Peter Travers

Just know that Pulse possesses the dark art to make your pulse pound and your hair stand on end -- with no cheating.

Built on a slender, one-joke whimsy -- and a tough one to buy into, at that.

Brace yourself for Thirteen -- it'll cause a commotion.

Until predictability seeps in from the edges, first-time director James McEvoy offers an invitation to a rap party that’s hard to resist as two Scottish MCs fake their way to the hip-hop top as Americans.

Maybe money never sleeps, but this missed opportunity of a movie will have audiences dozing.

I have the same allergic reaction to this open faucet of tear-jerking swill as I do to the 1996 Nicholas Sparks novel that inspired it.

Eyes sees what it wants to see, but it's a riveting glimpse.

Satire in a blanket of bland.

Shelton's strong, stinging film — one of the year's best — wants to get at something ingrained in the American character: the irrational desire to make saints of sports heroes.

Ninety minutes of being buried alive with Ryan Reynolds: Didn't we all suffer that in "The Proposal"?

DiCaprio, in his most haunting and emotionally complex performance yet, is the vessel Scorsese uses to lead us through the film’s laby­rinth.

It's all a jumble and, worse, a damned impersonal one.

The movie is so soggy and anonymous, I had to remind myself that the Farrelly brothers, Peter and Bobby, directed it. It's sad to watch the kingpins of gross-out try to dial down to cute. Swung at and missed.

Isn't much of a movie, but it's worth a look just to see screen legend Kirk Douglas, Michael's eighty-three-year-old father, kick ass.

I'd prefer to think of Sandler in "Punch-Drunk Love," the one good movie of the three he did this year.

May be only loosely true, but it is thoroughly Hollywood.

So flimsy it gives froth a bad name.

A haunting and hypnotic movie, just the thing to get lost in.

The film is alive with delicacy and feeling...It's a beauty.

Build a comedy around Jim Carrey in manic mode and they will come. Case in point: Fun With Dick and Jane, a pointless, painfully unfunny and yet inexplicably popular remake of the 1977 fizzle with Jane Fonda and George Segal.

Clooney fashions a style all his own: visceral, vital and churning with off-the-wall ideas. That's what makes you want to see Clooney direct again. You can feel his joy in it.

Winds up being faster and funnier than the first time. Chan's acrobatic high jinks play strikingly off of Tucker's wiseass humor.

Bad Boys II has everything. Everything loud, dumb, violent, sexist, racist, misogynistic and homophobic that producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Michael Bay can think of puking up onscreen.

What catches us in Spider's web -- besides the indelible performances of Fiennes and Richardson -- is the director's sympathy with this freak man-child who struggles to order his confused memories into a kind of truth.

This movie isn't just a necessity (listen up, do-nothing politicians) - it might change your future.

Johnny Depp, who paid for the 2005 funeral in which Thompson's ashes were fired out of a cannon, narrates with just the right mix of awe and impertinence.

Reeves plugs in a live wire to play Abby, the girl vampire who's been 12 for, well, a very long time. That would be Chloë Grace Moretz, an acting dynamo (see Kick-Ass) whose mesmerizing performance goes deep.

Che looks dazzling, whether the camera is weaving through a battle or trying to bore into Che's haunted soul. Del Toro stands up to Soderbergh's relentless scrutiny. As for the movie, it's a reward to audiences eager to break from the play-it-safe pack. Game on.

Except for a rare scene of shaggy charm, nothing works. Nothing.

This is Berg's debut outing as a director, but other first-timers, namely Joel Coen (Blood Simple) and Danny Boyle (Shallow Grave), had it all over him for blending horror and hilarity.

This little-hyped thriller emerges as a dark-horse winner by reminding us of how pleasurably exciting a popcorn movie can be when it's populated by actors who are in it for more than an exorbitant fee.

Director Paul Schrader has fashioned a film of surpassing creepiness. It's pretentious, too, and sometimes maddeningly dull. But the erotically unsettling atmosphere – exquisitely rendered by cinematographer Dante Spinotti – soon seeps in.

