Marc Savlov

As a vehicle for Moore's acting abilities (and Mortensen's, for that matter), G.I. Jane is terrific. But as the end-of-summer blockbuster it's doubtless intended to be, it's pretty much a washout.

Lynch, who penned the screenplay with novelist Barry Gifford (Wild at Heart), seems to be attempting to capture not just a sense of place and time (it never works -- Lost Highway is wholly, irrevocably, out of place and without any linear time or time line to speak of), but also a sense of madness.

Forster should be commended for attempting something as daunting as the overreaching Stay, which despite all of its muddled logic and porous reality – or perhaps because of it – forces you to think, a genuine rarity these days.

It's a mess, but it's Wenders' mess, and that means that there are any number of salvageable parts to the whole.

Jorgen Persson's camerawork is spectacular, illuminating the cobalt blue of the frozen wastes with an almost regal air. As a travelogue, August's film works wonders; as a narrative, it's just not all there.

Despite the movie’s lack of anything resembling a narrative center, Testosterone isn't an entire waste of film stock – Sutcliffe, Sabato Jr., and especially the great Braga all act up a storm.

It's a noble effort, but aficionados and the mildly interested are recommended to seek out VH-1's excellent Studio 54 documentary in lieu of this shallow morality play.

As a period mystery, however, it's as muddy and swirling as the actual record of that fateful, deadly weekend cruise.

Dahl, who really does know what he's doing when it comes to investing a scene with both heebies and jeebies, is a notch or two above most.

Looks like a million bucks (or rather, a million bucks gone to compost), but at its dark heart it's a tedious, bewildering affair, lovely to look at but with all the substance of a dissipating dream.

Gratuitous in every sense of the word, this second remake of 1978's Joe Dante-directed/Roger Corman-produced "Jaws" knockoff is ridiculous summertime drive-in fun.

For a film focusing on such a rich emotional tapestry, Kundun is strangely lacking in its emotional core.

By turns entertaining, incomprehensible, goofy, and even on occasion unnerving.

The film is one of the more adult offerings out there in a spring movie season peppered with martial arts and superheroes. It may be just what you're looking for.

The catch is, once you get past the stunning special effects and the mind-numbing stuntwork, there's not all that much there.

Who, exactly, is stalking whom, and for what reason? I'm still not entirely sure, but Resnais' funky, frothy bonbon of a film is nevertheless a breathtaking sight to see.

All this and not a glimmer of General Franco makes for a surreal – and sporadically inspired – comedy of Spanish mores back when naughty was nice.

Above all, there's Nolte, who hovers over the whole production like some sapient force of nature.

Severance is a British horror-comedy that, from the get-go, has two distracting strikes against it.

Silly, predictable, and, dare I say it, oddly endearing, Hackers is the first film I've seen in a long while that annoyed me so much I actually enjoyed it.

Infinitely more entertaining than anything the WWE has done recently, this sophomore outing from "Napoleon Dynamite" director Hess is full of cheesy goodness, but it's Velveeta.

A go-for-the-lowest-common-denominator grab bag of raunchy sex gags and freakish outbursts. The cool thing is that it works.

The Cable Guy is being marketed as a dark comedy, which I suppose it is, to some extent. Honestly, though, it's just not dark enough.

Once the rodeo's over, where do the sweethearts go? Beesley, thankfully, doesn't end the film with the end of the rodeo, but there's a potentially more interesting follow-up doc ghosting right behind this one.

An occasionally charming mix of campy fun and dodgy computer-generated effects.

It seems downright unfair to harp on the remake’s differences from the original when both films are having such a ball.

Truth itself is little more than a word in The Prestige, a film that both celebrates the wonder of being fooled and the foolishness of wanting just that.

Invincible is like a thick, sweaty slab of NFL comfort food.

If you (or your kids) loved Toy Story, you'll like Toy Story 2 as well. Just don't expect any big surprises.

13 Minutes, which was released in Germany two years ago, is an earnest examination of personal conscience and the frequent necessity of the individual to monkey wrench the state. Or at least to try.

To call The Crazies the most original horror film in a long while only serves to point out just how lousy mainstream, studio-released horror has become. It's a solid thriller, sure, but there's precious little in it that hasn't been seen countless times before, and in the end it plays it safe … by not playing it safe.

Director Carr, who helmed the similarly predictable "Daddy Day Care," keeps things moving, both on and off the court, with the sort of light, sweet humor you're not likely to find in too many other summer movies.

Bombastic it may be, but it’s rarely boring, as was the first Tomb Raider. Keep your expectations in line with the source material and you may be pleasantly surprised.

Both interesting and insufferable.

It's the opposite of "The Opposite of Sex," a meditation on multiple truths, and the lies that sometimes lie in between.

Wilson and Beckinsale, as the couple on the rocks, do their damnedest to go along for the creepfest, but nothing in Vacancy manages to come anywhere close to the quiet and steadily mounting dread of the real thing, much less the purview of Norman Bates or his beloved mother.

Ultimately the composition comes off as both overplayed and underdone.

