Maitland McDonagh

By the time it reaches its fiery finale, the film feels less mythic than self-consciously portentous.

This minimalist meditation on loneliness and loss is so spare and drained of color that it seems always on the verge of fading into invisibility.

The film's wittiest moment comes before it starts: the familiar MGM lion is replaced by a roaring crocodile when the studio's logo appears.

A sweat-slicked, near-abstract ballet of blood and sand.

As bad as the title, and much longer.

Ultimately, Coppola's pastel-colored take on Marie's life is beguiling and annoying in equal measure.

It's a raw, haunting experience.

The film deploys its disparate elements smartly, and director Hirotsugu Kawasaki can stage an action sequence with the best of them.

The Savages is funny in the if-you-didn't-laugh-you'd-cry way and superbly acted by all involved, including the supporting cast of home-care attendants, nurses, hospital administrators, intake personnel and nursing-home staff.

Just a little shy of twisting the knife that extra twist.

A leaden, tone-deaf remake of the 1955 Ealing comedy starring Alec Guinness, the Coen brothers' painfully unfunny rehash hinges on the duel of wits between five larcenous oddballs and one sweet but strong-willed old lady.

The multitalented Jaoui and Bacri excel on every level; her direction is efficient and unobtrusive, their script dissects the nuances of corruption by celebrity with a razor-sharp scalpel, and they deliver a pair of subtly unsparing performances.

The film's elliptical character development sometimes renders the actors' work opaque; restraint is an underpracticed virtue, but even it can be taken to excess.

The first fruit of wunderkinder Alicia Silverstone's First Kiss Productions, this muddled thriller-cum-romantic comedy of errors suggests that she might want to lay off the producing for a few years.

This underrrated shocker has developed a cult following since its scattershot 1973 release, but deserves a wider one.

This amazing footage alternates with interviews that include more than a dozen surviving members of the troupe, whose recollections are by turn funny, touching and mind-boggling. What a time!

If all this were anarchically funny, its shambling idiocy could be forgiven.

Bad enough that the plot is shopworn, but the tough-gal talk is unintentionally hilarious, and the complicated narrative structure is annoying and pointless.

Despite the handsome production values and best efforts of the attractive young cast, it's hard to get deeply involved with the frantic "what's going on?" sturm und drang.

The result is sheer, unadulterated nastiness with no apologies.

The film's Montana vistas are breathtakingly beautiful, and the crisis-in-the-hot-zone sequences are as spooky as those in Outbreak, but Seagal's monologues about the environment, biological warfare, Native American spirituality and natural medicine are excruciating.

Screenwriter Lona Williams doesn't seem to have gotten much beyond the petty absurdity of theme headdresses and ludicrous talent competitions.

Banderas inhabits the role of the mariachi with a feral grace undimished by the seven-year gap between films.

The brothers' dark, all-star farce about sex, lies and surveillance is pretty damned funny.

You don't have to be a chem-lab wonk to be seduced by the seven scientists who discuss their work and lives in this engaging film.

Kidman accomplishes a remarkable feat of transformation, adopting not only an accent, but a slightly seedy, faintly feral demeanor that almost makes you forget her icy good looks and fashion model's figure.

A rapt fascination with transcendent lunacy runs through Herzog's work, both fiction and documentary; while disdaining Treadwell's rhapsodically anthropomorphized vision of nature.

Slight, smart-alecky romantic comedy.

The film's style is best described as utilitarian, but it gets the job done; the performances range from good to a bit amateurish.

Make no mistake: This slackly paced picture doesn't gel.

Though generally sympathetic, the film manages (without stooping to clichéd moralizing) to suggest that being Ron Jeremy isn't the non-stop paradise his fans imagine.

A ludicrous mishmash undermined by ghastly performances and a hopelessly convoluted screenplay.

By the time Reilly's shaggy life story winds down, it's hard not to wish he'd been your friend, too.

Nasty fun all around.

