Hazel-Dawn Dumpert

That nothing more monumental than an everyday life has occurred to any of the subjects is perhaps the film's most compelling aspect.

(Linney and Ruffalo) are just beautiful enough, in fact, to be in the movies and still remain convincing as authentic folk, and their performances are tremendously moving.

Signals the real end of the party, charting a denouement that arcs from blissful ignorance to violence and its ever-present threat to a final retreat.

Not only relates the astounding story of the expedition and its unimaginable hardships, it presents a thoughtful study of a time when there were adventurers who might actually respond to an advertisement reading "Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold . . ."

To watch Joplin, Rick Danko, Jerry Garcia and Mickey Hart, all massively wasted, giggling and jamming, is a delight tempered by the knowledge that Joplin would be dead just months later, with the rest but one following after.

To see the film in this meticulously restored and remixed version is like watching it for the first time, so clear is the sound, so vivid the sights.

Trueba reveals his subject organically, letting the music speak for itself.

Ultimately, however, a too-earnest script that pins the future of this community on a school-district singing contest, undercuts the film's natural performances and its sedate, contemplative pacing.

Director Stephen Hopkins (Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child) and writer Akiva Goldsman (Batman and Robin) layer a ridiculous time-travel tale with the story of a dysfunctional family Robinson, impressive special effects, and IKEA does Star Wars production design.

Still, the big-show musical payoff is good fun, and Black and his little doppelgangers have it all over "Daddy Day Care."

Perhaps because this is director Yoji Yamada's 77th movie, every aspect of his filmmaking is placidly assured and meaningful.

The Sex Pistols themselves were bloody magnificent.

Freshened immensely by pitch-perfect song parodies, a batch of hilarious faux album covers, nimble improv from the ever-marvelous cast, and a palpable love for the subject matter.

Maglietta, whose soulful countenance and offhand grace are soothing to behold, and Ganz, who says more with a shrug and sigh than most poets do with a sonnet.

It makes a convincing argument that Dowd's personal history is a kind of history of the 20th century itself, encompassing the era's art, science, commerce and politics.

The performances are revelatory.

The story's charming, the set pieces are wildly inventive, and even the throwaway one-liners, about everything from movie-animation pioneer Ray Harryhausen to the old Oscar Meyer jingle, are hilarious.

To call the film contrived would imply that some sort of effort had been made, when Sweet Home Alabama is nothing but dead lazy and slow — y'all.

This ode to wrestling one's way out of youth's shell holds up surprisingly well.

It becomes clear that all this man-child craves is to be loved and, thus, saved.

A modest pleasure, driven by a jumble of Old West signifiers and goofball modern flourishes.

The film is exhaustive -- and ultimately exhausting.

The music, it goes without saying, is great.

The photography is clear and colorful, the acting just fine, and the pace steady. However, the wan script by Geert Heetebrij imbues the brothers with so little personality that their respective transformations -- pack no emotional punch.

The genuinely fascinating story is one of revolutionary intention and unrelenting grit, but while Mario is a competent enough filmmaker, he has neither the urgency nor, frankly, the chops to make his own movie fire up.

As always, conversation is the constant threading together Rohmer's stately pace and episodic structure, the thing he uses to show us who his characters are and what their friendship entails.

Despite some grace- ful performances, especially from Ruehl and Kazan, the result is a tepid repast at best.

The proceedings are leavened also with a carefree sense of humor -- including some clever, jokey camera work -- and given depth by a cache of marvelous performances.

The film may be rife with emotional declarations, but rather than the studied sentiments of news anchors and politicians, these ruminations have the quotidian ring of real people struggling with a standard vocabulary to describe something unthinkably new.

Voice-overs and commentaries are piled on top of contrived intimate moments until, despite some easygoing performances, the movie -- the actual movie -- is a blur of undercooked motivations and halfhearted improv.

And like, the movie's got all these bright colors and shit, so it's not some fuckin' boring art film, and the new wave soundtrack is awesome.

The result is a fast-paced, brilliantly edited indictment that's as hard to turn away from as it is infuriating to watch. The irony, of course, is that Greenwald deploys the tricks of the trade every bit as knowingly as the evil geniuses at Fox.

Strangely drab.

Lovely ensemble piece.

