Peter Travers

For its first stingingly funny half hour, The Invention of Lying had me thinking that Ricky Gervais had finally found a way to bring his indisputable brilliance at TV comedy (The Office, Extras) to the big screen. Then the air went out of the balloon. What a shame.

Even when the script slips into sermonizing -- a Swoff voice-over informs us that we're all still "in the desert" -- Mendes keeps invading us with emotions. The jolt of Jarhead is undeniable, and it comes when you least expect it.

For the first time, the Farrellys seem to be embarrassed by their own crudeness. For the first time, they should be.

A movie this unspeakably awful can make an audience a little crazy. You want to throw things, yell at the actors, beg them to stop. But the film drags on, digging horrible memories into the brain -- like Bruce Willis and Danny Aiello's singing.

Feels fake, forced and indigestible.

It’s not that Robert Getchell’s script is any less crackbrained than Besson’s. This kind of kink just works better with a French accent.

Despite grim doings involving sexual hysteria and chopped-up body parts (don't ask), Ramsay and Morton fill this character study with poetic force and buoyant feeling.

The film is rapturously beautiful, enticing us into a lush, aristocratic world.

The true story of the LaMarcas, well told by the late Mike McAlary in Esquire, has been pounded into TV-crime mush by screenwriter Ken Hixon and director Michael Caton-Jones. Shockingly, the acting doesn't help.

We have to suffer through two hours of this rancid summer cheese.

"Sixth Sense" rip-off.

It's Hanson's astute directing that makes the film's life lessons go down painlessly, turning the smartly entertaining In Her Shoes into a comfy fit for both sexes.

The perfect summer movie, that is if you're eight years old or under. For the rest of us, the sequel to the first "Fantastic Four" that miraculously amassed more than $150 million in 2005, is a plotless, brainless, witless bore.

Their (Travolta/Jackson) teamwork was classic. Basic breaks up the team. What's up with that?

"Your incompetence is most taxing," says the chief vampire (Bill Nighy). A line that pretty much nails this rusty Blade.

It will knock you for a loop like no other movie this year.

Stylishly shot on the high-def cheap, runs 77 potently sexless minutes. Its subject isn't erotica, it's commodities trading.

Regrettably, Bergman can't do much with a one-note script by Jane Anderson that reduces Perez to a grating cliché, Cage and Fonda to a parody of Ken and Barbie and our interest in what could happen to them to dry ash.

Except for Ashley Judd, who shows true grit as Vivi in her babe days, the effect is like being buried in molasses. For guys whose pain threshold is way low when it comes to the bonding of Steel Magnolias, Ya-Ya is a definite no-no.

Driver's tough core of honesty and wit is bewitching. So's the movie.

The Core -- with its by-the-numbers plot and performances -- isn't offensive, just unblushingly tacky and derivative.

If you want to see explosive acting, just watch Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett ignite in this film version of Zoe Heller's 2003 novel.

The film has no soul. An epic about this day of infamy should shake you to the core. But the real infamy about Pearl Harbor is that when you exit, you don't feel a thing.

Scrappy, funny, hot-to-trot biopic.

What saves director Ted Demme's comic talkfest from sitcom slickness is a quirky script by Scott Rosenberg and an appealing cast.

It's a frisky romantic comedy with a great title and wonderfully appealing performances.

What if director Joseph Ruben didn't resort to B-movie suspense tricks? What if the fine cast wasn't saddled with a shamelessly contrived script by Wesley Strick and Bruce Robinson? Then Return to Paradise would be a better movie, that's what if.

It's soft-core pap for horny boys and their hornier dads.

A personal best for producer Jerry Bruckheimer, a triumph for Scott and a war film of prodigious power. You will be shaken.

DiCaprio is terrific, but he can't save this lecture from the shame of using Africa as a vehicle for another white man's redemption.

It's funny as hell, and like all comedy that stings, sorrowful at its core.

It's a role of fierce demands, and Rampling meets them all. In a summer of crass, Rampling is a true class act.

