Lisa Schwarzbaum

A superior lyrical ragamuffin Irish drama.

The antics are wacky -- but far from Wilde.

Actually, there's one other way to approach Matchstick Men, and that's to forget all about neuroses and con artistry and admire the movie instead for the unsettlingly beautiful directorial study in geographical mood that it is.

Leder establishes a syncopated rhythm unlike anything we're used to in a catastrophe spectacle.

As Carrie might type on her laptop while giving one of her girly little shrugs, When did Sex and the City become so long and mean so little?

Nanking, a carefully nonpunitive documentary of remembrance, is emotionally draining, as it should be, but it's also overstructured, as it needn't be; the actors are intrusive in a story that isn't theirs.

The comic moments in this ingratiating bit of malarkey from director Peter Cattaneo and screenwriter Simon Beaufoy (both TV trained, both making their feature debuts) are winning.

Connoisseurs of digital animation, graphic novels, and the history of dystopian art will have plenty to discuss about Christian Volckman's visually striking, technically impressive black-and-white animated feature Renaissance…But no one will be talking about the movie's banal plot, the trite dialogue, or any of the indistinguishable characters who offer a bleak futuristic vision of cinema that's all style, no soul.

As a work of art, the movie, shot quickly on digital video, is genial enough if unrefined.

There's wit but never a wink in this smartly shot production, which pays homage to the 1980s without fetishizing the era.

The film squanders every opportunity (and international-coproduction cent) on by now imitative Nine Inch Nails-video-style visual Goth-goo, and, scarily, forgets to input a plot or script that makes any sense.

The surprisingly puny haul comes from the jolly, usually sparkling comedy workshop of David Dobkin, who directed "Wedding Crashers," and Dan Fogelman, who wrote "Cars" -- two great movies that both make better stocking stuffers.

Brooks guards the movie from overheating in a surfeit of warmedy.

Older and sadder, Mulder and Scully are no longer sure they've got the energy to even ask if the truth is still out there. And it feels as if Carter is skeptical, too.

Miracle -- the title taken from TV announcer Al Michaels' famous game-clinching cheer, ''Do you believe in miracles? Yes!'' -- wins not when it exhorts by word but when it shows by action.

What willful streak of perversity inspired Kevin Costner to take on this wacky tale of a letter carrier-turned-postapocalyptic hero?

None of this detracts, however, from the terrific piss-and-merlot performances of Channing and Stiles, or from the committed participation of Frederick Weller as a Neil LaBute-era businessman caught in the lounge between two she-devils disguised as businesswomen.

Veteran French farceur Francis Veber proves that feature-length idiot humor is not limited to the Farrelly brothers.

A peculiar combination of willful meandering and matter of fact violence, and it occasionally confounds in its attempts to exalt.

Against all odds in heaven and hell, it creeped me out just fine.

Every once in a while, though, Firth's eyebrow hints, Can you believe I'm wearing this dorky leather breastplate?

A rich, dark, pulpy mess of entanglements that fulfills all the requirements of the genre, and is told with an ease and gusto that make the pulp tasty.

Ramis’ talented, underused SCTV colleague Eugene Levy makes a brief, welcome appearance as a nuttily dim cement contractor, but he’s a zany interlude in an otherwise muted, unzany tale.

Wafer-thin, content-light, structure-wobbly, and whimsy-heavy.

It's a toss-up as to what's the worse sin in this graceless piece of tragedy porn.

Walking the path grooved by such stone-faced confreres as De Niro and Schwarzenegger (and following up on his own more successful self-parody in "Men in Black"), Jones positions himself as a Man in a Stetson.

A jolting, artfully made drama set in and around a suburban playground somewhere between "American Beauty" and "In the Bedroom" on America's psychic highway.

Spiderwick is set in the present, but goes for an overall design look of dainty, cozy, William Morris-y arts-andcraftiness.