Rick Kisonak

Beyond any contention is Morgan Spurlock's gift for metabolizing common knowledge into uncommonly entertaining cinema.

Proyas creates a futurescape that's snazzy in a “Blade Runner” lite sort of way and one or two of the film's effects are eye poppers.

The movie doesn’t even try to break new ground–it’s shot entirely on location in familiar Ferrell-McKay territory.

Watanabe's charismatic performance and a couple of colorful minor characters aside, The Last Samurai has little to recommend it.

A silly comic book movie with provocative psychological overtones. Or a provocative character study with silly comic book overtones. Take your pick. Either way, it's hardly the cinematic milestone it's widely hailed as being.

Likely to exceed expectations.

The film doesn't have anything but bad news for Spacey fans anxious for the actor to break a stinky streak.

Ultimately, The Strangers does succeed in the sense that it offers a riveting, vastly credible enactment of everyone's worst nightmare.

Post-personality switch, the picture does come to life somewhat but proves a one trick pony.

Details like period fashion and album covers are handled flawlessly. It's the big stuff that falls short of the standard set by this troupe. A Mighty Wind is good for an occasional laugh but you're not likely to be blown away.

It may not feature the funniest performances Stiller, Walken and Black have ever given but, these three guys giving performances just this funny is enough to make Envy a movie you'll end up kicking yourself for missing.

While the picture doesn't rise to the level of instant holiday classic, younger members of the audience are guaranteed to get a Christmas kick out of it. If disappointment awaits, it awaits Ferrell's older fans.

A good laugh is almost never a bad thing and almost every frame of Old School is grade A goofball fun.

The heart of Ray, of course, is the music and, whatever other shortcomings the film may have, it does not fall short as a showcase for the artist's greatest hits.

If characters with more than one dimension, a plausible story and some sort of viewpoint are moviegoing musts, you may leave 2012 feeling a tad shortchanged.

Goes south early and its director never comes close to turning things around.

The situation is suspenseful and unique enough to hold our attention for a time.

Despite the cast's capable portrayals, it's difficult to connect with or care about any of these characters as, one by one, each stabs another in the back.

If you're looking for Rock's trademark smart-ass wit, you'll want to look somewhere else. Likewise when it comes to a movie with something fresh to say about the balancing act that is wedded bliss.

Campion and company may like to think they've made something provocative, moody and new but it's really just "Looking For Mr. Goodbar" with extra nuts.

Aside from a few routine battle scenes, the movie's action consists mostly of people slogging slowly through non-stop rain. This is not interesting, much less exciting. The dialogue is hokey hero blather.

Figgis has spent too many years crafting thoughtful, innovative films to have much of a knack for storytelling this mechanical and many are the moments when he does indeed seem to have been asleep behind the wheel.

At the end of the day, though, this is Charlie Kaufman's movie and I'm not sure he proves quite the visionary puppetmaster many in the media are making him out to be.

Wolfgang Petersen's popcorn epic doesn't fail exactly. It just takes on too much. Modern man is at something of a disadvantage-even aided by his trusty muse, the computer-when presuming to bring the stuff of gods, myths and timeless sacred texts to the big screen.

A touching, stirring story even if it has been given the Hollywood treatment.

Billed as a comedy but it would be every bit as accurate to categorize it as science fiction or a World War II drama. It is simply not a funny film.

There’s something fundamentally unconvincing and contrived about the story. Forget the fact that O’Connor hauls out every cliché in the bad cop handbook and the dialogue is more boilerplate than hard-boiled. The premise itself is just plain preposterous.

Watts is extra-watchable and, as I say, the filmmaker does achieve a style and tone the script never comes close to living up to. Otherwise, Verbinski's adaptation of the 1998 Japanese hit "Ringu" misses the mark almost completely.

Gratuitously brutal, chronically preposterous, abysmally unoriginal, pretty much pointless and virtually 100% free of credible characters, Derailed represents career lows for its stars while marking an unpromising English language debut for its director.

The bottom line is the movie's a mess. Friedkin would like one to believe there's more than meets the eye to his tale of two trackers.

On its own terms, the picture is at least as contrived as it is charming and its characters in many cases bear less resemblance to flesh and blood human beings than those in a Farrelly brothers farce.

The chief triumph here, it seems to me though, is one of style over substance. The disaffected kids who shuffle through its universe have nothing to say, nothing to tell us. I’m not sure the movie has a whole lot more.

The truth is About Schmidt offers only the sporadic laugh, the less frequent original cultural insight and, at best, a craftsmanlike performance from its aging headliner. The truth is there are long stretches in the picture that are unequivocally dull.