Final Analysis suffers from something much worse: terminal shallowness.

For stranding these talents in a one-gag movie that wears thin somewhere between the first choir practice and the second chase, the filmmakers should say a sincere Act of Contrition.

The final confrontation between the Hulk and Blonsky, now the roaring Abomination, is like the clash of Downey and Bridges in "Iron Man," only not as exciting.

The title of this limp retread of "Minority Report" -- both films are based on stories by Philip K. Dick -- presumably refers to the reason the big names involved did this movie.

This rip-roaring Irish comedy is the freshest surprise of the season.

Spellbinding.

You always know where it's going even as it meanders for two and a half hours getting there.

Cuaron's hot-blooded, haunting and wildly erotic film revels in the pleasures of the flesh without losing touch with thought and feeling.

At its relaxed best, when it's about, well, nothing, the slyly comic Bee Movie is truly beguiling.

The tricky thing about parody movies is that the jokes get old fast and they're hit-and-miss. Walk Hard, a spoof of every musical biopic from "Ray" to "Walk the Line," is guilty on both counts. How lucky that when the jokes do hit, they kick major ass.

Sollett, hoping for a "Before Sunrise/Before Sunset" vibe, sadly settles for a soggy aftertaste.

The acting is of the highest caliber. Winger, magnificent and too long between films, is a volcano of repressed anger.

The money shots of the living tableau are padded with jokes that feel embalmed before the actors get them out of their mouths.

Its truths are personal. It means to shake you. And does.

Taut, tense and enthralling, as smart and surprising as it protagonist.

Get ready to be shaken and stirred.

"You're an awfully hard man to like, Hitler." Few serious films could survive a line like that. Max certainly doesn't.

OK, the plot is inane, Val-gal-speak is a clichT, and Heckerling was more incisive covering similar hormonal ground 13 years ago in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High." But there's still wicked good fun to be had.

Here's a fireball documentary about the 1970s, when filmmakers were stoked by sex, drugs, rock and, oh, yeah, social conscience.

The four actresses supply enough humor and heart to light any movie’s fuse, even this cliched retread of Thelma and Louise. Like the characters they play, the sisters deserve better.

What the film lacks is suspense, surprise (the new ending is a dud) and passion.

Reality tv, welcome to the multiplex. If "The Hills" went back to high school and developed wit, perception and a conscience, it might play something like Nanette Burstein's wallop of a doc.

In the end, The Soloist isn't about BIG MOMENTS, it's about the grace notes, the kind that stay with you.

Watching Carville and Stephanopoulos manipulate the media by playing both footsie and hardball makes for a wickedly funny and irreverent lesson in ’90s power politics.

Admirers of Irving's sprawling tome are sure to find Birch a botch.

Here's the problem: The movie was made just four years ago by Argentinian director Fabian Bielinsky. It is called "Nine Queens," and it is vastly superior to this blah U.S. remake from director Gregory Jacobs.

The result is a film that defies description. I'd call it some kind of miracle.

Sam Peckinpah lives! The rampaging spirit of the late filmmaker, known as Bloody Sam for films such as "The Wild Bunch" and "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia," is all over this blistering modern Western from first-time director Tommy Lee Jones.

A film of startling humor and feeling. For that, director Steven Shainberg, who co-wrote the script with Erin Cressida Wilson, owes much to two remarkable performances.

Grating.

Whatever you call this one-of-a-kind bonbon spiked with wit and malice, it's classic oo-la-la.

It's refried comic beans that smell stale and smack of desperation.

Allen screws up his directing debut with a script that smothers his wit in a blanket of bland.

By playing it safe, the new Precinct leaves the audience sorry and restores thirteen to its place as the unluckiest number.

Reeks like something produced from a squatting position.

This unique and devastating look at the Holocaust is drawn from the autobiographical novel of 2002 Nobel Prize winner Imre Kertesz.

