Ernest Hardy

Beautifully shot, full of lush, vibrant colors and expertly wrought sets...a club-kid's frothy date flick.

The cast—and Evans's deft hand with them—makes it worth checking out.

It's Tobey Maguire, doing fine, subtle work, who holds it all together -- he puts a human touch to what is otherwise expertly wrought hokum.

Much of what's presented is familiar territory, but it's the moments that fracture prejudices and expectations that stick with you.

The film gets an "A" for effort, but doesn't have the courage to really get as bloody, messy and dirty as its subject matter inherently is.

Intelligent, moving film.

Dazzles with rare performance footage.

The movie starts to drag near the end and feels longer than its 90 minutes - but that's cool. It's a love letter to the faithful in the first place.

From the cool voiceover to the crisp dialogue, the script strikes the perfect balance between stylized and naturalistic language that is profane, poetic, and prophetic.

Smith has crammed the film with enough genuinely funny moments and insightful bits to make it well worth seeing.

The film powerfully hits the note of universalism that is its goal; haven't many of us fallen for someone that we, they, and the world deem out of our league?

Writer-director Noah Buschel's script is peppered with both offbeat humor and philosophical debates that circle back to what is, at heart, a class critique that skewers everything from the art world to the bougie dreams of the common man.

Song is filled with great beauty and moments of everyday life that show that director Michael Obert has a fine sense of the power of the quotidian... But Obert also slips in powerful critiques of Sarno with the lightest of touches — some so light they might be accidental.

Tightly directed and well acted (even though many characters are cut-outs from every war movie you've ever seen), The Front Line shoehorns little known history into a familiar format, and it works.

Presswell's stylized dialogue, whose rapid-fire banter often hardens into self-conscious artifice, is biting and witty, but is thankfully absent either endless pop-culture references or cloying self-consciousness of its own cleverness.

Shearer builds an airtight case to prove his thesis, and one of his most chilling arguments is a roll call of brave souls whose lives and careers have been systematically wrecked in pursuit of the truth.

As the film dissects various cultural norms and goes behind the scenes of the $5 billion penis enhancement industry, it transcends the concerns of one man to show the flipside of the gender equality movement.

Despite the fact that you can see every plot twist a mile off, director Tim Story keeps the script by Mark Brown, Don D. Scott and Marshall Todd rollicking with a jazzy spontaneity.

It's a guy's film that doesn't just revel in testosterone, though -- it has a more purposeful agenda.

By the time Leila's brow furrows in concern for the father, the film has absolutely earned its tug at your heart.

It's potentially strong material, but the film is so determined not to demonize the conservatives that it winds up being an inadvertent profile in the banality of bigotry.

The appeal of Lunch might be limited to Hollywood-nostalgia buffs, but they will be enthralled not only by the stories told, but also how they're told. These guys are still some of the sharpest wits in town.

The film would have been more powerful if it also included a man or woman who wasn't lovable once you got to know him or her--maybe one of the young crack or meth addicts whose violent demeanors, as explained by an old-timer, have considerably shifted the dynamics of street life.

It's smart, funny and insightful and it's quite easy to see what attracted the stars to it.

In a film that quickly reveals itself to be a love letter to Wu, some of the best moments have nothing to do with that legendary hip-hop collective: Sage Francis taunting the unruly, increasingly tense crowd with his cerebral, political performance-art hip-hop; Redman playfully admonishing his young son to be good and then giving the boy a kiss when the paternal command wounds.

The whole thing can be hard to follow, but the energy (and pulchritude) of the cast make it a perfectly fine bit of popcorn escapism.

The film's abrupt ending leaves many crucial questions unanswered, but that weakness doesn't detract from its overall power.

An enjoyable ride.