The few minutes of footage devoted to a performance by bona fide jazz artist "Little" Jimmy Scott, an eccentric cult favorite, is more genuinely evocative than anything else in the film

The film's depiction of life among the salt of the earth is blandly cartoonish; and the "Super Sounds of the '70s" soundtrack meticulously matches songs to action, as though the filmmakers didn't trust viewers to figure out what these one-note characters were feeling.

A painfully claustrophobic picture.

Wright's haunting performance is the anchor that keeps Ruscio's film from vanishing down a rabbit hole.

It feels as though everyone involved was having a rollicking good time, and while the film itself is wildly uneven, Lin and company get in a few pointed jabs at Hollywood fatuousness and self-delusion, cultural stereotypes and '70s fashions.

The story is less a sustained narrative than a series of scenes. But personal dynamics are the main event, and McDormand's powerhouse performance alone compensates for many minor deficiencies.

While rich in ethnographic detail, the film ultimately recalls nothing more than pulp fictions like Robert E. Howard’s "Conan the Barbarian," which validate their worship of ubermensch-ian brawn by way of sad tales of childhood victimization.

This film is no exception to the rule that philosophical debate seldom spawns compelling cinema.

Viewers are left to draw their own conclusions, which inevitably will be colored by individual reactions to unabashed frontal nudity.

One-scene guest star Sissy Spacek packs enough genuine madness into her brief screen time to make the surrounding film feel like so much listless play-acting.

The film's underlying notion, that imperfection is the essence of humanity and the pursuit of bland flawlessness a kind of soul-killing drug, is far more compelling than its story of clichéd teen angst.

This psychological thriller takes its time and never delivers the big shocks genre fans raised on its American cousins have come to expect. But it works up a chilly atmosphere of creeping dread, and the tension.

It's an impressionistic experience rather than a linear one, and the process of surrendering to the images and rhythms of lives lived in simultaneous harmony with the physical and the spiritual is greatly helped by the chants that dominate much of the soundtrack.

If only this amiable shaggy dog story...didn't degenerate into an implausible, second-rate thriller after takeoff.

It's a one-gag film that rises or falls on how funny you find the sight of fat, grease-slicked Jack Black crammed into spandex pants and capering like an epileptic lamb.

Falls disappointing short of its ambition to be both sympathetically straightforward and funny.

Ultimately, Dick subordinates scholarship to passion, which may be exactly what it takes to convince mainstream moviegoers that they should care about a system that shortchanges THEM when they go to the movies.

Director Nancy Savoca's no-frills record of a show forged in still-raw emotions captures the unsettled tenor of that post 9-11 period far better than a more measured or polished production ever could.

So shallow and brainless it's in perpetual danger of drying up and blowing away.

Although notorious in South Africa, Stander is little known elsewhere and Canadian director Bronwen Hughes' unsatisfying account of his life and crimes is unlikely to earn him a spot on the outlaw celebrity A-list.

A sickly soft-swirl confection of low laughs and smarmy sentiment.

Affectionate, melancholy and anchored by a well thought-out performance from Sean Penn.

Steven Soderbergh's direction conjures an understated '70s vibe, striking an apparently effortless balance between grit and glamour.

Heartfelt but overly familiar film.

The performances are uneven and the loosely structured story never actually goes anywhere.

You don't have to know an arabesque from an alligator handbag to enjoy Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine's loving documentary about the various incarnations of the Ballet Russe.

Shot on digital video as murky as Masuoka's imagination, its creeping sense of dank dread is as slow to build as it is hard to shake.

Medem's stupendously gorgeous puzzle movie features strong performances from its four leads.

Pascal's low-key presence is particularly important, since in another actor's hands Alain's whining and waffling could easily be insufferable.

The payoff doesn't quite equal the intensity of the spectacularly squirm-inducing premise, but Farrell takes his showboating star turn and runs with it.

Fun if you like this kind of thing and don't expect too much of it.

Hartley's score is lovely and he makes excellent use of digital video, but the film's paucity of provocative ideas is its undoing.

A fresh and spirited fairy tale.

Kor's intentions are beyond reproach, but her campaign raises discomfiting questions.

Spare, rough around the edges and unsentimentally melancholy.