So what's not to like? There's the bad CGI, the choppy pacing, the comically intense acting, the repetition, the dullness and mostly the idiot plot about how there's only one male dragon and everything will be fine if they kill the Big Dick. Wha? Somebody get a hose and put this Fire out.

A shit stain on the genre.

Ritchie's got something all his own: a go-for-broke energy that cuts through the cliches of the crime genre.

Winslet's fierce, unerring portrayal goes beyond acting, becoming a provocation that will keep you up nights.

Toss this ugly-ass crap to the curb, along with the other multiplex garbage, and see a romance that gets it right. I'm talking "(500) Days of Summer."

This blisteringly cynical satire, written by Paddy Chayefsky, is one of the darkest movies ever made, a cold-eyed lament for a society torn apart by upheavals of the Sixties.

What makes it such a mesmerizing, wickedly witty entertainment is the revealing portrait it paints of an era in which everyone is presumed guilty where greed is concerned... It's an often chilly movie, but the chill cuts to the bone.

Acted with relish by a note-perfect cast -- a romantic comedy of true sophistication. There's a sting in every laugh.

One of the best and liveliest movies of the year - funny and touching in ways you can't predict.

For three years, the camera focuses on the Chicks as wives, mothers, entertainers and political flash points. Their fight to stay uncompromised is inspiring.

Gibson has made a film of blunt provocation and bruising beauty.

These melancholy Danes create something sweetly sexy, funny and touching.

This black-comic assault on family entertainment is going to set a lot of teeth on edge -- If only his (De Vito's) material were better this time.

Williams gives a performance that is riveting in its recessiveness and, as a consequence, truly, deeply scary.

Stumbles and sometimes falls on its top-heavy ambitions. But there are also flashes of visual brilliance and performances, especially from Haley and Crudup, that drill deep into the novel's haunted soul.

Wilson drops the ironic smirk to give a sincerely affecting performance. His scenes with Murray provide the ballast when the script veers off into unconvincing pirate attacks and animated sea creatures.

Walken is so funny, he almost makes you forget this flick is one joke stretched thinner than Calista Flockhart.

But the film exerts a hold. The crux is: for how long?

If you don't see where this is going, you've never seen a movie. Sorry it had to be this one.

Director Luke Greenfield, the auteur behind "The Animal," starring Rob Schneider, wants to pass off this limp-dick farce as social satire. Ha!

Will Smith has an easy charm, and this labored romantic farce works it hard. Too hard.

The film is a mesmerizing erotic odyssey given gravity and heart by Cruz.

No more than a beguiling trifle. But in the dog days of summer, it's a perk to wallow in inspired silliness.

What jump-starts the film is the casting of Johnny Depp as Don Juan and Marlon Brando as his shrink. They bring a playfully romantic touch to a drama that could have been dead weight in clumsier hands.

If the devil made them all do it, he's one dull bastard.

Estevez means well. But having your heart in the right place is no excuse for insipid ineptitude.

Amid the action heroics of White Squall, Bridges creates a character of consequence.

Kazan’s technique drafts seductive promises that the empty-headed Dream Lover can’t keep.

The movie is thunderously exciting, but what makes it resonate is the wrenching story we read on Damon's face. We've waited all summer for a wild ride to grab us with more than jolts. Now it's here. Hang on.

By the end, Vantage Point is such a unholy mess of drooling sentiment and sloppy loose ends that you’ll hate yourself for being suckered in.

Lulls aside, Wain and Showalter deserve camp kudos for getting the details right.

Cruz is a dish, but her movie is as soggy and indigestible as Styrofoam.

Fine directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel take a detour into mumbo jumbo.

Richardson -- acting with her mother, Vanessa Redgrave, who plays her aunt, and her aunt Lynn Redgrave, who plays her mother -- finds the story's grieving heart. Fiennes is her match in soulful artistry.

The acting by Esposito and Jackson is exceptional, but it is on the remarkable face of Nelson that Yakin shows what gets lost when a child beats criminals at their own game.