It's not a bad movie by any stretch of the imagination, just one that grabs your attention and then lets it go, time and time again.

Manages to get by on wry smarts, barbed asides, and plenty of Barrymore's comic grace.

The Coen brothers’ newest is an odd amalgam of tics and stutters that plays like something of a greatest-hits reel but never seems to jell into a real comedy.

For fans, Oasis: Supersonic is a reminder of both the band’s musical strengths and of a simpler time for pop music in general, pre-internet and all that that implies.

The comedic success of this pair of dramatic archetypes, the radiant flibbertigibbet and the gray, lumpen elder spinster, in a lightweight bit of piffle such as this is a testament to both Adams' and McDormand's smarts. It's tough to play dumb when you're not and even more difficult to dial down your own innate brilliance.

Ultimately, though, We Were Soldiers fails to bring as much to the table as it at first seems it might.

Pop psychology has never been as visceral as it is in Saw III.

It's a promising epic that ends with what feels like a lie. In short, it's a glorious mess well worth seeing, but light-years away from what fans were expecting.

Fans of the irritatingly limp and relatively toothless Twilight series may actually find their tormented inner selves fondled to exquisite, precoital perfection with this slick and gleeful adaptation of the classic Eighties vampire-next-door flick.

By the time the film's abrupt conclusion arrives, you realize you've been watching a love story and not, as some might hope, "The Lord of the Rings: The Asian Edition."

Tykwer ends the film on a bizarre note that caught me off guard, a too-literal bit of salvation that is more bothersome than revelatory.

A cracking good adventure film well worthy of classic Saturday-afternoon matinee status. It's also, in myriad ways, a more youthful version of Spielberg's "Raiders of the Lost Ark."...What you don't have, however, is a great movie.

At once perplexing and joyous, Maddin has crafted a film that, for all the confusion inherent in the tale, unfolds on its own unique (and rather tedious) terms. Love it or hate it, this is one film that just doesn't give a damn what you think.

Of course, the film is critic-proof, but as a longtime comic book (and film) nerd, I can say with some surety that Snyder has crammed too much of a great thing into his film, resulting in a super-slog that has just too much of everything.

It’s not a disaster by any stretch, but purists will ache to show newcomers the horrific genius of "Ju-on" over The Grudge as soon as they exit the theatre.

A weird mix of pseudo-jingoism and Bay’s usual bombastic firepower, 13 Hours ends up being a straight-up war film without an actual war in it.

It also has wild plot holes and requires an almost inhuman suspension of disbelief, but it's still a fun ride up to a point.

This is a different sort of comedy that more or less succeeds on its own terms, despite that fact that you find yourself rooting for the post-Snowden CIA.

Beyond the Gates bears witness to the worst of the worst, but these days, and far more importantly, so does YouTube.

There's nothing terribly bad about Bend It Like Beckham -- in fact it's a fine Friday-night-out film -- it's just that it strikes me as being an awful little piffle cloaked in the garb of something so much more.

Miner strives to imbue the film with the requisite autumnal haze of the original but then gives up midway through and instead resorts to the standard stalk 'n' slash formulas.

A huge success in Japan, this thrilling, if overlong, epic from director Mamoru Hosoda (Wolf Children, Summer Wars) is part "Karate Kid" and part Japanese folklore.

By far the weakest of the trilogy. Spurting arteries and random acts of horror are not enough to sustain a film with such a supposedly bold groundwork. Let's hope Barker himself can find the time to return to directing before he ends up like Stephen King.

For some reason Derailed never fully engages our sympathies. I think that's because it's difficult to swallow Owen as anything other than eminently resourceful.

While this isn’t anywhere near a classic of the comedy-horror genre, it’s still a well-written work of splatstick that’s more downright engaging than 90% of the “serious” (i.e., mediocre) horrors that have flooded theatres of late.

Hoge's film raises more questions than it answers – that's his point, I think, to get us thinking – and Gosling, who previously played the conflicted Jewish Nazi skinhead in "The Believer," inhabits the role of Leland so fully it's as if the character had killed him as well.

Director Noyce has a sure hand with the action sequences and keeps The Saint from bogging down too often in the mires of action film exposition (once again, think Mission: Impossible).

Suffers mightily from sequelitis. Forced to explain what’s going on and what’s going to be going on in the next and final installment (due out in November), the Wachowskis have laced the film with a series of crushingly dull and often incomprehensible scenes of exposition and yakky gabfests.

The final 30 odd minutes of this revisionist Holmes explodathon are downright thrilling, and it should go without saying but we'll restate it for the record: Downey Jr. inhabits the role of Sherlock Holmes to a near-molecular level.

It's overstuffed with all the actors wasting both the viewers’ and the movie’s running time by actually speaking dialogue when we all know that what audiences really want to see is outrageous vehicular slamslaughter.

It's stoner comedy of the most absurd kind, part fryboy mental drizzle, part wink-wink audience baiting, and wholly, utterly funny.

