J.R. Jones

The end result is more like a supermarket on Saturday afternoon. The content is engaging, though.

The film is soon bogged down by fake hugs and a faker climax.

Anthony Peckham's script is formulaic, woodenly reverent, and devoid of real dramatic tension.

Written and directed by Tom Six--who doesn't seem to realize that movie theaters rely on popcorn sales--this nasty stuff plays like a cross between "Saw," "Naked Lunch," and "Bride of the Monster."

Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves are both such guarded celebrities that I have a hard time imagining them as lovers, a problem this Chicago-based romantic fantasy surmounted by isolating them from each other almost entirely.

The characters are drawn with such compassion their follies become our own and their desires seem as vast as the night sky.

"The Illusionist" also centers on a 19th-century magician, and the elegant contours of its story are even more impressive compared with Nolan's clutter of double and triple crosses.

Unlike high school movies made for the teen market, Chalk gets many of its laughs from the backstage wrangling among the teachers as they unload their stress on one another.

Tom Hollander gives a strong performance as the considerate and quietly grieving young man.

The vile sadism of the Saw movies has been replaced by decorative references to Saint Augustine and Immanuel Kant, and there's a beautiful but brainy police profiler (Waddell) on hand to dispense a thick layer of psychobabble.

On its deepest level it considers not a particular war but the complex feelings between mothers and the young men they send out into the world to kill or be killed.

As a suspense movie, this works pretty well: director Bryan Singer (X-Men, The Usual Suspects) maintains a crisp pace as the plotters set out to kill the fuhrer with a briefcase bomb, and the historical details of the botched coup, which exploited one of Hitler's own contingency plans to mobilize the army reserves and disarm the SS, are inherently interesting.

Its mix of personal reminiscence (Mario made his screen debut playing Sweetback as a boy) and cultural history is fascinating. This engages in a fair amount of mythmaking itself, but its lesson in self-empowerment is both vivid and sincere.

By the time Herzog tried to pass off jellyfish as Dourif's old pals, my indulgence was nearing its end--but then so was the movie.

This sequel to the apocalyptic splatter flick "28 Days Later" . . . (2002) is still well equipped to rip your face off.

The plot contrivances that bring them together to torture each other are so deftly handled that I almost bought them, and the two leads are charming and funny enough to offset the characters' obnoxious motives.

This manages to make the real seem generic, rather than the other way around.

Everything wrong with today's hipster comedy seems to coalesce in this toothless satire.

The script, by newcomer Sabina Murray, is occasionally cloying as the naive hero falls for a bitter prostitute (Bai Ling), but its epic tale of two cultures tragically entwined is anchored by deep and elemental emotions.

As usual with Stallone's Rocky sequels, the schmaltz is unbearable, but the fight is plausibly handled, and Stallone's sincere sadness at growing older makes this an unexpectedly satisfying conclusion to the series.

The movie seems unusually honest in portraying the no-option existence of the working poor, but the story slips into melodrama in the last reel.

It preserves the peculiar machismo of Ayer's earlier projects: the alpha male dominates not only because he's the most powerful, but because he's the most jaded.

As the title of this splatter comedy by writer-director Stuart Gordon (Re-Animator) indicates, he's like a bug stuck to her windshield, and that's about the level of humanity and insight one can expect here.

Cagey low-budget horror flick.

Routine crime thriller.

This singing-along-to-the-radio effect has a dingy charm that honors the blue-collar Italian setting, yet Turturro spoils it by turning the movie into a hip star party, with a cast of indie-acting royalty.

Todd Phillips is no artist, but his lowbrow comedies (Road Trip, Old School) always hit the mark because they're so psychologically true: the superego tries to control the id, but the id gets drunk and barfs all over it. Hilarious.

Undeniably well executed.

Whether you want to trace this romance back to "La Strada" or Allen's marriage to Soon-Yi Previn is your business, but on-screen it never registers as more than a writer's conceit.

With its sappy musical vignettes and encounter-session dialogue, the movie consistently overplays its insights, though all three leads contribute thoughtful and genuine performances.

Charlize Theron, in nonglam mode, dominates this powerful drama about sexual harassment at a Minnesota iron ore mine in the early 90s.

Watt's script is a bit overstuffed, and by the end the roiling animated sequences (drawn by Emma Kelly and inked by Watt and Clare Callinan) are wearing out their welcome. But the convincing characters and hearty examination of mortality make this fresh and oddly uplifting.

