Sean Axmaker

An anti-war spectacle that uses the story of brothers divided by the 1950 civil war as a metaphor for the wounds of the split.

For all its darkness and tragedy, Monster's Ball is a film that wants to be liked and Forster stumbles over his good intentions to win the audience over.

The orderly and clean drama is more like theater than history come to life.

More clever than smart and isn't always emotionally convincing, but the cast brings a palpable, persuasive awkwardness to the social tensions of this not-so-romantic getaway, and there's a sly wit to the way the filmmakers mix and match and upend genres.

The spirits of Jim Jarmusch and Kevin Smith hover over this breezy slacker comedy set on a comatose Sunday afternoon.

The actor holds the stage with his warm humor and emotionally charged anecdotes.

With the story's vivid and passionate women and the power of emotional healing (not to mention the intense eroticism of his hothouse romance), gives Sex and Lucia a dynamic, vigorous life.

There is no "why" in The Grudge, at least not an explanation that provides comfort or cure. It simply is. That's what makes it really scary.

At its best when it remains with the women, and Marshall draws marvelous performances from all.

For the most part the eruption of repressed anger is blindly destructive. There's little healing to be found in the bitter melodrama, but there is a small sense of triumph as the children face up and move on.

Spottiswoode and Schwarzenegger deliver a clever and colorful conspiratorial thriller with high-energy action scenes, car crashes a go-go, spectacular technology and big explosions, packaged with ferocious glee and spoofing humor. Who could ask for more from Ah-nold?

Those willing to give themselves up to Lynch's sensibilities will find a hypnotic and richly textural experience that challenges them to make their own connections through the imagery, echoes of repeated dialogue and metaphor.

Not a comedy of guffaws and goofy gags, but a wry, underplayed little piece with an undercurrent of loss and abandonment.

Ayala gives Joan a fiery, full-blooded passion and Aranda challenges Pedro Almodovar in the arena of self-destructive love, obsessive passion and sweaty cinematic sex. It's the lustiest costume drama in years.

"Time destroys all," claims the film, but the monstrous capabilities of human evil is the real culprit here, and Noe is determined to prove that the real evil that men do is not fodder for cinematic spectacle and cinematic entertainment.

There's a real joy to this film, a love of the music and an appreciation of the band's eccentric humor.

Jolie steals the film from nominal star McAvoy in the wild gunfight and dynamically absurd chase that kick Wanted into high gear. Her wicked moves and seductive smirk brand her immediately as a true believer who really, really loves her work.

Verbinski puts a Jackie Chan flourish of high energy and gymnastic action on the swashbuckling stunts and swordplay and keeps this lark sailing along.

I guess there's something grizzled old codgers like Clint can teach those young hotshots after all.

It's a gloriously baroque vision and Leconte believes in his sequin and sawdust fantasy with such unabashed enthusiasm that he makes it work even through its most absurd moments.

For all of its weakness, Ju-On: The Grudge is creepy and unnerving, qualities in short supply in gore-filled American horror films.

When (Tykwer) connects it's exhilarating and gorgeous, a sight to behold.

This restrained drama of lifelong friends drifting in separate directions is a quietly rich and resonant portrait of disconnection.

It makes for an unusual angle on the era, and a passionate paean to the power of books, ideas and art.

Though it's hardly as uplifting or inspiring, it's hard not to appreciate these driven men who know they've found their calling when they start to anagram in their dreams.

It's as if Gondry lets his performers settle into their parts and feel their way through their stories. It gives the film an ambling pace and a unique chemistry that bubbles with strange and unexpected flavors.

Inspired, inventive and funnier than it has a right to be, Larry Blamire's loopy spoof of 1950s bargain-basement sci-fi and horror knock-offs gets it right where so many well-meaning efforts go wrong.

Presents itself as a sassy twist on "Taming of a Shrew," but what looks like just another contrived sex comedy becomes, surprisingly, an insightful and sensitive look at knots that family ties create in adult romance.

There are some flat moments, to be sure, and Palansky's direction can be a bit unsteady and awkward, but he doesn't wallow in the eccentricities or the modestly self-empowering moral. This fairy tale feels pleasantly down-to-earth.

Has the modesty of a savvy, smart drive-in movie with Hollywood studio polish and a movie buff's loving care.

The film is weirdly fascinating in its own maverick way.

A spirited, screwball crime-thriller with a sly heart.

There is such a joy of play in the film that it's easy to overlook the overdone performances and the lazy script shortcuts.

In a summer of comic book super-operas dense with psychological torment and sprawling well over two hours, the unpretentious efficiency of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is refreshing.

It's Waters' way of saying: It's only a movie.

"Network" it's not. Weitz doesn't have the killer instinct for merciless satire but he knows how to stage a gag and deliver a punchline.

A furiously choreographed martial-arts spectacle wrapped in a fumbling narrative.

A highly entertaining film that still packs much of the punch and the quirkiness of Willeford's novel.

Plays in spots something like a stage play smartly brought to screen.