Friedkin turns on the juice and Jones and Jackson let it rip.

It takes a while for this oddball film -- a mosaic of stories in the style of "Magnolia" -- to take hold, but when it does, it grabs you hard.

Director Brian Robbins ("Good Burger") and screenwriter W. Peter Iliff ("Prayer of the Rollerboys") have wrapped their moral fable in a glossy package of hard football action and towel-slapping, hard-body fun that might seem exciting if you've never seen a movie before.

This Sweeney is a bloody wonder, intimate and epic, horrific and heart-rending as it flies on the wings of Sondheim's most thunderously exciting score.

Getting lost in the hypnotic Half-Blood Prince is what gives the movie its haunting power.

This thriller is so gritty it could chafe your eyeballs...Miami Blues is high on its own malevolence.

Bright Star is the New Zealand writer-director's raw, sensual attempt to render Keats as experienced by a young girl who couldn't understand the genius of his verse.

Director Regis Warginer ("Indochine") lets his film degenerate into a turgid melodrama.

Writer and director Carl Franklin ("One False Move") scores a triumph in using the brooding atmosphere and racial tension of the sun-kissed, seedy City of Angels to reveal character and reclaim a neglected past that ace cinematographer Tak Fujimoto brings to vivid life.

Don't look for the originality and grit that distinguished Weir's Australian films Picnic at Hanging Rock and Gallipoli, Green Card has all the heft of a potato chip. But Depardieu's charm recognizes no language barriers, and MacDowell, the revelation of sex, lies, and videotape, proves a fine, sexy foil.

Essentially an old-fashioned weepie gussied up for Y2K.

Add Showtime to the pile of Hollywood dreck that represents nothing more than the art of the deal.

Confessions is no more than a painless time-waster. But the beguiling Fisher is well worth the investment.

The pitch-perfect performances help Holofcener stir up feelings that cut to the heart of what defines an ethical life. There's no movie around right now with a subject more pertinent. It'll hit you hard.

You cheered Jack Black in "School of Rock," now give it up for Paul Green in the real thing.

First-time director Peter Care crafts something darkly funny and touching from a coming-of-age fable that might have drifted into formula without deeply felt performances from Culkin and Hirsch and dazzling animation from Todd McFarlane (Spawn) that brings the boys' comic fantasies to jolting life.

If there is such a thing as hard-core with a soft heart, this is it.

The call on this one is: dead on arrival.

Director Michael Hoffman sprays on the tears like a toxic mist. Avoid like the plague.

Leave it to a g-rated cartoon to give the live-action epics a lesson in action, fun and bracing originality.

Jolie is inspired casting. She plays the role like a gathering storm, moving from terror to a fierce resolve. And Eastwood, at the peak of his artful powers, tightens the screws of suspense without ever forgetting where the heart of his film lies.

Adventureland throws a lot at us, but not enough of it sticks.

Hellboy is on fire with scares and laughs and del Toro’s visionary dazzle. It’s the tenderness that comes as an unexpected bonus.

Enjoying this wondrous wisp of a something is easy, describing it is hard. Luckily, Charlyne Yi is an enchantress.

The buildup is steadily engrossing. That's because Nolan keeps the emphasis on character, not gadgets. Gotham looks lived in, not art-directed.

Veering on the maudlin, the film ultimately succeeds by striking a universal chord on the subject of inconsolable loss. It's a stirring, humane testament from a surprising source.

Panahi creates a raw, riveting film.

Not since Gus Van Sant inexplicably directed a shot-by-shot remake of Hitchcock's "Psycho" has a thriller been copied with so little point or impact.

It's not the identity of the killer that gives Seven its kick -- it's the way Fincher raises mystery to the level of moral provocation.

This big-screen Hamlet, pumped up to operatic scale by overkill director Franco Zeffirelli, exposes Gibson's shortcomings.

