Kirk Honeycutt

Unlike his songs, the film holds something back. It goes deep into a life filled with as much trouble and pain as triumph and accomplishment but never quite gets at the root of who Ray is.

The movie boils down to one character, acting under enormous pressures of space and time, racing to solve a mystery. In this case, that may be good enough.

The curious thing here is that Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor rewrote this long-in-development screenplay. Yet the authors of such smart comedies as "Sideways," "About Schmidt" and "Citizen Ruth" can't move the film away from the world of easy laughs and sitcom jokes into a realm where sexual prejudices and presumptions get examined in a whimsical yet insightful manner.

"Phoenix" might go down as the problematic film, full of plot but little fun.

Director Steven Spielberg seems intent on celebrating his entire early career here. Whatever the story there is, a vague journey to return a spectacular archeological find to its rightful home -- an unusual goal of the old grave-robber, you must admit -- gets swamped in a sea of stunts and CGI that are relentless as the scenes and character relationships are charmless.

A temperate, evenhanded perhaps overly timid film about an intemperate time in South Africa.

What the film most damagingly lacks though is a sense of mystery and danger.

Indeed a wary viewer must get past the film's infatuation with celebrity culture to enjoy this movie's charms. But charms it has.

If you're going to tell a wildly implausible tale of fortune hunting and unlikely heroes, you could do worse than National Treasure.

Some may find the film overly schematic, but Garcia smartly uses three parallel narratives to probe the extraordinary nature of motherhood.

Boys will be happy at the mild grossness; parents will tolerate anything that entertains their hyperkinetic boys; and sisters will agree with the film's lone girl.

In The Weather Man, Nicolas Cage doesn't so much play a protagonist, warts and all, as he plays a protagonist who is all warts.

For all its biographical truth, Get Rich's journey into a ghetto of hustlers, gangstas and mindless violence is all too familiar.

While Kirkpatrick does a fine job in establishing a gritty inner-city milieu and a collection of more than credible street characters caught up in an endless cycle of crime and violence, his body count reaches the proportions of the worst sort of studio schlock. Going for a shock effect, he instead strains credulity and risks unintended laughs.

The writer-director's inquiry into this tragedy makes for a moving and intelligent film, but the dark story never feels fully realized.

The biggest surprise in Roman Polanski's Oliver Twist is that there are no surprises.

The movie isn't nearly as bad as you would expect when the studio holds its only press screening the night before a national opening.

The director is chasing a mood here -- a mood, an atmosphere and feelings -- much as he did in "In the Mood for Love."

A dramatic thriller with a large cast playing the hell out of some very juicy roles. Nieman's script shuffles nimbly among an array of colorful characters and offers unexpected twists that keep you off-balance.

The film is fresh and funny, but it is also meandering, at times vague and defiantly uncommercial.

Aniston gets marooned here: Her comic instincts are muted by all the identity angst, yet there isn't sufficient dramatic material into which she can sink her teeth. Costner strolls through this role with disarming ease.

Eastwood has always had the gift for comedy in his acting repertoire, but he indulges in it only rarely. His fans might embrace this return to comedy.

Day Watch does dazzle and even at times amuse. But its imagination is limited. The backstory is shallow and pat. Its characters are mostly one-note. And everything goes on much too long at 133 minutes.

Where the best Coen brothers comedy is a matter of finely tuned tone, diction, attitude and visual rhythms, everything in The Ladykillers feels out of kilter. With Tom Hanks delivering -- arguably -- one of the most perplexing performances of his career.

It contains terrific sequences, and Nicholson and Sandler team up better than one might expect. But the film plays like two characters in search of a story and runs a good 15 minutes too long.

A mildly diverting naughty comedy, lacking the pure comic nastiness of "Bad Santa" or the sheer audacity of "Up in Smoke."

If one thinks of "Babel" minus the melodrama and histrionics, you get a clearer picture of what Moodysson has done here.

Cheerfully disconnected from the real world, bearing a great resemblance to screwball comedies of old.

A must for Doors fans as the film attempts to disentangle the facts from the myths surrounding the legendary band.

A complex and often compelling melodrama, at times almost verging on soap opera.

Several good ideas for a movie rumble around inside ATL, but they never coalesce.

Despite shortcomings and implausibility linked to their roles as written, Rogen and Banks come off with surprising charm and grace.

In Channing Tatum, who also starred in "Saints," the film has a good-looking, magnetic hunk to draw a crowd. Terrence Howard lends the pedigree of great screen acting, and Zulay Henao adds charm and glamour.

