few of us look at terrorist acts casually. It's insulting to watch this grandiloquent pornography, using shock value and Hollywood cliche to evoke poignancy.

There's no denying its surreal, hypnotic effect.

Doom Generation is an 85-minute, darkly comic assault on the audience, laden with satirically over-the-top (and below-the-belt) violence, unending profanity and enough references to the posterior to fill a proctologic encyclopedia. Araki wants to serve up the sleaziest, crudest fare he can dream up. His efforts can only be described as successful.

If you're going to make a gross-out comedy you can't just be gross. You've got to be to be funny as well, or the movie will be DOA. Which is why Eurotrip should be toe-tagged and shoved into the deepest and coldest of video vaults.

Unfortunately, the movie is likely to earn more money than praise. If it showcases him in all his glory, it also shows what little glory there is to celebrate.

If he had to die so soon, this movie is the best and most appropriate sendoff Lee could have hoped for.

Based on a true story, the movie takes us through some harrowing times.

One of the most enjoyable experiences of the year.

A smart cartoon about the life of the mind. It's about the fuzzy border between dreaming and living. It's thoughtful, provocative, liberating and fun.

You don't have any idea what's going to happen next. You're not caught in a movie, so much as a narrative stratagem.

I think you can say that almost everyone watching this will be spellbound, whether they're stupefied by its insanity, more conventionally compelled by the various horrors in store or a combination of both.

Actually, Spottiswoode's film has its moments.

This is exactly the kind of weird, sardonic texture the movie is aiming for - and unfortunately, most of it occurs in the first half of the story.

Levinson was never one for narrative tightness. As with much of his previous work, Bugsy is a maze of episodes, a sprawling excuse for engaging human banter. Although the truth will inevitably catch up with Beatty -- especially concerning that expensive nightclub -- it's not entirely clear what the movie's about. But that's the kind of detail Beatty's Siegel wouldn't even worry about. Neither should you.

There's something secondhand about everything here. Hoge (this is his debut) seems to be mimicking the tone and fabric of other, better indie movies.

Has its moments of fun, many of them having to do with Reilly's deadpan comic style. But the movie lacks the original edge of its better predecessors.

A Prairie Home Companion tries to embrace the spirit of that longtime radio series but suffocates the very qualities that make the original show so special in the first place.

Writer-director Cameron Crowe, who directed the John Hughes-scripted "Say Anything" and wrote "Fast Times at Ridgemont High,", creates a diverting collection of interwoven vignettes. It's not art, but it's always diverting.

One of Martin Scorsese's most brutal but stunning movies, an incredible, relentless experience about the singleminded pursuit of crime.

Has its moments. In fact, it has too many of them. At 2 hours and 20 minutes and with enough characters to take up a few floors at a big hotel, it feels about an act too long.

If ever there was a movie fit for permanent entombment, it's this sequel.

You can feel the movie's sensibility and its powerful emotions in every aching image, which leaves you so caught up in these ancient times, you're loath to return to present-day normalcy.

Maybe they should have called A Love Song for Bobby Long something more appropriately descriptive, such as "When Actors Imitating Southern Characters Go Bad."

Do these soldiers make it? We keep watching and waiting. There's not much more to Gunner Palace than that, but it's no different than the soldiers' lot.

As if aware that Congo is the least interesting adventure ever filmed, screenwriter John Patrick Shanley (who once wrote a funny movie called "Moonstruck") tries to inoculate the activities with humor.

It's difficult to concentrate on the story. Not that there's much to concentrate on anyway.

Spade and Warburton might not have made The Emperor's New Groove one of the mouse factory's all-time greatest, but they've certainly made it one of the funniest.

Even though it's weak in the final stages, Rock Star has more than enough sparkle to last you. That's chiefly thanks to Wahlberg, the main firework of this movie.

Feels patently inauthentic.

It's too manufactured and deliberate to be persuasive.

And what makes this autopsy of a love affair funny is Tom's ironic, morose commentary as he revisits what happened.