Full speed ahead fun, a rollicking caper romp that hearkens back to a quainter, pre-Ken Lay age when bigtime fraud could actually entail writing books as opposed to merely cooking them.

The film also benefits from unusually solid writing and a masterfully understated turn by Billy Bob Thornton.

May just be the most quintessential Steven Spielberg movie Steven Spielberg never made.

Spoof or tongue in cheek update, the movie squanders the lion's share of its time on tired, cartoon-quality sequences choreographed around ho-hum chases and explosions. None possess the satiric zip of Austin Powers-style parody.

The movie crosses the line between offering mindless entertainment and insulting our intelligence.

Radio is a film many people may be tempted to laugh off as button pushing feel-good fluff. Before doing so, they might want to ask themselves just what it is they find so funny about a little peace, love and understanding.

While the massacre is a wall-shaking and effective bit of high decibel drama, some of the movie's best moments come during the Texans' long brave wait for almost certain death.

This is a decidedly hit or miss deal which, despite the current outpouring of critical praise, is destined to rank among the Coen's least memorable achievements.

Easily the most disappointing movie of the summer, Extract is more significantly the biggest letdown of its esteemed creator’s career.

By the way, good luck making sense out of the final fifteen minutes. I'd say people were asleep at the wheel on this one but the film is so pointlessly all over the place that I'm not sure there even was one.

Identity steams my broccoli big time and not just because its surprise twist is an insult to the intelligence of every audience member.

This is one of those "Crash"-style pictures with interwoven narrative strands. The problem here is that most of the strands wind up little more than loose ends.

Who's responsible for this comedy proving such a disappointment- Jack Nicholson, Adam Sandler or director Peter Segal? Nope. The correct answer: screenwriter David Dorfman.

Anyone who loves rock music will appreciate the script's insights into the form and its history.

The role is ill-suited for Kinnear's talents. Abraham's pacing is glacial, the cinematography is flat, the score by Jill Savitt is suited better to a supermarket and then there's the fact that the climax can be seen coming a mile away. Maybe the biggest, though, is its failure to play fair with the audience.

The film has brief flashes of believability and humor. By and large, though, the script is uninspired, the picture's characters are stick figures, its dialogue is lackluster and the star's performance seldom rises above the adequate.

To put it in the best light possible, I recommend thinking of Four Christmases not so much as a really short movie but as a very special holiday episode of a sitcom.

Recycles a great many motifs from "Truman" but never comes close to putting on as good a show.

The pacing is brisk-something wacky happens every couple of minutes, the editing crisp and the effects promising. Then disaster strikes: the first act gives way to the relative witlessness of the second and third.

Elegy's last act is a mournful smorgasbord of bathos in which major and supporting characters alike drop like flies. The body count is practically Shakespearean. The same, regrettably, can't be said for Coixet's touch when it comes to tragedy.

If my moviegoing experience was magical in any way, it was only in that I once or twice nodded off for a spell.

This is a film which resonates on a surprising number of levels. But the level on which it undoubtedly works best is the victim-goes-postal-and-takes-the-law-into-his-own-hands level.

Has its rollicking moments and snappy lines but even Pacino can't elevate them into more than a fleetingly juicy treat. This is a movie that desperately wishes it had been written by David Mamet.

A competently calibrated feel-good machine. It's as effective as anything on The Lifetime Channel. Which is likely where this project would have wound up were it not for the involvement of Washington.

Until this past Friday, the worst werewolf film ever made was, hairy hands down, Mike Nichols' "Wolf." Cursed now assumes that dubious distinction and someone is going to have to try very hard to wrestle it away.

Given their lack of training, nearly all the young performers do a commendable job. It's the director who slips up by, among other things, dividing his cast into such predictable phyla.

Long before you buy your ticket to the new Jim Carrey film, you've already been doomed to disappointment. Several parties play a role in this. Interestingly, Jim Carrey isn't one of them.

Bottom line: the spectacle he was preparing may well have provided Jackson with the appropriate note on which to close his long, controversial career. This, however, I think even die hard fans will concur, isn't it.

Portraying the same 1945 confrontation from the vantage point of the Japanese was an inspired idea. Unfortunately, the movie it inspired is something of a letdown.

This is a gentle, understated character-driven piece that has more in common with European romantic dramas than those made in this country as a rule.

The first half of Luis (Angel Eyes) Mandoki's new thriller is as whiteknuckle, nerve-wracking as they come. The second is such a mishmash of overblown action and gaping plotholes, it's hard to believe it's the work of the same director.

Perkiness Alert! Much of the banter and many of the gags are amusing but Witherspoon cranks the perkiness to off-the-dial levels here and anyone with low tolerance for superpeppy movie do-gooders should consult a physician before viewing.