Kirk Honeycutt

Pure's lively and colorful cinematic style turns a "downer" story about grim lives and desperation into a powerful love story.

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.

In "Virginia Woolf," George and Martha are locked into a symbiotic, disturbingly needy relationship that absolutely feed off their acidic battles. But for Revolutionary Road's Frank and April Wheeler, you wonder: Why don't they just get a divorce?

It's simply old-school stunts and movie magic.

The movie is fun, with plenty of intrigue and suspense that will have audiences clutching at their arm rests.

The film is unusual in that it is a co-production with the Chinese. Whatever difficulties this imposed on the Western filmmakers, the reward is a period film that feel authentic to its time and place.

A satisfying comic gem.

The film penetrates the myth and mythos surrounding Wilson, making his works more accessible and open to those of us who sometimes puzzle over the methods and meanings in his cerebral, psychologically complex expressionism. The film should engender an art house following in sophisticated urban venues before its HBO broadcast.

This attractive cast may help get an audience, but they will surely puzzle over such a downward-spiraling story that lacks inner logic.

The two key roles are wonderfully cast with Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn and the gross-but-not-too-gross humor will score with young moviegoers. But Wedding Crashers is still a letdown. The film never quite lives up to the promise of its premise.

An unconvincing psychosexual drama that tries to reconfigure the classic romantic triangle but winds up looking like a preposterous pretzel.