Kirk Honeycutt

Is Kill Bill a homage to great Asian action movies? Yes. Is Tarantino trying to outdo his cherished masters (on a budget that dwarfs their films)? Of course. Is there any other point of any of this? Let's see "Vol. 2."

This is a discouragingly limp movie in which nothing is at stake.

Infamous gives you the unique opportunity to see how two sets of filmmakers can take exactly the same story, make extremely tough though different choices in emphasis and tone and achieve brilliant movies.

The filmmakers were right to believe that a live-action version of this story would have failed to achieve the universality Persepolis does.

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.

A sobering yet hysterically funny documentary.

The movie suffers perhaps from too many characters and subplots but all the actors appear to have fun with their characters.

The guy knows how to make a heart-pounding movie; he just happens to be a cinematic sadist.

Hopkins' performance flat-out works.

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

There is something undeniable hypnotic and bewitching about Tatia Rosenthal's $9.99, which if nothing else is a candidate for the most unusual film of 2008.

The new gimmick here is that all the flying body parts and absurd impalements come in 3D. And that's about as inspired as anything gets in this edition. Story and character get chucked to the sidelines as the arena has room for only death scenes.

This is, in a way, a real horror film about everyday things and a disconnected family.

Will richly award locals with sly in-jokes and a wonderful comic performance by Bruhl. Non-Germans will certainly get the essence of the humor but may find the movie long and repetitive.

In retelling the still-astonishing story of the political career of Eliot Spitzer, a shooting star whose spectacular crash might forever obscure his accomplishments, Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney has all the ingredients for a potboiler: greed, corruption, sex, power, overweening ambition and jaw-dropping hubris.

A pitch-perfect ensemble comedy that burrows deep into the mind-set of white, upper middle-class Angelenos, anxious to strike the right balance among career, family, love life and money but never quite pulling it off.

His heart -- and musical soul -- is in the right place, but the film makes you at times uncomfortable with black and Southern stereotypes that may hinder some from fully enjoying an otherwise benign and cheerful tall tale of the Saturday night when rock came to rural Alabama.

The final episode of George Lucas' cinematic epic "Star Wars" ends the six-movie series on such a high note that one feels like yelling out, "Rewind!" Yes, rewind through more than 13 hours of bravery, treachery, new worlds, odd creatures and human frailty.

This fascinating relationship gets smothered in pointlessly long takes, repetitive scenes, grim Western landscapes and mumbled, heavily accented dialogue.

The movie entertains, but it's a shallow entertainment where you have no rooting interest in the outcome.

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.

New wave Bollywood at its best, a Hindi-language film from a Mumbai studio that shows the influence of American and foreign films.

May be too clever for its own good. Essentially, it's the story of weekend scientists who build a time machine in a suburban garage. But this nearly gets lost in a miasma of technical jargon and scientific conjecture.

It's a pleasure to experience Scorsese as a circus master. One just hopes he doesn't continue in this vein.

A slow meander through the mostly stagnant life of a character hardly worth the bother.

The 3-D footage of Titanic does speak volumes, and sometimes the sheer fussiness of all the ghosts and archival images get in the way. As huge as the Imax screen is, when six different images vie for one's attention, it looks cluttered.

Now Batmanglij and Marling deliver another terrific and engrossing venture into speculative fiction, Sound of My Voice.

Moore stays "on message" here from first shot to last. There is no debate, no analysis of facts or search for historical context. Moore simply wants to blame one man and his family for the situation in Iraq the United States now finds itself in…So the real question is not how good a film is Fahrenheit 9/11 -- it is undoubtedly Moore's weakest -- but will a film help to get a president fired?

In this film, directed by Mike Nichols in one of his most satirical moods and scripted by Hollywood's most politically astute writer Aaron Sorkin, a womanizing, alcoholic, easily tempted bachelor gets elected in a Texas district that doesn't care what he does as long as he brings home the bacon.

The best one yet.

Yet music, the one thing that might have given the film some kick, is de-emphasized, with only two songs sneaking into the picture.

The details are what matters, and thanks to a cast of all-star British elders and a mischievous sense of humor, the filmmakers bring those details to vivid life.

The film is thought-provoking but not terribly involving.

Chabrol has been making and remaking this film for six decades now. He seemingly will never tire of explaining how tired he is of the petit bourgeoisie.

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

Limitless should be so much smarter than it is.

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

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

An arresting visual style cannot make up for lack of new information or viewpoints about the Green Revolution in 2009 Iran.

This topsy-turvy funeral produces a number of smiles, giggles, pleasant guffaws and several solid, sustained laughs. Not a bad batting average as comedies go.

A backyard ecological comedy outfitted with some fine, silly slapstick and clever animal characters.

What this strange yet strangely beguiling film does is capture one of pop culture's great entertainers in the feverish grips of pure creativity.

Pretentious to the core and lacking any context or credible characterizations.

More than delivers on the excitement and terror of this existential flirtation with one's own mortality. Where it falters is trying to link this event to Nazi-era politics and a feeble love story.

This is a film of terrific selectivity. By focusing on two of the few who did survive the collapse, the film achieves emotional power and an uplifting ending.

Noir never has been this dark.

Weitz gives all his actors room to shine.

A compelling albeit highly discouraging portrait.

