Frank Lovece

The filmmakers believe they have better emotional beats at the end than what that hack Dr. Seuss came up with—and in the process make the Grinch pathetic and practically groveling.

Deftly tweaking the tropes of rock biopics, this drama of singer Freddie Mercury and British hitmakers Queen dazzlingly captures an era, a man and the universal quest for identity.

There's something for everybody in The Lost Village, but it's like a beef-casserole milkshake.

Beautiful is the apt description for this hilarious masterpiece that embraces reason, celebrates truth and ultimately believes we're civilized enough to accept both.

It is a tremendous disappointment to find such estimable folk meandering in an only intermittently amusing story of no clear point or theme.

As fascinating and well-crafted as it is, The Public Image Is Rotten is ultimately a vanity project, authorized by Lydon and his manager and meant less as an unvarnished journalistic documentary but as a burnishing of, well, his public image.

There is magic in this film's ode to growing old and being with the people who knew us young.

Aside from a witty montage near the start of the movie and sparks of his cheeky, goodhearted subversiveness later on, most of Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation is bludgeoningly broad and obvious.

Refreshing, innovative and immensely funny.

This is no film for the squeamish.

A meandering and deeply shallow tale of spiritual redemption.

Characters' eccentricities feel contrived and the wackiness seems forced, though the film's amiable ambling does keep the viewer intrigued, if not charmed.

Compared with most of what passes for scary movies these days, this is golden: It's not stupid, it's not wussy and it pulls off a couple of pretty nasty jolts.

This truly terrifying film version of the best-selling Blatty novel is far superior to the book.

They STILL didn't get it right this TIME.

The movie sticks with you as few do: It's rewardingly authentic and emotionally real.

While the unfortunate epilogue strains the naturalism of what's gone on before and leaves a bit of a sour taste, this semi-improvisational comedy otherwise reaches Balzacian brilliance.

Deeply adolescent; its impact is visceral rather than intellectual.

Even the snowboarding scenes that might have been the visceral heart of this thing are cut in such a way that we never get more than a few seconds of full-frame athletic skill; despite the real-life snowboarders doing the stunt work (including Rob "Sluggo" Boyce, Tara Dakides and Javas Lehn), it all looks like editing-room cheats.

Overall it's a funny film, but parents should decide if the anti-gay and misogynist elements are worth the laughs.

If you've never seen a martial arts movie, this is a great place to start.

An effective and moving drama about the strength of the human spirit and the will to survive.

The genial humor is occasionally marred by an overall sexist tone and some downright nasty homophobic and racist attempts at humor.

A sad blot on an impressive career.

The atmosphere is Southern Gothic pure enough to do Carson McCullers proud -- grotesque, sentimental and dankly nasty -- and Thornton manages not to undermine his own writing.

The glammed-up Kinski looks the same age throughout and only has three expressions: angry, wistful, and someone's-killed-my-dog.

Stands separate from the rest, in a pantheon, a true cinematic masterwork of sight, sound, intelligence, and most importantly--passion.

Extremely well-shot espionage thriller that might have worked as an old-fashioned guy's-guy movie if the guys involved had any real, human personality and the espionage were actually thrilling.

Like the hardscrabble lives of this isolated wasteland, it's equal parts unforgiving white-heat aridity and golden late-afternoon glow.

Despite the Lear-like trappings and the talented young cast, which does its work with considerable grace, it has little momentum or punch.

Heartfelt as Reno and Applegate are here, the film strands them with an impotently blustering, straw-dog villain and a limp, directionless story.

In the end the film has absolutely nothing to say.

Amusing and at times uproarious.

The movie's physical violence isn't gratuitous -- it's the emotional violence that makes this a movie for grown-ups, not kids.

That rare film aimed at teenage girls that's still enjoyable for grownup viewers.

The latest offender in the odd "let's see what the cute and funny mentally ill can teach us" genre, this mystery/domestic drama commits all the usual sins and clichés.

The story's a bore; its arrhythmic stutter of humor and drama, tension and calm never builds into any coherent emotional arc.

In a film mercifully free of the usual warm and fuzzy movie sentimentality, director Maggie Greenwald and her fine cast shatter most hillbilly stereotypes.

Colossally entertaining.

