Kirk Honeycutt

An enjoyable spoof of Mexican soap operas and the entertainment business itself. The film doesn't ask to be taken seriously but if you absolutely insist, there is pointed commentary about the deep divisions within that society over skin color, gender politics and social backgrounds.

Stirring tale of a team whose big win speeds the integration of intercollegiate sports.

Hop delivers plenty of wit, verve and surreal mayhem to entice even the post-adolescent crowd into this jolly (and strangely Christmas-like) Easter egg hunt.

A popcorn movie that reaches back to the fantasy epics of old and forward into the digital future, where the word "unimaginable" no longer exists.

Stephen Mirrione's fast-paced editing and David Holmes' pop-rock score propel the story ever forward whether one follows the twists or not.

Provides a treasure trove of outrageous characters, rampant speculation, personal obsessions and a glimpse into the rarefied world of art collecting. Instead of spinning off in so many directions, the film actually pulls together into an engrossing meditation on the value of art in our lives.

Plays like an Alfred Hitchcock thriller but is nevertheless a movie of ideas. It bristles with intriguing thoughts about the realm of fiction, how one loves, issues of identity and questions concerning how one transfers a real-life incident into big-screen fiction. This is a film that can crawl inside your skin.

Gwyneth Paltrow is triumphant in this somewhat derivative and overly stage-bound film.

If sheer cleverness were everything, Robots would be the best computer-animated cartoon yet…Yet, unlike the very best CG animation, Robots doesn't quite connect with the emotions and humor for which one yearns in cartoons.

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."