By avoiding sentimentality, Millions emerges as a simple tale told with sympathy for a child's point of view.

This odd collection of oddballs doesn't quite play out as a satisfying movie.

What should have been an inspirational story about fortitude and courage in the face of mind-numbing tragedy becomes a compendium of sports cliches.

More character study than sports movie, the people in this film come across very much as flesh-and-blood personalities despite the script's tendency to indulge in cliches and let characters deliver highly emotional speeches.

It contains all the elements from the original film...But that's the problem: It's virtually the same movie with new locations. Oh, plus Helen Mirren. Not a bad addition, but the popcorn fun is gone.

Cross "Body Heat" with "No Way Out" and you wind up with Out of Time, a slick crime melodrama with more style than substance.

While the film bristles with cinematic verve, it also is as second-hand as an antique store.

Taylor does capture the Jim Crow era and its anxieties well, but his characters tend toward the facile and his white heroine is too idealized.

A more accomplished film than "Yards." Yet it will fail to satisfy police movie buffs, as procedures are de-emphasized, and the drama is too perfunctory and obvious.

Enough goodwill has been built up in the early sections that most viewers will not take offense when the movie abandons its plot and characters.

The film is by no means terrible -- its two hours and 32 minutes running time races by -- but those things we think of as being Tarantino-esque, the long stretches of wickedly funny dialogue, the humor in the violence and outsized characters strutting across the screen, are largely missing.

The real problem is that Brugge and Haythe fail to satisfactorily pull off either the thriller or the marital deconstruction.

As an introduction to this mind-spinning festival, the film gets the job done.

This is a hand-me-(dumbed)-down chick flick that is counting on Kutcher's tabloid popularity and Peet's unmistakable though here underutilized talents to cover up for rote characterizations, tired plot devices and a general lack of inspiration.

Chases romance and comedy across Europe for nearly two hours without ever quite catching either. Essentially a teenage rendition of William Wyler's immortal "Roman Holiday."

The film's Italian director does achieve in his second American outing a pleasing blend of Hollywood professional sheen and European sensitivity to character details and nuances.

The film is always watchable, and the confrontations contain undeniable edgy excitement. But even if this weren't a remake, it would be a remake. Hollywood filmmakers have fished these waters so thoroughly that it's virtually impossible to land a big catch.

The saving grace to the utter predictability in Christina Mengert and Joseph Muszynski's screenplay is reasonably personable characters and spirited acting by director Bruce Beresford's cast.

Unlike "The Matrix," all fights and stunts -- including a 14-minute freeway chase -- have a disturbing tendency to repeat intricately choreographed action. Thus, computer technology and overkill supplant the ingenuity of the original film's action.

A respectable and at times an exciting film that should appeal to males of all ages, history buffs and -- yes, it's inevitable -- patriots.

While it can be labeled a thriller or a murder mystery, the film is talky, unhurried, contains little action and shows more interest in how characters think and behave than in its plot.

Not a bad film and veteran star Daniel Auteuil makes any film he inhabits an interesting place to visit. Perversely, its tissue-thin substance may even make the comedy more commercial in North America than such films of his as "Monsieur Hire" and "Ridicule."

Since the movie lacks a vision of what Alexander was really about as a man and a figure in history, it falls back all too frequently on movie spectacle.

A meticulously rendered romantic drama, very well acted and featuring solid production values and location work that makes New York feel like one of the movie's characters. The only problem is the story is rather flat.

This is a slick studio production with a huge movie star and top professionals occupying every production role so that the polish of this well-made film makes even homelessness look neat and tidy.

One either likes this sort of thing or not. Even fans might not buy the ending in which more people get wiped out than in Hurricane Katrina.

Certainly their musicianship and onstage professionalism are smooth, though maybe a bit too smooth. There is little spontaneity in anything they do.

The large cast, costumed and made up as filthy scalawags and sinister buccaneers, gives tremendous energy to every scene.

Much of the bite and a good deal of the wit of the first two films are missing here. The rude send-up of beloved fairy tale conventions remains -- somewhat -- but these playful jabs no longer come as pleasing surprises. You expect them. And you expect better.

As usual, Zombie has added an element of camp fun to the proceedings with his clever casting of B-movie icons in small roles, including Dee Wallace, Brad Dourif, Danny Trejo and Sid Haig.

