Scott Foundas

No doubt, Levinson thought he was making this generation's "Dr. Strangelove." What he's actually made is a desperate, ponderous sop to progressives that caters to all of the left's worst fears about voter fraud, corporate malfeasance and the impossibility of effecting real change.

The results are far from perfect: For one thing, Lipsky is so far from being a fluid visual storyteller that the garishly lit, appallingly composed Flannel Pajamas makes another two-hander talkfest Lipsky famously distributed -- "My Dinner With Andre" -- seem like "Lawrence of Arabia" by comparison.

An often thrilling, always compelling intro to the sport.

A stimulating scientific inquiry that may cause audiences to look at (and think about) the world around them in dramatically different terms.

Hidalgo can still be a wonder to behold, especially in its dynamic racing sequences, but the movie bogs down in its midsection with a needless kidnapping subplot that ultimately becomes quite tedious.

It's all cliffhangers, with no downtime in between.

Like "Life Is Beautiful" before it, Imagining Argentina juxtaposes horrific images of torture and humiliation against gooey optimism and thinks it's saying something profound about human resilience in the process.

Depressingly thin and exhaustingly contrived. Only masochistic moviegoers need apply.

Could have used two rangier lead players than Stiller (doing his patented aggrieved-yuppie shtick) and Barrymore (who's so perky you want to slap her); the 81-year-old Essell, however, is a wicked pleasure throughout.

Above all a rousing entertainment.

Intolerable Cruelty seems the kind of movie that results from two essentially erudite, anarchic talents playing down to the masses.

Harris tries his best to make something more out of his one-dimensional white-knight character, while Gooding plays his vaudeville Rainman routine to the rafters.

If "Crash" grew a pair of cojones, it might look something like Larry Clark’s cheerfully defiant Wassup Rockers.

Despite the considerable imagination that has gone into realizing period scenes on a modest budget, all the episodes (past and present) feel hurried and clipped, like they've been passed through too many impatient editing-room hands, and the picture never fully absorbs you.

A superior all-ages adventure pic made by a filmmaker who knows more than a thing or two about the genre.

The result is 90 minutes in the company of some of the nicest and most boring people you can imagine ever having a movie made about them.

Pic makes up in strong performances and wry observation what it sometimes lacks in narrative drive. Result is a perceptive (and unexpectedly moving) portrait of lives in crisis.

Superman Returns is a lush and enthralling piece of adventure storytelling that's both revisionist AND reverential, putting a timely spin on a timeless character without violating his primal appeal.

There may not be two equal sides to every argument, but in giving such little credence to those who might oppose him, Jarecki makes us wonder what exactly it is he’s so afraid of.

Few surprises lie in store for connoisseurs of torture cinema, though unlike its 2003 predecessor, this Massacre owes less to Bay’s attention-deficient aesthetics than to the measured, Georgia O’Keefe-on-acid sensibility that guided Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkel’s much-cannibalized original.

Where "Amores Perros" was a feast of energy, wit and imagination, 21 Grams is like a starvation diet -- a movie that wallows so profoundly in its own misery that watching it is like atoning for some sin you didn't commit.

"The Blues Brothers" it is not, but in its best moments, the movie feels like a comic exaggeration of the real hardships that a couple of average, decidedly unhip guys went through on their unlikely way to the top.

Bardem, given the only fully fleshed-out character to play, is a marvel to behold...If only he had found a more soulful, less didactic movie to be plunked down into.

It’s the sort of buoyant, all-ages entertainment that Hollywood has been laboring to revive in recent years (most recently with Hairspray) but hasn’t managed to get right until now, and the glue holding it all together is the incomparable Adams (an Oscar nominee for 2005’s Junebug), who gives the kind of blissful screwball performance that seemed to go out of fashion after "I Love Lucy" left the airwaves.

Mann has done something transformative with Farrell: The Irish actor has never had this much charisma and natural authority in a role, and as he navigates that gray area between Crockett's real identity and his fabricated one, revealing subtle fissures in the character's cocksure facade, he's fascinating to watch.

Strikes me as one of Godard's most accessible works - one in which the graying, stubbly maestro, who turns 74 today, presents himself and his ideas to the audience in a less combative way than he sometimes has in the past.

The resulting film is one of too much reverence and not enough satire.

As in his previous "In Good Company," Weitz wants too much to like all of his characters, and he wants us to like them too. The result is a movie devoid of any threat, or many laughs, with barn door–broad performances.