At times, it’s a bit like being cornered and regaled by actor Bill Nighy’s aging rocker Billy Mack from "Love Actually," but certainly more interesting, and a rewarding and informative document of some unlikely visionaries of maximum rock & roll.

High Heels becomes mired in its own best intentions - primary colors and all.

The straight dope for speed junkies and fans of the art of flinging one’s well-padded frame through the contortions enabled only by disastrously catapulting oneself off a slippery asphalt track at speeds even Dale Earnhardt would have dismissed as lunacy.

Carrey has yet to find the perfect vehicle for himself, but The Mask, while hardly as fantastic as it should have been, is a step in the right direction.

Unnerving and occasionally witty, were it not for its weak third act, Nolan's film might fall just short of genius. As it is, though, it's unique nonetheless.

Despite the grating, workmanlike direction of Chris Columbus (he's no Robert Wise, and Rent is nobody's idea of "West Side Story"), this boisterous adaptation is both a vivacious, wiseacre musical and an inarguable morality lesson: Love is all you need. Oh, and rent, of course.

It’s ingratiating in that nice doggie way, but the dogs, who have had their lips enhanced via CGI to aid in the illusion of speech, don’t have much more on their minds than where the next stick is going to sail in from.

By the end of this film/experiment/prank – which, to be blunt, is pretty unsatisfying – the viewer is left to ponder what it's all about, and what its purpose may have been, which, knowing Lynch and Herzog, might well be what it was about, and what its purpose was.

It's all a little too polished, a little too smug to be ranked up there as one of the great journalism films.

As YA adaptations go, this isn’t quite "The Notebook," but its core demographic of teen girls will likely be more than satisfied.

Ultimately, however, The Way Back fails to connect on the all-important visceral, emotional level.

This remake of the 1972 Peckinpah gem lacks the Ali McGraw/Steve McQueen heart and soul of the original, opting instead for the vacuous and thoroughly forgettable anti-chemistry of Baldwin and Basinger.

The film tries so very hard to be The Movie of Summer '93 that it almost makes you sick for what could have been, what should have been, and, in the end, what it is: soulless sound and fury -- action in a vacuum.

The most expensive South Korean film ever made is also one of the most realistic (read: gory) depictions of the horrors of war, specifically World War II, global cinema has ever produced.

It's an obvious effort through and through, but that doesn't seem to dampen its ridiculous charm one bit.

For all its Del Toro touches (Goodwin as a young autistic boy kidnapped by the bugs), Mimic is a surprisingly hollow thriller.

U-571's plot moves like a rocket, never pausing for breath, and this works to a point, but certain events ... are glossed over in favor of more (exceptionally well-done) shots of exploding depth charges and topside battles.

It's interesting, though, to think of double-billing Woods' Crow with Pacino's Prince of Darkness from Devil's Advocate: Scenery-chewing never looked so good.

Not likely to win any hearts or minds this holiday season, La Bûche finally scores points by virtue of its inoffensiveness: Relax, pour a cuppa nog, and watch somebody else muck up the holidays for once.

A middling film through and through, despite the occasional shocks it tries to earnestly to achieve.

The gags are quick and barbed, but the wire seems blunted by the essentially one-note gag storyline.

While it’s far from bad, it also falls far short of the icy frissons produced by the original.

It's a totally serviceable reboot for young people who are just discovering the joys of manga, but I can't help but miss the raw animation and even rawer emotional aesthetics of Tezuka's original televised animé series.

It is, in essence, the video game transferred part and parcel to the screen, and very well at that.

A bore... The film leaves you with the feeling, once again, of having enjoyed a lovely meal fit for royalty only to discover, too late, that the fruit was made of wax and the roast was little more than a Styrofoam mock-up.

So silly, so garishly over-the-top, and so bracingly eager to please, that it's hard not to fall under its gleefully gooney spell.

Feels like an overlong "SCTV" skit. Many prime gags are recycled throughout the film, and, honestly, there's only so much Eugene Levy schtick one can take (though he does get the best Yiddish lines in the film).

Predicated on the slimmest of notions, this debut by Jones is so cuddly-cute in its desire to be pleasing that it's all but transparent.

Does little to dispel the creeping feeling that Washington’s getting himself in something of a rut.

Not an easy film to love and politically incorrect to the hilt, it nevertheless leaves its mark on you – and it’s rarely, if ever, dull.

It doesn't always succeed, and sometimes it has the egocentric obviousness of a particularly clever, grad-student thesis film, but at least Harrison is game enough to mess with your head in the first place.

This film is an evocative, effective entry into the holiday blood-spray subgenre in its own right. And if it doesn't make your skin crawl ... you probably ate too much Christmas dinner.

This expanded version only suffers, albeit in grim visual splendor, from the extrapolation.

When the film changes gears from light coming-of-age comedy to ex-post-facto war parable midway through, it loses its focus and suddenly becomes a much darker beast.

It's not rocket science making nonstop action feel semi-fresh, and The Losers’ script by Peter Berg and James Vanderbilt manages to render each individual, um, a loser in the broadest and most memorable strokes. It's not a masterpiece, either, but it'll do until Hannibal, Murdock, and the rest the A-gamers start blowing things up come June.