This package of three short films originally produced for German television is sex-themed without being especially sexy.

An utterly preposterous but entertaining sci-fi action brain-bender.

The story is predictable, but Reeder's performance is painfully convincing and the East Village locations so uniformly grimy that they all but weep despair.

The film's epic look is undermined by his narrow focus; in the end it feels rather thin and less than the sum of its handsome parts.

Casually paced and filled with telling detail, Yamada's delicate drama with swordplay (there's not much, but what there is packs an emotional wallop) transcends its specific setting in its depiction of Katagiri's internal struggle.

The movie's tone and plot twists are so ludicrously overwrought that even Washington's admirably restrained performance -- can't rescue it from its own excesses.

Lame, derivative comedy.

Without the top-notch cast it would be indistinguishable from hundreds of pedestrian serial-killer pictures that clog video store shelves.

This scattershot comedy (which might be called "irreverent" if anyone actually revered movies like AMERICAN PIE) features vulgar gags at the expense of recent youth-oriented pictures.

What could easily have been a sentimental, fannish exercise in musty nostalgia is in fact a lovely tribute to an era of feverish creativity that seemed as though it would never end yet now lives only in memory.

Screenwriter and co-director West -- who works in gay porn -- evinces an easy and even-handed familiarity with the milieu, and his characters only occasionally lapse into broad caricature.

Though the clash between old-world parents and their American-born children is familiar territory, New Jersey-born, Taiwan-raised director/cowriter Bay-Sa Pan gives the conflict a culturally particular spin and elicits strong performances from her appealing cast.

Despite its floating narrative, this is a remarkably accessible and haunting film.

The result is fearlessly divisive and will no doubt play according to viewers' preexisting perceptions.

A hyperactive hodgepodge.

The supporting cast is uniformly strong, with Simon McBurney standing out as an oily representative of the British foreign service.

No, it isn't as magically enchanting as the 1952 children's classic by E.B. White, any more than a museum-shop print of La Giaconda is as mysteriously beguiling as Leonardo's original. But this respectful, live-action adaptation of White's gentle tale about an undersized pig, a clever spider and the everyday marvels that too often pass unnoticed is a charmer nonetheless.

While far from the cream of the mockumentary crop, it's still a pleasant diversion.

It goes without saying that the humor is vulgar and juvenile.

Neither trite nor pandering, and that's what makes the film better than most of its peers.

A snapshot rather than a sustained look at Meat Loaf's tumultuous life and career, Klein's film is a revealing glimpse at the late career of a performer who looked a safe bet to die before he got old, then surprised everyone by hanging on long enough to find fans who weren't born when he started out.

Subtle performances and the "you are there" immediacy conferred by digital video give Roy's film the feel of a series of stolen moments.

Why would anyone who wanted his or her film to be taken seriously saddle it with a cutesy title like this?

This sour coming of age story is a testament to his self-centeredness and dogged perseverance.

What do you get when you cross a serial-killer movie with a sappy father/son drama and give it a time-travel twist?

Lacks a sense of bone-chilling dread.

The movie's performances, especially Lathan's, are strong enough to balance out the sometimes-clichéd script.

It would be hard to mount a straight-faced defense of Brisseau's feverish moral tale, complete with a lurking angel of death, but the carnal machinations are hugely entertaining -- particularly if you like your skin with a bracing sermon chaser.

The youngsters all turn in game performances, but the standout is Anne Heche, whose weird Missy Egan is pure Mimsy Farmer at maximum twitch.

Capably directed by Betty Thomas, this freewheeling pseudodocumentary tribute to Stern's juvenile antics paints the anarchic radio idol as Everyschmo made good.

No voice is more vivid than that of the writer of O, who died in 2002.

This rather obvious parable about soul mates benefits from luminous B&W cinematography, Paradis and Auteuil's luminous performances and the picturesque carny atmosphere.

This small-scale film isn't for all tastes. But veterans of the dating wars will smirk uneasily at the film's nightmare versions of everyday sex-in-the-city misadventures.