It's a bitch telling a coming-of-age story minus clichés and sappiness. So Youth in Revolt, with Michael Cera in his best performance yet, is a small miracle.

I didn't believe a word of it.

Keaton, a sorceress at blending humor and heartbreak, honors the film with a grace that makes it stick in the memory.

Charmer of a comedy.

The grand becomes grandiose and the lyrical turns bombastic.

Compared with ("The Sixth Sense"), there's no contest. Stir of Echoes has been outrun and outclassed.

All credit to a finely tuned Brosnan for packing so much intensity and wayward wit into his scenes with McGregor. Their verbal duels make for a dazzling game of cat-and-mouse.

Blast of fright and fun.

It looks like a documentary...Don't let anyone tell you more.

Tyler, a true beauty, gives the role a valiant try, but her range is too limited to play this amalgam of female perfection.

Howard struggles with the role Kidman nailed. And the graphic nude scene in which "proudy slave" Timothy (Isaach De Bankole) puts a towel over Grace's head before ravishing her pale body is as rugged on the audience as it is on the actors.

Plods along in the Oscar-winning, yawn-inducing tradition of "Out of Africa," making me yearn for something less "National Geographic."

Taymor's visual and visceral flair makes Titus a grabber.

For a movie made from spare parts - take "The Exorcist" and attach to "The Blair Witch Project" and "Paranormal Activity" - The Last Exorcism delivers the heebie-jeebie goods.

Critics will score Semi-Pro on its missed shots. My guess is that audiences will do what they always do with Ferrell: remember when he killed them laughing.

You may want to revisit this profanely hilarious Hollywood satire. . .just to catch the zingers the audience often drowns out with laughter. Hollywood corrupts absolutely, and Mamet turns the toxic process into the year's best and smartest comedy.

I could puke.

Jonze has filmed a fantasy as if it were absolutely real, allowing us to see the world as Max sees it, full of beauty and terror. The brilliant songs, by Karen O (of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs) and the Kids, enhance the film's power.

"Sensational" is the word for Joseph Gordon-Levitt (equally striking in Mysterious Skin), who stars as Brendan, the teen outsider who becomes a budding Bogart.

Elegantly witty and haunting . . . McKellen gives the performance of his career . . . and Brendan Fraser excels.

The only touch of Caine's brutal sexiness is in the thrilling songs by Mick Jagger and Dave Stewart that should win Sir Mick his first Oscar. The rest is marshmallow.

How special.

Writer-director Raymond De Felitta creates something wonderfully funny and touching.

Writer-director Peter Sollett takes the familiar and turns it into hot, heartfelt movie magic.

Drugstore Cowboy improves. Not much, but in provocative ways.

Hollywood has again turned a challenging book into negligible cinema. Forget the $13 million budget and the reputations involved. This Handmaid’s Tale is merely a piss-poor rehash of The Stepford Wives with delusions of grandeur.

This unholy mess replaces the artful ambition of "The American" with torture, blood spray, kinky sex, twisted fun and a bizarro critique of U.S. policy on illegal immigration.

The movie goes soft in its final stages, but Rudd and Segel keep it real. "Sweet, sweet hangin'," says Peter of knowing Sydney. The same goes for the movie.

Performance artist Miranda July hits a grand slam as the writer, director and star of her first film. It's a moonbeam romance laced with startling wit and gravity.

In contrasting the sexuality and rebellion of Lucy's generation with his own, Bertolucci clearly yearns to rekindle his creative spirit.

It's a tall order that Tucci is not up to filling. But don't discount the pleasure of watching him try.

It's a tale so used, abused and broken you can hear it wheezing.

One of the worst movies of this or any year.

Simultaneously full of itself and full of sh--, Brooklyn's Finest is a cop movie so shallow, dumb, derivative and infuriating that it feels like a parody of bad cop movies.

A black-comedy gem.

What begins brightly gets bogged down over 140 minutes. A film that took off like a hare on speed ends like a winded tortoise.

Count this rehab a success.