A preposterously silly bit of work, chock-full-o' nuts and rife with the kind of plot holes you could drive a submersible ROV through.

It's gritty, nasty, predictably meat-and-potatoes suspense, but genuinely gonzo fun nonetheless.

The fact that Russians appear to have dash-cams as standard equipment in their four- and two-wheel rides is as foreign and fascinating as anything President Donald Trump could come up with.

The entire film is curiously soulless, with major characters making their entrances and exits (some of which are unexpectedly final) as if they were breezing in from some other screening next door.

Like its protagonist, Cordero's film is a nimble thing, darting from hot-button topic to prison-cell metaphysics in the blink of a blind eye, but it never quite achieves the level of journalistic condemnation it so clearly seeks.

It's not "Billy Madison," quite, but The Waterboy is still pure Sandler. If you like that sort of thing.

Like its protagonist, the movie tries to rise above convention, flails about a bit, and slides back into self-parody.

Hudgens' dimples threaten at times to overtake the narrative, but in the end, they're no match for Olsen's creepy-ass smirk, which, frankly, appears ready-made for Tim Burton's next outing.

Not in itself a bad thing -- the "Star Trek" films have long come under friendly fire for being too heavy on the philosophizing and not enough so on the deep-space car chases -- but oddly, the film feels soulless and hollow, despite best intentions to the contrary.

If you've seen the 2006 Nick Nolte vehicle "Peaceful Warrior," then you've pretty much already seen this. Capturing the essence of surfing – or any sport, for that matter – is more often than not a fool's errand. A more fitting tribute to Moriarty's legacy? Go buy a board and hit the deep blue yourself.

It's an admirable, if clunky, attempt, and though it never quite jels in the way that, say, "Waiting to Exhale" did, it's good to know someone's making the effort to portray black urban males as something other than criminals or crime-fighters.

The Dead Don’t Die feels like something of a minor comic note in the director’s curriculum vitae, but it’s not without its pleasures. And like Romero’s genre classic, social commentary, satirical and otherwise, abounds.

Mandel and producer Sherry Lansing have obviously put their whole into the creation of what ought to have been a riveting and powerful film. Instead, School Ties ends up about as memorable as a plate of gefilte fish.

It’s The Alamo, all right, but will anyone want to remember it?

You have to wonder – not too hard, though – what this gore-soaked auteur's bedtime dreams are like.

Neither a revelation nor a total wash, EDtv is instead solid comic filmmaking. I just can't help but think it could have been so much more.

Colorful, kid-friendly, and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny. ’Nuff said.

The animation itself is superb, and the filmmakers long ago mastered the dreamy, stream-of-consciousness narrative tropes that work so well with stop-motion, but even with all that going for it, A Town Called Panic feels more like some exotic animated curiosity than a film to return to again and again.

If only someone had taken away that disastrous third act we'd have one of the better mainstream films dealing with the impossible societal demands put upon gay parenting yet made. No such luck, though.

Gifted may rely on the extremely old-school lovable-orphan-and-adopted-parent template, but there’s a certain emotionally complex realism to both the performances and the storyline that lifts the film beyond the obvious and the cliched.

While the film never quite reaches the emotional peaks it so obviously seeks to scale, Zwick's film is still potent enough to save you three months salary.

In the end, Ip Man 3 doesn’t quite rise to the dizzying heights of the first two films, but then again, this will almost certainly be your only chance to see Mike Tyson go up against Donnie Yen.

You end up feeling -- despite Jones' dead-on performance -- like you've been cheated. It looks good. It feels right. It gets the job done…. But there's nothing there. Just like Cobb. Maybe that's the point.

A crowd-pleasing blockbuster if ever there was one, features as its centerpiece a jaw-droppingly vivid re-creation of the Japanese attack on the U.S.'s fabled (and extremely vulnerable, as it turned out) Pacific fleet.

Is this the future of horror or just some bizarre fluke? Don't ask me, I'm having too much fun to care.

Bottom line: This Orphan is an atmospheric and occasionally vicious little git and an above-average entry into the "cuddly hellspawn" genre, overlong at two-plus hours, but nowhere near as excruciatingly overdone as others of its ilk (Devil Times Five, I'm talking to you).

Bertolucci returns to his native Italian soil for the first time in 15 years, and the result is a gorgeous albeit fairly insubstantial homecoming.

Dependably fascinating.

It's Banderas' film all the way, of course: he's one of those genuinely gifted, glowing actors who can nevertheless hold your attention through sheer onscreen charisma.

Certainly lead adult actor Arnezeder has panache to spare, as does Bousinna, but the muddled storyline defeats them time and time again, no matter how perfectly angry/hopeful their lines are.

Goofy summer fun that makes Earth vs. the Flying Saucers look like Citizen Kane.

Despite the hardships depicted, Golden Door is a sweet film at heart, playing witness to the birth pangs of modern America with both due respect and the occasional comic grace note, but not, oddly, one single shot of the Statue of Liberty.

