Rene Rodriguez

Point Blank is as disposable as a feature-length episode of TV's 24: The movie is all adrenaline and excitement, and it doesn't really stay with you. Just try to tear your eyes away while you're watching it, though.

Like most movies about the Middle East conflict, Omar is ultimately about the futility of violence and how it feeds on itself.

The movie is better when it’s poking sly fun at Cruise’s superheroic screen persona (look at the expression on his face when Ethan realizes just how big the guy he must fight is) than when it asks you to buy into its far-fetched antics.

Has the ring of classic Disney seamlessly combined with a modern-day sensibility.

Sicko occasionally returns to Bush, but it doles out the smacks equally on both sides of the political spectrum (Sen. Hillary Clinton gets hers, too).

Theron's transformation in Monster goes far beyond mere appearance. As Wuornos, the actress gets to display a blunt, graceless physicality that is rarely needed in women's roles, which are traditionally internal.

In its last half-hour, A Bigger Splash becomes a specific kind of story, and it’s not as pleasurable or strange as what preceded it.

An overwhelmingly tactile experience. Scott brings you so close into the action, the grit and smoke and blood seem to spill off the screen and into your head.

Humpday sells its admittedly far-fetched premise by illustrating how men often can't help but behave like stubborn children in the company of their friends -- even when the stakes are raised to ridiculous levels.

It plunges so deep, in fact, that the film winds up bordering on the unwatchable.

A fiendishly subtle horror movie, a goosebump-inducing exercise in suspense that uses your own imagination to scare you silly.

Nothing fantastic or supernatural ever happens, but you can still feel cosmic forces at work behind the scenes, conspiring to repeatedly test the movie's characters, doling out reward and punishment in equal doses.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame is an example of Disney animators at the very top of their craft -- and at their most daring. [21 June 1996, p.5G]

Here, finally, is something you've really never seen before.

Director Kevin Macdonald, an accomplished maker of documentaries making his feature-film debut, gives The Last King of Scotland the pace and crackle of a thriller, albeit a thriller with substance.

It's a simple message, and it's delivered with a grace and subtlety that's rare in would-be blockbusters.

The movie earns its tension and suspense the old-fashioned way: By making you care about its characters.

What distinguishes The Orphanage are some spare but fiendishly well-placed shocks that give the film an extra sense of danger: You can't take comfort with this one assuming you know what lurks around each corner, because you don't. Trust me.

Set almost entirely in one location and shot in widescreen to accommodate its ensemble cast, The Invitation seems tailor-made for a talented filmmaker who wants to show off skills within the constraints of a small budget. But the script, by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi (who somehow still find work after having written The Tuxedo, R.I.P.D., and Clash of the Titans), is flimsy and nonsensical in the manner of cheap, straight-to-video-not-even-VOD horror pictures, and Kusama’s direction is clumsy and uninspired. She also telegraphs too many of the plot’s twists.

Red Lights is actually an examination of marriage -- of what keeps people together long after the passion has fizzled, and all that's left is bitterness and resentment.

This time, the actors don't seem to be making up the movie as they go along, and they're guided by a gifted director who has earned the right to have some guileless fun.

Gibney even convinced Armstrong to sit down for one final interview in May. In it, he comes off as somewhat contrite but also victimized, as if he were being single out for something everyone does.

A wonderfully rumpled, loose comedy about the paralyzing fear of failure.

Mysterious Skin bears all of Araki's hallmarks, from its stylish compositions and lush colors to its willingness to confront difficult subject matter head-on.

Rush is the kind of Hollywood studio production that has sadly become all too rare — a smart, exciting, R-rated entertainment for grown-ups that quickens your pulse and puts on a great show without ever insulting your intelligence.

Oliver Stone tried encapsulating Alexander's life into one movie, only to discover the task was impossible. Bodrov knows better, using Mongol -- the first of an intended trilogy -- to center on Genghis Khan's formative years.

It's a brutal, merciless, somber picture, utterly devoid of the heart-tugging sentimentality that always creeps into even his best films.

Like most movies about death, the gentle, quirky Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself ultimately turns out to be a story about embracing life.