A sappy-sweet romcom that seems to have been invaded by a screenwriter - one Geoff LaTulippe - with delusions that he's David Mamet.

Cate Blanchett is the spark that keeps this well-meaning but by-the-numbers biopic going.

Uproarious and unexpectedly biting.

Duvall missteps in trying to mesh suspense with a love story that also involves the woman (Kathy Baker) John J. lives with and her young daughter (Katherine Micheaux Miller), on whom he disturbingly dotes.

This is a generational family saga everyone can relate to, and Nair gives it her special magic.

Some may enjoy the slapstick, which plays like "Harold & Kumar Go to Old Peking," but this bloodless Coen crib job is simply not my cup of noodles.

Hotly hilarious.

What do you say about a movie that proves Zac Efron can act, introduces a master thespian in Christian McKay and launches a charm assault that is damn near irresistible? I say, see it.

By the time Fry lets darkness encroach on these bright young things, the fizz is gone, and so is any reason to make us give a damn.

If you're looking for action movie heaven, try Speed, a crackling blend of suspense and fun that gives you the rush of a runaway roller coaster.

It helps that the fun doesn't stop. It helps even more that the pitch-perfect script doesn’t step out of character for a joke.

A summer firecracker. It's also a tribute to outcasts -- teens, gays, minorities, even Dixie Chicks. It's not without thought or feeling, except when its mind gets bent by the gods of box office. Then it's craven and empty.

This hilarious, high-kicking nonsense cost two cents and looks it -- hell, it was shot in 19 days, but you'll laugh helplessly anyway.

Don't stall about seeing Sofia Coppola's altogether remarkable Lost in Translation. It's a class-act liftoff for the fall movie season. Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson give performances that will be talked about for years.

LaBute achieves a bracing originality by observing human folly as a means to understand rather than condemn. Love or hate his films, LaBute is one of the most challenging filmmakers to emerge in years.

A Dirty Shame is Waters unleashed, and wicked, kinky fun for anyone except the twits who rated it NC-17.

Lewis’s vintage rock is still cause for cheering. Too bad the movie that contains these Killer sounds never rises above a whimper.

Ali is a bruiser, unwieldy in length and ambition. But Mann and Smith deliver this powerhouse with the urgency of a champ's left hook.

Delivers frisky fun for bruised romantics regardless of age, sex or nationality.

Gangs of New York is something better than perfect: It's thrillingly alive.

Bruckner is an amazement, piercing the heart without begging for sympathy. This small gem of a movie is the perfect setting for her breakthrough performance.

The Village, even when its step falters, is on to something more provocative than seeing dead people. Its power, unrelated to digital monsters, comes from the tension building inside the characters.

The knockout punch comes from Eastwood. His stripped-down performance -- as powerful as anything he's ever done -- has a rugged, haunting beauty. The same goes for the movie.

Inspired by a true story (translation: a lot of it is made up), the movie shucks its corn straight from the cob. But it's no less engaging for that, thanks to the enthusiasm of the young cast and the fusion of classic dance with hip-hop moves courtesy of Rich and Tone Talauega.

Based on William Boyd's 1981 novel, the film has a touch of Evelyn Waugh — though the satire is served dry, it has still got a kick.

Contrived, manipulative and shamelessly sentimental, this film is notable for the courageous reach of Sean Penn, who gives a bold, heartfelt performance.

Kearns' conflict is readable in Kinnear's every word and gesture. His performance is worth cheering.

The film shines at capturing the watercolor delicacy of China's past.

Even when you know what's coming, Crazy Heart haunts you like a classic country song. It's a mesmerizer. So is Bad Blake. This dude also abides.

Director Brad Anderson tightens the screws of suspense, but it's Bale's gripping, beyond-the-call-of-duty performance that holds you in thrall.

The choice for the uninitiated is simple: Take the ride for its fitful thrills and dark elements, or just say the hell with it.

For dynamite suspense loaded with thrills and wicked fun, you can’t beat The Fugitive — the summer’s best action blaster.

