Maitland McDonagh

Frankenheimer pretty much ignores everything that's happened in the action and thriller genres since 1975, and mostly that's a good thing.

Stanford's script is painfully obvious, right down to the line of dialogue spelling out the title's significance.

There are two kinds of police officers in David Ayers and James Ellroy's convoluted, ultraviolent tale of corruption within the LAPD: dirty cops and dirtier ones.

The overall effect is either exhilarating or exhausting, depending on your emotional investment in the franchise, but credit where credit is due: Steven Spielberg and George Lucas set out to make one for the fans and delivered.

For all her own frustrations, Davenport is honest enough not to gloss over the fact that what Muthana's adventures in the screen trade taught him was to hustle, toady and ingratiate himself to useful people. And she helped.

Though inspired by Weiland's own childhood, the film's plot sticks close to the underdog's coming-of-age formula and is marred by young Bernie's gratingly self-pitying voice-over.

Is it funny? Sporadically.

The resulting awkward, earthbound mishmash thoroughly overshadows Judd and Kline's authentically moving performances.

It's ultimately hard to care deeply about a silly, sheltered girl-woman who's taking an inordinately long time to learn that money can't buy happiness.

A tour de force and an utter delight, studded with priceless supporting bits by Miriam Margolyes, Maury Chaykin, Rosemary Harris and Rita Tushingham, each of whom steals at least one richly deserved moment in the spotlight.

Roos' sly, throwaway insights into the ways people deceive and undermine themselves are both ruefully funny and painfully on the mark.

This Australian tear-jerker finds more humor than you'd imagine possible in the story of a dying woman getting to know her adult children.

A sober, earnest drama about child abuse.

Vonnegut's brand of juvenile surrealism...doesn't age especially well...but it could hardly be worse served than to be brought to the screen with such ham-fisted literal-mindedness.

Adds little to the annals of werewolf lore. But it's briskly paced and features a couple of clever twists on genre conventions.

Maybe the life was edited out of it in the two years between shooting and release, or maybe Dominik was simply overwhelmed by the outsized myths of the West, but the film only comes to life after James' death, when Ford quite literally takes center stage.

Nolan's intention was clearly to cast the material in a more conventional Hollywood mold without turning it into namby-pamby nonsense, and he succeeds admirably.

No matter how you spin Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky's chronicle of headbangers on the couch, it sounds like a pitch-perfect parody in "Beyond Spinal Tap" mode. If anything, knowing it's no joke makes it harder not to giggle.

The film rests on Depp's evocation of Barrie's gentle, playfulness and deeply buried sorrows; it's difficult to imagine another actor so gracefully evoking Barrie's childlike qualities without seeming creepy or emotionally malformed, and only the hard of heart will come away dry-eyed.

Overall it's a colorful, diverting cautionary tale.

Yet another variation on the theme of Ambrose Bierce's "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge." If you've read the short story, you'll see where things are going in no time flat; if you haven't and want to be surprised, don't look it up.

The film, though admirably ambitious, is resolutely earthbound, mired in ick and slime and never more wooden than in the delirious climax.

It's vivid evidence that great music and stories transcend time and place.

This picture's b-movie values probably play better on video than in theaters.

The movie opens with the dismal statistic that most teachers quit after three years. Akel and Mass see the humor in the situation, but the laughs are small and sad.

Weepy, overwrought love story.

Though too long by a good half hour, Lee's latest film packs a genuine emotional punch, largely because its polemical agenda doesn't entirely eclipse the drama.

Equal parts soap drama and ham-fisted morality tale.