Jack Mathews

This, the 10th and worst-written entry in the series, would have been better if it had followed Dreyfuss instead of Clouseau, or if Kline had been cast as Clouseau instead of Martin.

While it won't rival the Harry Potter movies as a cultural milestone, the luminous, irresistible Stardust is no less industrious at scavenging myths and legends and making something altogether new from the familiar pickings.

Possibly the worst idea for a movie this century.

It's often maddening, because of its structure, and some of its visuals are pretentious nonsense. But, as a story of undying love, it's certainly unique.

The film makes you squirm as well as empathize, but it does need narration.

September Dawn, written by an evangelical Christian, may be the worst historical drama ever made.

The standout in the cast is James Todd Smith, whose acting talent may soon persuade him to shed his adolescent stage name of LL Cool J and concentrate on mainstream film roles.

Good, clean fun, and the view is fabulous.

It's no Runaway success, but Gere and Roberts still glow.

Though Borat has been likened to "Jackass," there's a huge difference. The "Jackass" movies are about extreme stunts. Borat is about interaction and gullibility, and its success is unique to both Cohen and to this one-time-only movie.

If you feel anything other than admiration for its craftsmanship, let me know; The Good German is as emotionally cold and unconvincing as any movie I've seen this year.

More than a bad movie, it's an anti-movie.

In Crazy Love, friends of Burt and Linda express as much confusion over their relationship as we feel, and the Pugaches themselves make an unconvincing case for theirs being a love that conquered all. On the contrary, love doesn't seem to have had anything to do with them. She married him out of desperation, and he pursued her out of a sense of entitlement.

This is a "What were they thinking?"-size disaster, with the wrong actors in the wrong roles in a project that had no reason to be remade in the USA.

the director works way too hard to cover his tracks, and the resolution is a disappointment - if you get it at all.

Far from the smart historical epic some might have expected, is just another feisty summer shoot-'em-up.

There's great music and lovely settings, but the filmmakers have done little more with their subject than reiterate the Britannica's description of her.

Ishii instills this unpleasantness with some Hitchcockian black humor.

The story itself is a smooth little gem.

A ponderously slow experience.

The playfulness evident in the hundreds of bondage photos that made a pious young Tennessee model semi-famous in the 1950s and an 82-year-old legend today is also the driving force of Mary Harron's superb The Notorious Bettie Page.

a despairing movie that you can't look away from, though you'll wish you could.

Ale's community is like a band of pirates - collegial, bickering, larcenous and supportive - and his life within it is both heartening and heartbreaking.

A slice of life in the most profound sense.

Warner Bros. quietly releases Hiller's latest film, Carpool, without advance critics screenings, without more than a whisper of promotion, without warning or apology to the lost souls who might wander in to see it.

Some of this is elemental psychology; blood is thicker than water, etc. But the movie also reveals how the privileged class ignored, condoned or denied the reality of the Holocaust.

The Exorcist is still shocking, but mostly because of its graphic, anti-religious language. [2000 re-release]

Typical of road comedies, it's a pastiche of sketches.