The creepy set pieces are repetitive and the payoff is rather unsatisfying, even though the prophecies do eventually pan out.

There are effective scenes and powerful performances scattered among long sequences in which various members of the family gaze into space as they contemplate the burden of the past, walk aimlessly through Atlanta or have odd encounters with strangers.

The script's vague, silly "explanation" for Linda's experiences -- nature abhors a spiritual vacuum, so weird stuff happens to the faithless -- is the icing on the irritation cake.

All's well that ends well, and rest assured, the consciousness-raising lessons are cloaked in gross-out gags.

Sad, leisurely road picture.

DiCillo's short, sharp snapshot about celebrity and life on the fringe has nothing new to say, but it says it with considerable charm and affection.

Newcomer Grace seems born to the part of an unformed young woman whose character cries out to be shaped, but it's Ivey's unobtrusive skill that shapes their onscreen relationship into something thoroughly convincing.

The whole enterprise has the sweaty sheen that comes from trying too hard to be cool.

A fantastic symphony of decay (Decay + Fantasia = Decasia), simultaneously heartbreakingly beautiful and exquisitely sad, pieced together from snippets of old films on the verge of oblivion.

The film is preposterous on so many counts that it's hard to enumerate them.

He (Allen) seems to have forgotten that comedy is all about timing, letting individual scenes meander -- often to accommodate his own stammering monologues -- and giving viewers far too much downtime in which to consider the staleness of many of the film's gags.

Vividly photographed in shimmering colors and driven by a propulsive score.

Thinly conceived and thoroughly shallow.

This smooth concoction goes down with a pleasant tingle and leaves behind a warm glow.

Lavishly costumed and shot largely on location, the film benefits from a phenomenal central performance by Lopez de Ayala.

The film's lingering exploration of their sleek surfaces verges on roboporn.

Clever though the premise is, the film's real strength is the smooth banter between Sam and Devon; it's never less than smart, often startlingly perceptive and always thoroughly convincing.

A very entertaining, hugely neurotic romantic comedy.

An exhilarating, funny and deeply sad story of growing pains that works on two levels; it's a feel-good story that quietly undermines the notion of gain without loss.

The story is familiar, but terrific performances and a vivid sense of place elevate it above the average teen-oriented picture.

This cautionary tale, complete with the swank cars, cool clothes and depraved babes that inevitably accompany degradation Hollywood style, is based on former sitcom scribe Jerry Stahl's lurid tell-all memoir of his descent into heroin addiction. Under the witty surface, the moral seems to be "The devil made me do it." Even by sitcom standards, that's old.

It's a terrific showcase for battling Boleyn babes Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman.

Lightweight, thoroughly charming fluff.

Davis' tough, man-of-the-people narration is often annoying, but his words can't diminish the power of his story.

Inventive visuals and funny bits abound, but the film's gritty look and unsentimental characterizations - Harry, Hermione and Ron are far from golden teens - ominously foreshadow the truly wicked shape of things to come.

This unsubtle parody probably worked better on stage; its candy-colored artifice looks more than a little strained on film, and the actors are all trying really hard to be camp.

Enthralling, darkly funny, horrifying and hopeful.

Though overall an overwhelmingly positive portrayal, the film doesn't ignore the more problematic aspects of Brown's life.

Ledger swirls his cassock glamorously, while Weller is clearly concealing cloven hoofs beneath his; Addy plays the fool and the one-note Sossamon is thoroughly annoying, as fey as Meg Tilly but without Tilly's redeeming faraway air.

Mark Boone Jr. makes a vivid impression as eccentric loner Beau Brower, and Danny Huston is mesmerizing as the leader of the shrieking, slashing, wallowing-in-gore bloodsuckers. They effortlessly eclipse the rest of the cast.

One of the flat-out creepiest films ever released by a major American studio.

The first two thirds of the screenplay by Aja and cowriter Gregory Levasseur is a relentless exercise in bare-bones nastiness.

While Burnam and Garrison imbue their characters with authentic-feeling frustration and anger, they never succeed in making them especially interesting; it's hard to care in any serious way what becomes of either.

