Hazel-Dawn Dumpert

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.

The movie is not without charm or humor, but it leaves little for Lane to do besides chuckle at setbacks as if they were naughty children.

While Gardos knows what to ask -- and though Kinski and Johansson both easily command attention -- the filmmaker lacks the storytelling sophistication to answer with anything but prettily rendered cliches.

May be scant on character and plot development, but it’s rich with affection for daydream believers

The result is a sui generis, love-it-or-hate-it exercise in homegrown American surrealism.

A funny summer frolic.

Ultimately a wiser and truer film than its crass and cartoony beginnings would have us believe.

This feeble remake offers little more than two pretty and willing leads who nonetheless can't hide their embarrassment over being set up as distractions to hide the film's thorough lack of coherence and appeal.

The film isn't really about much and so feels patchy and forced, with elements more calculated than inspired, more urgent than exciting.

A flimsy premise to begin with, it’s been punctured beyond repair by an amateur script from Bill Kelly and director Hugh Wilson (The First Wives Club), and by Wilson’s shocking ineptitude with dialogue, framing and pace.

Even though he refuses to excise about 15 to 20 minutes of unnecessary material, Pappas is nonetheless a steady editor who, less intrepid than dogged, pieces together a sustainably intriguing, suitably distressing exposé.

Thoroughly mediocre.

While The Business of Fancydancing is a thoughtful and complex work of sound and vision, it doesn't seem quite right to call it a film, for a couple of reasons. First of all, it is plainly, if crisply, shot on video, with a bright, shiny surface that fairly screams low-rent. Second, the whole business is strangely non-cinematic.

It's a setup so easy it borders on facile, but keeping the film from cheap-shot mediocrity is its crack cast.

Like a good punk tune, the filmmaker's focused energy distracts from compositional flaws, all the better to enjoy visceral pleasures such as a spot-on Zoë Pouledouris as preening singer Fauna.

So many stars means so little room for character and plot.

On the strength of such skillful pacing, and the pair's beautifully modulated performances (Leary's never been so warm or vulnerable), the film builds almost imperceptibly to a climax that's as moving as it is startling.

The first half-hour of The Core is hip enough to its own moribund formula that for a brief, shining moment, there's hope the film will actually be a goofy gas instead of the effects-bound lump it becomes.

You can't see the movie for the footage, so thick is it with digital tricks and furious action.

Narrow definitions of femininity limit the comedy and the romance.

By the time a Bollywood production number segues into the finale from "Grease," the transition not only makes perfect sense, it sparkles.