The dark fantasist in Lucas makes a comeback after years of once-over-lightly.

Cate Blanchett can do anything, even play Bob Dylan, but she can't save this creaky sequel to her star-making 1998 biopic of Elizabeth I.

Director Stephan Elliott uncorks a rare vintage of laughs tinged with heartache.

Jarmusch is a true visionary; he knows his films can't bring order to the ravishing chaos around him, but he can't resist the fun of trying. In this compassionate comedy of missed connections, he makes us see the ordinary in fresh and pertinent ways. But the flickers of humanity in those taxis are soon dulled by barriers of time, sex, race, language and money. They are flickers in a vast emotional void.

Forrest Gump lives in spirit in this overbearing tear-jerker that takes two and a half hours to cover three baby-boom decades in an effort to prove that nice guys finish first, at least in the hearts of academy voters.

Listen to me: trash can surprise you. So don't get all elitist about the so-called cheap thrills in Mr. Brooks.

Maybe this redo didn’t need so many bells and whistles, but Mangold brings it home.

Spacey's deft directing can't offset a script that wants to be Chinatown and ends up as indigestible chop suey.

Outrageously, even shamelessly, entertaining.

Capote is a movie that doesn't pull its punches. It's a knockout.

Takes off with the lightning speed of a thriller, the gonzo force of frontline journalism and the emotional wallop of a drama that puts a human face on shocking statistics.

Makes you gag.

A movie of prodigious power and feeling that is also high-spirited, hilarious and scorchingly erotic.

You'll have major fun at this movie. But what makes it something special is the way Kasdan laces the laughs with a sting.

Alive draws considerable power from staying more human than heroic.

Trouble enters only when the script overcomplicates things in the end. Until then, especially in a growling dogfight, director Francis Lawrence (Constantine) keeps you squirming.

This spark-free film has no place to go on their resumes except under the heading of "Cringing Embarrassment."

It isn't the sex that shocks here, it's the chilling core of loneliness. Intimacy dares to cut deep, and its daring gets to you.

It's really inventive and bizarre and marvelously entertaining.

It may sound silly, but Lord and Park conjure up a world of visual miracles.

Doesn't seem directed at all; you half expect the actors to crash into each other. Still, give me the attempted satire of Head of State over the racial stereotyping of "Bringing Down the House" anyday. You can feel a mind at work when you watch Rock.

Any cornball contrivances in the plot dissipate in watching the knockout talent of Williams, a performance artist with the exhilarating fire that only the best actors possess.

I don't know if 3-D could improve all movies (nothing could make "The Love Guru" funny) but it sure works here.

A violent cartoon that trivializes apartheid. If there's any justice, the birds of loneliness will be circling the box office.

What makes the film distinctive, devastating and unforget-table is the way De Palma lets the actions of the characters speak volumes. There is no conflict between what De Palma and Rabe are trying to say. But their methods are different. De Palma shows; Rabe tells...This is a portrait of hell so harrowing it’s impossible to shake.

When Hollywood decides to remake French farce by Francis Veber, the result can be a champagne cocktail (La Cage Aux Folles spawning The Birdcage) or pâté de merde (Les Compères degenerating into Father's Day). Dinner for Schmucks, adapted from Veber's Le Dîner De Cons, falls somewhere in the middle.

Redford plays the game of filmmaking to reveal what he holds sacred: story, character, feeling, thoughtful pacing, and an alertness of nuances of honor and shame that most movies skip in the rush to the rush.

In Cry-Baby, Waters has created a crackpot jamboree that captures the Fifties, then parodies and transcends the period; any resemblance to Nineties greed, prejudice and repression is intentional. At forty-three, Waters remains unrepentantly juvenile. It’s his saving grace. What he can’t fight, he ridicules. The mirror Waters holds up to the world is distorted, turning everyone into a grotesque. But we can still see ourselves in it And laugh.

These kickass Barbies bring heart to a machine tooled genre.