Though Hollywood hyperbolizes the Gregory Poirier script -- Mann is a fictional character -- John Singleton ("Boyz N the Hood") directs the film with riveting urgency.

There's not that much that's new in screenwriter Marshall Karp's sitcom-ish memoir, but Alexander keeps the laughs coming.

The hard action, bracing wit and mournful grace of Peckinpah’s cowboy classic shames every new movie around. It’s a towering achievement that grows more riveting and resonant with the years.

Writer-director Andrew Niccol -- gets this Hollywood satire off to a rousing start. But the middle flattens, despite Pacino firing on all cylinders. And the end just nose-dives into something silly and, worse, sentimental.

Mamet is on his game, and that is a sight to see. No con.

It's a gimmick, it's not a movie.

Elliot fails to make the needed connection between the audience and a peeper who has lost his moral balance.

A burst of pure filmmaking exhilaration that manages to pay homage to the classic 1960s TV series and still boldly go where no man, William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy included, has gone before.

Watching De Niro take Paul through his first panic attack ("I'm crying like a woman") is an unalloyed joy.

Campbell Scott swings at one of the year's juiciest roles and knocks it out of the park.

Director Tony Goldwyn tries for the lyrical melancholy he brought to "A Walk on the Moon," but as Michael waits for days on Jenna's porch getting drenched (as irritating a scene as any in recent cinema), only the most rabid chick-flick fan will fail to notice that it's the movie that's all wet.

Here's the movie of the month for those who like their escapism big, brutal and brainless. Two fine young actors – James Marshall (Twin Peaks) and Cuba Gooding Jr. (Boyz n the Hood) – have inexplicably agreed to strike suitable-for-leering poses in their underwear while director Rowdy Herrington (Road House) devises other distractions from the idiotic plot.

A surprise package of fun, fright and untamed imagination.

The Rock has a flair for action and comedy; he's a real movie star.

The film collapses because Lee can't sew these vignettes into a seamless tapestry. He's more interested in getting even than he is in getting it right.

The film never digs deep enough into the pressures on Glass from his family, his peers and himself to achieve psychological depth. But as an inside look into the hothouse of journalism, it's dynamite.

Freeman's nuanced acting is a marvel.

A riveting and surprisingly romantic ride.

This one-of-a-kind spellbinder from first-time director Laurence Dunmore is not afraid to shock. Depp is a raunchy wonder, especially in a time-capsule-worthy opening monologue.

Cuarón has a gift only the greatest filmmakers share: He makes you believe.

If you can't watch John Malkovich being John Malkovich, it's still a kick watching him play Alan Conway, a gay Brit who pretended to be the legendary and reclusive director Stanley Kubrick during the 1990s.

So what if nothing is revealed. Todd Haynes is a mischievous visionary who puts the music and the myth of Bob Dylan before us in I'm Not There and dares us not to revel in the troubadour's poetic, contentious, ever-changing essence. It's a feast for the eyes, the ears and the Dylanologist scratching around our minds and hearts.

In his sappiest film since 1989's "Always," director Steven Spielberg has come down with a case of the cutes that the whole cast catches.

Moore has marshaled what's on the record and off into a stinging indictment of where we're going. In a multiplex filled with Hollywood cotton candy, we need him more than ever.

You can't shut the door on this spellbinder. It gets into your head.

Cruz exudes a sensual aura of mystery that holds you spellbound. And Almodóvar, a true poet of cinema, creates images -- horrifying and healing -- that live inside your head like a waking dream. You want to miss a movie like that? I didn’t think so.

The acting is electric. By the end of this haunting, hypnotic film, you feel you have watched lives being lived, not just imagined.

As always with Park Chanwook, you just hold on and let him rip.

The script, co-written by Antonioni and Peter Wollen, focuses on a TV journalist (a superb Jack Nicholson).

How the hell did Ben Affleck, 29, wind up replacing Harrison Ford, 59, as our hero? Who's next as Ryan -- Ozzy Osbourne's guppy son, Jack? Chronology hasn't been this royally fucked with since Memento.