To appreciate the movie, you have to be okay with vampire violence. I don't mean subtle little nips at the neck and, ooooh, it's directed by Werner Herzog.

Enough to make any thinking person want to shoot a hole in the screen.

Newman's cuteness aside, this movie feels long-winded.

It's hard to imagine an audience that won't break up in laughter at this bewildering mixed message: Enjoy this movie, but you really shouldn't be watching it.

A stylish hoot: entertainingly edgy and ludicrous all at once.

So taken with its own love of cinema, it forgets to lead you down the necessary dramaturgical path to make you fall in love, too.

Director Phillip Noyce, who made "Dead Calm," "Patriot Games" and "Clear and Present Danger," keeps things moving at a kinetic, involving pace. And writers Jonathan Hensleigh (who wrote "Die Hard With a Vengeance") and Wesley Strick create a diverting human steeplechase.

Director Demme is smart and sensitive enough to sit back and listen to the music without attention-getting intrusions. The tunes are subtly compelling.

It's just a simple, actorly drama about big, gaping emotional needs and the consequences a woman can face -- particularly during the 1960s -- for simply owning up to them.

An intriguing yarn.

Low-tech inventiveness at its best.

To come out of the summer haze and enter the dark (and cool) wonder of Batman Returns is a pleasure not to be denied. Even more than before, this cartoon opera about cloistered personalities bathes exultantly in moody blues, gothic music swirls and a symphony of character tragedy.

Ford makes such a dynamic president in Air Force One, you may find yourself favorably weighing his odds in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Too long winded and dull.

It sweeps over you with blunt, unequivocal conviction.

This finale turns Assisted Living from fascinating experimental film into something finer.

The performers bring freshness to what could have been cliched roles.

The haunting beauty of the music, and the people who produce it – that's the chapter and verse of this story.

Enormously entertaining.

There's a great sense of fun in the cultural collision between Indian and British lifestyles -- often within the same person.

James Woods, a bushy-tailed attorney, goes the distance with the powers that be and makes "True Believer" a legal blast.

It's more of an urban fairy tale, a surprisingly charming story that -- in certain sections -- almost crystallizes into the sweetness of a Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland musical.

The film feels inauthentic, a cardboard version of other epics that's cast for distribution to various world markets.

If the movie is straightforward and predictable in its attitude, it also exudes a sort of documentary lyricism.

Monte Merrick's script is an unspectacular, cliche-riddled voyage from start to finish, with everyone lugging their own tote-bags of facile character idiosyncrasies.

Watch this film. You may never look at nature indifferently again.

There is so much violence, as gangs kill gangs, or gangs kill cops, or the predator kills all of them, that it's hard to watch without the brain succumbing to self-protective numbness.

With the exception of Burton's jolting sight gags (I may never recover from the vision of Parker's head grafted on to the body of a chihuahua), the comedy is half-developed, pedestrian material. And the climactic battle between Earthlings and Martians is dull and overextended.

Until the movie gets lost in its ultimately convoluted conceit, however, it's a superb modulation of menace, tension, mystery and eroticism.

Dismal. Lame. Not funny.

You probably never dreamed a charming romantic movie could be staged against a backdrop of Scud attacks from Saddam Hussein.

Even though we're caught up in his derring-do as he beguiles entire meeting rooms of jaded publishers and editors, we're kept at a dissatisfying distance from Irving and the movie.

Cuts a path directly to the heart.

Has its creepy moments, but also its cliches.

The direction has a fluid, no-nonsense authority, and the performances by Harris, Phifer and Cam'ron seal the deal.

The geological equivalent of an albatross around the neck. It's another of those Warner Bros. productions that are heavy on star iconography and production values but AWOL on story.

This is a superb theatrical situation, and you have two great performers doing the emoting.

The acting is occasionally creakily theatrical; as is the script. But some important things come through.

This is a Reagan youth's wet dream of underwater ballistics and East-West conflict.

