Gemma Files

Surreal to the point of poeticism, amusing and tragic by turns.

She's not a real person, in any way, shape or form -- which makes watching Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, the first in a projected series of live-action films based around her exploits, a visually spectacular yet oddly cheerless experience.

Chan's glorious madness.

This is a waking dream of truly operatic dimensions.

Opinionated magic and mayhem

Sarandon prostitutes her blazing talent and sharp political sensibility to the service of a pile of misogynistic bullflop.

Some things just don't translate . . . not with Lipnicki attached, at any rate. Stick with the books.

An unexpectedly adult emotional rollercoaster with some very cold and unsettling things to say about men, women, marriage, and the lies we so often tell each other.

Mr Kumble: Keep your hands off the classics! You don't deserve to read them, let alone paraphrase them.

A magic-realistic fable whose lows soon prove as infuriating as its highs are intoxicating.

Quills -- like the Marquis himself--is a posey, pungent, ultra-theatrical yet weirdly seductive mess which wants to have its cake, eat it too and discuss the whole concept and context of its meal (constantly, contradictorily) while it does so.

Ends up suffering from the classic diseases of book-to-film adaptation: triteness, overreliance of narration, and a general "need" to impose classic dramatic structure on what is not a particularly dramatic narrative.

It's a rollicking good time, full of genuine emotional pull and incandescent acting, and anchored by a passionate love for the theater itself which puts most human liaisons--including Shakespeare and Viola's -- to shame.

Though issues of politics and philosophy are touched upon, this is a film about the people inside the uniforms -- a story of human beings under pressure, forced by circumstance to make choices both impulsive and, on occasion, heroic. It's also the new year's single most satisfying movie experience thus far.

Basically a dressed-up piece of drivel, a self-referential pseudo-thriller with pretensions to pretensions of classic Hollywood suspense.

Confirming the moral of a thousand "Twilight Zone" episodes: Don't play with time.

An endlessly contrived exercise in self-referential "black comedy", can't help but strike me as no kind of triumph of anything over anything.

Appalling, repetitive, utterly predictable.

Ephron is still a director whose movies veer uncomfortably between the good -- make that adequate -- "You've Got Mail", the bad "This Is My Life" and the ugly Lucky Numbers. Pity.

About an hour after you've seen it, you'll already be fuzzy on just who was screwing who, and why

A startling debut full of emotional depth and political punch.

It's adult and humane, genuinely sexy, laugh-out-loud funny.

Lyonne, as usual, does her best...but she's running uphill.

Man, I just can't recommend this enough.

Well worth the price of admission.

It's sumptuous, archaic, and longer than a firehouse ladder.

An exercise in outrageous style over substance.

A tiny slice of bleak, black near-perfection.

It doesn't really hang together. And waaay too much style. Pity.

Renders the net result fairly squarely unenjoyable, on almost any level.

Not quite good enough to leave more than a vaguely pleasant, vaguely disappointing aftertaste.

One way or the other, there really is something to be said for a movie which seems to revel in its own inherent comic-book silliness.

Actually funnier than the first movie, but getting to those parts requires a little bit of patient mental fast-forwarding.

Kusama understands her subject intimately, and it shows.

Nothing less than stunning: a slapstick ballet of choreographed buffoonery.

This is half a good movie held hostage to the other, trashier half, and unfortunately for all of us, no rescue seems forthcoming.

This is independent acting (and movie-making) at its best -- true, tight, anything but trite.

Mandy Nelson's sugar-high bright-'n'-cheerful script takes a series of easy ways out, avoiding completely the prospective pitfalls of having to see any of these characters as complicated, contradictory, not entirely nice or identifiable-with -- actual human beings, in other words.

Has its - very - occasionally funny moments, so does a car crash.

No classic, but two hours well-spent nonetheless.

Mehta's latest release, combines a similarly intoxicating visual immediacy and delight with a sobering outsider's long view.

Valentine simply mines the same tired, predictable slasher-movie vein as everything else he's (Blanks) done thus far. Send this one back unopened.

The kind of thing Franz Kafka might have dreamed up, had he only had access to a daily dose of MTV.

Visually stunning but emotionally shallow.

A nonsensical mishmash.

Expertly done, and a real joy to watch.

Langorous and oddly detached... a mess.

Breaks virtually no new narrative ground, yet treads the familiar territory it does cover with grace, style, wit and fun.

Good intentions, bad writing.

Good vs. Evil For Dummies....and I, for one, dislike being treated like a Dummy.

Not even Goldberg's near-flawless central performance can polish Kingdom Come beyond mere soap opera pap.

Borderline incoherent.

A true achievement -- no matter who eventually wants to take, or deny, credit for its creation.

An almost total waste of time.

Retains enough of Soderbergh's usual indie sensibility to make some sly but contentious points.

Sunshine's historical reference-heavy narrative walks a fine line between novelistic tragedy and comically overstated melodrama, falling down on the job more than once.

You'll definitely feel cheated -- especially when you keep on finding yourself thinking how Mulder and Scully would have handled it all.

Flirts with the idea of insight.

An incredible star turn from Hilary Swank.

Horror presented without restraint or apology, as a full-bore, blood-soaked load of nomad nastiness caught in constant forward motion.

A gorgeous and enduring piece of work.

One of the most consistently amusing ways in which it frustrates audience expectations has to do with how amazingly little of this very violent cast of characters' violence actually ends up being expressed onscreen.

If you're looking for something child-appropriate that'll actually keep the little darlings awake for two hours straight, you'd do better...and cheaper...to just stay at home with the Discovery Channel.

Here in the rotting depths of pulp horror/adventure territory, that's the entire point of the exercise.

A two-hour slice --of comedy pie.

Starting small and building steadily, the movie reaps some fall-down funny laughs.

Tired, overcomplicated mix of macho bullshit.

It's all quite precious, just not in a good way: "Postmodern" to a fault, deeply shallow, infuriatingly trite.

A fascinating combination of dare, stunt and genuine artistic risk -- often disorganized, but never less than entertaining.

It always surprises, never bores. It's also just damn good, on every possible level -- so go see it. Now.

The lack of chemistry between he (Yun-Fat) and Foster is truly striking: so much so, in fact, that the strain of trying to manufacture some keeps her looking on the verge of outright illness throughout.

Has a soundtrack crammed with infectious music gleaned from fairly surprising sources.

But it IS enjoyable.

Silly in some parts, but sheer fun in most, Bootmen will get you wiggling in your seat with a big grin pasted on your face.

Sweet and hilarious, a classic crowd-pleaser which elevates rather than eviscerates the homespun eccentrics who make up its cast of characters.

Ferociously inventive.

Subtle, strange, off-putting, fascinating.

What ensues is never exactly unpredictable, but always witty, fresh and fun.