Michael Sragow

A movie made at wits' end. There are four or five authentic laughs in the whole 170-minute extravaganza.

The movie goes awry from the opening shots.

This movie has a tone, look and mood all its own - it's a joyously bittersweet piece of visual music about isolation, melancholy and everyone's yearning for transcendence, through love, art or both.

At last, a great contemporary holiday movie that's strictly for grown-ups - a holiday movie that really is a moviegoer's holiday from desultory daily fare.

What's fatal to the film is that De Niro's character, though compelling, is so temperate and wise he gives no indication of why he was drawn to a life of crime.

The whirl, bang and general bother of crashing gears and gnashing metal ends up suffocating the senses.

Even at its most enjoyable, Eight Legged Freaks is disappointing -- it grazes your funny bone instead of tickling it like crazy.

Holofcenere genuinely wants to make pictures that plug into an audience's need for intimate contemporary comedies. But she doesn't do enough to quench that thirst.

In Curse of the Golden Flower, Zhang Yimou tries to top the breathtaking poetic spectacle of his masterpiece, "House of Flying Daggers," and instead plummets into self-parody.

As Laura, Rueda hits sublime notes of confusion, grief and wrath. She's sympathetic enough to make you root for her and complex enough to get you arguing afterward about whether Laura did anything to deserve all this.

Even the great Lily Tomlin can't muster a funny reaction to a Polish joke. It's an everything-including-the kitchen-sink comedy -- and the sink has rusty pipes.

Remember mood rings? The Ring Two is a mood movie - a bad-mood movie.

With Tristan & Isolde, the core must be a passion that enlarges two outsize characters and seems as momentous as the rise and fall of a kingdom. Too bad this film's Achilles' heel is its heart.

Takes 20 minutes to burst into fierce, inspired filmmaking.

It's an experience that blows your mind, clears it and educates it.

It's the whole constellation of relationships that Winick and company create in and around the barn that brings the movie its kaleidoscopic charm.

Thelma Schoonmaker, a Scorsese collaborator for over a quarter-century, did the bull's-eye editing. The moviemaking throughout is swift, unaffected, masterly.

Once you get past the movie's needlessly fragmented framing device and its protracted introduction to a xenophobic rural Minnesota town, the core story gains some traction in your mind.

Benton's version of The Human Stain feels under-energized and modest to a fault. Yet it still delivers a genuine sad sting.

Role Models has a tart surface and a heart of goo. The movie grows more obvious as it goes along.

It's no compliment to say a movie is "all of a piece" if the piece is all worn out. For all its surface harshness, this movie is a star vehicle at once rickety and cozy.

The climax and epilogue are the juiciest, most tough-minded bits in the movie. Too bad Mayer didn't work his way backward from the end.

Domino should have been a terrific anti-heroine, but the movie never gets deep enough inside this walking time bomb to reveal what makes her tick.

The film is tense and engrossing. But it lacks exactly what the title advertises: the sense of inexplicable familiarity that should haunt you as the story unfolds and leave you all a-tingle when it ends.

What a relief to see a movie in which an audience responds with peals of laughter to subtle facial shifts as well as punch lines.

As a whole, The Matrix Reloaded is thin on magic, charm, surprise and fun. It's less like an all-out escape, or even a thrill ride, than a sensory workout. At best, it's a treadmill-like bridge to the hoped-for splendors of episode three, The Matrix Revolutions.

It's an unusual and engaging romantic comedy because it's mostly about how these women ready each other for real love.

Phone Booth may not be awful, but it's puny.