It's a neat, sweet experiment in meta-documentary filmmaking overall, but like Yi's own heart, it sabotages itself in the process and becomes another casualty of too-close scrutiny.

It's rougher stuff than most would expect, though not unrewarding in its own horrific way.

The actors, particularly the icy Bassett and the fiery Devine, excel in their roles and drive home the film's multifaceted messages.

Hell of a nice try, but I've seen it all before.

So ingratiatingly good-humored that it's hard to take it seriously enough to complain. Sure, it's no great triumph of moviemaking, but it is entertaining, and a more or less plausible way to kill 95 minutes on a Saturday afternoon.

It's a glorious mess, though, with genuine bits of comic genius strewn amidst the rubble, not unlike a plane crash in its own way.

Second-guessing the audience in the third act takes some of the wind out of his sails (the film wraps up the loose ends so tightly you can practically see the bow), but Hackford does his best with a King tale that many thought would be unfilmable.

Eastwood's grim handling of even grimmer subject matter could have used some paring down toward its histrionic ending, but Changeling is still one of the director's most assured and engaging historical horror shows.

Hasn't got a lot more to say than it did last time about the necessity of accepting the nontraditional family in extraordinary times, but what it does have going for it are its well-delineated characters.

Green and screenwriter Peter Straughan never completely go as far as they might have, satirically speaking.

But even a rapper needs to punch things up a bit, and 8 Mile, for all its hip-hop braggadocio, is a pretty weak riff.

Amazingly, it all works up to a point, although at approaching two hours in length, it could’ve easily shaved its bifurcated mohawk down by a good 15 minutes.

All told, though, Thor suffers from "Iron Man 2" syndrome: too much backstory, too many subplots and character introductions, and not nearly enough full-frontal nudity from Natalie Portman, who frankly is given very little to work with here.

There's much to enjoy here – Ratner's pacing is fluid and fast and the film rushes along its busy, cluttered way with something approaching melodramatic snarkiness – but it's also terribly busy and cluttered.

Marshall, like his characters, does not mess around: Good people do bad things to not-entirely bad people while the Man (in this case No. 10 Downing St.) seeks ways to screw everyone.

On the whole, though, Kong: Skull Island is great big dumb fun. It’s also shockingly beautiful to look at when you aren’t having creature guts flung into the camera.

The film is being marketed to kids and their parents, and as such, it’s well worth mom and dad’s hard-earned sawbuck for the implicit lessons it stresses. Be kind, especially to the seemingly strange ones who might not look like you.

D-FENS is a cut-out, a cartoon Everyman we're supposed to feel sorry for and can't. He's a bad parody in what will doubtless be an over-analyzed film about loss of control. It's just too bad nobody on the creative end seems to have had much control either.

Dogg has the makings of a genuinely great actor. When he's on screen the film crackles, and even when he's not it's a trippy, funhouse ride.

The self-reflexive nature of New Nightmare is a twist we haven't seen before, and it works well, up to a point.

Quentin Tarantino sans the witty dialogue.

Offers too small a dose of the blood-and-sand adventure you expect from this sort of big-budget Hollywood remake. As it is, it borders on The English Patient's on again-off again heroics, minus Anthony Minghella's patient skill in eliciting romantic suspense.

October Sky falls flat (despite its rich tone and some startling cinematography by Fred Murphy) due to its all-too-obvious third act and the vague fact that, really, not that much happens.

Do we like John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester? As played by Depp, this 17th-century nobleman-cum-travesty is a carriage crash of epic proportions, and so it's difficult not to crane your neck around to get a better view of the proceedings.

Despite its high tech sheen and overstuffed cast of characters, played by some of the best actors in the land, this mega-mecha melee manages to give short shrift to both the airborne action set-pieces that define Iron Man's zoomy panache and incoming supervillain Whiplash, aka Ivan Vanko (Rourke).

Ultimately, Meyjes focuses too much on Max when he should be filling the screen with this tortured, dull artist and monster-in-the-making.

Albert Nobbs is the furthest thing from a comedy, although as a character study of cultural mores and stations and the lengths human beings will go to to circumvent them, it's fascinating stuff.

Sharply edited while ranging all over the comic map – Lazer Team has its share of groaners, to be sure – it’s a solid debut from Austin’s gaming and comedy hometown heroes.

Red Tails is both a stirring and simplistic tribute to the men that not only shattered the U.S. Army Air Corps' racial barrier but also saved the lives of many a white, B-17 crew member, all while downing countless numbers of Hitler's formidable, jet-propelled Luftwaffe.

Heijningen's The Thing is tightly paced, has enough imaginative horror to satisfy even the most jaded gorehound, and never strays too far from its source, so why do you come away from it feeling like it was the runner-up in a daylight nightmare festival?

Pleasant but pedestrian.

Cobbling together so many different characters (nearly all of them familiar to regular viewers) has left the Kids' feature debut as something of a letdown. We've seen it all before, and better, on HBO and Comedy Central.

For all its kiss kiss, bang bang, Haywire ends up feeling as hollow as the points on Mallory Kane's 9mm ammo.

