Ken Tucker

Its ambition is so great that the production’s occasional melodramatic touches can not only be forgiven, but viewed as having been executed in the spirit of the man himself.

Begins, at two-hours-plus, is a nonstarter.

Gunner Palace too often makes the grunts look like mean slackers -- precisely the opposite, one presumes, of what was intended.

It's a film you won't stop thinking about, arguing over, debating, after the lights come up.

Closer is marred by some drippy music courtesy of Damien Rice and a small-surprise ending that feels like gimmicky irony. But the film's core idea is compelling.

Tim Curry makes a fine, flashy Long John Silver, and charming newcomer Kevin Bishop is a lively, toothy young Jim Hawkins, but it’s Gonzo and Rizzo the Rat who make Muppet Treasure Island, the Muppets musical adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson, novel a hoot.

Delightful, insightful documentary.

Penn is mostly in "I Am Sam mode" here, doing a lot of shoe-gazing and mumbly-talk, but not without adding an edge of bitter intelligence to his character; he's just too good an actor to merely repeat himself, even when the material encourages him to.

Danes gives a marvelously quiet, poignant performance.

Penn is terrific in his low-key doggedness.

When superb craftsmanship, discipline, and risk-taking (toning down Diaz and MacLaine; treating Collette as a desirous leading lady) are applied to accessible, even frivolous material, the results can be deeply pleasurable. In Her Shoes isn’t a masterpiece, but it’s the best Saturday-night movie millions of people are going to go to.

Writer-director Walter Hill follows up last year’s nuanced, underrated Wild Bill with this numskull, overwrought shoot-’em-up.

As a result, Jarhead is utterly predictable (boys endure tough training; boys encounter another culture and are baffled), studded with first-rate performances.

So fizzy it nearly fizzles out.

Jackson's wonderfully nuanced, witty performance, and a few unexpected plot turns, give Coach Carter a subtext that helps complicate such knee-jerk oversimplifications, redeeming the role with energetic humor and a loose-limbed grace.

The most impressive thing about A Very Brady Sequel is the shrewd care that has once again been taken to evoke the look and tone of the endlessly repeated, ultimate ’70s family sitcom.

A cool summer thriller whose laughs don't slow down the suspense.

Director Ken Kwapis fills the movie with feeble references to Planet of the Apes and King Kong that don’t amuse adults and sail over the heads of tykes who snicker most at the raspberries Dunston blows at anyone he meets.

When are we going to get a generation of actors who will finally decline to succumb to The Woody Mystique, and refuse to accept a proffered role without first deciding whether the entire damn project is worthwhile?

It's simply an astringent action flick that uses the wounded sensitivity of Ethan Hawke and Fishburne's witty hauteur to give the shoot-'em-up scenes some juice.

Mostly stiff acting and intentionally flat, banal dialogue.

Given a wealth of acting talent and the freedom to improvise its way past the cliches that hobble so many films by and about women, Chantilly Lace ends up a cliche anyway: a manipulative tearjerker.

This is Chinatown for chowderheads.

Reeves has confidently entered his self-parodic period. You’ll enjoy his wry post-Matrix murmurs and squinty stares.

Instead of being drawn into Dragonheart‘s tale of swords and sorcery, I frequently sat there thinking things like Gee, I wonder how much time it took Connery to record his lines. It’s too bad, because in other respects Dragonheart is a corker.

John Travolta finds no artistic breathing-room in A Love Song for Bobby Long.

The time shifts are awkward, and Egoyan displays little of the deftness of characterization he evinced in such movies as "Exotica" (1994) and "The Sweet Hereafter" (1997); the result is a cold scold of a movie.

One reason the Flipper flick is worse than the TV show: Bland, mannered Paul Crocodile Dundee Hogan plays Sandy’s uncle, Porter Ricks, instead of television’s wonderfully grumpy Brian Keith.