Gore keeps us riveted by being charming, literate and profoundly persuasive on a topic that's scarier than anything in a dozen Japanese horror flicks. Vote Gore on this one.

Nothing the Hughes brothers have done in their videos for Tone Loc, Tupac Shakur and others prepares you for the controlled intensity and maturity they bring to their stunning feature debut.

In this roaringly comic and powerfully affecting road movie, Terence Stamp gives one of the year's best performances.

The filmmakers offer no commentary. We watch. And what we see is explosive, deeply moving and impossible to shake.

It's Bacon who overcomes all obstacles.

Director Sydney Pollack zapped out a taut thriller in "Three Days of the Condor". But The Firm is mostly flab, in the manner of Pollack's elephantine Havana.

The big problem with Big Trouble, despite a fine cast and director (Sonnenfeld made "Get Shorty" and "Men in Black"), is that the damn thing isn't funny.

But just watch Hanks, with the effortless grace of a Jimmy Stewart, turn the loony into something sweetly logical. Now that is magic.

A frustratingly uneven satire with undeniably sharp teeth, isn't afraid to shoot comic darts at its targets until blood is drawn.

Cautionary tales aren't new. What sets Kids apart as daringly original, touching and alive is its authenticity.

It's unapologetic schmaltz, deftly directed by Gary Winick (Tadpole) as if it really meant something.

A movie utterly devoid of wit , excitement and any reason for being.

This movie isn't over-the-top -- it doesn't know where the top is. Trash addicts will eat up every graphic minute, even if they prefer to wait for the DVD.

In uniting to honor Arenas, Bardem and Schnabel create something extraordinary.

Derivative and blindingly dull, Quick Change is an occasion for a quick nap.

DiCaprio is in peak form, bringing layers of buried emotion to a defeated man. And the glorious Winslet defines what makes an actress great, blazing commitment to a character and the range to make every nuance felt.

There’s not a real or spontaneous minute in it.

Jonah is fated to ride alone. Don't make the mistake of keeping him company.

In this wildly ingen­ious chess game, grandmaster Nolan plants ideas in our heads that disturb and dazzle. The result is a knockout. But be warned: Inception dreams big. How cool is that?

A borrowed idea -- hello, "Blade Runner," hi there, "Matrix" -- but an idea nonetheless.

A fine case ... but none weighty enough to keep this fluff from evaporating as you watch it.

Plays like an unholy union of "The Natural" and "The Prince of Tides." Too bad...Build a movie as a shrine to baseball and they will come. Suckers!

This lively mess proves that when Toback loses his head, he does it with style.

Steadily engrossing and devilishly funny, and, o brother, does it look sharp.

It's a magical, beguiling wonder.

There's Theron, like a force of nature, compelling us to go beyond TV-movie supposition and look Wuornos straight in the eye. Her raw and riveting performance makes Monster an experience you won't forget.

Moon is a potent provocation that relies on ideas instead of computer tricks to stir up excitement.

Like the music, the film is outspoken, roaringly funny, defiantly sexual and relentlessly in your face. I couldn't have liked it more.

Director Mike Barber springs a twist ending that makes you sit up and stifle those yawns.

Follow Shyamalan's Signs. It will take a piece out of you.

The real burned-out case is director-writer Peter Bogdanovich. The Last Picture Show made his reputation, and these aging Texans trying to rediscover their innocence obviously touch him deeply. But Bogdanovich’s style has turned heavy, crude and incoherent.

It's good fun for a while, especially the therapy sessions that feature Luis Guzman as a gay hood with a paunch he covers in Day-Glo spandex and John Turturro as Dave's "anger buddy." John C. Reilly also scores as a bully turned Buddhist monk.

Even education can't kill the demon of fun in Black. Enroll in his class and you won't stop laughing.

Even the stalwart Nolte drowns in the laughable idiocy of the Wingo-Lowenstein love affair, which lifts Tides to the fiasco class.

