Peter Travers

Nothing the skunk does can begin to match the stench of this movie.

To those who see no purpose to this film, I say the purpose is learning not to turn a blind eye. The unique and unforgettable Elephant keeps its eyes wide open.

It's a first-class ride. All aboard.

To Die For, sparked by a volcanically sexy and richly comic performance by Kidman that deserves to make her an Oscar favorite, is prime social satire and outrageous fun.

In crafting a fierce, fragmented, downbeat film about a character who makes the wrong decision as a man by being right as a cop, Penn flies in the face of what sells in Hollywood. Godspeed.

If you haven't already sold your soul to rock & roll, Almost Famous should seal the deal.

The movie that might have been goes down in flames.

From the Eastern flavor of the opening theme, hauntingly sung by Nancy Sinatra, to the Japanese setting, the fifth film is the Bond series just gets better and cooler with age. The tasty script by Roald Dahl junks most of the Fleming novel, spinning its own witty Cold War fantasy.

Any doubts about three Chinese actresses speaking English with Japanese accents vanish in the face of their deeply felt performances and the world Marshall conjures with magical finesse.

Luhrmann is a director with the style and snap to have these tired routines on their feet and kicking like a line of Rockettes.

Good-natured fun when it isn't stale, which is most of the time, this talky comedy set in a Chicago barber shop is a sitcom pilot disguised as a movie.

At the risk of understatement, The Matrix Revolutions sucks.

An irredeemably dull tale.

Stick your neck out for this Swedish horror show. It's a winner, full of mirth and malice, plus a young romance you'll never see on the Disney Channel.

The line between making guerrilla art and selling out has never blurred more provocatively.

This comedy is packed with p---- jokes, the cruder the better.

Too much manic energy runs the movie off the rails.

He lacks Scorsese's raw inventiveness, but there's no denying De Niro's skill in keeping this pungent street epic brimming over with action and laughs without sacrificing intimacy. He is a supreme director of actors.

Call it "Apocalypto" for pussies -- a PG-13 rating, puh-leese! -- or prehistory for peabrains. Just don’t call it friendo. 10,000 B.C. will take your money, rob your time and hit your brain like a shot of Novacaine.

The main problem with this treatise on racial politics undercover as an exercise in suspense is that the director, Neil LaBute, didn't write the script.

Not to be catty about it, but the stench of the litter pan is all over this big-screen $90 million disaster-in-waiting.

A rowdy blast because the spiky young cast treats the played-out script like virgin territory. That's acting!

The movie belongs to Moretz, whose sensational performance will be talked about for years. Her scenes with Cage, who wears a Batsuit and uses a voice borrowed from Adam West, are a hoot.

Old master Eric Rohmer, 82, uses new tricks in the form of painted backdrops inserted digitally to create a virtual reality. Rohmer goes Lucas - who could have guessed?

Keeps the pulse pounding without sacrificing laughs or logic.

Take this walk for the appetizing scenery, which includes Reeves and Sanchez-Gijon. The rest deserves squashing.

What holds us are the actors, including Terrence Howard as a cop who grew up with the brothers.

A slipshod sequel that looks tossed together over a weekend by people who couldn't care less.

Whatever juice is left in the "Cop" franchise or in the once unstoppable career of Eddie Murphy peters out ignominiously in this poor excuse for a sequel.

Gets the action job done and you better believe that Bruce is still the man.

Limp exercise in erotica...Rourke appears comatose, and Otis, though lovely in or out of her skimpy wardrobe, wears the pained expression of a woman who has accidentally stepped into something squishy and rank.

The kind of movie that TV stars do when they're on hiatus and trying to squeeze one in.

It doesn't help that Damon and Cruz fail to generate sparks or that the second half of the film, in which John and Lacey face hell in a Mexican prison, feels bluntly edited to fit a two-hour running time.

The talented Mr. Minghella has made an imperfect movie but not an impersonal one. His morality tale means to get under the skin, and does.

