Michael Atkinson

An adept mood maker, Medem strains madly for cosmic alliances, fairy-tale imagery, and fated coincidences, but he triumphs only with two hot bodies, a cluttered apartment, and a Shower Massage.

Despite exposition delivered so redundantly and witlessly you think you're in a Kaplan class, Stigmata manages to be incoherent.

When he isn't overreaching for absurdity, Curtis can write bouncy patter, but each character gets about 60 seconds before the movie jumps deck to the next love-seeker and the next moony pratfall.

Endearingly pretentious -- as if it swallowed a thick brick of Beckett and can't pass the uncooperative Beckettian stool.

Throughout, Tykwer reaches for mysteries he has no idea how to evoke, relying instead on his actors' empty stares.

Though Lee's movie is dripping with action and beautiful details, it's aimless and, eventually, tedious.

Ozon -- has finally hit a home run, and Rampling is his most remarkable RBI.

Since Lee is a sentimentalist, the film is more worshipful than your random "E! True Hollywood Story."

However defined, the movie's a moody piece of Wellesian chiaroscuro (shot by Max Greene, né Mutz Greenbaum) and an occasionally discomfiting underworld plunge, particularly when the mob-controlled wrestling milieu explodes into a kidney-punching donnybrook.

Virtually plot-free, the movie's organic cultivation of Argentina's economic tension and ethnophobic woes is smooth as silk.

Isn't terribly revealing, and though it is interesting to watch Condo paint, it's only interesting for so long.

85 percent explosions and editing idiocy (a window can't break without director Peter Hyams cutting between five different angles) and 15 percent Arnold trying to grow a third dimension. Seeing him try for "sad" is like watching a dog try to talk.

Stylish, sullen, and a little predictable, Tell Me Something is the match of any American film in its quasi-genre, though you suspect that without a world market to target, it might've been even more anxious and intrepid.

Dim and eye-rollingly foolish -- Call it Dumb, Dumber, Dumber Still, and Dumbest.

As it is, Duris, capable and dull, is no Keitel, 2005 is no 1978, and The Beat That My Heart Skipped is no "Fingers."

The digital-video results play like a flatulent teenager's first discovery of jazz, cigarettes, and hooch.

What's not recognized enough is the indelible, self-sickened performance of William Holden as Desmond's boy-toy/hired hack.

It's the casting of Liam Neeson as the nervous breakdown that turns the movie to asphalt -- it's like watching Andre the Giant play Woody Allen.

It's Korzun's film, and she is in complete control of her character, never divulging too much of the haunted woman under the studied facade of American hotsiness.

Good Night, and Good Luck's primary handicap is history itself -- the toe-to-toe televised dialogue between McCarthy and Murrow was, however arguably vital to the Wisconsin senator's eventual retreat, brief and less than epochal. Even so, the wonderfully mustered context wins out.

The movie neither inspires us to pine for what might've been nor makes Gilliam-style filmmaking seem like a noble pursuit.

Because stateside newspapers aren't enough, "The Battle of Chile" (possibly the most riveting and vital historical document ever put on celluloid) should be a prerequisite to Guzmán's new doc, The Pinochet Case.

For all its originality, O Brother doesn't seem to have a point, or enough spark to distract us from the lack thereof.

It might be worth enduring the Limburger to see Fraser morph from freckled-faced Rod McKuen dweeb to seven-foot albino ball star and never miss a beat.

Safe Conduct -- a rangy, irreverent, episodic odyssey through French filmmaking during the Occupation -- is one of the very best movies ever made about the life of moviemaking.

Dissing a Bond movie is quite like calling a dog stupid, but when it has the temerity to run over two hours, you feel like winding up with a kick.

Essentially a reheating of 1982's "First Blood" -- a psychologically wounded warrior-vet pits himself against civilized America -- but the fallout this time is simultaneously more ruthless, less emotional, and duller.

Lusts for a feel-good ending the material doesn't comfortably provide. One can't help wondering how dismal Jerry and Dorothy's life together will be after the credits roll.