The challenge is exhilarating. You can discover a lot about yourself by getting lost in Mulholland Drive. It grips you like a dream that won't let go.

By the time they're onstage, your pulse is pounding right along with theirs. Spell this movie: g-r-e-a-t.

Bummer. The vampires have no fangs. The humans are humdrum. The special effects and makeup define cheeseball. And the movie crowds in so many characters from Stephenie Meyer’s book that Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen) is less a director than a traffic cop. But there’s a reason that Twilight has already become the movie equivalent of a bestseller: The love story has teeth.

Among the recent spate of comic-book movies, from "Spider-Man" to the "X-Men," The Punisher is unique.

Funny, touching and acutely observed film.

There's a word for the kind of comic, dramatic, romantic, transporting visions Miyazaki achieves in Howl's: bliss.

You won't forget the way Carrey transcends mere impersonation to find the roots of Andy's torment.

De Niro's decision to make Dwight a loony from the get-go throws the delicate symmetry of the story out of whack.

The film ultimately gives in to a case of TV-movie blahs.

It's subpar sitcom.

Holmes nails every laugh without missing the dramatic nuances. She makes April and her movie well worth knowing.

The shortage of wit and the excess of goo can be summed up in Sandler's line to these children of divorce: "I'm like the stink on your feet — I'll always be there."

This movie and Hardy's electrifying performance will knock you for a loop.

As heartfelt as it is hilarious.

Solondz likes to put the screws to moral hypocrisy. As always, he goes too far. As always, you don't want to look away.

Kline finds every nuance of mirth and melancholy in this wonder of a role and rides it to glory. You can't take your eyes off him.

You won't forget this film -- it's devastating.

This documentary succeeds triumphantly on so many levels that its full impact doesn't hit you until you have time to register its aftershocks.

Junkies for dark humor should prep for going cold turkey, despite the efforts of director Andrew Adamson to spice things up with combat and a rivalry between Caspian and Peter (good on Moseley for showing some backbone) that Lewis never imagined.

Director Peter Segal ups the ante on the action, aiming for Bourne more than Bond, but the stunts grow frenzied and increasingly flat.

Just soak up that Tuscan sun and wonder when Lane will get another movie, like "Unfaithful" or "A Walk on the Moon," that will let her really shine.

It's a total triumph, brimming with humor, heart, sexual heat, political provocation and a crying need to stir things up, just like Harvey did. If there's a better movie around this year, with more bristling purpose, I sure as hell haven't seen it.

Refreshingly naughty and nice.

The film, quite rightly, is a tour de force for Bardem.

Some bad movies should carry a leper's bell to warn off ticket buyers. Such a contagion is Charlie St. Cloud, a load of mawkish swill starring Zac Efron (bereft of the talent he showed in "Me and Orson Welles").

An absolute stunner of a movie.

Roth takes three powerhouse actors -- Julianne Moore as the mother, Samuel L. Jackson as the cop who interrogates her and Edie Falco as another woman who lost her son -- and reduces their talents to rubble and their characters to screeching cliches.

Awful.

Messed up as it is, you can't tear your eyes away from this explosion of brutal sounds and images.

300 is a movie blood-drunk on its own artful excess. Guys of all ages and sexes won't be able to resist it.

Comedy and tragedy cohere in this extraordinary film of Alan Bennett's play.

The film feels more like a thesis than vivid drama.

Lessin and Deal have made Trouble the Water a spellbinder you do not want to miss.

The year's most beguilling and touching surprise. Bravo.

The first commandment of Dogma: Thou shalt not stop laughing.

A romantic thriller of more than usual ineptitude.

Prepare to be scared senseless, and then, when you think you have it figured, your certainty will be shaken by scenes built to scare you even more.

Abandon all hope of logic, you who enter here.

Sherrybaby is the kind of pretend-arty Sundance thing that gives indie cinema a bad name.

