Kirk Honeycutt

Utterly compelling account of a true-life criminal investigation where "truth" can never be pinned down.

The acting is overly broad, so even the dimmest light bulb in the audience gets the gags.

A downbeat story line layered with philosophical discourses will restrict the audience to fans of the animated genre.

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.

The stroke of genius is, of course, the film's hero -- the big, lovable bear that is the Chinese panda.

While the film sometimes plays like an hour TV medical drama padded to reach feature length, Sawant achieves touching, naturalistic performances from a fine ensemble cast.

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

Sherlock Holmes goes wrong in many ways except for one -- at the boxoffice.

A really terrific, intensely focused documentary on a fascinating personality.

It took three films, but The Twilight Saga finally nails just the right tone in Eclipse, a film that neatly balances the teenage operatic passions from Stephenie Meyer's novels with the movies' supernatural trappings.

Joel and Ethan Coen clearly are in a prankish mood, knocking out a minor piece of silliness with all the trappings of an A-list studio movie.

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

In I Think I Love My Wife, Chris Rock does something entirely unexpected. He isn't funny.

The Swedish video and commercial director seeks artistic adventure but winds up with pointless self-indulgence.

Could develop a cult following. But it is hard to envision repeat viewings or any great number of people willing, even vicariously, to undergo the couple's ordeal.

Despicable doesn't measure up to Pixar at its best. Nonetheless, it's funny, clever and warmly animated with memorable characters.

Terrence Howard delivers another solid lead performance and competition swimming is a new arena for such films. Nonetheless, Pride is just plain trite.

How can a director as savvy as Lee make so many errors of judgment regarding taste, tone, intention and dramatic structure?

With strong visuals and even stronger emotions, Rachid Bouchareb's Days of Glory makes a powerful war film about a particularly unique subject.

This is a minor film from a master, which is disappointing, but nevertheless it has its charms, most notably in the acting by a cast of stage and screen veterans.

Noir never has been this dark.

A dull actioner that looks like a bad video game.

Nothing anchors the lighter-than-air story as it drifts away under the direction of Stephen Norrington ("Blade") into an FX stratosphere where wit, character and vigorous storytelling cease to matter.

Lame sketch comedy, an uninspired performance from Will Ferrell and an overall failure of the imagination turn Brad Silberling's Land of the Lost into a lethargic meander through a wilderness of misfiring gags.

Hopkins' performance flat-out works.

Hoffman emerges as a confident film director with visual flair and, no surprise, a remarkable ability to maximize his fellow actors' work.

A protracted and uninvolving affair in which men battle over issues that audiences may struggle to find compelling, and no central figure emerges to take command of the film.

There's really not much of an audience for this picture. The movie demands that its viewers put the fragmented images and information together like an intellectual jigsaw puzzle, but it never gives those viewers a good reason to do so.

Brilliantly sung by an extremely talented lyric theater company in Cape Town called Dimpho Di Kopane. Whether this all works will be a matter of opinion -- mine is that it does not -- but the experiment is fascinating.

A lackluster affair, devoid of laughs and just about anything else one might construe as entertainment.

Herbie: Fully Loaded is, pure and simple, a children's film.

Edward Burns' best riff yet on guys trying to sort out their feelings about women.

Turning away from his highly entertaining epics "Hero" and "House of Flying Daggers," Zhang Yimou goes for utter simplicity in Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles, a film of much distilled wit and wisdom.

Delicious slapstick, droll wit and terrific characters make Aardman's first venture in CG cartooning a great success.

The new "Freaky" plays the obvious gags in ways both surprising and imaginative.

Kim Ki-duk keeps dialogue to a minimum and actions simple in what is virtually a two-character piece. Humor arrives organically, often resulting in hearty laughs.

Fulfills the requirements of grand-scale moviemaking while serving as a timely reminder that in the conflict between Christianity and Islam it was the Christians who picked the first fight.

The issue of sexual politics so dominates the story that it's a relief when an emotional showdown involves family rather than workplace issues. Not so surprisingly, these are the movie's best scenes.

Morrissey gives a stiff, awkward performance, while Stone moves dangerously close to overplaying the femme fatale. There is little if any intrigue in the story or the characters. Even the murders don't even seem to matter much.

Audience can certainly find entertainment in this movie, so long as no one takes things too seriously. One suspects, however, that Zaillian and a vast team of producers and executive producers that includes political consultant and pundit James Carville believe they are making a serious commentary on American politics. It comes closer to kitsch.

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.

Noisy, standard-issue cop actioner.

In his second feature as a director, Gallo acts as writer, director, producer, star, cinematographer, production designer and editor. Thus, the failure is all his.

A delightful though wafer-thin starring vehicle for one of our finest actresses, Annette Bening.

The sheer nastiness of the jealous one-upmanship and angry sabotage puts a damper on the yuletide comedy. You're much better off watching a DVD of "Bad Santa."

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.

In the revisionist Marie Antoinette, writer-director Sofia Coppola and actress Kirsten Dunst take a remote and no doubt misunderstood historical figure, the controversial and often despised Queen of France at the time of the French Revolution, and brings her into sharp focus as a living, breathing human being with flaws, foibles, passions, intelligence and warm affections.

In spite of its portentousness, the film does engage one.

The movie so deftly mixes sentimentality, romance and bathos in just the right measures that her fans and maybe new ones will enjoy the new Miley.

While the sadism doesn't stoop -- rise? -- to the level of the "Saw" horror-thrillers, Vacancy does have a name cast.

The only thing that can explain middle-aged men acting like 6-year-olds is mental retardation, and there's nothing funny about that. The idea of middle-aged actors playing adolescents isn't much funnier. Put it this way: Such an idea does not make for an inexhaustible source of comedy.

The freshness and ingenuity of this techno-thriller should spark a cult following among sci-fi fans at the very least, but the film could make inroads among cineastes, adult adventure-seekers and the Latino community as well.

Allen turns the character into a tour de force that unleashes an unexpected comedy about compassion and self-loathing.

Just lousy.

If you were keeping score, it would be Quentin Tarantino 1, Robert Rodriguez 0.

A smooth blend of visual special effects, exceptional stunts, fluid photography, sharp design and a possible best-selling soundtrack.

Red Eye has a devilish charm. It pulls just about every nail-biting, edge-of-your-seat trick imaginable, yet gets away with it through what is, admittedly, a clever and original gimmick.

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.

Four terrific performances make the transition to a U.S. setting go smoothly for British director Udayan Prasad.

In the end, an audience has far too much knowledge about Gregoire's movie projects and finances and far too little about what makes anyone here tick.

Fugitive Pieces has a sharp, devastating story to tell.

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.