The whole film is plagued by a sense of false, desperate cheerfulness.

The plot's preposterous and Affleck is way too callow for a role that would have fit Robert Mitchum like a second-hand suit.

Features generally crisp dialogue, solid performances by a mix of newcomers and familiar character actors, and Provenzano's direction is strikingly accomplished.

Is this sophisticated humor? No. But it is pretty entertaining.

Fatuous twaddle posing as a REALLY DEEP consideration of what's wrong with our crazy, mixed-up world, Matthew Ryan Hoge's slick but deeply dumb film unfolds in a picture-perfect suburb of Anywheresville, USA.

It's a cut above the throng of mindless, purported thrillers in which explosions and gun battles replace even rudimentary story telling.

Berlevag's 1300 inhabitants are by nature hardy and uncomplaining, but Knut Erik Jensen's unhurried documentary reveals that there's more to them than mere stoicism.

Romero isn't a subtle filmmaker -- the sociopolitical underpinnings of his DEAD films have always been brutally clear -- but LAND is alive with subtle touches.

It lacks "Fingers" searing, explosive vitality.

A beautifully acted slice of intersecting lives defined and driven by the business of beauty.

Though clearly shot on a shoestring, it's handsome, tightly written and generally well acted.

While the aerial dogfights are handsome and apparently historically accurate, right down to the tracer bullets that leave graceful, crisscrossing trails in the clouds, they have a video-game feel.

The greatest mystery, though, is how this thoroughly trashy picture wound up opening theatrically, rather than going direct to video.

This film will doubtless interest serious anime fans, but it won't win any converts.

Simply a series of set pieces designed to insure Angelina Jolie's status as action-babe pin-up.

The perky Aniston is both unflatteringly photographed and utterly unconvincing in the pivotal role of Lucinda, and overall the film has the oddly disconnected quality of '70s Euro-thrillers whose international casts spoke different languages on the set and were dubbed into conformity.

A cut above the preposterous action spectacles that now pass for espionage films.

It's almost three hours long, and that's a lot of time to invest in what is, essentially, a theme-park attraction you can't ride.

For all its impeccable indie credibility, writer-director Zoe Cassavetes' bittersweet romance is little more than a hipster chick flick in which the same old smart women make the usual foolish choices.

Sweet-natured, formulaic and ripe for an American remake.

This noisy, time-wasting spectacle is crammed with what purports to be characters, except that not one of them has any more depth than will fit into a one-line description.

This dazzling pop allegory is steeped in a dark, pulpy sensibility that transcends nostalgic pastiche and stands firmly on its own merits.

Labored and dispiriting.

Overall, Owen and Law are more nuanced than Roberts and Portman, but Portman's dewy youth is 90 percent of Alice (the remaining 10 is an eleventh-hour twist), and Nichols uses the unkindly costumed Roberts so skillfully that her performance looks like a revelation.

The locations and production design are breathtakingly beautiful. But though cast largely with Chinese actors, it was shot in English, which no doubt made business sense but almost certainly accounts for many truly awful performances.

Well acted and hugely entertaining, the film strikes a near-flawless balance between sly pop-culture allusions and the details of how business gets done under pressure.

A thrilling return to form.

Has honorable aspirations, even as it becomes mired in mainstream movie conventions.

Pays backhanded homage to Woody Allen via the travails of college loser Max (Gary Lundy), who fears that years of wallowing in "Annie Hall" have permanently poisoned his love life.

This dogged journey of self-delusion is interrupted periodically by snippets of footage...that promise a dark revelation that would give an edge to the otherwise tedious goings-on but, sadly, never materializes.

A strong cast that flounders in profoundly unappealing material.

Formulaic but well-acted variation on the theme of pursuing your dreams through dance.

This fast-paced entertainment is a surprisingly successful mix of spectacle and human-scale drama.

This disappointing sequel to last year's horror sleeper gets trapped in the clichés it's trying to send up.

Noisy, derivative and thoroughly preposterous even by the standards of 21st-century action movies.