Bigelow's artful handling of the magic & menace of the night is hauntingly apparent.

Broken Flowers may be too low-key for laugh junkies, but Jarmusch fills his sharply observed comedy with wonderful mischief. The mix of humor and heartbreak brings out the best in Murray.

Nunez finds a striking lyricism in simple lives that inspires an uncommonly fine cast and ranks him as a world-class filmmaker.

This remarkable movie will haunt you for a good long time.

Some movies are too good to miss. Judy Berlin is one of them...It works like magic.

Starting to feel sick? Just you wait.

A film of female empowerment that resonates deeply.

The heart of the movie is really in Jasira's moments with her father, a mass of contradictions that Macdissi plays with comic ferocity and genuine feeling.

This crap is supposed to be the chick flick antidote to Super Bowl fever. Ha!

This film is a muckraking provocation whose time has come.

At moments, especially in the conflicted intimacy between Marcia Gay Harden and Daniel Stern as Bliss' parents, Barrymore shows real directing chops. But in Whip It she's painting inside the box.

Instead of a scalding brew of mirth and malice, served black, Donner settles up a tepid latte, decaf.

What the movie damagingly lacks is a personality of its own.

Starting with the outrageous and building from there, he ignites a slight love-on-the-run novel, creating a bonfire of a movie that confirms his reputation as the most exciting and innovative filmmaker of his generation.

"GoodFellas" Oscar winner Pesci, who hasn't appeared onscreen in a major role since 1998's "Lethal Weapon 4," is a dynamo of conflicting emotions. And Mirren, bawdy in ways that erase all memory of her award-winning role as Elizabeth II in "The Queen," is magnificent.

Michael Moore might want to look into this before more animal docs steal his thunder.

A feast of a film done on a low budget with a menu featuring top-grade acting, writing and direction.

It sounds sappy, and sometimes it is, but director Koepp and co-writer John Kamps stay alert to the humor and pathos of Bertram's isolation.

Director Burr Steers, of the terrific "Igby Goes Down," is stuck polishing clichès.

Throughout his life, Brown refused to give in to public convention or his own despair; he wouldn't play the victim. Brown labored to express all of his feelings, not just the acceptable ones. Day Lewis works the same way. My Left Foot, a keen match of actor and subject, stands as an eloquent tribute to the talents of both.

No trite, tear-jerking cliché goes undrooled in the script by director Kirk Jones.

The film, sometimes talky and overemphatic, is also literate, erotic, brutally funny and touched by brilliance in its quartet of live-wire performances.

The humor is slight, but the actors make the blarney go down easy.

At its best, The Russia House offers a rare and enthralling spectacle: the resurrection of buried hopes.

Dull title for a juicy, fact-based caper movie that's full of surprises I have no intention of spoiling.

Pulls you in, challenges your prejudices, rocks your world and leaves you laughing in the face of an abyss. It's alive, all right. It's also an uncompromising American classic.

The three actors could not be better. Huge feelings are packed into this small, fragile movie. It's something special.

Despite a hint that Peter (Jeremy Sumpter) and Wendy (Rachel Hurd-Wood) might get it on, there's nothing to crow about.

You'll hoot and holler as it strips down its targets and sticks it to them, hardcore. Baron Cohen is the pure, untamed id of movie comedy.

It's probably the movie event of the summer if you're an eight-year-old girl who doesn't get out much.

Director Brian De Palma’s $45 million film version of the book is superficial, shopworn and cartoonish. On film, Bonfire achieves a consistency of ineptitude rare even in this era of over-inflated cinematic air bags.

A fiercely poetic study of violence. Stunningly shot in black-and-white. [14 Dec 1989, p.23]

You won't know what hit you after watching Tyson. This power punch to the gut is one of the best movies of any kind this year.

A romantic comedy so numbing it feels like Novocaine.

There's a difference between exposing misogyny and crassly exploiting it.

Baldwin is a marvel in a casting surprise that pays off.