Directed by Davis Guggenheim ("An Inconvenient Truth"), the movie is heavy on hokum but easy to like, thanks to the spunky Schroeder.

Directed by David Slade ("Hard Candy"), the action scenes are artful and terrifying; these killers move so quickly and decisively, there seems to be no hope for humanity.

A truly awful and extremely loud scareflick.

There is no evidence of life outside the immediate world of the movie.

There isn't enough magic in the bag this time. Although Parkes and Lasker produce a set of primates guaranteed to charm the upholstery off the theater seats, there is little else.

Left-wing filmmaker's attempt to call foul on megamedia owner Murdoch's exclamation-point news network.

Head-scratchingly ordinary, given Schwarzenegger's need to prove he's still a virile (i.e., non-aging) action hero.

The performers understand the simple integrity of a slapstick gag, and they're prepared to suffer for its entertainment value. This is what the Jackassers do for fun -- and their fans, already well versed in such previous shows as the original MTV series and the 2002 "Jackass: The Movie," understand that perfectly. And is there any significant moral difference between these performers and dedicated ballerinas who damage their feet in the highfalutin interests of art, or Daytona drivers risking their lives on the track?

Commitments, adapted by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais from the Roddy Doyle book, exults in its own world. The characters, with their foibles and verbal joustings, are everything. There's something poetically sardonic in every sentence they utter.

Edwards wants to leap deliriously between gender roles and stereotypes. But he treads on every possible corn, from heterosexual to lesbian.

Witty, sweet and charming but never sappy, the movie joins the heady company of such extraordinary child-centered movies as "The 400 Blows," "My Life as a Dog" and "Au Revoir Les Enfants."

So dull and formulaic, it ought to be leashed and led directly to the doghouse.

And thanks to great existential one-liners from scriptwriter Robert Harling (with appropriate plaudits to novelist Olivia Goldsmith, of course), gender warfare is made amusing for almost everyone.

Director McGrath retains the novel's highlights, but he slices everything to ribbons.

The mawkishness is ultimately too formidable.

Uninspired baseball romance.

There's a good chance you're going to enjoy Aladdin more than the children.

A compelling, compact story about a country that was left to destroy itself while one man presided futilely over the carnage.

The most brutal husband-wife encounter since axe-wielding Jack Nicholson yelled "Heeeeere's Johnny!" to Shelley Duvall in Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining."

Feels more like an overblown TV special than a grand theatrical release.

His spirited take on the Sicily-set comedy is enjoyable, primarily for its all-embracing attitude. It breathes modern life into old expressions like "fare thee well" and "by my troth," and it welcomes nontraditional New Worlders Denzel Washington, Robert Sean Leonard, Michael Keaton and Keanu Reeves into the traditionally British throng.

Though much of "Candy" is a clumsy sprawl, there's more than enough human spirit in the tank to keep it going.

Heaven forbid a Hollywood romantic movie have any narrative surprises.

What's so powerful about Mandoki's film, which he co-scripted with Torres, is the complex, ever-surprising course that Chava takes toward manhood.

Fluidly edited, subtle.

It telegraphs its emotions loud and clear, but somehow they don't reach us.

Unaccompanied Minors, a sort of junior league version of "The Breakfast Club," never achieves the universal appeal of John Hughes's 1985 film about youth and authority.

Pleasant enough and its ecological, pro-wildlife sentiments are certainly welcome.

None of the characters are compelling, despite the star-studded vocal cast behind them, including Madonna, Robert De Niro, Snoop Dogg and Jimmy Fallon. Our attitude toward them is casual interest, not anxious concern.

Its mixture of wisdom and whimsy -- exemplified by the movie's unnamed and occasionally cheeky narrator -- makes this Australian movie feel as timeless as it is timely. And instead of feeling dutifully cultural as we immerse ourselves in this story, we're genuinely intrigued, touched and even amused.

Touching and funny eye-opener of a documentary.