Most of the film's imagination and energy seem to have gone into the clever casting and flamboyant costume and set design.

If you try to imagine a breezy Cary Grant movie in which Grant makes penis and fart jokes, you'll have some idea just how wretched it is.

A comic masterpiece.

The non-action scenes are so pedestrian that one suspects the good stuff is less due to workmanlike director Lee Tamahori than to one of the best second-unit crews in the biz.

Photographed as harsh spectacle in brown and gray with unfailingly overcast skies, the story is affecting and suspenseful enough when focusing on Vassili, the humble peasant youth, and his patrician adversary playing a chess-like game of cat-and-mouse.

A collection of interconnected vignettes shot as live-action digital video footage which is then 'fed into' computer animation software, Linklater's latest film is an audacious, ambitious undertaking. There's a surreal yet consistent logic to it, which is the film's biggest accomplishment.

Kudos to writer-director Eric Schaeffer for doing a sexually graphic romantic comedy about fiftysomethings without being patronizing or cutesy. With both heart and guts, he honestly depicts how that moony-eyed, falling-in-love rush of endorphins is the same at 55 as it is at 15.

Occasionally marred by purple narration; it's also a mite sloppy in terms of time-passage and geography. Yet its mythic characters feel like genuine, hurting human beings.

Sexist, plot-hole-riddled movie equates women with cows and men with bulls.

Captures the way drug addiction gives structure and purpose to aimless lives, and evokes the breathtaking rapture of a fix. All this and a happy ending, too.

This is as powerful a set of evidence as you'll ever find of why art matters, and how it can resonate far beyond museum walls and through to the most painfully marginal lives.

Feel-good tone notwithstanding (and creepy to boot), there are nagging riddles about the Helfgott story that the film has neither the nerve nor the sense to tackle.

The able cast brings these emotionally complex characters to life, while making Shawn Slovo's occasionally lyrical dialogue sound perfectly natural.

This sweet, lovingly passionate story is nonetheless a charmer. Anderson's technique -- jaggy, product-testimonial close-ups; eerie still-image insertions -- is arresting, but this is an actors' showcase.

Relentless parade of tragedy.

Delightful, off-the-wall, and ultimately moving.

Sarandon is terrific and Penn is in top form, but the film is an achingly earnest message movie with a curiously muddled message.

It would have been nice if Hardwick had a bigger budget for retakes to work out some of the supporting actors' stiffness, but he does keep the story moving, finding the humor in characters caught up in their own machinations rather than cheap wisecracks.

It differs from American films about the period in its evocation of day-to-day passion. The power of beauty is often dealt with in films, but not so often its powerful curse.

The film proceeds from an utterly fascinating notion. As with A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Spielberg's admirable intent is to create a prescient, serious science-fiction movie.

This one makes De Niro's recent film "15 Minutes" look like "Network." Even worse, aside from a few scenes with Shatner, it just isn't funny.

For all the casual terribleness it records, it is entertainment; the characters are real and fleshed-out, and we care about what happens to them.

Kristin Scott Thomas is the film's revelation. She takes center stage as a smart, fearless woman who's utterly irresistible.

A romantic comedy distinguished by the particular roadblocks writer/director Kevin Smith throws up in front of his characters.

While this is just as long as the first film, more convincing special effects help make time fly.

The character designs, however, are much less impressive. Except for the oddly naturalistic Sinclair, the rest look like cartoony characters from one of Disney's '60s films.

That rare, unfortunate thing, a total misfire of a movie.

From the opening lines to the epilogue (one of the film's few misfires), this taut first feature from TV producer and novelist Henry Bromell sustains a taut mood of unease and isolation, and the ensemble performances (TV starlet Campbell's included) have the qualities of the highest-caliber stage work.

Though the electric organ score is unnecessarily ominous in clearly comical scenes, this is a fascinating early interpretation of what has become a classic tale.

A lovely soundtrack by Irish balladeers the Saw Doctors can't make up for the rest of this belabored labor of love.

Penn's stark and unvarnished portrait of the challenged Sam makes even the hardest-to-swallow plot acceptable.

Essentially a feature-length episode of the popular Nickelodeon animated series, this faithful expansion is savvy enough to stay put.