Mamet's incendiary writing and the potent performances are teasingly ambiguous. Though he exposes the widening gulf between the sexes, Mamet leaves the audience to find ways to explain it. That's what makes Oleanna such a powerhouse; it's a brilliant dare.

Even with sex, drugs, hip-hop and a murder, these four stories are dull, dull, dull, dull.

Miyazaki is the Pied Piper -- see Spirited Away and you'll follow him anywhere.

Writer-director Richard Shepard gives Brosnan his meatiest role ever, and he digs in with relish.

There are delicious bits aplenty in Spider-Man 3 for those who care to notice.

Backbeat catches the Beatles in the act of discovering themselves. It’s a thrilling spectacle that rocks the house and a lot of lazy misconceptions about how legends are made.

Whether audiences are pleased or vexed, very vexed, by A.I., any movie buff worth his salt will want to sift through this fascinating wreck of a movie.

Penn, in tandem with the superb cinematographer Eric Gautier (The Motorcycle Diaries), captures the majesty and terror of the wilderness in ways that make you catch your breath.

Given the assault of devilishly clever plot twists that buzz-bomb your brain like a two-hour binge of quad-shot lattes, Duplicity goes down as too smart for its own good.

What doesn't spark is the love story. Morton still seems soggy from her "Minority Report" role as a drenched pre-cog. Who wants romance in a future where glum is the word?

Offers something magical in the haunting and hypnotic performance of Sarah Polley...(the film) cuts deep.

Though the material isn't up to Mr. Show's high standards, some great laughs abound.

Think "Sex and the City" with men, only in Italian and with lots more hollering and hand gestures.

This baby dazzles like nothing else anywhere.

Despite melodramatic lapses -- the gripping action recalls Walter Hill's 1981 "Southern Comfort" -- this is Schumacher's most ambitions film since "Falling Down" in 1993, and it plays to his strengths with young actors.

Simple story, beautifully told.

It's no go. Green and Gothic make for a clumsy fit.

The flaws don't cripple what is a fiercely funny, exciting and provocative detective story about the crimes of corporate culture — crimes that transcend race and geography.

Minahan wants us to see ourselves in the dark mirror of this outrageously funny satire. He's built the laughs wisely so they stick in our throats.

A promise unfulfilled.

It's shocking, considering the talent involved, the The Perfect Storm looks and feels fake.

A tornado of laughs based on the black experience as lived by these four insightful jokers, instead of as filtered through the Hollywood formula.

"Waves" is a spellbinder.

This one belongs with the leaders of the scare pack. Isn't it time that we give Romero his due? It's hardly an accident that Stephen King, Quentin Tarantino, Guillermo del Toro, Simon Pegg and Wes Craven recognize Romero as a master. He is.

Until the last half-hour, when Lucas actually does establish a emotional connection between the landmark he created in 1977 and the prequel investment portfolio he laid out in 1999, the movie is one spectacularly designed letdown after another.

Branagh's take on the play comes right up to the edge of disaster but stubbornly refuses to leap in.

Best of all, Jason Mewes is out of rehab to play Jay and spar with Smith as Silent Bob, his dope-dealing partner.

The sequel, also directed by Harold Ramis, is painfully padded.

The team of producer Ismail Merchant, director James Ivory and writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala drops the ball with this droopy, snail-paced prigs-in-wigs movie.

This sweetheart of a comedy boasts a hilarious and heartfelt performance by Keri Russell.

Jackson’s visionary triumph, heightened by the blazing performances of Lynskey and Winslet and by Alun Bollinger’s whirling camera, is in capturing the delirium as the girls whip themselves into an erotic frenzy with Mario Lanza records, semi-naked dances in the woods and revenge fantasies.

Beware all male viewers who enter here, you are in chick-movie hell.

Schindler's List, despite blatant compromises, is a rending historical document. But the film's near-certain victory is based less on merit than on the marketing of its ambitious intentions. The academy doesn't judge movies, it weighs them by subject matter. On that basis, Spielberg's epic tips the scales.

Crowe's tantalizing film sticks with you.

