John Patterson

Helgeland strips the material back to its pulp origins and overlays it with a patina of glib motifs familiar to devotees of Hollywood’s 1970s renaissance.

The film's sheer likability and very impressive gag-to-giggle ratio derive more from sweetness and sharpness than from shit jokes.

Crowe's undeniable gifts -- his well-crafted individual scenes and his love for his characters -- are more evident here than his flaws.

While the film has the feel of an illustrated radio play, it teems nonetheless with pleasing ambiguities and subtle doubts, and its elusive qualities force the viewer into active and rewarding participation rather than simple passive spectatorship.

Relentless, infantile and impossible to dislike.

Sadly for dramatic purposes, Jones' achievements seemed effortless, and the movie could really use the odd Ty Cobb wig-out.

It all feels rather laddish and belabored, but it will eat up 90 minutes of your time without making you regret the loss.

Schwentke handles the claustrophobic environment efficiently enough, though he dallies too long before letting anxiety give way to action.

Relentlessly positive and optimistic, the film is also likable, in the most chaste way imaginable.

What enrich the film are its layers of detail -- moronic racial protocols, turf wars, pecking orders, men as livestock -- the authenticity of the dialogue and the rich range of characters.

Despite its dry wit and compassion, the film suffers from a philosophical emptiness and maddeningly sedate pacing, and, in the end, the only aspect of the movie that truly commands attention is Jagger's desperately inexpressive acting, which hasn’t improved one iota since "Ned Kelly."

We spend too much time with the kidnappers - a veritable Geek Squad of undifferentiated techies - as each successive escape attempt is foiled and our eyes are warped by abundant shots of computer screens and grainy surveillance-camera footage.

If as much thought had been expended on character and consequences as was lavished on bell-bottom diameters, collar widths and soundtrack selection, Blow might have been a richer, more intelligent experience, and much more Demme's movie than a carbon copy of other people's.

If the contrast between Marine life and blue-blood luxury sometimes pulls the film in awkward directions, Anselmo's perceptive fondness for all his characters -- parents, children, grunts, even drill sergeants -- more than compensates.

Nauseating, tasteless and offensive -- but in all the best ways.

Genially moronic, Road Trip will tide you over until the next slice of "American Pie" comes along.

Without a well-delineated political or social framework, Union Square offers little that we didn't already know.

Gossip is trash, but it's well-written, slickly directed trash.

A schizophrenic outing from habitually hysterical director Tony Scott (True Romance, The Fan), Man on Fire is a movie of two unreconcilable halves.

Into the Blue is a likable bimbo of a movie, all surface and -- despite breathtaking underwater photography and a marked resemblance to Peter Yates' "The Deep" -- zero depth.

The drawback is Tyler, who lacks the vigor and energy her part requires in order to transcend charges of misogyny.

Whenever Green shows up to do his semi-improvised, non-acting shtick (detaching pit bulls from testicles, kamikaze wheelchair rides, etc.), this otherwise sprightly and intermittently amusing movie suddenly feels like a ship dragging its anchor.

Whether Quitting will prove absorbing to American audiences is debatable: After all, it's not like we don't have enough rehab stories of our own, and Jia often comes across as a sullen, unreachable brat.

The characters are flat creatures of duty, and the film is more a tale of the collective will of a state than of the rugged individuals behind it.

At once over- and under-written, and peppered with tiresome coincidences and misunderstandings, Goldberg’s mechanical, joke-one, joke-two, joke-three approach to ensemble screenwriting soon betrays his TV-sitcom roots.

There's more than a hint of self-pitying male-castration fantasy in writer-director Jeff Franklin's portrayal.

There’s something entirely ridiculous about rating a movie like this NC-17: Why should sniggering, infantile, adolescent humor be denied its natural core audience of snigger-ing, infantile adolescents?

An intermittently gripping, good-looking movie.