Michael Sragow

The biggest crime of Van Helsing is that it resurrects classic monsters and fails to make them scary. With a full 132 minutes of feeble jokes and gimcrack phantasmagoria, it's not spine-tingling - it's butt-numbing.

Could have been a contender, but it lacks the courage of its own ambivalence.

The surefire laugh-getter centers on using a tampon to stop a nosebleed. Watching this movie, I had to hope it could stop brain-drain.

Wild Hogs puts the "ick" into City Slickers.

The movie is edited and, worse, narrated in ways that sabotage the magic and even undercut the movie's message.

The result is a treat for Sandler fans and a revelation for those of us who've spent the last decade wondering what on earth his appeal is.

The movie version of Love in the Time of Cholera doesn't have the drive or the dynamism to be an artistic nightmare. It's more like a dead dream, the kind that leaves nothing more behind in the light of day than a sickly cloud.

It's one nutty holiday fruitcake that is appetizing and tasty.

In "Jaws," you didn't know whether to laugh or to scream. In The Host, the yocks rarely mesh with the yucks.

This chick flick never should have made it out of the incubator.

Becoming Jane isn't just a soap opera - it's a soft-soap opera.

I found the sight of McAvoy as a piano player in jazzy-seedy duds a lot more disconcerting than Ricci's porcine prosthesis.

I love Rabbit-Proof Fence as drama, as protest, as moviemaking and as poetry.

By the time it reaches its supposedly crowd-pleasing finale, Baby Mama may have self-respecting comedy fans (and even Tina Fey fans) crying uncle.

Samson Raphaelson's marvel of a script unfolds in six sequences that rise and fall with the surprising weight of mini-lifetimes; under Lubitsch's tart-tender direction, the emotionally transparent Stewart and the electric, conflicted Sullivan create an immortal comic courtship. [13 Feb 2004]

As social commentary, Fun With Dick and Jane wears Leno-thin. As a big-screen sitcom, it's a procession of hit-or-miss touches that cancel each other out.

At its best, The Mystic Masseur is like a tall tale that grows more beguiling and credible the taller it gets.

This movie has its own emotional sorcery. In a raw, humorous way, it grasps how hope and desperation spur magical thinking and, sometimes, real magic.

Twisted is an unusual forensic crime film because it's witty and sophisticated as well as taut and creepy.

It's sad that with everything it has going for it, this movie plays like a tall tale -- something too good to be true.

Although it's in the same genre as "The English Patient," it's a vastly better movie --more surprising and original, more rigorous and sympathetic. This film is oddly shaped. It is also heartbreaking and exhilarating.

Spielberg's inchoate attempts at cultural observation stretch the movie out and dilute the giddiness instead of adding a pleasurable spike. When the movie doesn't feel inflated, it feels soggy.

An unconventional and engrossing French thriller.

The only reason to see Nights in Rodanthe is to check in with Diane Lane.

Maya Rudolph's subtle, lyrical portrait of a patient wife and expectant mother enlivens and elevates Away We Go, an erratic couple-on-a-quest film.

What Phoenix and Witherspoon accomplish in this movie is transcendent. They act with every bone and inch of flesh and facial plane, and each tone and waver of their voice.

Penelope Cruz is sensational in Volver - she's its lifeblood, its raison d'etre and its meaning.

Deep Water is a movie that will connect to anyone whose private fantasies and creative plots have landed them in hot water.