A kind of folktale, rooted in poignant personal experience.

Nettelbeck's storytelling grace, however, only highlights her clumsy script, which drags the viewer through an all-too-predictable menu of catharsis and romance that can overpower the film’s subtler, more complex flavors.

It requires nothing more of a viewer than quiet complaisance, which is rewarded in turn by pleasant scenery, a few mild laughs, and the dependably involving presence of Weaver and, especially, Neuwirth.

Poignant portrait.

Rozema seems determined to defrill the Austen trend and charge it with a fiercer sort of femininity.

Both visually and emotionally, a panoramic picture; Mehta wields a master's hand as she weaves together vistas of urban and pastoral India with thoughts on the nature of man as it keeps cycling out in the specifics of history.

Paula Gray wrote the script (it was her UCLA senior thesis), and if there are gooey spots, there's also nicely turned, lived-in dialogue and a gentle affection for all her characters.

Dean Parisot's direction of the funny, affectionately satirical script by David Howard and Robert Gordon is crisp and assured.

The lack of cohesion and conviction is disconcerting, and it allows the movie to veer dangerously close to exploitation. Its subjects -- and its viewers -- deserve more.

Heartwarming here relies less on forced air than on Petter Næss’ delicate, clever direction -- and a wonderful, imaginative script by Axel Hellstenius.

The result is a carefully wrought, historically grounded and thoroughly absorbing look at a quintessential American experience.

The film is never less than lovely to gaze upon, shot in saturated colors, richly appointed in period trappings and peopled only by the very beautiful. But it is also, by its end, too silly to take seriously.

If Sayles had maneuvered these stories and performances into even a shade more sentimentality or gravitas, the weight would have collapsed them like a house of cards. As it is, they breathe easily, delicately into each other.

A work of top-shelf schlock.

Miraculous photography.

Startlingly affecting -- What emerges is a picture of an illness that causes enormous suffering but whose origins and treatment continue to elude even those doctors who pay attention to it.

Tavernier's documentary about the famed Paris Opera Ballet is itself a graceful thing, a fleet-footed yet substantial examination of what it means to devote one's life to the art of dance.

Never really gets across the essence of who the band members are and why they inspire such fidelity.

Enlightenment Guaranteed is a parable of alienation and rediscovery told with such affection, insight and visual elegance, it could never be taken as preachy or stern.

Stettner's vision of both women lacks fullness, relying on stereotypes of feminine strength and vulnerability.

Me Without You is at its truest and most affecting when it steps back from the gig gling, bitching and nail biting to reveal how the compulsion to control and appropriate can be born of simple love and admiration.

If there's anyone to credit for The Butterfly's eventual triumph over the inherent fatuousness of the material, it's the great Serrault and his tiny leading lady, who matches her elder nearly line for line and look for look.

If director Scott Elliott falters, it's only in the spots where he tries to comment on her (Alice's) persecution without being complicit in it.

Breaks in the film's otherwise smooth continuum, however, are bridged by Hutchins' soulful performance, and by Chaiken's excellent feel for the grace notes and steady tempo of native New York life, the sacredness of female friendship, and the precarious balance between love for oneself and for others.

This bleak debut feature from writer-directors Alex and Andrew Smith would be all but impossible to sit through if it weren’t for Ryan Gosling and Clea Duvall.

For a film hinged on one of the more passionate art forms, it's all a little bloodless.

While the film strives to prove its cool, it's also built on the insufferably antique idea that some flattery and a good fuck are all any woman needs.

Where Káel stumbles is in having his stars lip-synch, sometimes poorly, to a recording. It's a devil's bargain that allows for more natural staging, but that fails to convey that an opera's power lies less in cinematic shadings of character than in raw emotions refined by the spectacular art of a rigorously trained human voice.

On its own, the story is tepid, and less than original. What draws us in is the way in which Gatlif sets it against a rich Andalusian backdrop.

The film's best and scariest moments come when Miles is confronted with scenes that he translates into proof of the Wendigo's power.

In Fitzgerald's hands, freestyling is an all-good means of personal expression and communal identification. The dark side of rap he treats only superficially, shortchanging a well-rounded discussion in favor of wholehearted celebration.