Stinks worse than dino dung. Sure, the creatures look good.

The movie brims over with action -- check out Alex's run through traffic on the Paris beltway -- but Canet scores a triumph by plumbing the violence of the mind.

It's a little early for self-parody in the career of Vin Diesel. But he's a calamitous cliché in A Man Apart.

A delicate gem.

Craig gives us James Bond in the fascinating act of inventing himself. This you do not want to miss.

Watching John Travolta ease into a role is always a pleasure, but this film version of Nelson DeMille's 1992 best-selling mystery novel is a lurid mess.

Eastwood's direction here is a thing of beauty, blending the ferocity of the classic films of Akira Kurosawa (Seven Samurai) with the delicacy and unblinking gaze of Yasujiro Ozu (Tokyo Story).

This hilarious and humane film nails its subject -- not just the unshaved armpits and the lack of underwear -- and marks Moodysson as a talent to watch.

Offensive on multiple levels -- if only the plot had any levels at all -- Black Snake Moan leaves no "Tobacco Road" cliche unsmoked. Ricci gives it her all, and then some, but even her body and Jackson's blues can't heal a movie that rockets plum off its nut.

Woody Allen's sexiest movie ever.

Before it goes off the rails into strained sermonizing, this sorta-sequel to 2008’s delightful "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" gets in big laughs.

Forget "Hero" -- that cult hit was just Zhang Yimou's warm-up for this martial-arts fireball that throws in a lyrical love story, head-spinning fights and dazzling surprises.

The worst thing I can say about this savage, sexy and ferociously funny screen translation of three stories from Frank Miller's Sin City series of graphic novels is that it's too much of a good thing.

Trash.

Duncan zips through five decades and dozens of characters without reducing the participants to cliches or slogans. A remarkable cast helps him to keep focused on the core of the piece.

The bloodsuckers in this thriller may not have much bite, but here's a movie that can -- it's guaranteed -- drain the life out of an audience in minutes.

Towne doesn't weave all the elements as deftly as before, and his political observations seem secondhand.

It's the new year's first happy surprise.

This kinky game of murder and eroticism is preposterous but never boring.

Ferrell is effortlessly uproarious. And watching hardass Wahlberg, in his first starring shot at farce, shake his sillies out is not to be missed.

Ninety minutes pass like an eternity. Verdict: Down for the count.

If you can buy the pillow-lipped Angelina Jolie as a psychic FBI agent in Montreal to hunt a serial killer, then you can swallow the other implausibilities in this retread thriller.

There is nothing new in Robert Greenwald's sobering doc.

Craig Lucas’s prince of a play has been turned into a toad of a movie.

Even when the acting is hammy, notably Wilford Brimley’s turn as Chance’s Cajun uncle, Woo stages every fight with hypnotic grace.

Bosworth is a star in the making, but even she can't outshine the surfing footage, which is flat-out spectacular.

Stupendously exciting and emotionally engulfing... With probing intelligence and passionate feeling, Cameron has raised the adventure film very close to the level of art.

Shopworn propaganda.

Lavishly produced swashbuckler that should have been far more entertaining.

An almost-there comedy with diverting compensations.

Ribisi and Macht are sleaze incarnate. James Caan, as a conniving lawyer, and Rade Sherbedgia, as a Russian crime boss, are even more cootified. Best of all is Wilson, digging into his juiciest role in years and putting a human face on this mesmerizing morality tale, a journey into the toxic heart of the American dream.

By spinning something fresh out of something familiar, Reality Bites scores the first comedy knockout of the new year. It also brings out the vibrant best in Winona Ryder and Ethan Hawke as friends who resist being lovers, makes a star of Janeane Garofalo as their tart-tongued buddy and puts Ben Stiller on the map as a director.

A ruthlessly clever musical, a punchy political parody and the hottest look ever at naked puppets -- the first film, porn included, in which a woody is actually made of wood.

You know a sequel isn't working when, ten minutes into the movie, a voice inside your head starts screaming, "Please make it stop!"

