Mark Holcomb

An exhilarating serving of movie fluff.

Largely sidesteps sentiment in favor of a tentative hopefulness.

Happily, beneath the film's nostalgic veneer and tooth-rattling visual and aural effects lies a mature ambiguity that's unusual for a holiday blockbuster -- and all but unheard of in a Tony Scott movie.

Eschewing the jock-like aversion to "artiness" inherent in most sports docs, John Hyams's contemplative snapshot of professional bull riding, Rank, ups the ante for the form.

Tender irony and dark humor abound in Israeli director Eran Riklis's latest account of bureaucracy colliding with burgeoning compassion.

He (Jacobs) and cinematographer Chris Menges compose the film largely in close-ups, and the effect is appropriately unnerving. Regardless, unfavorable comparisons to "Nine Queens" are inevitable.

Too brisk and plucky to dislike.

Becomes more satisfying than the stock thriller–star vehicle it begins and ends as.

Stupefyingly benign.

To call this action gambit formulaic is to sell it short: The Rundown runs down more formulas than a month's worth of complimentary premium cable service.

Suffice it to say that if you've always wondered how a fish out of water and a band of resourceful yokels would behave in the Quebec hinterlands, this is your movie.

Who is this movie's target audience, anyway? Preteens will be bored stupid, while adults are unlikely to want to revisit puppy love in such grueling detail. The lingering, soft-focus, slo-mo shots of Rosemary that punctuate the action suggest a constituency I'd rather not contemplate.

All the shell-shocked wryness, irredeemable remorse, and unaccountable will to survive that the movie attempts to embody are realized in Gyllenhaal, and the actor makes it possible to root for Moonlight Mile despite its flaws.

Cynically accumulates plot twists while showing little regard for suspense or audience sophistication.

Guaranteed to polarize audiences. Is her insistence on taking every measure possible to save little Nicholas heroic or monumentally self-serving?

Good intentions or not, ineptitude and cloying sentimentality don't do anybody any favors.

Weird, frivolous, and impossible to dislike.

Thanks to an uninhibited screenplay and the easy, unforced chemistry of its ensemble cast, Punks is mostly good, snappy fun.

By turns whimsical and painful.

Ouimet versus Vardon probably was the greatest golf game ever played, and Paxton and Frost do it justice, but I wouldn't sit through another simulated hole of it for Tiger Woods's salary.

Falling somewhere between fratboy porno wish fulfillment and Europhobic sex-tourism scare flick, Eli Roth's taut, wily, but ultimately pointless shocker Hostel is neither as transgressive nor as grueling as it aims to be.

In the end, Milk and Honey's contrived connections blossom into a disarmingly effective reckoning with loss and regret.

If Michiko Yamamoto's screenplay overdoes Magnifico's holy-fool virtue to the point of hysteria, de los Reyes's fluid compositions, dead-on pacing, and knack for eliciting naturalistic performances make the story uncommonly cathartic.

Most Wanted isn't aiming for social commentary, but it isn't too difficult to enjoy its good-natured humor.

A diverting pulp time-waster.

Appallingly violent.

Treading the same supernatural turf trampled by "Somewhere in Time" and "Frequency," director Alejandro Agresti's gooey, ostensibly spooky romance yarn The Lake House flounders less on its thudding familiarity than on its mood- killing dourness.

Comes off as an overlong, overstuffed promo for an "industry" that hasn't needed promoting since the movie's target audience was in diapers.