Where the film falters is Jonze and novelist Dave Eggers' adaptation, which fails to invest this world with strong emotions.

Mild vulgarity and discreet nudity garner the sought-after R rating, but this effort feels forced. The real "bad" here is the sheer formulaic nature of everything. There are no surprises but for once you don't much mind.

It's too loose and casual, all too willing to trade the writer's trademark wit and literary mischief for slapstick comedy.

The film does achieve moments of catharsis, but it can be heavy going.

As drama the film mostly serves to illustrate the two sides of this crucial social debate in Africa.

Although wholly predictable in its every beat and featuring bland, unremarkable WASPs as romantic leads, "Life" is not without its charms.

Alas, this is a remake without a reason. Alfie can no longer shock us.

While it aspires to draw the same audiences who admired "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "Hero," The Promise is but a pale imitation of those landmark films.

This is a slicker, shallower exercise. It's hypnotic as it unfolds, but once the credit roll frees you from its grip, it doesn't bear close scrutiny.

The comedy is sloppy, crude and contains far too many misfires, but the film does capture the old ABA spirit in its ungainly struggles to wrestle laughs from seriously mediocre material.

The film never realizes its dramatic potential, choosing to take predictable story paths with obvious characters.

Predictable, cutesy and surprisingly short on genuine humor, Legally Blonde gets by thanks to the magnetic presence of Witherspoon.

The Hughes Brothers' measured, well-paced direction complements the comic-book simplicity of this narrative.

In the midst of this didactic, self-conscious movie about a high school shooting comes an extraordinary and intense performance by a young actress named Busy Philipps, which elevates the whole picture.

Geoffrey Sax, a British television director making his theatrical debut, lavishes enough craft on the paranormal thriller to send more than a few chills down the spine.

Unlike "The Sixth Sense," the film's key revelation might be too mild to jolt audiences. Some may even feel cheated.

A slick enough thriller about a presidential assassination attempt. It is also a rather mechanical, soulless affair that avoids politics or anything else that might clearly define who these characters are and why we should care.

A teen comedy that possesses a wickedly satirical streak.

As a thriller, The Debt performs many if not all the right moves. Where the John Madden-directed film gets into trouble is in wanting to deal with the Holocaust without being entirely a period film.

Jarhead refuses to engage in its own point of view toward events it depicts. So the film feels empty and tentative, uncertain of what if anything these events add up to.

Jennifer Lopez carries this thin concept about as far and as well as she can, with Alex O'Loughlin in his first leading-man outing managing not to get lost in the shuffle.

The effect is impressionistic and provocative, with the emphasis falling differently on scenes because of our knowledge or lack thereof.

An underwhelming vampire romance long on camp but short on emotional insight

The film, well made in every way, smartly focuses on an unlikely friendship between Gretel and the athlete who ultimately replaced her -- a high jumper who was later revealed to be a man!

Eyre does a fine job overseeing performances by a terrific cast that rings true until female hysteria takes over the final act. But in tone and theme, the film has all the hallmarks of playwright-screenwriter Marber's stark, uncompromising misanthropy, if not misogyny.

A throwback to the days when Disney would recruit second- and third-tier stars to stroll through indifferently written, modestly produced comic fluff that served as family entertainment.

The film would make a better fit on television or at one of Disney's theme parks. In cinemas, Heart & Soul is an odd duck, out of sync with the current generation of documentarians whose films dig deep into stories and issues the media generally overlooks.

La Ronde 2011-style is simply a game and its makers expert gamesmen. The film is never less than intriguing. But the artifice shows all too clearly.

A muted psychological mystery where filmmaker Hilary Brougher's interest in "solving" a possible crime is superseded by her investigation into matters involving denial, free will and the physical and emotional burdens of pregnancy.

The movie telegraphs its intentions too early and relies too much on a single actor, Johnny Depp, to achieve its emotional force.

Awesome will please fans of the band, but expect little crossover to nonfans. No new ground is broken here. From a cinematic point of view, Awesome represents simply a monumental postproduction salvaging effort.

The film is messy the way Piaf's life was messy: It's unafraid of extravagant gestures even when they fail to come off.

Clearly, much care and intelligence have been lavished on discouraging, routine material.

Irish director Jim Sheridan, who has made his films in America in recent years, now delivers an American remake that hues closely to the original but loses some of its true grit.

The CG animation is nothing special, but the characters are surprisingly fun and the story is full of enough puns, wordplay and slapstick to elicit laughs from across the age spectrum.