Cage and Baruchel work hard to stay accessible, but the computer-generated effects come on like heavy artillery blowing away any hint of flesh and blood. The Sorcerer's Apprentice should be rated U for Untouched by Human Hands.

Sorry, no XOXO for this slick, hollow hooey.

What Button shows is that Ben is ultimately not the hero of his own life or his own movie. He gets inside our head, that's for sure, but, frustratingly, we never get inside his.

Duvall is a blazing wonder in a film that ranks with the year's best.

Close gets laughs, as does Bette Midler as a Jewish rebel. But the sting is gone.

The boat nearly sinks from character overload, and Curtis brakes when you most want him to gun it. But there’s no denying the comic energy of the cast.

This bracing, original comedy may be mostly smoke and air, but it's not insubstantial. Mystery Train insinuates itself into the memory and lingers on.

Unique and unforgettable.

Rob Cohen, who last directed "The Skulls" --ouch! -- can consider this one another career-killing skid mark.

It's a haunting and hypnotic film.

Does he (Hartley) succeed? Not with a movie this plodding, peevish and gimmicky. Is it fun to watch him try? Me, I'll take failed ambition over hack efficiency any day.

The actors could not be better. Sarsgaard, Scott and the luminous Clarkson negotiate the film's razor-sharp laughs and bone-deep tragedy with resonant skill. Lucas' powerfully haunting film gets under your skin.

A film of awesome power and blistering provocation.

Bruckheimer and director Tony Scott have wisely set their course by Will Smith, who is sensational in a dramatic role that leans on him to carry a movie without the help of aliens or Big Willie-style jokes for every occasion.

But the bad boys achieve something a budget can't buy: an easy, natural rapport that makes you root for them. For comedy and thrills, Lawrence and Smith are a dream team.

All cast members seem willing to make total fools of themselves for our delectation. A fine but futile gesture. The bad news is that even with such yeoman efforts, it's still impossible to drag one tired joke around for nearly two hours. Like Bernie, the movie ends up dead on its feet.

This is the kind of movie that they show on planes -- white noise that lulls you to sleep.

The real action in Silver City happens on the fringes, where the mischief is. Daryl Hannah is spice incarnate as Dickie's sexy screw-up sister. Billy Zane plays a lobbyist with insinuating soullessness. And Dreyfuss feasts on the snappiest lines.

Fresh comic thinking spices up this smart cookie of a satire from director-writer Paul Weitz (About a Boy). He makes it sexually provocative and subversively hilarious.

This afternoon-TV special trying to pass as a real movie earns an extra half star solely for Samuel L. Jackson, who brings his usual fire to the role.

Indefensible on a moral level, Rob Zombie's perversely watchable follow-up to his much-reviled cult hit "House of 1000 Corpses" is loaded with filmmaking energy.

Niccol is too good a screenwriter (The Truman Show, Gattaca) not to know that Hollywood cliches are hell on a film's political bite. They muzzle it.

Younger knows it's fun to watch Rafi and David cross lines of age, culture and religion. He also knows it's painful. That's what makes his movie hilarious and heartfelt.

Not your typical biopic. But it is one of the best times you'll have at the movies this year.

The film can't hide its stage origins, and in cutting almost an hour on the journey from stage to screen some resonance is lost. But Bennett's dialogue sparkles and skewers with killer wit. Dig in.

Laced with such rampant misogyny that the laughs stick in your throat.

To sum up, Definitely, Maybe is crap with compensations.

Before it runs off course into excess, this brilliantly acted film version of the 1999 novel by Andre Dubus III moves with a stabbing urgency.

The actors, especially Grace, fight hard against a schizoid script (the kids are rubes one sec, hipsters the next) and cotton-candy direction from Robert Luketic (Legally Blonde). It's a losing battle.

A script by Peter Gaulke and Gerry Swallow that is minus a shred of Farrelly wit.