Demme (Monument Ave.) brings a sure hand with pace and structure to the soft-at-heart script by Robert Ramsey and Matthew Stone, allowing Murphy, Lawrence and company to sit back and focus on the job at hand -- making us laugh.

By the time Princesa finally slides into halfhearted melodrama in its last quarter, we're only too happy to follow Fernanda back to the rim and a little excitement.

The film quickly becomes a vortex of father-son bonding and rivalry, and what could have been a mere travelogue becomes a bumpy exploration of male identity and communication.

The problem with Rush Hour is that the film isn’t a partnership, it’s a Chris Tucker movie with Chan as straight man.

Aside from isolated flares of unchecked emotion ...Bouquet's Lucie is too far removed from our ken of romance and overriding purpose, or from Berri's for that matter, to be embraced entirely.

It's (Stuart's) utter believability that lets us follow him into the ecstasy of absurdity that is the rest of the film.

Jabberwocky is not a Python film, a fact most obvious in its marked lack of humor.

For the most part, the action, shot entirely on Hawaii's famed North Shore without blue screens or tanks, is awesome, all swirling turquoise tubes, thundering foam hammers and sleek, graceful riders.

The best parts of the film...are often distractingly slick enough to cover the film's overriding lack of soul.

It's the spark and surprise of good sketch comedy that makes this film really work--the laugh-out-loud moments are worth the wait.

By cinematic standards, not exactly scintillating stuff: The mix of archival materials, talking heads and dramatic readings is strictly PBS 101. Filmmaker Peter Gilbert's great achievement lies in his integration of disparate historical threads and voices into one steadily paced, riveting tale.

The rather sad performances boast more clams than a Pismo beach party.

Too much of a mess to say anything with assurance, pieced together as it is from mismatched institutional movies such as "Cool Hand Luke" and "Shock Corridor" -- with "Lord of the Flies" thrown in for good measure -- and turning on plot points that simply don't wash.

Even if Signs suffers a little from uneven pacing and mismatched tones of reverent homage (to "The Birds" and "War of the Worlds"), soul-searching and silly comedy, the jokes are clever, the tension continual and expertly calibrated, and the performances -- are both deep and moving.

The film is nothing if not benign, but its merits are moot for those above 7 or so.

Does have its charms.

Yu’s filmography includes dozens of pictures between 1965 and 1994, but with its nonstop flurry of fighting, ersatz bloodletting and incidental hilarity, this remains his signature work.

The uneasy meeting of cultures is mirrored all too well in the stiff and clumsy direction.

A wonderful movie. For every misstep there are the sublime expressions of agony and ecstasy of which Herzog is a master.

Attack of the Clones' high-definition surfaces are certainly impressive, but they offer no lifelight, nothing to put your arms around.

As usual, the final fight-scene extravaganza is outstanding, but it’s hardly worth the dreary hour and a half that precedes it.

Paymer is the key to this mild-mannered comedy built on easy setups and borscht-belt one-liners.

Well-acted, briskly paced and prettily photographed, the film is a mild-mannered family story with a caring heart, and that's ultimately enough to make its 104 minutes worthwhile.

Won't be of much value to anyone besides die-hard Cubs fans or the Santo family itself.

Film is a ghostly and gorgeous tale of a court magician, the legendary Abe no Seimei.

It's the filmmakers' post-camp comprehension of what made old-time B movies good-bad that makes Eight Legged Freaks a perfectly entertaining summer diversion.

Might make a fun Lifetime TV movie -- if it weren't quite so morose.

The young filmmaker clearly needs to experience a bit more of la vraie vie before his own observations can take in more than the clumsy romantic feints and parries of early adulthood.

It's perhaps Greendale's greatest flaw that, rather than stirring the blood, its heartfelt call to arms comes off as a sentimental, even trite, notion from an increasingly distant past.

Rather exciting, rendered in a bright sunset palette and a mixture of expressive, boldly drawn traditional animation and fluid computer-generated imagery.

There's no doubting that Williamson is a man who knows and loves his genre, and all the scary, screaming, sniggering fun continues here.

The director is Garry Marshall, but The Princess Diaries is no where near as nauseating a fairy tale as Marshall's "Pretty Woman."

The good news is that this off-the-wall ensemble comedy may just be the summer's happiest surprise.