Jessica Winter

Two Men is slow and sweet as warm pudding, but Cranham and Derek Jacobi (as one of Churchill's intelligence officers) both add a generous, wholehearted gravitas the film might have thought to ask for in the first place.

Lovely to look at but insipid.

The poised Vega and pleasingly phlegmatic Sabara are resolutely uncute performers, and the reach-out-and-touch-it gadgetry carries a homey scent of proactive nostalgia. Spy Kids 2 is an island of lost Circuit Cities.

The contortional physical shtick familiar from Lawrence's sitcom, laden with a dollop of Three Stooges violence, should keep the boys happy.

A handsome, mostly tasteful production on par with 2001's Bayley-Murdoch impersonation "Iris."

Unfolds as a series of slightly disjointed vignettes, padded with redundant voiceover and an oppressively histrionic score.

The Business of Strangers goes too far in dramatizing Julie's primal, Paula-fied surge of female fury, and the script finally mistakes respectful ambiguity for vaporous drift.

Though Wilson gives a customarily sympathetic, engaged, and unpredictable performance, his work is drowned out by pyrotechnics and orchestral paroxysms of patriotism.

Largely inept and weirdly endearing.

Begs the question: Did the lads from Squatney trail the zeitgeist at every turn, or were cobandleaders David St. Hubbins and Nigel Tufnel simply in touch with their past and ahead of their time?

Mackenzie and Marber opt for an anonymous viewpoint of clinical detachment, which generates about the same psychodramatic tension as reading the "DSM-IV."

A junk-food movie striving to be nutritious -- it's one of your racier Be Yourself after-school specials crossed with 'Who Moved My Cheese?" for Cosmo girls.

Handheld sprinting and swish-pans try to enliven the duo's shenanigans: undermotivated fisticuffs, fun with the nutty controls on their limousine (the roof slides open!), Vaughn's endless yapping.

We get a bunch of straight actors focusing on the "gayness" of their characters, mincing and lisping and melodramatically breaking nails, all in the besmirched name of tolerance.

Martin seems uncomfortable and oddly waxen (the orange Al Gore makeup doesn't help), injecting Frank with neither restless anger nor wry humor.

Amid the awkward pacing and gaping plot holes, the film's chief point of interest is Goldblum's morbidly fascinating performance: equal parts Walter Neff and Captain Kirk.

The Edukators smiles indulgently as the kids rage belatedly against the dying of the SDS light.

Begins and ends with footage of FDR intoning "I hate war," something the film takes two interminable hours to say.

Depp and Highmore's final scene together strikes a muted blow of desolation -- bottomless but just bearable -- that Forster rather bravely lets stand as the last word on all the fanciful solace that Barrieland had to offer.

Pacino simply wipes the cobblestones with the rest of the cast: His beautifully calibrated performance is lucid, commanding, and genuinely tragic.

A happy ending is never at issue here -- it's clear where she's going, but there's little clue where she's been.

Though it often wallows in louche baroque textures, The Golden Bowl is perhaps the most visually accomplished of the Ivory soaps.

In lieu of vaporous message-mongering, the languid, episodic narrative -- centering on hapless sadsack Quoyle (Spacey) -- streams along by the gentle force of a convincing melancholic undertow, a dejection and longing that's not so much surmounted as sustained.

It's dispiriting to watch him (Murphy) stand patiently by and concoct reaction shots for quipping raccoons and dancing bears.

Day-Lewis is as rooted as an oak in his character and milieu, yet easefully disengaged from the film's pensive histrionics.

Vatel is dull and silly, but the holiday season doesn't offer a better sets-and-costumes workshop.

A frat-boy remake of "Pink Flamingos" which isn't all bad.

The overdetermined approach preempts character shadings or social subtext-just compare Hideo Nakata's original "Ring," which tapped its dread from viral-replicant mass culture and its pathos from a broken home, or Nakata's "Dark Water," which channeled the sorrow, guilt, and paranoia felt by a young divorcée mired in a custody battle.