In the end, Shelley and the audience are cheated of a tale truly told. De Niro, on the brink of giving a landmark performance, settles for being a gross special effect. And the promise Branagh once showed as a filmmaker, like the hope of revitalizing Frankenstein, is dead again.

Other films this year will have to sweat bullets to match the explosive power and subversive wit of David Cronenberg's A History of Violence. It slams you like a body punch and then starts messing with your head.

This oddball mix of "The Cotton Club" and "Six Feet Under" is a big, beautiful mess. But it offers the not-uninstructive spectacle of talented people stumbling over large and unwieldy ambitions.

Spectacular in every sense of the word, even if you don' t know an Orc from a Uruk-Hai.

Edward Scissorhands isn't perfect. It's something better: pure magic.

Heebie-jeebies are guaranteed.

The cast got to spend a month shooting on Bora Bora. So that explains why they're in the movie. Why you'd spend good money for a ticket to watch them have all the fun and not have any fun yourself passes understanding.

As Van Peebles turns the western into an equal-opportunity genre, his voice occasionally fades in the din. But be assured: It’s a voice spoiling to be heard.

Modestly made and modestly charming.

Detractors will see the usual parade of repressed feelings in a Masterpiece Theatre setting. Those who look closer will find one of the best films of the year.

[Keaton] delivers a chilling performance, imbuing what could have been a one-note nut case with unexpected reserves of feeling. The acting and direction don’t fill in all the credibility gaps, but they do make for classy, crackling suspense.

The film is for horny pups of all ages who relish the memory of reading stroke books under the covers with a flashlight. Verhoeven has spent $49 million to reproduce that dirty little thrill on the big screen.

To call the animation crude would be high praise. But they succeed enough of the time to make a perversely entertaining movie.

Just one talking head, that's all. But the head in this mesmerizing documentary belongs to Traudl Junge.

If you ever admired Julia Stiles, Selma Blair and Jason Lee -- and who didn't? -- don't watch them crush their careers in this laugh-free romantic comedy.

Michael Gerbosi's script might have reduced Crane to a clueless cliche were it not for the bruised humanity that Greg Kinnear brings to the role. Kinnear is dynamite.

Kramer takes on a hot, unwieldy topic in Crossing Over -- the dream that immigrants have of U.S. citizenship and the nightmare of achieving it, especially with shortcuts. I'm sure Kramer will be picked to pieces for trying something while Hollywood crap climbs the box office ladder. There are all kinds of nightmares.

Meryl Streep -- at her brilliant, beguiling best -- is the spice that does the trick for the yummy Julie & Julia.

Director and co-writer James Mangold (Girl, Interrupted) is supplying comfort food for bruised romantics.

Adapting Robert O'Connor's novel, director Gregor Jordan slaps us with keen wit and purpose.

I'd rather be buried in a mound of Floridian chad than watch director Donald Petrie force Bullock to jump through another desperately unfunny comic hoop.

Lacks the cumulative impact of "Boyz," since Singleton allows repetition and sermonizing to dull his theme about the infantilization of black males. But Baby Boy leaves you shaken.

Writer-director Michael Patrick King, the creative force behind the show's later seasons, can't disguise the fact that the movie is basically five TV episodes strung together (only three hit the mark). But his script is more honest about aging than anything in "Indy 4."

Zane, a good actor in the right circumstances (Orlando, Dead Calm), is trapped by screenwriter Jeffrey Boam (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) and Australian director Simon Wincer (Free Willy), who don’t give him anything to act.

What is surprising -- remarkable even -- is that Beloved arrives onscreen with a minimum of dull virtue, gagging uplift and slick Hollywood gloss.

How many movies these days leave you wanting more? The funny and heartfelt Home is a small treasure.

A new crime classic.

With Brando around, The Freshman has a snappy madness that’s hard to resist.

What good is a wallow in sicko sadism if you take all the fun out of it?

Waggish fun like this is too good to miss.

Polanski, working from a fluid script by Dorfman and Rafael Yglesias ("Fearless"), gives the story its due. He creates an atmosphere of claustrophobic tension to rival his "Knife in the Water" and "Repulsion".