For all the misery and emotional mess of Snow Angels, Green finds resilience and hope in the kids and even in some of the grown-ups.

The hit-and-run destructiveness of the rapacious media is nothing new, but Cordero gives his cynical take a unique setting and a queasy climax.

Unusual even for Japanese animation.

He (Chan) still can turn a silly little action comedy like this into a high-spirited, butt-kicking good time.

The result is a painful and poignant film at once empathetic and critical, more soberly unnerving than exciting, but never less than compelling.

Oliviera's mastery is a joy to experience and his bittersweet comic touch adds a loving absurdity to what could have turned maudlin or morose.

The rough, exposed emotional candor of Cheung's singing voice carries into her performance.

My Brother Is an Only Child isn't a critique of the left but a film about the consequences and responsibility of "political action." Luchetti measures social justice not in ideals but in positive change and the compassion with which it is accomplished.

Linklater powers the film with the energy and attitude and beat of his soundtrack.

Wry and dry.

The skewering of spiritualism, dogma and passive-aggressive prayer groups has an exaggerated absurdity that borders on cartoonish and Dannelly's satire is more clever than cutting.

An inspired melding of action thriller, satire and biographical drama through the looking glass of a funhouse mirror.

The result is joyous and exhilarating.

It's the kind of stunt that gets Oscar nominations and accolades. Theron turns it into a raw, bristling performance that deserves them.

Where the Wayanses flogged every last chuckle from their belabored ideas, Zucker spring-loads his gags and lets them fly in rapid-fire succession. Not everything hits the target, but he tosses so many of them off with a wink and a grin that they catch you by surprise.

Much of the film is oddly ambiguous, as if Tran used it to explore conflicts of tradition and modernity and never came up with any answers.

A slick, smart-alecky rat-a-tat crime comedy.

It's more admirable than enjoyable, beautifully crafted and artfully unpleasant.

It's a romantic fantasy of the gangster brotherhood and their doomed lives, executed with Takeshi's unique mix of stoic ruthlessness and giddy energy.

Dark farce, a four-handed game of sexual trumps.

Inkheart feels a little confused in its tone and direction, but only a little, and I appreciate the way it both celebrates the power of literature and reminds us that stories have a life beyond the page, even if they are only in our hearts and minds.

This tale of kooky social misfits finding their place in the world is an audience pleaser, for all the reasons such tales usually are.

There's not enough insight to the social phenomenon presented onscreen, but that doesn't make the utterly human horror of this thriller any less unsettling.

The film's strength is compelling character relationships and Whedon's trademark dialogue, a smarter version of the cliched action-movie barrage of wisecrack under fire, only better executed, laden in personality, and enriched with evocative western colloquialisms of a frontier culture.

It's a tough movie with a fearless performance by Bacon and brave filmgoers will be rewarded with a bracing experience.

It may not be art, but A Dirty Shame is shameless fun.

Kahn manages to turn his feast of flesh, navel-gazing talk and self-destructive jealousy into a thoughtful reflection on the subject.

Andrew Bujalski's refreshingly modest look at life in the directionless netherworld between college and career is the rare film that finds its story in the minor contradictions and simple conflicts of ordinary people doing, well, not exactly nothing, but nothing important.

A reminder of the offbeat comic sensibility and visceral charge that marked him (Sabu) as a director to watch.

The concept is clever and Johnson's brisk editing, dynamic camerawork and snazzy transitions has fun with it all. It makes for an inspired time-warped teenage film noir.

It's pure romantic fantasy, almost too cute and naively innocent for its own good. Jeff Balsmeyer, a former storyboard artist making his directorial debut, stumbles through the clumsy establishing scenes, but his playful direction smoothes out as the characters settle in.

It's as much conceptual art as dispassionate survey of the bloodless assembly line nature of the modern food industry, all process and work, automation and repetition.

While not a grand-slam comedy, the offbeat humor and easy byplay gives The Grand a winning hand.

Oddly fresh and naively chipper.

The faces of its inarticulate characters tell the story, and Majidi has put some amazing faces on the screen.

It's hard to call it thrilling -- these aren't characters you actually care about and De Palma isn't as concerned with building tension as playing visual games -- but it sure sparkles.

The film walks a fine line between contempt for Polanski's crimes and sympathy for his trials and his screwed-up psyche, and it manages both while showing us why he fled the U.S. rather than face the corrupted judicial circus.

The script is full of brassy lines.

Murders aside, Mac and Pat are the most fun-loving Shakespearean couple to hit the screen, and Morrissette's answer to Lady Macbeth's damned spot is brilliant.

Don't expect scary from this trilogy of short horror films from a trio of Asia's most interesting directors, which are not so much extreme as twisted.

Director Cherie Nowlan creates vivid personalities for the entire family and exposes the raw nerves of the biting humor.

There's an unconvincing warm, fuzzy happy ending, in which recognition is treated as cure and understanding heals all. But, until then, Phoebe in Wonderland is an involving and empathetic drama of mothers and daughters.