Once you get past the admittedly breathtaking shots of our national landmarks being turned into kindling, the rest of the film is a tired and empty two hours of feel-good patriotism and oddly cast characters.

Vaughn did a cracking good caper film with a pre-007 Daniel Craig called "Layer Cake" six years ago, but Kick-Ass has little of that film's heady panache and instead batters you about the face and neck with wildly over-the-top fountains of gore, bone-cracking slow-motion, and, yes, Cage, who dials his acting down a few notches from the kicky Herzogian mindf---ery of "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans."

Meehl's documentary features plenty of interviews with cowboys and ranch hands who've had their lives – and their horses' lives – changed by Brannaman, but it lacks the literary or cinematic magic of either version of "The Horse Whisperer."

Some people might find Chunhyang a chore to sit through, including me. Despite all of its accumulated period gorgeousness, or perhaps because of it, the film moves at a snail's pace, telegraphing plot twists miles before we actually arrive at them.

Despite the sheer gorgeousness, it ends up feeling false and, towards the end, rushed.

Relax, sit tight, and enjoy the ride.

Without a doubt, the animation is vibrant and electrifying; it's only the story that lacks.

Moves with the stately speed of most Merchant/Ivory productions, which is to say too damn slow, but the film is snatched from the jaws of tedium by Doyle's resplendently lush camerawork and Fiennes and Richardson's spot-on performances.

This Godzilla is lacking both the awesome spirit of the original and the sublime silliness of the more recent Toho outings.

A middling urban thriller that's one part "Rear Window" and three parts "Seven."

For a film that's ostensibly about modern American society's love affair with addictive behavior – sex, drugs, rock & roll – its bark is much worse than its bite.

It's a comic book movie in the broadest sense of the term, and although it's neither as emotionally resonant as "The Crow" nor as surreally goofy as "Tank Girl," Barb Wire still manages to get you going, Anderson Lee fan or not.

Silent Hill's main attraction, for genre fans, certainly, lies not in its plot nor in its characters (you could place anyone in this particular township and whatever might happen, you could be sure it'd be unnerving), but in its relentlessly nightmarish imagery.

Does it make any sense? Nope. Does this detract from the film? Not at all. It's classic Italian Grand Guignol at its most disturbing; a car crash, autopsy, and disembowelment all wrapped up in a nice, soggy package.

Taken as a whole, Thirst meanders too far from the crossroads of life and death; it gets outright dull in spots, although they are few and far between.

It is a harmless and occasionally hilarious pop comedy good for a few bargain yuks.

Watchmen is worth seeing, fan or no, for Haley's squirmy presence alone, and all the other characters are also well-served.

Palmetto follows the rules of film noir so slavishly that it's tough not to like it just on its own dopey, headstrong merit.

Who doesn't love an animated, anthropomorphized-chimpanzee-starring, sci-fi romantic comedy?

It's fun enough on its own relatively low-budget merits, but it's really nothing to die – or kill – for.

It’s all in good fun, and critic-proof to boot, but Jurassic World doesn’t even come close to that most intimate and dearly coveted “Gosh, wow” sense-of-wonder that the original film mustered so easily. Roar more, bite less.

All's fair in love and war, I know, but really now.

Herzog, ever the eccentric filmmaker on a mission, may have met his match in this man of the cloth.

It's a messy, overlong film, but it's impossible to take seriously and therefore more than a little entertaining.

Hostel certainly delivers in the gore department, and Roth, who knows and loves his favorite genre at least as well as the gang over at the Alamo Drafthouse, peppers the proceedings with various witty in-jokes.

A horror film (or, more accurately, a shocker film) that takes such exuberant, gleeful delight in the unspeakably gory dispatch of assorted teenagers that it may well be the most fun you'll have at the movies all week.

Make no mistake -- this Mummy is an effects film all the way.

Ultimately, though, Jack Goes Boating is too much of a banal thing. Jack's a good guy, and you root for him all the way to the end, but, wistfully, that doesn't make him an any more interesting everyday Joe than he is.

McGuigan's wonderfully ambitious but terribly melodramatic film is chock-full of symbolic references, subtext, and the sort of period detail that made Monty Python's historical comedies so gamely endearing.

Ghosts of Mississippi isn’t a bad film by any means; it’s just not a very good film.

It's charming, in its own little way, but really, this film has as much substance as a Cirrus cloud, despite fine turns from Boyle as the family patriarch and Warden as Godfather Saul.

It wouldn't feel out of place on a double bill with "Dangerous Liaisons," given Breillat's unrepentantly nihilistic attitude toward the battle of the sexes in which all are pawns, every knight is errant, and the only queen is Queen Bitch.

If you can get past the ick factor inherent in these suddenly adulterized relationships –- and there’s really no way this film should have received a kid-friendly PG rating –- and latch on to the film’s wealth of metaphor, you’ll surely have something to discuss over coffee post-screening.

If you’re expecting "Paddington"-level profundity and whimsical adventure you’re going to be sorely disappointed.

