Pete Vonder Haar

A handful of nifty battle scenes and some decent performances aren't quite enough to make Kingdom memorable.

How much you join in will depend on how big a fan you are of the collegiate comedy formula, how many times you've seen "Animal House" and "Caddyshack," and how much you hate Long in those smarmy Mac commercials.

It's worth a look, even taking into consideration the lack of zombies.

May not be much more than a story about girlfriends growing up, and it's not going to score any points for edginess, but it's entertaining in a low-key, non-threatening kind of way.

Intermittently amusing.

Craven eschews horror trappings and gore for a well-paced and engaging thriller that keeps the audience involved despite the fact that most of what takes place onscreen is a conversation between two people.

The rape scene is, admittedly, as brutal as any I've seen in recent memory, but much of what Iliadis shows us is a direct riff on the original.

Your enjoyment of Alpha Dog may very well depend on how put off you are by these facts, as well as how much you buy Timberlake in his role, and how in the mood you are to sit through "River’s Edge" set in the "Entourage" universe.

Thanks to a compact story and some economical direction, it actually ends up better than it has any right to be.

An above average film, and features fine performances (Theron and McDormand are probably stone locks for more Oscar nominations), but be wary of the advertising pointing out the film's similarities to movies like "Erin Brockovich."

Offers an unflinching look at the effects of a terminal diagnosis, not just on the victim, but on everyone around him.

Doesn't do much besides giving original "Ringu" and "Ringu 2" director Hideo Nakata the chance to strut his stuff in front of a wide-release audience.

It's the journey that offers the most enjoyment. Well, that and the beauty pageant climax, which I won't spoil here, but is one of the funniest scenes from film in recent memory.

This isn't to say The Departed is a bad movie, far from it, but knowing who's directing it and the amount of talent he had to work with, it's hard not to be disappointed that Scorsese didn't knock us on our asses. Is it his best movie since "Goodfellas?" Sure, but it falls shy of that film's excellence.

Reports of boos at the film's debut at Cannes are more understandable now, not because Marie Antoinette is an inaccurate or indifferent look at French history (it is), but because it's self-indulgent shit. Booing - and beheading - are too good for it.

It's funnier than "Wild Hogs," which is about as ringing an endorsement as I'm capable of these days.

As with "Napoleon Dynamite," Hess' sense of humor is an acquired taste, where all the characters speak in peculiar cadences and are afflicted with a terminal case of the "quirkies." What’s unfortunately missing from Nacho Libre is much in the way of humor.

It looks stylish, sure, but the script is laughable and the acting is ridiculous.

As it is, you'd get the same level of excitement watching "T.J. Hooker" reruns.

The film's quick pace and near-constant action carries you along quite nicely, and by the time Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) makes his climactic appearance, one can't help but look forward to the remaining films.

To top everything off, Tom Cruise may just have resurrected his career with the role of Les Grossman.

Land falls well short of the greatness of Romero’s previous zombie efforts.

Turistas fails in almost every way a movie like this can.

The same problems that plagued the original are on display here. Most notably, the lack of any coherent plot. Lots of creepy kids jump out at us, but these scenes are never satisfactorily meshed into the story itself.

You’re unlikely to come across a more powerful film this year.

The primary weakness is in the story itself, which at times seems like mere background for the snappy banter and knowing glances.

Exactly the kind of thing most of us have in mind when we think "popcorn movie." It's largely brainless, pretty to look at, and produced solely as a lead-in to another moneymaking sequel for Disney.

Younger children getting in on the ground floor of fantasy will enjoy the film.