Shimizu generates a sense of palpable dread in each segment, expertly manipulating tried-and-true scare tactics supplemented by a truly inspired use of spooky sound effects.

Though the specifics of the story may be unfamiliar to Western viewers, its broad outlines and underlying themes are universal, and Christopher Doyle's ravishing cinematography transcends language.

Ralston gets solid performances out of his cast, and the film has a surprisingly polished look. But in the end, there isn't much to it.

Shot as "Backwater" and test-screened as "The Reaper," this film contains a couple of bracingly mean sequences, but it cleaves so closely to the slasher-movie formula that it can't muster up any suspense at all.

(Griffith's) appearance often verges on the grotesque. Which, come to think of it, could be said of the movie as well.

The film is dreary and attenuated, the tedium broken only by the occasional golden moment when one of the stellar supporting players - Ron Silver as the principled presiding judge who alternately tolerates and quashes Jackie's antics, Peter Dinklage as the lead defense attorney or Annabella Sciorra as Jackie's ex - manages to cut through the clutter.

Tedious and obscure where it was apparently meant to be atmospheric and tantalizing.

The movie isn't "Blade Runner," but it's got some provocative ideas about the implications of cloning in a market-driven, capitalist society.

No one and nothing can be taken at face value in Beach's twisty tale of secrets and lies, which buries its very interesting idea in a welter of ludicrous dialogue and skin-flick imagery.

Without an assured character at its center, the movie quickly collapses in a heap of moldy clichés and contrived (and not especially funny) situations.

How engaging you find this loosely structured road movie will depend on how charming you find the over-aged slackers played by Josh Alexander, who also wrote the screenplay, and Robert Bogue.

Tricky thriller relies on its smoothly unrippled surface, leisurely pacing and slightly awkward performances to create a false sense of security that sets up viewers for a shock when it takes an abrupt turn into Patricia Highsmith territory.

Kilmer and Dorff, who was also an executive producer, immerse themselves in difficult roles.

The gorgeous Mole Antonelliana is the breakout star of Ferrario's fluffy valentine to the cinema.

"Make a Wish" (2003) actually beat this film to the gay-themed slasher-picture punch with its story of lesbians on a camping trip being stalked by a killer, but writer-director Paul Etheredge-Ouzts' background in art direction serves him well — his movie wins hands-down for style and attitude.

Jim Brown and Gary Burns hang a powerful antisuburban diatribe in the form of statistics, expert opinions and pictures worth a thousand words on the experiences of the Moss family.

Overall, the film is occasionally interesting but essentially unpersuasive, a footnote to a still evolving story.

Larry Bishop's painfully self-conscious homage to biker films of yesteryear is a carefully crafted pastiche that doesn't miss a wild-deadly-angels-devils-sadists-revenge cliché and can't hold a candle to the down-and-dirty likes of "The Glory Stompers."

The interactions between the raspy-voiced Hurt and various shallowly cheerful Americans are genuinely charming and dynamic.

Ratnam, known for integrating controversial cultural and political themes into popular melodramas, bundles a multitude of coming-of-age traumas into the kind of juicy, overwrought narrative that was once a Hollywood staple.

An amazing technical accomplishment that never becomes a coherent movie.

Suicide, child molestation, corruption, insanity and the faintest implication of incest are wound around the film's suggestion that the cure for modern-day alienation and anomie lies in embracing traditional Japanese culture, like ritual tattooing.

The story is slight and would probably be better suited to a short subject, but first-time feature filmmaker Pierre-Paul Renders gives it a striking formal twist: It's told entirely in the first person.

Both a biographical portrait and an exploration of the tradition of Jewish liturgical music in America.

Balaban and Nairn are radiant, with none of the mannerisms that so often make Hollywood actresses look like Stepford teens.

Would be too long even if it were twice as funny. And that about sums up the movie.

If the film ultimately amounts to little more than a middle-aged coming-of-age story, it's richly imagined and filled fanciful touches in keeping with its passionate subject.

A huge hit in France, Michel Hazanavicius' straight-faced spy spoof unleashes a French operative of incomparable incompetence on the volatile Middle East of 1955.

