Rick Kisonak

An achievement of this magnitude is a stunning and extremely pleasant surprise.

The odyssey that follows reminded me of the one Bill Murray’s character took in "Broken Flowers" - and I mean that in the most complimentary way.

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.

It may not be great but you're guaranteed to feel great walking out the theater door.

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.

While it fails to shed significant new light on its subject, Gibson's film and the all-Jesus-all-the-time attention from the media it's attracted do tell us something somewhat disconcerting about the state of American culture: That the way to make a religion based on love and forgiveness relevant today is to turn it into violent entertainment.

Tykwer makes of all this murder and madness a concoction of improbable beauty and rare artistry. "Perfume" is not just the finest film of his career but easily one of the past year's most accomplished.

The final act is all but guaranteed to astonish and satisfy. See this movie.

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.

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

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

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.

Down With Love has little to offer besides hip sixties references better films have already made and made infinitely more hip.

Rowan Atkinson's spy spoof is wildly uneven and yet, at times, nothing less than wildly entertaining.

A fine cast, understated treatment and tantalizing premise make for a movie well worth seeing even if you don't come away believing.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The men in this movie are little more than beer ad cliches going through Ford tough motions as though trapped in a bad country music video. There's not a realistic moment or character or performance in the picture.

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.

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.

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.

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.