The twist – and it’s a smart, effective one to be sure – is that this time it’s not a bunch of beergasming dudebros making life hell for the Radners, but an off-campus sorority led by Moretz’s feminist-slash-party powerhouse blonde, Shelby.

Not for everyone's taste, I'd think, but a notably thoughtful effort nonetheless.

This Total Recall is fast, furious, and frequently confusing fun, but to be completely honest, it lacks the snappy, weirdo vibe of its predecessor.

This is a more hardscrabble, beaten down version of Neeson’s iconic revengers than most of his action roles, with Hanson coming across as sympathetically appealing despite the cliched storyline.

It bears noting that Greendale is an awful lot like the town of Mayberry R.F.D. in that paragon of homespun virtue, "The Andy Griffith Show," but then again, it's probably equally wise to bear in mind that before Griffith was the sheriff of that hamlet, he was in "A Face in the Crowd" playing a character who, with his conniving, manipulative, black-at-heart ways, might well represent Greendale's dark and awful future.

Miike's film is a cunning little comedy of manners gone mad. Even when you feel you have to turn away from the screen or lose your lunch, Miike has something interesting to say. I'm not entirely sure what it is but his lips are moving and something horrific is definitely coming out.

By no means a great film, but it is an entertaining one, a nearly bloodless, family-friendly throwback of sorts to a cinematic age when Persian palace intrigue, winsome princesses, and ambitious princes ruled the back lots and Errol Flynn was in like, well, Errol Flynn.

It seems almost beside the point to bring up the notion of plotting and characterization in such an effects-driven film ; nobody's going to rush out to catch Dante's Peak on account of the Shakespearean-caliber thespians involved.

Limitless is a writer's movie by a writer, and it explores the dark side of the muse.

Both a headache and a marvel, often eliciting simultaneous groans of despair and sheer wonder at the director's nervy chutzpah.

Transporter 3 is so far over the top that it more than once spills into outright cartoonishness.

No Reservations succeeds as well as it does (kinda sorta) by virtue of Zeta-Jones' performance.

Unfortunately, The Pelican Brief comes across as a prolonged bout with deja vu: you know you've seen this before, and more than once at that.

The good news, then, is that The Siege is hardly the ticking time bomb of racial slurs some would have you imagine, and the bad news is that it doesn't matter because it's all too damn pedantically serious to take seriously.

Ultimately undone by some less than remarkable character development and an unnecessary, if currently contemporaneous, pseudo-political undertones. Which isn’t to say it’s not a blast to see Gammell’s eerie, Francis Bacon-esque illustrations come to herky-jerky and horrifying life, because it is, absolutely.

Fincher's camerawork gives the movie a jittery feel, and his video-trained eye lends the prison sets the look of a dilapidated cathedral, but again, there's really nothing here that we haven't seen before, and better, at that. Nice title, though.

Fuller’s film is inarguably a stone-cold classic of the genre, but Fury, for all its cacophonous chaos and half-crazed characters, never quite reaches the shellshocked heights required to make it a bona fide pillar of cinematic combat.

Kick-Ass 2 returns with the original’s rollicking sense of vulgarity and bodily trauma fully intact, but the story has more plot lines to string together than absolutely necessary.

Jim Jarmusch's elegiac, hilarious performance as a man about to smoke his final cigarette is brilliant.

In the end, Meadows' film lacks the bite it needs to make us care about this oddball trio, endearing though they are.

Iranian-American director Keshavarz utilizes the always reliable Sarandon to fine effect, but the final takeaway is less than riveting.

A Perfect Getaway is, in its own delightfully silly and manipulative way, one of the most effective paranoid thrillers of the new millennium. That doesn't make it a great movie by a long shot.

Juvenile yet compellingly smart humor.

Turnabout is fair play, to be sure, but ultimately virtually everyone in Teeth ends up using sex as a weapon, edged or otherwise, to the detriment of all concerned. Just say "Ow."

Like its protagonist, Sleight is a scrappy, semi-super origin story that lacks the existential heft of, say, M. Night Shyamalan’s "Unbreakable," or the grim comic nihilism of James Gunn’s "Super."

Torture, you may recall, used to be an unparsable, unpardonable sin. Now it's porn.

It's not often you come across a film as unique as this, and while my taste for liver, lights, and sweetbreads isn't what it once was, this is still a fine post-Halloween aperitif, with guts to spare.

There are droll comic flourishes in this very brave film, to be sure, but all you really want to do after watching CSA is hang down your head and cry.

Inoffensive fun that kids will love and adults will likely love too, it's a middle of the road affair, but a far cry from roadkill.

For sheer, sepulchral eye candy at this most horror-ific time of year, del Toro’s Crimson Peak leaves Tim Burton – reigning misfit king of hyper-stylized, goth-y weirdness – in the dust and well-nigh forgotten.