Wan's debut feature is a twisted, squirm-inducingly nasty bit of work, which isn't a criticism because that's exactly what he and cowriter Leigh Whannell had in mind.

Utterly enthralling even for viewers unfamiliar with the Congo's complicated political history.

The best thing about Fracture is the way in which it defies genre cliches and turns all Hopkins' mannerisms into assets.

Trapped uncomfortably between its higher aspirations and the demands of genre, this picture never quite gets its bearings, but it's still a solid ride.

A delicate watercolor dream of a ghost story, as insubstantial and tremulously haunting as an unquiet spirit.

Attal's characters are one-note position statements, which forces the unsubtle soundtrack - mostly American pop songs that range from the Velvet Underground's "Sunday Morning" to Radiohead's "Creep" - to bear the brunt of clarifying their thoughts and feelings. Without it, you'd be entirely in the dark.

Would be more appealing if the women's behavior weren't alternately moronic and venal.

Dopey "thriller."

The film pulls off a couple of "gotchas!", but the subtle creepiness of its predecessors is gone, replaced by a sense of numbing predictability.

Produced by the son of Trinity Broadcasting Network founder Paul Crouch, this historical epic offers a solid two hours of spectacle and intrigue drawn from The Book of Esther by way of Tommy Tenney and Mark Andrew Olsen's novel "Hadassah."

While movies like "The Long Riders" (1980) and "The Great Northfield, Minnesota Raid" (1972) aim to be serious considerations of the outlaws' lives and legends, this picture just wants to have fun.

The lesson is that money can buy a vanity project, but it can't buy talent, imagination or an audience.

The extremely intimate violence is more explicit than is the mainstream norm, and Dalle's mouth is the stuff of nightmares.

A slow-moving, dramatically slack film.

This ambitious independent feature eschews gore in favor of rubber-reality ambiguity.

Based on a short story by Joe R. Lansdale, this low-key oddity stresses character over broad laughs and shock effects, allowing Campbell and Davis to develop a quirky rapport that's a real pleasure to watch.

It's a shimmering, thorny, and consummately self-aware valentine to a paradise, however illusory, lost.

The occasional amusing one-liner can't compensate for the broad caricatures and awkwardly structured story.

Turturro's sweaty, lumpen Cain is a profoundly disagreeable guide down the rabbit hole of hallucinatory paranoia.

The extensive CGI work is well used and the children are exceptionally well cast, especially the girls.

Neither a conventional documentary nor a work of complete fiction, Hammer's film constructs a secret history, part imagination and part reality that is both revealing and slyly entertaining.

An astonishing act of synthesis, bringing together disparate Ripper theories and a fiercely idiosyncratic version of London's history, architecture, policing and social structure.

There's not much substantive food for thought.

The film rests entirely on Poupaud's shoulders, and he rises to the demands of a complex, deeply unsympathetic role.

Stone, the master of the epic conspiracy and the operatic spectacle of diametrically opposed forces at war for men's souls, is so entangled in the trees that he's lost sight of the forest -- who could have imagined?

Overall the film is a fascinating glimpse into an insular world that gives the lie to many clichés and showcases a group of dedicated artists.

It is ultimately a simplistic film that will play better to youngsters who wish their grandpas were this cool and to parents who are nostalgic for the kind of exceptional childhood they neither had nor can provide for their own children.

A dark delight that combines pop-culture wit and genuine emotional depth.

Postal's touches of wit are lost in the flying body parts, gross-out gags, and the full frontal spectacle of Foley's no-longer-private parts.

Frequently funny, generally fizzy and occasionally piercingly perceptive about the price love exacts.

The film's heart is the concert, whose highlights include "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?," "Wimoweh," "Guantanamera" and the crowd-pleasing "Have You Been to Jail for Justice?"

First written in the early '80s, Terrence Malick's fourth film in three decades is a trancelike take on the relationship of Native American princess Matoaka - better known by the nickname Pocahontas and English adventurer John Smith.

A rapper doesn't make the story fresh.

Witless comedy.