The film ends with a return to the beach, and one of the most psychologically chilling and expertly photographed shots imaginable.

Some great things can found in this fluidly kinetic film, well-directed by X-Files series and movie veteran Rob Bowman, including no-nonsense dialogue, epic photography and a terrific score. It's too bad the story is so sloppy and stupid.

The funny lines fall flat and the relationships and conversations among adult characters are straight out of 1950s sitcoms. Now that's scary.

Bighearted and wistful, but with no fresh spin or anything new to say.

The combat visuals that follow are as powerful as those of any war film.

The ever-charismatic character actor George Coe stands out as a small-town jeweler grateful for a late-life affair.

Suffers from wishy-washiness.

The real trouble is Jack: He's narcissistic and tough to like (Pontevecchio's fine, but a younger actor might not have brought an impression of arrested development to the character), and his crude sense of humor borders on the disgusting.

Serenely stunning.

Overblown, ridiculously contrived drive-in flick.

No matter your age, this is one great AGE to be at.

A massive, sweaty, frequently silly epic that nevertheless delivers enough brute pleasure to pass a rainy afternoon.

Formulaic but not entirely predictable, it's like old-school Disney, but without Tim Conway.

Some brilliant human moments do emerge, and there's nothing wrong with a reminder to live life in harmony, and not to beat yourself up.

Happily, a feeling of genuine comradeship among these athletes shines through, and their irreverent, go-for-broke comments are a jolt of fun compared to the usual canned epigrams from pampered sports multimillionaires.

Collapsed into the black hole of its own mythology.

The effect is one of gorgeous puppets, a removed perspective that makes some of the most powerful political and social events in history seem like the sad, desperate flailing of monkeys.

The annoying Reg Rogers, on the other hand, who plays Little Caesar creator Raoul Berman, delivers his lines like a stoned Pee-wee Herman, and the scene in which Billy Crystal mutters and drools in a restaurant is just disturbing for anyone who admired his work in the past.

Grownups who grew up on The Jetsons and children who, like the movie's heroes, aren't yet nine years old, should enjoy this film.

Stiffly animated and featuring uninspired songs.

So bewildering it's almost entertaining, this comedy of fiftysomethings and their extramarital affairs is one of those films you can actually see flailing for life.

Sometimes seems as noisy and unrefined as Jean himself. But it has just as much heart, and builds up to rousingly "Rocky"-like climax.

The characters may be one-dimensional ciphers with nothing much to say, but boy, do they not say it with style.

This lively and nicely timed comedy has plenty enough, farce, slapstick and even drawing-room humor.

The film's one saving grace is 18-year-old Ellen Muth, who gives one of the screen's most natural, non-Hollywood portrayals of a child.

Thought-provoking but proceeding at a crawl, the film suffers from performances that are virtually all pitched to the same note of existential ennui -- thank goodness, then, for Rush, who's arrives like a wake-up blast of compressed air.

Manages to inject more than a little humor into this tension-filled genre classic.

Never has the adage "You can't help who you fall in love with" been more lavishly illustrated than in this historical drama.

A brilliant surrealistic joke about a group of friends whose attempts to dine are continually thwarted.

Inconsistency of tone and internal logic plagues the film throughout.

With grace and cleverness, mixing romance and comedy in a genuinely delightful way.

The film is a harmless extension of the skit, aimed at fans and best viewed as a showcase for Meadows's considerable talents.

It's a classic fantasy scenario, overflowing with creative possibilities, but Carrey's Nolan isn't charmingly misguided or comically loathsome enough to deserve the lesson; he's just a big, inconsequential crybaby.

A rare sequel that's better than the original.

This ORANGE is a lemon.

The movie's uninspired animation (including primitive, blocky computer imagery) doesn't help, nor do its astonishingly stereotyped characters.

The title of the film is most unfortunate because it gives no indication of the film's stark theme. Moreau is good as the disenchanted woman, but Mann is less effective.

This may be the warmest movie the Coen brothers have ever made. There's something unmistakably human beneath the oh-so-clever surface.

Screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie's tough-guy dialogue and Bryan Singer's crisp direction give the ensemble cast every opportunity to shine, and they do.

A radiant, heartbreaking film.