Paula Nechak

The film is so full of ideas and so dense that its narrative splinters, moving tangentially, and ultimately is weighed down by its rant and rhetoric.

Sticks in the mind and simply won't go away.

While most of the film is well-written and acted, there are some difficulties. Aniston's Olivia is hard to figure.

Cast and crew have a blast making a family movie that spoofs its James Bond-like premise, is jam-packed with action, sweaty-palm suspense and adventurous, high-tech fun effects, and yet never loses its at-the-core heart and sympathies.

Has difficulty reaching a resolution. In the final half-hour, the film becomes almost hysterically out of sync with its prior quiet reserve.

Zeffirelli creates a lovely, perfectly composed and lyrical look at life under Mussolini's black-shirted fascist regime. But despite danger on every corner in Italy, there is a tinge of rose-colored sentiment that blurs the events yet lends to the making of an affecting dramatic period piece.

airily works not only because of Witherspoon and a game supporting cast...but because, with its bark-and-bite agenda wrapped in a blanket of laughs, has the sense to remember that, first and foremost, it's entertainment.

While most movies would sink under the weight of such eccentricity, pretentiousness and earnestness, Garden State is so full of wit and the genuine heart of characters that you can't help but care about what happens to them.

It's an unashamedly old-fashioned and richly visualized evocation of a time when values were key, trust in your neighbor complete, and a way of life that should be simple is made unfathomably complex because of economic hardship.

Here's yet another take on "Pride and Prejudice,"...but all spiced up as colorfully as a dish of curry.

While there is a faithful following of kids, it just never seems as exciting or sad or emotional -- or as ablaze with personalities -- as what has gone before.

Writer and first-time director Thomas Bezucha certainly knows how to create warmth, ambience and situation.

What Jeffs -- and Paltrow -- do capture is the shroud of tragedy that hovered over Plath.

A foreign film feel despite its strong American cast.

Who was Bettie Page? You won't find out in Mary Harron's chirpily cheery chronicle.

[Jarmusch] seems...to introduce gratuitous bloodshed that is out of sync with the engaging, offbeat tempo and dark, comedic moral fable that has come before.

Like a family visit during the holidays. Tensions run high, not everyone is likable but being there's an uneasy comfort because everything is so familiar.

A comic, loving, affectionate glimpse of the '80s, its music and fashions, and most of all at that hard-to-find thing called true friendship.

Unfortunately can't transcend its theatrical roots and the actors, good as they are, seem like they're grandstanding.

Lurches toward an offbeat honesty but it also very nearly crashes in its quirkiness.

There is a certain poignancy to a film that metaphorically examines the stages of a woman's life through each character.

In the end, dark comedy drives the film, but it's overwhelmed by a desire to be liked, really liked.

Quite long and violent enough to have made several critics squirm in their seats during a recent press screening.

Swicord has enough savvy to conjure up a terrific cast that compensates for her rote direction.

A shapeless comedy that is enjoyable to watch and often clever with its barbs -- and doesn't have very much to say.

Often as stillborn in pace as it is conceptually compelling.

For all its somber heaviness and reverential gravity, it never quite pulls all the elements and themes together.

The result is a movie that washes down without much thinking or introspection, provides some laughs and a tear or two, and dishes up a little something to mull over with its messages about friendship and loyalty in the face of naked ambition.