Comedic touches aside (nearly all of which belong to Ben Stiller who's off on another, far more interesting, planet as the genuinely goofy Bwick), If Lucy Fell strives hard to be a serious romantic comedy for the Nineties. It almost succeeds. Schaeffer trips up, though, when he lets his philosophies get the better of him. Nothing stops If Lucy Fell faster than its mordant underpinnings, cute though they may be. It's “The Best Date Movie of the Nineties,” number 224 in a series. Collect 'em all.

Much of the film is frankly ludicrous, but that does little to dispel its overall power and passion.

Make no mistake, I'm not saying Dr. Giggles is a cinematic watershed or anything like that, but it does manage to mix humor and horror in a way that very few films ever manage successfully.

It's a gorgeous albeit depressing mess, as distancing and despairing as a realpolitik wipeout.

The whole production does reek a bit of origin story filminess, but even so, it's light sabers beyond Christensen's sad, revengeful fate in "Episode III" and does offer a nice view of the top of the Sphinx's head no less than three times.

Heady stuff, indeed, but perfect midnight-date movie fare if you’re, uh, in the mood.

Surprisingly, it’s distinctly one of the better faith-based films in some time to wander down the road to Galilee.

It's hardly a classic of the genre, but then again, like Armour hot dogs: it's Comfort Food for Men.

Its most remarkable featis sustaining the level of forebodeingly atmospheric suspense.

For all its emotional and familial kerfuffles, People Like Us is an honorable misfire – good intentions and all.

So what's not to love? For starters, there's the inescapable fact that Ted is, no matter how you stuff it, yet another man-child buddy movie – and all that that implies.

Magic Trip comes off nearly as scattershot as the events it depicts, which is a major stumbling block.

Stardust has lost a good amount of its magic in the transformation from page to screen. It's the cinematic equivalent of getting a punch in the mind's eye by a bunch of faeries wearing the coolest Doc Martens this side of Florin.

The only thing here that feels truly, utterly alive is Ledger's maniacal, muttery Joker. The last laugh is his and his alone. It's enough to make you cry.

Although guaranteed to split critics and viewers alike, nobody can argue that Bravo and Gelman haven’t put their all into this absurdist, existential farce. The question remains: Will Lemon make or break that all-important first date comedy connection? (Personally, I’m sticking with Ruggero Deodato.)

There are precious few surprises here, but parents will find director Robbins' breezy remake a painless affair and, judging by the yowls of laughter from the peanut gallery at the screening I attended, the kids will be barking all the way home.

It takes creepy, spooky, and altogether ooky to a hideous new level.

There’s not a whole lot new here in this story of rival lifestyles and familial skeletons, but just allowing yourself to immerse yourself in the initially catty melodrama is pleasure enough.

Let the brilliant, epic silliness of The Man With the Iron Fists engulf you in a tsunami of crimson cheese and you, like I, will have a super-happy-fun-big-smile-crazy-face-monkey-time.

Hood's realization of Card's novel is a tightly constructed, thought-provoking meditation on adolescence trapped by permanent war footing, alloyed with some of the best CGI effects work I've seen since, uh, "Gravity."

Fans of the original films will dig Richards and Eisenmann's cameo appearances.

Where Scream 3 triumphs is in its wacky, take-no-prisoners, I am a Juggernaut of Terror, Hee, Hee attitude, which wisely makes room for some downright surreal moments amongst the carnage.

Full of nuanced performances (Streep in particular) and wonderfully enveloping music.

Viewed entirely on the exceptional virtues of its CGI animation (flashbacks occur via traditional, hand-drawn animation) and its occasionally raunchy humor, Un Gallo con Mucho Huevos is a small gem of a film. But its trivialization of cockfighting will surely be a rightful stumbling block for many potential audience members.

Director of photography Robert Murphy deserves a Spirit Award of his own for his breathtaking and evocative lensing of ever-cinematic Berlin and Montenegro, and Stephen Coates’ melancholic score is equally suited to the story at hand.

It's not nearly as mediocre a two hours as the trailers would have you think.

While this is hardly "Breaker Morant," it's nowhere near as mawkish or cloying as it could have been.

This is meat-and-potatoes (and bullets) action filmmaking, although, really, that title's got to go.

Simply put, it’s too much of a good thing, this unreined tumult of chaos.

With plot holes so large you could drive a HumVee through them, this debut film from director Shapiro is little more than a lousy hybrid, one part Fatal Attraction to two parts Lolita, only this time Humbert Humbert writes for trendy Pique! magazine and lives in Seattle (but doesn't everybody these days?).

There are a number of cheeky winks from the filmmakers specifically aimed at Harryhausen fans; in the end, though, Leterrier's Clash of the Titans is nearly as messy an assemblage of mythic odds and ends as the original.

It works extremely well as a drunken, date-night midnighter or film-fest entry, all madcap bloodletting and surrealist non sequiturs.

Ultimately, it's a very boring ride.

From its marketing-impaired title on down, Event Horizon is a steadily churning debacle that promises much more than it can deliver and ends up drowning in a crimson sea of gore and maddeningly out-of-place steals from other, better genre shockers.

A predictable affair that nonetheless ingratiates itself into your good fortunes by sheer virtue of its amiable nuttiness. It's mindless fun while it lasts.