Although this film doesn't have the classy quality of The Fugitive, it certainly goes down like an action milkshake. And Jones, one of the most enjoyable actors on the screen, plays himself to the hilt.

It's easily the best and brightest family-friendly movie of the year.

A darkly interesting distraction but not much more.

Stumbles mindlessly in all directions.

It's about as deep as electronic white noise.

A disposable intermixing of son-of-Satan and cop-thriller cliches, featuring the requisite string of murder victims (with bloody pentagrams carved into their bodies).

The movie is visually stirring. And the locations, in Zimbabwe and Mozambique, imbue the story with eerie authenticity.

Brooks-the-performer embodies the movie's spirit with superb modulation. 

A well-orchestrated nightmare that keeps you on edge until the very end.

In this banal era of smart-aleck parodies and homages, Last Man Standing amounts to stylistic overkill.

McConaughey remains more buffed than compelling. He's not helped by a two-hour convolution of episodes that are too busy imitating other, better movies.

Winter Passing is one dull, extended encounter session among hackneyed characters -- although Deschanel gets the most points for almost imitating a human.

You can expect to fall about, snort and hoot, at times hard enough to hurt inner body parts that only doctors can identify.

Mike Myers unleashes (or seems to unleash) the entire contents of his comic mind.

There’s so much high-voltage fun running throughout this comic sci-fantasy -- engineered gleefully by director Luc Besson -- you’re hard-pressed to be unaffected.

An overture to the subject rather than a profound study.

It's depressing enough to sit through an unfunny comedy, but it's worse to watch Falk, Penn and Berg having to earn a living like this.

An enormously enjoyable gothic yarn from Mexico, transfuses the genre with wry grotesquerie, but retains respect for the old, classic films.

Little in this movie makes real sense; and characters (particularly Dafoe and Delany) seem to bump regularly into each other. But there's something transcendentally appealing between the lines. This is a film to be savored for its nuances rather than its story.

Trust me, you'll want to leave these people to get on with their tedious scams alone.

Without hesitation, I hand the comic award to Smith. She plays a pinched guest known as Constance, Countess of Trentham, to such a hilarious tee, her tee runneth over.

One-dimensional archetypes, too much predictability and not enough comedy.

Sometimes in horror movies, bad acting is effective, its very woodenness contributing to the sense of robotic horror. That ain't happening here. These guys are just bad actors.

It's too bad about the ending because, until then, Pay It Forward... is Hollywood feel-goodism at its best.

A bleakly comic, palm-sweaty hoot.

Brings things to an almost cheesy conclusion. Given the gripping, dark elements that creator George Lucas introduced in the two previous films, the third movie’s outcome smacks of PG-rated populism rather than artistic fulfillment. But the experience is still highly entertaining. [Special Edition]

Smells much more like real life than the immediate mating that occurs between expensive movie stars on Hollywood soundstages.

Moderately pleasing adaptation of the W. Somerset Maugham novella.

Despite a dissatisfying conclusion, a sense that things don't completely jell, The Tailor of Panama is lively and provocative.

Another gate-crasher at the let's-do-a-mediocre-update-of-Shakespeare party.

Just about everything you ever loved (or hated) about Italian films can be found.

It's an updated Capra fantasy that goes for the sweet rather than the tart.

An extremely affecting experience, down to the last agonizing moment.

It's a movie full of quietly assured flourishes: elegant camera compositions, wonderful uses of silence and an entertainingly eclectic cast, including Peggy Lipton as a sensitive bartender.

Shows us how funny farce can be -- even with the hokiest of premises -- in the hands of the British.

Spouses Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger -- the latest flavors of the month to tie the knot -- slum their way through a glam-noirish extended video. Amid director Roger Donaldson's pseudo-atmospherics and the ersatz Thompson fare hacked up by screenwriters Walter Hill and Amy Holden Jones, they shoot guns, plan heists, talk tough and make love in silhouette.

Luminously understated.