Dillon is a potent combination of looks, charm and menace, as he proved in Drugstore Cowboy, but Dearden’s script fails to provide the raw material that would let him go beyond the stereotype.

Result? It's not scary, just busy.

When studios plant these stink bombs in theaters, do they really think that audiences won't notice the stench?

In Kill Bill, Tarantino brings delicious sin back to movies -- the thrill you get from something down, dirty and dangerous.

The movie damn near lives up to that promise. Picture the Marx brothers and the Coen boys collaborating on a valentine spiked with mirth and malice.

Tarsem uses the dramatically shallow plot to create a dream world densely packed with images of beauty and terror that cling to the memory even if you don't want them to.

The power of this Holocaust tale sneaks up and floors you.

Martin Sheen makes his directing debut with this military drama mixed with laughs. It isn’t awful — just bland, which is worse.

Fueled by gripping suspense, dark humor and outraged humanity, the film is a modern horror story that means to shake you, and does.

Despite Bates' mastery at bringing unexpected depth to unhinged characters, Dolores is a few pints low on chills and challenge.

The film is rich in period flavor and refreshingly unhip.

To call it trippy would be an understatement. Your head might explode. Just don't accuse Taymor of playing it safe.

Panic Room is Fincher's high-style testament to the cool things movies can do to make us jump out of our seats in the dark.

After a lively start -- the sorority sisters, shaken by the slightest imperfection in themselves, cannot cope with handicapped athletes -- the film smooths its rough edges and reduces complex characters to sitcom stooges. Call it an opportunity missed.

Even when the script slips into sentiment, Peirce sticks with her troubled, questing soldiers, and through this raw and riveting movie, they stick with us.

Just what we didn't need: another kick-ass cop flick in which we know the guys are macho because they rough up their wives and the gals are hot because they totter on spike heels like hookers.

Shocking and indispensable viewing.

It's too bad. Jones deserved better than a biopic with a TV-movie heart.

Here's a comedy of punishing tedium that pretends to be hip when it's so five minutes ago.

The Beverly Hillbillies is not, as the saying goes, a critic’s picture. Still, you want to root for a movie that wallows without shame in leering, fatuous humor. I did — for about 15 minutes — then the sameness set in like an overdose of Beavis and Butt-Head.

A ham-handed melodrama that trivializes an important topic: the role of the teacher in a violent classroom.

In a summer of dumb, shameless drivel, Moore delivers a movie of robust mind and heart. You'll laugh till it hurts.

What a cast, indeed. And what a bust as persuasive drama.

Favreau supplies the go-go-go that makes the movie stratospherically entertaining, even without 3-D. But it's the promiscuously talented Downey who adds the grace notes that make Iron Man 2 something to remember.

Fighter shapes up as one of the great documentaries of this year, or any other.

It's not just that Jennifer Lopez looks lost and out of her league acting with Robert Redford and Morgan Freeman. That's to be expected. It's the drag-ass solemnity of this turgid family drama that makes you crazy.

Casts a spell that grips you and won't let go. The film works as a provocation, on a personal and a political level.

Both sides of the political fence will feel royally skewered. All that's lacking is a warning from the Surgeon General: This film will make you laugh till it hurts.

Fiercely provocative, Paprika shames Hollywood’s use of animation as a kiddie pacifier.

What you get in this cop drama is NYPD Blue lite. That's not bad. In fact, it's compulsively watchable. But there are no leaps, just fits and starts.

It's sledgehammer whimsy, and it's not talking to me.

Money, madness, incest and murder! Just the recipe for a twisted mesmerizer of a movie, if it doesn't creep you out.

I don't know what to say about the acting, writing and directing in G.I. Joe because I couldn't find any.

One of the year's best and most provocative films.

The Interpreter bristles with the smart, steadily engrossing tension that marked such 1970s goodies as "All the President's Men," "The Parallax View" and Pollack's own "Three Days of the Condor."

Hackman and Freeman will pin you to your seat.

Sinfully funny.