Del Toro is the movie's force field. This is a performance you will not forget.

Scott Pilgrim is a breathless rush of a movie that jumps off the screen, spins your head around and then stealthily works its way into your heart.

The love story, beautifully acted by Richard Gere and Jodie Foster, makes for a ravishing romance. And British-born Jon Amiel (Queen of Hearts, TV’s Singing Detective) directs with admirable restraint.

The film's secrets unfold slowly, allowing Phoenix and Paltrow -- a luminous fusion of grace and grit -- to build a relationship in full. The script, by Gray and Richard Menello, is inspired by Dostoevsky's "White Nights."

Smart, witty and alert to the buried resentments that poke through the shiny surface of affluence, Holofcener's film recognizes that money is the new sex.

Bury the nostalgia. Like the rap twist Kayne West puts into the film's classic theme, this movie is best when it stirs it up.

Exhibits rank incompetence on every level.

Lane is a force of nature. Her slow-burning, fiercely erotic performance charges the movie.

Hartley's debut deserves heralding; he combines a rigorous social conscience with the exuberance of fresh comic thinking.

Timely and smartly entertaining.

If you stay and watch the endless end credits, there's a short scene that hints a sequel is coming. That's what I call real pain.

Writer-director Gerard Stembridge keeps the amoral laughs bubbling.

It's the scenes of the boys on horseback, riding this moonbeam of a movie to a fairy-tale ending, that provide the essential ingredient: a sense of wonder.

The film goes beyond historical anecdotes. Besides fresh and funny insights from the likes of Norman Mailer and John Waters, it shows how little censorship politics have changed from Nixon to Bush.

Though shot for maximum moodiness by the gifted Peter Deming ("Mulholland Drive"), the movie straps you in for a head trip that promises hallucinatory wonders but delivers the same old Hollywood formula with sugar on top.

It's a popcorn-movie deluxe.

Shelton obviously wants to distill something innocent and romantic from a relationship the world saw as sleazy. A noble mission. But he's left out a few essentials — like the facts.

You'll notice that the actors are way overqualified for this nonsense. But the kick they get out of one another is what pulls you in. Traeger's script does more than strain credulity, it administers multiple fractures.

The uniformly fine performances are a tribute to Washington, who plays the shrink with his customary command.

The jokes? "Chicks are for fags," says Lloyd. The film is subtitled When Harry Met Lloyd. Believe me, you don't want to be there.

Murphy, teaming again with his "Norbit" director Brian Robbins, is assuming we'll all line up for lazyass toilet jokes and pay for the privilege. Prove him wrong, people, please.

The result is commendably non-West-centric, but no less sentimentally conceived.

Crowe -- fierce, funny and every inch the hero -- gives a blazing star performance.

Hess and his terrific cast -- Heder is geek perfection -- make their own kind of deadpan hilarity. You'll laugh till it hurts. Sweet.

It's a wild, whacked-out wonder. Coenheads rejoice.

What's lacking is emotional weight. It's sad to watch a talented cast, including Bill Nunn as Henry's physical therapist and Donald Moffat, Rebecca Miller and Kirby Mitchell as co-workers, selling bromides.

Lee is a true master, and his potently erotic and suspenseful Lust, Caution casts a spell you won't want to break.

All the acting is exemplary. Brody, new to Wes' World, is revelatory as Peter.

Lumet has a reputation for speed, and when a film doesn’t engage him, as in Family Business, the result seems rushed, sloppy. But in Q&A, with all the actors perfectly cast and on his wavelength, he works wonders. Nolte is electrifying.

Bale even cedes the juiciest part to Aussie newcomer Sam Worthington, who is star material as a machine with a conscience. T4 is a mixed bag, but it's not f***ing amateur.

Misery is enduring this Rocky Horror Paris Show.

"WALL-E" had more charm, more soul, more everything. But there's enough merry mischief here to satisfy, even if you’re way past puberty.