A full-throttle fantasy, about as heady a movie experience as it gets.

This is definitely a family trip to stay home and skip.

Take the kids. Have fun.

Avenue Montaigne transforms an overwhelming metropolis into a user-friendly village with quirkily appealing characters.

Greenaway's narrative and his direction of actors -- two elements which only recently has he concerned himself with -- are without foundation. After the effects of the visual presentation have worn off, the film becomes rather tiresome to follow.

Impressive, big-scale scenes, such as a train derailment from a snow-covered bridge. And the vocal performances of Ryan and Cusack give us a real sense of romance.

This handmade feel gives Zathura an appealing, childlike sense of wonder, an element too often forgotten in movies with many times the budget and technological resources.

If a hero is one who perseveres and never gives up, this is one Hero that should have quit when it was ahead.

No darn good.

The title may be a mouthful but Like Water for Chocolate is a feast for the soul. Hauntingly and exquisitely prepared, this Mexican adult fairy tale is garnished with mystery and wonder.

Hilarious, painful and brutally frank.

A leisurely paced, subtly funny, though verbally crude chamber piece.

Even by its own please-the-mob standards, this movie is lacking.

Unfortunately, the message is made clear within the first 10 minutes, leaving us with about 80 minutes of thematic repetition.

Love is supple entertainment -- thanks to on-the-money performances by Bassett and Laurence Fishburne as Ike.

Them knows something the makers of the "Hostel" and "Saw" movies apparently don't: Subtlety and suggestion are every bit as terrifying as slashing and sawing.

It's not every day that movies present a Teutonic character in SS uniform as an unambiguously moral hero, so enjoy this rarity. And the film.

Laugh? I thought I'd never start.

Absolutely awesome in its relentless mediocrity.

The best thing about Murder at 1600? Speed of exposition. Directed by Dwight Little, who made Steven Seagalís "Marked for Death," this thing whizzes from one unbelievable story point to the next. Your suspension of disbelief appreciates the momentum, if nothing else.

Fraser is one funny, mixed-up guy

Add uniformly good acting to Sayles' script of dark coal pits, West Virginia spirit and cowboyish melodrama and you have stirring cinema.

As charming as it is instructive.

By introducing silly elements into a serious endeavor, the filmmakers undercut their own movie. In the end, we're watching a somewhat exploitative movie about exploitation.

Maestro is for people already aware of this history. For everyone else, this is pretty much invitation-only.

Finally, we have found ourselves in a movie where the characters are free to blunder, even if it means turning their backs on us. There's powerful liberation in that, all around.

The result is one of Almodovar's darkest films since the early days of "Law of Desire" and "Matador," and certainly one of his finest.

As cliche-ridden horror films go, Hide and Seek builds a pretty darn good mousetrap.

Feels razor thin. None of the characters is particularly noteworthy. And the revelations of deep-seated conspiracy in the usual privileged, closed circles are hackneyed and tired.

One of the most startling, grittily brilliant films in recent years.

With disarmingly entertaining movies like this, dare I say, who needs big bad superhero movies?

Carrey lights up an otherwise over-scripted, over-frenetic potboiler.

Another Stakeout -- like the original, directed by John Badham -- feels more like a rousing encore than a bold, new development. It's basically straight-out situation comedy, merely punctuated (or interrupted) by the evil doings of hitmen, FBI agents and other gun-toting suits. To those who seek these things, don't worry: People still get plugged with bullets. But comedy is the main artillery and Dreyfuss and Estevez, effortlessly replaying their elbow-nudging relationship, do most of the shooting.

Awash in heart-rending emotions and gorgeous images, this is a movie to lose yourself in.

Unfortunately, Buscemi's film conveys the spirit of its source material but doesn't make a satisfying transmogrification out of its homage.

Despite the Sybil-like plot (and questionable Rambo mentality), there's something watchable about it all. Weird it is, flop it ain't.

A special-effects extravaganza that uses the barest of excuses to bring these characters together.

