Michael Sragow

All Fey does is apply a smattering of wit to the story.

Auto Focus is a gutless wonder.

It wouldn't stick in the memory were it not for Matt Damon's audacious, baggy-pants portrayal of corporate whistle-blower Mark Whitacre, the antihero of this reality-based farce.

New York critics have anointed Crash in advance as the Second Coming, but it's just another over-ambitious first movie.

Kingsley dims divine Elegy.

As a documentary, the film is woefully underdeveloped.

If you have an ounce of romance in you, you'll sense your own inner Captain Blood emerge when Captain Shakespeare turns him into a dashing figure with a dangerous sword.

Will Ferrell does chicken-fried comedy right: with crackpot discipline and stripped-to-the-beer-belly courage.

The result is an exciting, infuriating, combative experience.

This picture is jagged and exciting; it tells several plots imperfectly, yet makes them add up to a great American story about integrity challenged and triumphant.

Dubowski's movie is an act of hope that the basic human needs of the gay Orthodox will someday be reconciled with their faith.

The documentary American Teen is the most realistic movie you will see all summer.

Penn, with curled hair and wire-rims, makes a brilliant, slippery high-end shyster; his modulated hysteria is amazing. So is Brian De Palma’s direction. Few films actually made in the disco era can match the kinetic allure of this 1993 production, which has a bluesy undertow all its own.

Margot at the Wedding is a Christmas gift for high-class depressives: a compendium of malaise fit for an L.L. Bean catalog.

Until it detours into dysfunctional-family comedy-drama, Transamerica rides cross-country without ever running low on bracing, cactus-spined surprises.

Brosnan turns his typical talent on its head. So does director Boorman, who forsakes his usual tingling virtuosity.

It wants to be like no other movie you've ever seen. It's more like every movie you've ever seen.

It sheds the series' famous and influential pastel look and plunges its cast of villains and warriors into the 21st century.

Cotillard brings honesty to histrionics. She makes Piaf - "the little sparrow" - soar.

In Spy Kids 2, Rodriguez tries to hold his family-spy saga together with the digital equal of rubber bands and chewing gum.

Zellweger has a ticklish furriness reminiscent of Jean Arthur in her screwball comic prime.

A film that climaxes in Shanghai shouldn't go down like a meal in Shanghai. But an hour after you see M:i:III, you may be hungry for a real movie.

The credits list a couple of dozen medical and scientific consultants. What this film really needed was a script doctor.

All it lacks are the crucial things an inspired director could have provided: spark, soul and magic.

The word "yuppie" has fallen out of favor from overuse, but Closer's young urban professionals are so vain and superficial they may bring it back as the ultimate putdown. This movie is a yuppie nightmare.

In the Valley of Elah is too inept and diffuse to be a howl against the war in Iraq. At best, it is a manly whimper.

The movie is full of holes - it lacks the precision and verve of a Francis Veber farce like "The Dinner Game" - but the two actors brew up a sane kind of comedy from their fractious rapport.

Even when you're disappointed with the film's predictability, there's something invigorating about the way it embraces literacy and argument.