Luna and García Bernal display the kind of chemistry that makes you overlook the clichés in the script by first-time director Carlos Cuarón. Sometimes good-natured fun is enough.

It’s one of the blackest comedies to hit the screen since Dr. Strangelove. Spurlock proves himself a supersize talent; he makes you choke on every laugh.

A mesmerizing look at an asthmatic, rich-boy medical student in the act of discovering his insurgent spirit.

The exquisitely wrought tale of four British women of different backgrounds who rent a villa in Portofino, Italy, is delivered with a witty feminist twist by director Mike Newell (Dance With a Stranger) and an outstanding cast.

What we're watching, however charming, is a fancifully costumed theater piece that cuts off the oxygen needed to make a play breathe onscreen.

Setting it against the backdrop of a wanton city under siege, Schroeder crafts a film of whiplash urgency.

Can no one save the talented Sandler from himself? I hate this movie. Click. I hate this movie. Click. I hate this movie. Click.

Certainly blunt, and since Anderson and Bach are veterans of the porn trade, there is no skimping on the sex.

The Siege is not a documentary but a glossy Hollywood entertainment that is prey to all the exaggerations, simplifications and acting histrionics that come with the genre.

There's no denying the kick of Pitt's memorably offbeat performance and writer-director Tom DiCillo's stylish debut.

The result is raw and riveting.

A landmark musical tribute.

It's a haunting, hypnotic film that exerts an escalating grip on the heart and the conscience.

An uneven movie that nonetheless bristles with stinging wit and exerts a perverse fascination.

Mitchell gives this post-punk, neo-glam rock extravaganza everything in his loaded arsenal of talents. He gets the sound right, the look right, the fun right and - this is crucial - the pain right.

An adventure in pure imagination that plays to the smart kid in all of us.

Stay for the outtakes – they’re improv delights, suggesting the movie that might have been if they had just left it all to Carell and Fey.

If there were an ounce of taste left in Hollywood, the magnificent Vera Farmiga would be a front-runner for the Best Actress Oscar.

In one scene, raw sewage is dumped on Joe. See Joe Dirt and you'll know how that feels.

Leave it to Hilary Swank. Even when her film's pace lags behind its cliches, she sparks this true story, about a California teacher who sparks her students, with the passion the subject demands.

Is the movie any good? At the dawn of the twenty-first century, when art is defined by commerce, this question is beside the point.

There was a time when guys would grab a six-pack and watch this kind of flick at a drive-in. I mean that as a compliment.

I'd watch the vibrant Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana in anything, but The Time Traveler's Wife is pushing it.

First-time director and screenwriter Hue Rhodes shows no discernible talent for dialogue, humor and, especially, pacing.

The funny and heartbreaking Off the Map, directed with a poet's eye and a keen ear for nuance by Campbell Scott, resonates with something rare in today's movies: simplicity.

Alive with beauty, spirit and wit, Roan Inish is pure magic.

The scenery is glorious; you can almost feel the sunshine and smell the wine. But Crowe and Scott are bulls in Mayle's china shop. Like an assertive Burgundy served with a delicate fish, they're a classic wrong pairing.

If Ridley Scott's Alien (1979) had more surprises and James Cameron's Aliens (1986) more thrills, David Fincher's austere, low-tech, darkly funny Alien 3 has more sharply observed characters.

It's too bad Martin already made “What's the Worst That Could Happen?” The title really fits this one.

What makes Ratatouille such a hilarious and heartfelt wonder is the way Bird contrives to let it sneak up on you.

For all its bile and incoherence, In Praise of Love is filled with haunting images and insights. Godard may be a lion in winter, but the lion still roars.

Jeez, did the "surprise" climax have to be this eye-rollingly stupid?

While you're remembering new high-impact names, add Arnold. In only her second film, after 2006's "Red Road," she keeps the screen filled to bursting with the beauty and raw terror of life.

Keane means to shakes us, and does.

Scott and Davis could not be better. You're in for something special.