Exudes that seriousness about life and openness about style. It's about nothing and yet everything.

At no point should anyone mistake this for an actual movie. This is an extended beach video that will leave no one swept away.

Turns potentially forgettable formula into something strangely diverting.

Although it's a drama, Osama feels like urgent documentary.

Realized beautifully by director Bille August, Intentions is a moving, profound requiem to all human relationships.

Ultimately, we find ourselves looking for the wrong sort of clearing: a way out.

The movie comes across as a political science course videotape rather than a movie to fully engage a general audience.

By many other directors' standards, Au Revoir would be a major achievement. But Malle has reached higher. If he'd made his childhood movie earlier in his career -- when he didn't have the sense to be so dispassionate -- it might have packed a meatier punch. Now it's just a deftly aimed poke.

Never was this funny a comedian in this horrible a movie.

Unusual, unexpected and strangely refreshing. For this movie to have resorted to a familiar action-flick finish with everything explained, pressed and dry-cleaned would have rendered it banal.

The movie refuses to descend into the cute smarminess of a mutual recovery drama, thanks to originally conceived characters. We're always wondering -- and wonderfully surprised -- by their choices.

What gives About Schmidt its ultimate boost, what pushes it into the stirring heavens is Nicholson, who produces the most understated -– and one of the most powerful –- performances of his career.

The movie does what any great musician should: It lifts an idea to the heights of ecstasy; it sells its song.

Like Nate, we are mere Notties. And we are supposed to feel oh-so privileged for getting to watch Paris through the glass.

Through this miasma of pain and suffering, love may not flicker more strongly than a dim lamp. But it's the only beacon to consider. Can Barry find his? Thanks to Anderson's assured picture, a symphony of cinematic textures, that disarmingly simple question becomes incredibly compelling.

At its worst (and this is where Made of Honor comes in), it can leave you with a bad taste, not just in your mouth but in your soul.

The gags are physical but rarely funny.

The movie -- adapted from James Patterson's novel by David Klass -- operates on the crime-movie equivalent of automatic pilot. It takes off, flies and lands without much creative intervention.

We're only a little spooked, only a little amused and, by extension, only a little entertained.

If this sounds like "Tootsie" with a ball, well, it is. Screenwriter Bradley Allenstein should be hauled up in writer's court for his shameless cribbing of that far superior comedy. Someone call a foul.

Macabre, yes, but the movie's also inventive and funny. You get a lot of smart bang-bang for your buck.

Has an intoxicating, old-fashioned feel about it. We are instantly lost in the period, thanks to cinematographer Dion Beebe's almost haloed images and Joseph Bennett's authentic, restrained production design.

In the uncertain zone between dumb and truly twisted lies 8MM, a movie that will baffle and disgust you in one disconcerting experience.

This ethnic family sitcom thing is rapidly turning into wearisome cliche, and American Chai doesn't hold a candle to either "Beckham" or "Greek Wedding."

There's a documentary-like realism to the movie, thanks to its authentic Maori cast and Tamahori's semi-improvisational approach to direction. Tamahori also gives everyone a sympathetic, realistic dimension.

This is a one-note deal, and it doesn't take long before you want to, well, just move out and leave these characters in their rent-controlled limbo.

There's a certain trashy fun to this combination of "Blackboard Jungle," "The Principal," "Dangerous Minds" and the old "Miami Vice" TV series.

Future II bombards you with more brand-name advertising than three hours of prime-time TV could muster, although repeat filmmakers Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis put a humorous twist on everything.

Director Howard is so mesmerized by the flames, he squirts formulaic lighter fluid over everything. A conflagration of hyped-up movie cliches, courtesy of George Lucas's Industrial Light & Magic special effects shop, scalds your face.

While Phenomenon attempts, tritely, to ascend into mind-blowing significance, it also plummets into a pit of sentimental mush.

The storyline is so familiar ("Cheaper by the Dozen," et al), the audience can practically call out scenes ahead of time.