Sean Astin is a winner as Rudy Ruettiger, who earns the grades, a place on the scout team and, in 1975, a chance to play... There’s little Rocky-like rah-rah. It’s Ruettiger’s persistence that his teammates and the film celebrate. For that, Rudy earns a rousing cheer.

Owen, in a heartfelt, award-caliber performance, never goes soft. It's his core of toughness that makes the movie so funny, touching and vital.

In a movie with more subtext than "Rosemary's Baby," nearly everyone, including Tim Roth as Dahlia's lawyer, harbors secrets. Salles unleashes a torrent of suspense for one purpose: to plumb the violence of the mind.

A movie that advances the career of a demonstrably gifted filmmaker, a fearlessly funny movie whose laughs draw blood, a bracingly provocative movie that won't apologize for its bad temper.

Though Exit is often bold and imaginative, it is also curiously lifeless. The screenplay, by Desmond Nakano (Boulevard Nights), which combines the novel’s six separate stories, never adds up to a coherent whole.

An emotional powerhouse.

The mischief Thornton does make adds up to wild, rowdy fun.

There's more palm-sweating suspense in one minute of this baby than in all of "The Omen."

This stuff is golden. Directors Brett Morgan and Nanette Burstein make sure the movie goes down like potato chips. It's great fun and compulsively watchable. And don't leave before Dustin Hoffman makes a hilarious appearance as the credits roll.

The film's most pleasing surprise is the beautifully nuanced portrait of Capote's confidante, "To Kill a Mockingbird" author Harper Lee, by Sandra Bullock. You heard me. Bullock gives the film what it otherwise lacks: the ring of truth.

There's heart but not much heat in this film version of "The Echoing Grove."

River may not be high art, but it is the perfect high old time for audiences in the mood to be tossed into the spin cycle for a pulse-pounding thrill ride.

If you're thinking "yuck," you're right. I added the extra star for Zooey Deschanel, who is so delicious as his honey that you want not to say no to Yes Man.

You won't feel too much like a jerk watching this rock & roll hostage comedy. There are laugh licks and spirited performances. It's fluff done with flair

A bright burst of action and comedy with a cast that makes for rousing good company.

Suspended over a deep gully of disbelief, where logic takes more bullets than the bad guys, Shooter still makes the grade as hard-ass action escapism.

Yup, director Michael Lehmann, far from the glory days of "Heathers," has made a movie about a hard-on, in which he relentlessly pounds a flaccid premise.

A no-bull throwback to 1970s action films. It zips along with B-movie verve while adding the rich details and go-for-broke acting that heralds something special.

There is devilish fun in this look into 1990s white-collar crime. But the jokes are the kind you choke on.

What have you done to The Wolfman, Hollywood? It’s got no kick to it. No fun either. And no real scares, which is more unforgivable.

It's a tense, terrifically funny action dazzler with a wow level in special effects that will be hard to top.

In Eastern Promises, shot to envelop by the great Peter Suschitzky, Cronenberg brings us face to face with the horror of self.

A raucous ride through one man's pain.

Tadpole may be small, but it's something special -- a cheeky comedy knockout.

Let Clarkson and Fanning take you to the rabbit hole of seductive enchantment that defines this movie. And don't ask what to do -- jump.

Even Cate Blanchett can't save this misbegotten horse opera.

Jennifer Aniston is a friend in need of a movie script that will really let her talent blossom. Picture Perfect is too TV-ish and timid a romantic farce to do the trick.

Rob Marshall's flawed but frequently dazzling Nine is a hot-blooded musical fantasia full of song, dance, raging emotion and simmering sexuality.

What Shelton fails to provide is a coherent structure; the film is wearyingly repetitive. The boys do the same hustle and hurl the same racial epithets as our goodwill dribbles away.

A mesmerizing deconstruction of the brute nature of love.

Dahan's impressionistic heartbreaker of a movie gets it all in. And Marion Cotillard, lip-syncing Piaf's songs and digging into her soul with gale-force urgency, gives a performance for the ages.

