Maitland McDonagh

The material is familiar, and doesn't have anything new to say about the ways men and women wound each other.

The film satisfies on both visceral and emotional levels.

Despite its length, the film only starts feeling as long at the end -- or, more correctly, ends. Serious fans of the novels will be prepared for the serial codicils, but the uninitiated are likely to think the film is over several times before it actually is.

Contains several profanely amusing moments, but they don't add up to much.

Ambitious, deeply flawed and studded with sequences that achieve pure, majestic greatness.

It's a hugely entertaining slice of sunbaked Gothic.

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.

It's a mixed blessing, in some ways even richer and more atmospheric than the original version, in others attenuated and logy.

Above all, Jackson evokes an almost palpable sense of the will to power trapped within the ring. Without this evocation of the ring's insidious ability to sniff out the potential for corruption and capitalize on it, the entire enterprise would be precious drivel.

Director Curtis Hanson keeps the hugely complicated story zooming along the boulevard of broken dreams without losing sight of the details that make the trip worthwhile.

It's dramatically unsatisfying.

Piercing, sweetly melancholy and acted with a breathtaking eye for nuance.

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

A stale rehash of Woody Allen-style "he's a neurotic Jew, she's a flaky shiksa" gags.

Mirren, who's played her share of queens in the past, is hypnotic.

Pekar's autobiographical chronicle of day-to-day banality is a rich, if dingy, tapestry of ordinary life in all its infinite, homely peculiarity, which filmmakers Sheri Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini bring to uniquely eccentric life.

Such a glorious cast, deployed to such trivial effect!

A loving, gently funny and slightly claustrophobic tribute to theatrical life.

Bizarre, utterly original and truly indescribable comedy...You just have to see it for yourself.

The result is truly a family film, not a kiddie time-waster that throws the occasional sop to adults; whether you like or love it is a function of how vividly the material reflects your own childhood fantasies.

A cool indictment of television's near-irresistible pandering to the inner peeping tom.

This film pivots on a romantic triangle as overwrought as it is stylized. It's like a Douglas Sirk melodrama ratcheted up with fists of fury and wrapped in apparently endless yards of shimmering silk.

For what could easily have been a slickly vulgar variation on "American Pie" or "Porky's", this libidinous comedy explores some unusually complicated territory, and benefits greatly from Verdú's unpredictable performance as Luisa.

It's a fearless performance and yields some squirm-inducingly funny moments.

Anderson is a master of detail, from the film's ubiquitous fish motif to the elaborate carnival set piece that unfolds inside the claustrophobic confines of a spook-house ride called "Route 666."

Lee occasionally stumbles as a documentarian... But the material is so profoundly moving that it hardly matters.

But the real marvel is that beneath the ghoulish in-jokes and horror-geek allusions, there's a core of the same bittersweet truth that makes the best fairy tales resonate from one generation to the next.

This thin, clichéd comedy of crime and social climbing contains some scattered laughs and whole lot of padding.