Lacks the wonder, surprises and supercool attitude Cameron achieved. "T3" is no weak sister, though. With Arnold Schwarzenegger back as the iconic title character and an often witty, fast-paced script by John Brancato, Michael Ferris and Tedi Sarafian, audiences worldwide will embrace the new film.

As enjoyable as this foodie movie is, you wish it would take a deeper, more nuanced measure of the women who, in two different eras, star in the movie's kitchens.

Sticking to its simplistic, patriotic origins, where a muscular red, white and blue GI slugging Adolf Hitler in the jaw is all that's required, Captain America trafficks in red-blooded heroes, dastardly villains, classy dames and war-weary military officers.

The film also does something quite remarkable for an American film: It makes middle-age love look sexy and hugely satisfying.

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

Results in an edgy comedy, where laughs stem at times from uncomfortable situations. In other words, Mean Girls lives up to its title.

A riveting tale of survival and how even war cannot diminish a child's indomitable spirit.

In American Me, Edward James Olmos has achieved several important goals, but one outweighs the rest: he has made a film that will scare the hell out of any inner-city youth not already lost to the hopelessness of gangs, drugs and prison. [9 Mar 1992]

The whole film, a comedy about crime and mental illness, seems at war with itself.

Audiences might enjoy this cinematic sleight of hand, but the key characters are such single-minded, calculating individuals that the real magic would be to find any heart in this tale.

So don't tell Spurlock he can't have his cake and eat it too. In Greatest Movie, he gleefully accepts his sponsorships on camera just to show you how wrong this all is.

A meticulously observed story about fathers and sons within the Argentine Jewish community...What the film desperately lacks, however, is any meaningful conflict. Thus, there is little story here.

Earns an A for effort but a much lower grade in the entertainment department.

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

The best science fiction tells stories about people in extraordinary environments or situations that serve to open up the vast, still largely unexplored terrain of the human heart. Mike Cahill's Another Earth is science fiction at its best.

A complete wipeout.

The film's dramatic moments are small but exquisitely rendered so that you feel the emotions experienced so many years ago. The film lingers afterward in your mind like a favorite vacation that triggered moments of sheer intensity.

While the film is made in English by a mostly Greek crew, Buzz"seems geared to foreign audiences. The film's "historians" spend too much time explaining things about Hollywood that are common knowledge to many Americans.

Smith, sporting a newly buffed physique, delivers an extraordinary performance as a man slowly coming unglued under the strain of no human contact and a constantly alternating role of hunter and prey.

A disappointing and manipulative look at one family's loss in the Iraq war.

Lemming does possess a mordant humor as it watches characters spin out of control. But the payoff is slight.

The film, while slavishly faithful, contains little innovative juice outside of its visual richness.

Has a demented sense of humor, and the cleverness of its taut narrative structure and misanthropic characterizations constantly surprises a viewer. The movie does what you wish more first-time features would do: tell a story economically with first-rate actors and no hint of self-consciousness.

A slim idea for a pulp-fiction short story padded out to 81 minutes with random encounters and celebrity sightings.

Determined to be faithful to the strong, often shocking language and in-your-face drama in Marber's mannered writing, Nichols and his actors find no way to lift Closer into a realm that enlightens.

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.

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."

An earnest drama about the search for self-esteem and sense of responsibility among young black people that successfully relies on its fine actors.

The guy really goes all out in these performances.

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

It's undeniably fascinating, but you might want to take a shower after hanging out with this unsavory bunch.

By the movie's end, writer-director Karen Moncrieff's The Dead Girl delivers considerable emotional impact. But that doesn't mean you've enjoyed the journey.

The vigor and pace is electric, and the movie features three showy performances by Kristen Stewart, Dakota Fanning and Michael Shannon.

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.

Salt moves ever forward -- pushing, pushing, pushing its heroine to greater feats every minute. It doesn't stop for martinis, either shaken or stirred, or any other detours. The movie is lean and muscular, looking for action even in situations where a little sleight of hand might have done the trick.

The film just doesn't mine enough humor or drama from this situation. Meanwhile most of the developments are wholly predictable.

The Matador gets a 151-proof tequila shot of sharp comedy from the droll byplay between Pierce Brosnan and Greg Kinnear.

Things are too predictable. Perhaps the viewpoint is to blame.

Provides Steve Carell and Juliette Binoche with comic roles that fit them like designer threads.

In watching this film, it's best not to worry much about the film's fidelity to history but rather simply lean back and enjoy one great jam session on film.

It has enough laughs, character arcs, politically incorrect rants and a satisfying emotional ending to more than justify this whim on Smith's part.

It has style to burn, eye-catching acting by an international cast and a story that harkens back to many literary classic with its themes of a family torn apart, brothers in conflict and a son's rivalry with a towering father figure.

All the acting is solid including a knock-'em-dead single scene by Annabella Sciorra as Jackie's ex-wife.

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

Edward Norton serves as lead actor and producer, but even his star power won't help this misfire reach a wide domestic audience.

You could point a camera just about anywhere at Comic-Con and record something weird, amazing, funny, stupid or all of the above.

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.

A one-note, lightweight, condescending comedy about the rubes of Idaho.

The film is a genuinely gripping tale about international terrorism that hopscotches across three continents.

Sunshine is its own creature, taking inspiration from classic science fiction films but insisting on a gritty reality that much improves on past space adventures.