J.R. Jones

A shocking revelation near the end explains the soldier's nihilistic rage but simultaneously tears a gigantic hole in the plot, leaving little to admire but Considine's typically penetrating performance.

Director Brian De Palma will probably take the rap for this tepid noir, but the real culprits are Josh Hartnett and Scarlett Johansson, red-hot lovers in life but (as ever) gorgeous stiffs on-screen.

The racial satire is about as subtle as a sledgehammer, but there's something exhilarating about so blunt a weapon being swung with such wild abandon.

Despite a few bloodcurdling shocks, this handsome Spanish ghost story from producer Guillermo del Toro follows in the suggestive, richly romantic tradition of the old Val Lewton chillers.

The 3-D element is unobtrusively handled, except when it perfectly re-creates the woman who's always perched on her boyfriend's shoulders in front of you at a concert.

Gervasi has tapped into a powerful if much-overlooked truth: humanity rocks.

The plot twists are mostly predicated on the characters' improbably shifting loyalties, the sort of thing you can get away with only when the people in your movie are drained of all compassion.

Eastwood is still a primal force on-screen, but his unusual practice of shooting scripts as written, which served him well on "Unforgiven" and "Million Dollar Baby," here leaves him exposed to Nick Schenk's familiar situations and awkward dialogue.

The remake is plenty scary, though any moral inquiry into the cost of revenge seemed to fly over the heads of the screaming, laughing crowd I saw it with.

This documentary profile of poet and novelist Charles Bukowski exploits the writer's counterculture persona but also works to dispel it, revealing a gifted and extremely complicated man.

The script is stupid, the acting is wooden, the special effects are laughable, the vintage-80s synthesizer score is cheesy. The movie's paranoid premise is boiled down from two superior sci-fi movies, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and The Day of the Triffids (1962). And there are no trolls.

As usual, the three instrumentalists (Ray Manzarek, John Densmore, Robby Krieger) take a backseat to their gorgeous front man, though their nimble, idiosyncratic playing has aged much better than his pretentious poetry.

Exhilarating.

The genre shows serious signs of wear in this needlessly fictionalized feature about Vince Papale.

Mike White contributed to the script, and though he shares with the Hesses an innocence that can be both sweet and slightly grotesque (e.g., Chuck and Buck), his influence is most evident here in the conventional plotting.

This passable live-action feature from Christian mogul Philip Anschutz (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe) also relies heavily on the voices, though the actors are sometimes miscast (Julia Roberts as the spider) or chosen more for their on-screen personas than their pipes (Steve Buscemi as the rat).

The cinematic equivalent of a tapeworm, this delivers few laughs beyond the initial chuckles of recognition. Seltzer and Friedberg (who also directed) have another script in development called "Raunchy Movie"; apparently one idea they haven't yet considered is "Watchable Movie."

Herzog deserves the lion's share of the credit for the movie's quality, but Port of Call New Orleans is also a comeback for Cage.

So few movies these days concern themselves with ideas of any sort that a drama like this one, about a man humbled by the consequences of his own intellectual breakthrough, seems even more powerful.

Kruger's elaborations on the original mystery are superfluous, but Watts gives this everything she's got.

The climactic sight gag is lifted from Monicelli's movie like a diamond from a jeweler's window.

Despite the gimmicky direction and a disappointing climax, this is a distinctive and unsettling comedy.

Too many extraneous elements have been added--the victim here is an aborigine, which prompts a racial backlash against the men and their families--but at the movie's center lies the knotty story of a marriage poisoned by amorality.

Being male, I can't relate to this at all; on the other hand, I don't need Midol either, but I'm glad it's on the market.

This was shot at the legendary Ealing Studios, but I hesitate to call it a British comedy: its two stars are American, it currently has no UK release date, and its innocuous naughtiness seems pitched at grandmothers who watch BBC America.

Powerful second film by writer-director Thomas McCarthy (The Station Agent).

Reitman deserves credit for going through with a bitterly ironic ending, but the movie is marred by its warm condescension toward flyover country.

Cox has some wonderfully funny moments, but both actors are playing heavily to type.