I love Franken and wish there were more funny liberals in the chattering class, but his crushing sarcasm wouldn't exactly elevate the national debate.

Brutally honest and brilliantly acted.

Indifferently scripted and shoddily animated feature.

Abysmal thriller.

Agreeable but overlong.

This is funny mostly for its brazen disregard of common sense.

Kurt Russell gives a terse, unsentimental performance as coach Herb Brooks, but director Gavin O'Connor sticks to the "Hoosiers" playbook.

Berman delicately unravels the silent resentments festering in the latchkey home, but the pain is leavened by his droll sense of humor.

Surrounding and ultimately subsuming this ethical struggle is a fair amount of pediatric-cancer horror and mush, though Cassavetes is frequently bailed out by his cast (Diaz is admirably unpleasant as the controlling mother, and Joan Cusack is unusually tough and restrained as the presiding judge).

To her credit, Bello makes a real commitment to this spiteful, self-absorbed character, though the credibility she generates through sheer force of will is no match for the gimmicky plot twist that arrives at the story’s midpoint and sends the movie spinning off into stupid-land.

The very idea of handing him over to professional lad Guy Ritchie (who directed Snatch, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels), to be played as a punch-throwing quipster by Robert Downey Jr., is so profoundly stupid one can only step back in dismay.

Myers pumps out a river of inventive shtick, but it doesn't cohere or connect; he seems less a character than a comedian doing couch time on a late-night talk show.

The gags are as idiotic as you'd expect, but they consistently hit the bull's-eye.

This is pretty thin soup, but the players are spirited and the jokes generally offbeat.

Ferrell and Reilly get more mileage out of juvenile pouting and bickering than any other performers I can imagine, but that's about as far as this goes.

Jarmusch makes some effort to deliver on the promise of suspense near the end, with de Bankole stalking despicable businessman Bill Murray at his fortresslike compound in the hills.

The story is inspiring and involves sports, but to call it an inspirational sports story would be wrong; its real center is Leigh Anne Tuohy (Sandra Bullock in a fine performance), the strong-willed woman whose love and generosity helped turn a mute, hopeless boy with no social or academic skills into a functioning young man with a promising future.

No movie with access to the Cole Porter songbook could be a complete waste of time, but this biopic of the great tunesmith by producer-director Irwin Winkler is all upholstery and no chair.

Brett Morgen (The Kid Stays in the Picture) has made an electrifying picture.

This is well worth seeing for Bening's arresting, unpleasant performance.

Stephen Gaghan, who scripted this turkey, landed in the director's chair after Edward Zwick (Glory) bailed out, and you can almost smell the flop sweat.

This revisionist western by writer-director Andrew Dominik makes a wan attempt to present the Jesse James legend as the dawn of celebrity culture in America.

The show ends with a moving declaration of faith by the star, who was raised in the church, but there's no denying that his funniest moments spring from impulses that are less than charitable.

Watchable exercise in Zen hokum.

Visconti rolls out some heavy left-wing proselytizing in the last half hour, but what really hits like a hammer is Lancaster’s realization that these awful people are the only family he’s got.

This may not be as ill considered as it sounds--some of the sharpest material in Rock's last concert special, "Never Scared," dealt with the eternal conflict between men and women--but his crowd-pleasing gags tend to clash with Rohmer's sly moral comedy.

More than anything Chuck and Larry shows just how flaccid American movie comedy has become now that "Saturday Night Live" has replaced vaudeville as our comedy college.

The orgy of violence, as ghastly as in any video game, should go a long way toward erasing whatever goodwill Stallone earned with his sentimental "Rocky Balboa."

Written by Steve Conrad, this is the smartest script director Gore Verbinski has ever had, and he makes the most of it, aided by a strong cast.

Weird anachronisms (cars, telephones, home computers) contribute to the craziness, but despite the copious imagination on display, this is a fairly long haul.

Canned racial uplift and tear-streaked faces abound, though they're offset somewhat by a nicely funky blaxploitation vibe.

Steppenwolf alumnus Tracy Letts adapted his play into this fearsome horror movie, directed with single-minded claustrophobia by William Friedkin.

This is the usual cartoon of hound dogs, roadhouses, antebellum mansions, and Civil War reenactments. Aside from that, it's not a bad date movie.

After a 40-year career playing jut-jawed a__holes, Michael Douglas must relish the occasional oddball role: he gave a winning performance as the pot-addled professor in "Wonder Boys," and he seems to be having a ball in this funny debut feature by Mike Cahill.