This is the safe and sorry Disney version, suitable for anyone under 10 or gullible to the point of idiocy.

It should have been an old-fashioned rouser, and sometimes it is. The great cinematographer Robert Richardson (JFK) lights the battle scenes like action paintings. But Kapur weighs down the tale with bogus profundities.

Carter can't sidestep the script's cliches, so he wisely cuts to the fancy footwork whenever possible.

It's a mouthful of a title for a rowdy, ramshackle funfest that flies by on its spirited humor and surprising heart.

You wind up caring deeply about the affair that began in the 1950s between American teenager Don Bachardy and three-decades-older Christopher Isherwood, the noted British author whose "Berlin Stories" inspired "Cabaret."

Hackman and Hoffman, old pals in their first film together, make a lively business of their one scene together -– in a toilet, no less. The rest you can flush.

Does this sound like rock heaven? It is.

The Book of Eli isn't as exciting or funny or inspiring as it wants and needs to be, and its preachy ending is an ordeal. But Washington, a movie star who can act, is one cool dude who is worth following anywhere.

Is this vulnerable Madonna the real thing or a ploy to ingratiate herself with film audiences who’ve found her chilly and strident? You be the judge. But there’s no denying that Truth or Dare is at its raunchy best when Madonna is kicking ass instead of kissing it.

This SCI-FI swill is the brain-child of director Mark L. Lester (Class of 1984), who says it’s really about “kids and the future of urban public education.” No, it’s not. It’s about kids and teachers kicking ass for two benumbing hours. What a waste.

Buscemi does not act in Lonesome Jim, but his sly humor and keen eye for nuance resonate in every frame. I can't recall having a better time at a movie about depression.

Incisively witty, provocative and acted to perfection, this sublime entertainment is a career peak for producer Ismail Merchant, director James Ivory and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala.

Something cold and mechanical has seeped into the sequel. The divas push so hard for fun, it kills the spontaneity that fun needs to breathe.

"Irritating" doesn't begin to describe Julia Roberts as Katherine, an art-history prof who arrives at Wellesley in 1953.

If you've forgotten the kick you get from watching a globe-trotting, butt-kicking, whiplash-paced action movie done with humor, style and smarts, take a ride with The Bourne Supremacy.

This dynamite thriller shivers with suspense. So if you ignore The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) because it's in Swedish with English subtitles, you probably deserve the remake Hollywood will surely screw up.

Drab in the extreme. Timothy Dalton's second and wheezing, final turn as 007 was barely recognizable as a Bond film.

Last stand? My ass. Billed as the climax of a trilogy, the third and weakest chapter in the X-Men series is a blatant attempt to prove there is still life in the franchise.

It's the Pixar animators who keep grown-ups as riveted as the kids with visual marvels that dazzle and delight.

Olmos is unsparing in depicting the dark side of human behavior. His in-your-face style stresses the urgency of a situation most of us choose to ignore. Though powerful, the film is sometimes preachy; there's a sense that information is being disseminated instead of dramatized. But it's hard to believe anyone will remain unmoved by American Me or its final shattering image of human desolation.

Director Doug Liman -- the hip skipper of "Swingers" and "Go" -- makes all the familiar dirty business seem fun and almost human. In these dog days, Bourne earns what passes as high praise: It doesn't suck.

Not only is this dazzler by far the best and most thrilling of the three Harry Potter movies to date, it's a film that can stand on its own even if you never heard of author J.K. Rowling and her young wizard hero.

It's scarier than "The Amityville Horror," as scandalous as "Fahrenheit 9/11" and loaded with more conspiracies than "The Interpreter."

Eastwood hasn't had this much fun with a role in years, and his joy is contagious.

O'Toole gives a staggering performance -- fearless, defiantly untamed and in its own way a work of art.

Schumacher could have exploited those tabloid headlines about solid citizens going berserk. Instead, the timely, gripping Falling Down puts a human face on a cold statistic and then dares us to look away.

A movie heart-breaker of oddball wit and startling grace.