Funny, perceptive, bawdy, tragic and philosophical, pretty much everything a viewer -- or a listener -- could ask for.

Apparently intended as a larky, character-driven adventure with dark underpinnings, this attenuated road movie was originally envisioned as a vehicle for relative unknowns, and might have worked better that way.

Slick, stylish and super-violent, but also oddly dull.

The mere sight of strapping men in micro-mini skirts suffering the indignities of thong underwear, catcalls and pushy pick-up artists is good for a couple of lowbrow laughs, but they're buried pretty deep in dreck.

There's nothing much new going on here (we feel compelled to point out the resemblance to one of the worst-ever episodes of The X-Files, "Teso Los Bichos"), but it's all slickly done, with the requisite big jumps, false leads, weird science and scary trips down dark corridors.

Unlike Woo's successful but rather disappointing "Broken Arrow", this brutal, stunningly choreographed spectacle weaves together lyrical beauty, blasphemy, sadistic cruelty and grotesque sentimentality with breathtakingly smooth assurance.

God bless Jennifer Tilly, who attacks her role in this third sequel to 1988's killer-doll picture CHILD'S PLAY with incomparable slutty brio.

Overall, the film falls into some comforting cocoon midway between affectionate spoof and adoring homage, much like Keillor's warmly nostalgic show.

You can't beat on Dead Man's on value-for-money terms, but it's like an all-you-can-eat buffet -- everything's tasty, the surfeit is sickening.

A preposterous misfire.

This efficient fright machine features a knowing cameo by Curtis's mom -- "Psycho's" Janet Leigh -- a couple of bloody good scares and a genuinely affecting performance from Curtis.

In a story driven by questions of loyalty and allegiance, no candidate is identified by party. It's a bipartisan nightmare from which no one escapes unscathed.

This cheeky fable rests on the slender shoulders of Etel and McGibbon, and the lovely, natural performances Boyle elicits from them are the film's real miracle.

The surprise is how tame and passionless it all seems, particularly after director Philip Haas's fevered "Angels and Insects."

Though Dylan shuffles through the dramatic sequences like a dessicated mummy, the music sequences are strikingly vibrant -- he's never looked worse or sounded better.

Winslet and Keitel are perfectly matched, go-for-broke actors handed dramatic license to do a psychic striptease.

Uncomfortable hodgepodge of poignant fantasy, showbiz satire and crime thriller.

The movie's greatest strength lies in phenomenal performances that reach from the leads right down to the smallest supporting roles.

Vulgar doesn't begin to describe it: Try one of the foulest, least funny films ever made under the rubric of black comedy.

Tarantino maintains a flawless balance between flat-out action, quirky dialogue, stylish homages to the glistening shadows of film-noir thrillers, the sun-baked brutality of Westerns (American and Italian), the ritualistic rhythms of Shaw Brothers martial-arts pictures from the 1970s and quietly dramatic moments, shifting between them with quicksilver facility.

Formulaic but surprisingly affecting drama.

By turns enthralling, seductive and deeply disturbing.

If you were watching it at home you wouldn't feel compelled to pause the film before going into the kitchen to fix a snack.

A military satire in the tradition of M*A*S*H and Catch-22, based on Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa's 1973 book.

Mediocre documentary squanders a terrific subject.

This intimate, bittersweet romance is proof that a familiar story and the trappings of a done-to-death era can still seem fresh and engaging in the right hands.

Though the performances are surprisingly good - the characters are drawn with a broad brush, but the actors, almost all professional comics, hit all the right notes - the material just isn't funny enough to justify the film's length.

Yes, it's a testosterone cocktail, but at least it doesn't leave you feeling as though you've been tumbled around in a gem polisher for two-and-a-half hours.

The film delivers a few slick thrills before beaching itself on an ending that would be chilling if its depiction of unimaginable horror's lingering legacy weren't so muddled.

It careens from coarse comedy to smart-ass stylization to vicious violence without ever becoming convincing on any level.

In the end, sharp writing and terrific performances can't compensate for the fact that the back-and-forth between a sour scribe and a manipulative celebrity doesn't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.