Only loosely connected to the story, the visuals quickly grow monotonous, and as the chronicle arrives at Cobain's late years of curdled fame and fortune, his bitterness and cynicism make even the narration hard to take.

The narrative conceit requires a fair amount of indulgence as the story progresses, but the fleeting, incomplete glimpses of the monster early on prove the old dictum of B movie auteur Val Lewton that a momentary image can have greater impact than a prolonged one.

By the end, when Moore presents himself as a lone crusader for justice and wraps yellow crime-scene tape around the AIG building, his reasoning is so muddled that he can’t distinguish an economic system (corporate capitalism) from a political one (representative democracy).

Even 82 minutes seems an eternity...The net effect is weirdly reminiscent of taking part in any online community, where a "relationship" is more like a juxtaposing of egos.

You may not leave the theater having switched sides, but you'll probably respect the other side more, and that in itself would be a victory for human life.

With a score by the Residents, cartoon art by Warren Heise and Timothy Stock, and scenes of the actors commenting on and interacting with the real-life Kurtz, this 2006 advocacy video brings a jumpy energy to its Orwellian tale.

You don't have to get too far into Kazuo Ishiguro's brilliant 2005 novel Never Let Me Go to realize it's hopelessly unfilmable.

Underneath the wrapping lies a squalid Tarantino-style crime flick.

The setup for this Oliver Stone drama keeps its iconic villain so far removed from the financial action that he seems like a dog tied up outside a restaurant.

Snippets of the band's brutally percussive music punctuate the endless encounter sessions, which expose the musicians' boundless self-absorption (the 9-11 attacks come and go without so much as a mention) and cowed obedience to their psychological guru.

The behind-the-scenes tragedy gives Gilliam an easy excuse for the dull chaos that engulfs the story, but he might have generated it all on his own.

Sheridan gives this a pacing and depth one doesn't often find in "urban" product, though Jackson, reliving his own life traumas, is handily upstaged at every turn by Terrence Howard (Crash) as his oddball manager.

Agresti has more on his mind than tugging at heartstrings.

A chaotic sequence midway through shows Mormon and gay-rights protesters shouting abuse at each other in San Francisco, and that's pretty much what the whole movie feels like.

Siegel manages to keep the action wound pretty tight, though he doesn’t seem to sympathize much with Rose’s bleeding-heart liberalism.

This family feature from the Christian production company Walden Media is something of a disappointment after its excellent "Holes" and "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe."

He looks like a truck ran over him, but at 52 he's still ripped enough to get away with the role; in the end the movie is about Rourke's indomitability more than the character's.

It's the epitome of an embedded war report, though Rademacher's at-ease scenes with the soldiers have some of the warmth and terse humor of Ernie Pyle's, and there's some hair-raising footage of a machine-gun firefight.

Krause is completely believeable as the solid old man, and though the story moves slower than molasses, it leaves the same dark aftertaste.

Beautifully unemphatic small-town drama.

Sublimely stupid.

By turns morally compelling and racially paternalistic, this provocative drama may be the first halfway truthful war movie to hit multiplexes since "Three Kings."

Adapted by Ernest Tidyman from his novel, this suffers from some sluggish dialogue scenes, but the movie comes to vibrant life whenever director Gordon Parks hits the streets of New York.

Though the movie isn’t much to look at, he (Siegel) gets a credibly dark and pathetic performance from the typically comic Oswalt.

Spike Lee's fans have learned to take the bad with the good, but this is pretty damn bad.

Only in the last third, when he gets down to the business of telling a story, does The Brown Bunny become a porn movie -- though not in the sense you'd expect.

Spade claims he latched onto his snide persona to distinguish himself from the pack; it's served him well as an ensemble player and a big-screen foil to Chris Farley, but as a romantic lead he's hopeless.

This has its moments--most of them thanks to Kilmer and Joe Mantegna as the boy's abusive father--but the troubled romance is unconvincing and the big-name actors hang on the story like ornaments on a spindly tree.

Zemeckis captures all the story’s terror, but its pathos has always been the real challenge, and it mostly eludes him.

This is one dull party.

This one follows the depressing pattern of "Surviving Christmas" and "Christmas With the Kranks": enforced holiday cheer gives way to bilious hatred, then hollow forgiveness.

As bad-taste comedies go, this is more clever than gross.