Even the best actors -- and I'd rank Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Ruffalo among their generation's finest -- can't save a movie that aims for tragedy but stalls at soap opera.

Jewison dodges the issues in the script by Ronald Harwood (The Pianist) to focus on cat-and-mouse chases that kill interest.

As for Lee, he clearly relates to this material and the questions of political, musical and family identity he himself raised in films as diverse as "Malcolm X," "Mo' Better Blues" and "Crooklyn."

In an effort to blend Thackeray and "Sex and the City," Vanity Fair ends up nowhere.

Leigh isn't breaking new ground, but he knows how a daily grind can kill love. Strong stuff.

From the first sight of German soldiers goose-stepping past the Arc de Triomphe to a postscript that spells out the fate of characters whose moral confusion is all too real, Army of Shadows is a movie of its time -- and ours.

A hilarious hodgepodge, in which De Niro gives his best comic performance to date.

Colorful and exciting, as far as it goes. But Boyle and Hodge pull back on their usual wit and grit.

Williams is an actor of protean gifts, a super pitchman when it comes to putting across flimsy material (Dead Poets Society). But even he can't palm off this lemon as a peach. When it's not being offensive, Ken Friedman's screenplay is merely oafish.

Matthew Michael Carnahan's caffeinated script isn't much concerned with balance, but it gets some anyway, from the resonant images of culture clash that Berg catches on the fly and a remarkable performance from Ashraf Barhom.

Nunez is a major filmmaker who thrives working in a minor key. He makes Ruby a romantic fable with a tough core of intelligence and wit. It’s a real beauty.

It strikes me that their teasing and one-upmanship are more brother and sister at play than lovers in heat. Cruise and Diaz are in it for the action rush.

The satire loses its edge as the filmmakers wrongheadedly try to humanize this nest of vipers. Soapdish is more fun when it's spitting venom than when it's licking wounds.

The motor of the plot, involving nuclear terrorism, not only knocked Bad Company out of last year's release schedule due to 9/11 sensitivity, it stops Rock and Hopkins from sustaining a comic rapport. The waste is criminal.

Chloe Zhao, the Chinese-born director of this wondrous work of art (Oscar, please), joins with a never-better Frances McDormand and a cast of real-life nomads to capture what inspires the human urge to roam. It’s a new American classic.

Scores a solid hit.

The acting is top-notch, and LaPaglia, who makes the cop's torment palpable, gives the performance of his career.

A hugely entertaining blend of music, fun and eye-popping thrills, though it doesn't lack for heart.

Allenphiles will have a field day mining the film for inside dope. Are the clips from Shanghai and Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity — movies in which men are set up for a fall by dangerous women — a sly dig at Farrow? Better to see Manhattan Murder Mystery for what it is: Annie Hall replayed in a minor key by a filmmaker who sees the comedy, tragedy and transience of love and can’t stop playing the game. Allen’s readiness to step on a laugh in favor of feeling may cost him at the box office. But in this time of private hell and public scorn, it will help him endure.

A triumph for the machines, more proof that we do indeed live in the Matrix.

The film's relentless pummeling grows wearying at 135 minutes. The first Terminator, a half-hour shorter, was leaner and meaner.

A dynamite bundle from British writer-director Guy Ritchie. Even when the accents are as indecipherable as the plot, Ritchie keeps the action percolating and the humor on high.

It delivers the popcorn goods, but it ignores the poison eating at Bond's insides. Killer mistake.

Valentine's Day is a date movie from hell.

A shockingly intimate and deeply affecting film about the roots of sexual role playing.

The film wants to make a case for Parker as the first modern woman. It gets the look and the attitude right, but it can't find her heart.

Polanski has great wicked fun with sex, love, cruelty, books, movies and, of course, himself. If you don’t go along with the joke, you’re in for rough sailing.

Works enough miracles of 3-D animation to charm your socks off.

Just isn't enough.

Depp and Burton fly too high on the vapors of pure imagination. But it's hard to not get hooked on something this tasty.

There's no denying the exuberant energy and emotional force of this movie. It gets to you.

Higher Learning is seriously intended and seriously flawed. Singleton tends to shout his objectives. But in an era of cop-out escapism, it is gratifying to find a filmmaker who is spoiling to be heard.

The film is dawdling, sometimes maddeningly so, but Newman and Woodward deliver lovingly detailed and bruisingly true performances that not only command attention but richly reward it.

A film that could have been the first cleareyed view of the jazz world from a black perspective ends as a romanticized fable. For the only time in his remarkable career, Spike Lee has failed to tell it like it is.

Both boys give such heart-rending performances that fear of reprisals for participating in the scene persuaded the studio to postpone the film's release to give them time to leave Kabul.

Until The Contender slips into partisan politics and platitudinous piety, it's a lively, entertaining ride.

The funny and touching result is worth cheering for.

Even a search party would be hard-pressed to find a spark between Harrison Ford and Kristin Scott Thomas in Pollack's latest tear-jerker.

As sexist propaganda, the film is shameless.

Cringingly earnest, totally unremarkable fable.

It’s early in the new year, but I doubt that 1996 will produce a film more unthinkingly insidious than Eye for an Eye.

A decent thriller that should have been dazzling, is nothing if not topical.

So fasten your seat belts for Gomorrah, just snubbed in the wussy Oscar race for Best Foreign Film (so you know it's dynamite).

Played as a child by Abigail Chu and as an adult by Delphine Chanéac, Dren morphs into a special-effects miracle, sexy and scary in equal doses.

An ugly masterpiece.

Director Gary Fleder ("Don't Say a Word") pushes the same old cliches in "Blade Runner" packaging.

Egoyan is an acquired taste, but once in, you’re hooked. Exotica is Egoyan’s most accomplished and seductive film to date — even tackling acute psychic distress, Egoyan’s deadpan comic eye never flinches.

A potent and provocative look at life unhinged. Bubble is said to be the first in a series of six low-budget films from Soderbergh. If they all rock the boat like this one, bring 'em on.

Renier and Francois give deeply affecting performances that help soften the film's harsh blows. But only in the compassionate eye of the Dardennes do these three children achieve a state of grace.

Altman clarifies a convoluted plot with a magician's ease, creates an atmosphere that brims with the pleasures of the unexpected and explores character nuances.

Don't worry. It just sounds like another bad Sharon Stone movie. Kinky Boots trips on its contrived plot, but this blend of trash and sass is a comfy fit.

It took four screenwriters to turn a potent premise into mush. There’s some compensation in a solid supporting cast, especially Fyvush Finkel of TV’s Picket Fences as the world’s oldest bellboy. But director Barry Sonnenfeld shows little of the wicked spirit he brought to The Addams Family.

Brad Pitt doesn't really act in Ocean's Thirteen, he just glides through the third chapter in Steven Soderbergh's heist-flick annuity on the magic carpet of his own unimpeachable cool. Don't knock it. Genuine star power is rare. Pitt has it in spades -- all aces.

There's a special kick that comes in finding a new star. So step up, Ellen Page, and take your bows.

Maher can be a smartass, but his attempts to apply reason to religion are more a challenge than a threat.

In his debut as a writer-director, Sean Penn shows a sure hand with actors and a knack for setting up a scene visually and dramatically. But he’s a bust at following through.

Talk about your quick-buck exploitation.

See this darkly comic character study unburdened by preconceptions.

Does the plot spin out of control? You bet. But dumb fun this smart is a gift.

The antique charms of the story can still seduce us when done well, and director Jean-Paul Rappeneau, who freely adapted the play with Jean-Claude Carrière, knows how to fashion a sumptuously beautiful, hugely entertaining spectacle that also stays alert to the cadences of the heart.

Funny, touching, vital.

Oh, how good actors can trap themselves in drivel.

A meditation on the racial and class conflicts at the heart of the American character.