The triumphs still are affecting, the setting is compelling and some of the human moments amid the political circus and culture wars are downright moving.

After all of these years playing smug street thugs, cocky idiots and patsies, can you blame Dillon for giving himself an elegant girl (Natascha McElhone), a devoted guardian angel, and a little redemption?

Scratch could use some of the wit and jagged energy that defined "Hype!"

Kassovitz keeps the film zipping along with solid pacing and just enough action to clear the credibility gaps as long as the film is rolling.

The film shoehorns in every memorable character from the original film.

A quietly, somberly effective American indie drama.

Doesn't necessarily offer anything new to the male/female dynamic, but it refuses to let Coles off the hook with an easy epiphany and a painless happily ever after.

Behind the sad and vulnerable eyes of Bernal's damaged Elvis is both a fierce rage and a desperate need for his father's recognition, but he's more enigma than person. Hurt is more nuanced as the sincerely spiritual man faced with a past that threatens his family and his future.

A few scenes are a bit coy and the "big secrets" threaten to pitch into melodrama, but Birmingham keeps bringing the film back to the delicate dynamics of the relationships at its heart.

It's a twisted but beautiful love letter to a city, not factually correct but emotionally true.

Winterbottom carves his own intimate tale out of the sprawling material, a modest miniature with witty flair and moments of humility.

Director Len Wiseman, confidently stepping up from the smallish budget "Underworld" films to mega-budget Hollywood mainstream.

Outside national borders, this naive vantage point is an entry into a country's history and culture, explaining without seeming patronizing.

Salles tends to explain rather than suggest, but he connects with the anguish and abandonment to give this ghost story an emotionally haunting core.

It's so beautiful and moving and simple that I'm willing to forgive Majidi his contrivances.

It's more than simply a well-crafted piece of fake history.

It's less a deconstruction of the heist film than an ambitious contemplation of our fascination with the genre, directed with a dispassionate eye at a ruminative pace and centered by a queasily emotionless figure wading through a swamp of moral ambiguity.

Isn't exactly adult animation but it's more complex and ambiguous than the usual Hollywood live-action blockbuster, and just as splashy.

It's all about waste and destruction, and not just the toxic waste -- illegally dumped in landfills -- that is poisoning the farmland and the aquifers in the region.

So Close is the film "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle" dreams of being: sleek, silly, completely ridiculous and irresistible.

Less cartoonish and more generous than the original.

There is a heart-warming familiarity to much of its 2 1/2-hour tale, but the surprises around its edges gives Zelary a refreshing perspective.

What it lacks is an intensity, a passion at the center...It is, nonetheless, a lovely and often powerful film.

Hardly sophisticated, but it's as inspired as teen sex comedies get.

Erin Gruwell (Hilary Swank) is real, and for all the dramatic license that writer/director Richard LaGravenese takes in his film, her story -- and the stories of her students -- are moving.

The earthy imagery is delicate while the drama is oddly elliptical, creating a lovely film of storybook images and parables. It's both obvious and elusive and, historical specifics aside, almost timeless.

The film's take on media and personal responsibility recalls Brian De Palma's faux Iraq documentary, "Redacted," here dropped into a homefront turned guerrilla war zone.

Based more on rumor and supposition than fact. It's a highly entertaining set of hypotheses.

It's a little visually precious and obscure but still a marvelously wistful film of regret and retreat, in which even the magic wine of forgetfulness erases only the memories, not the pain.

It's a pleasure to see mature portraits of adult characters who put their vulnerabilities on the line. I enjoyed my time in the company of these strangers.

Surprisingly sweet and infectious.

Chabrol's deliberate and drawn-out observations often work against the dramatic tension, but his gift is making the audience believe that emotion and obsession trump logic for these deluded characters.

The Pangs are at their best playing in the style sandbox, creating shivery imagery and eerie moods while exploring nothing deeper than irony and unease, as their climax so effectively demonstrates.

It's Kang's first feature and it suffers from rocky moments and an unsure eye, but his sense of detail is rich with prickly contradictions and he resists tidying up the story.

It's an old-fashioned Soviet road movie, filled with kind souls of the otherwise desperate (and at times predatory) world.

It's remarkably bright, funny and sweet for a film that wades through so much sleaze, though it can't escape all of the weirdness it worms through.

A summer movie that knows it's a summer movie. You don't go to this film for the story, but for the scenery: Bikini-clad girls riding waves, surf photography as beautiful as it is breathtaking, sun, surf, sand, even a little PG-13 romance.

Never comes alive.

Almost 30 years later, it's just as primal.

Romero's satire is largely replaced by a sardonic gallows humor (the zombie-shooting contest is as funny as it is grotesque), but otherwise it's a bloody entertaining zombie apocalypse.

The film attempts to put Zizek's philosophy into practical, accessible terms. Accessible, of course, being a relative term.

If Arlyck's own life feels unworthy of the attention, Sean's illuminating, unconventional and contemporary story makes up for it.

The live camel birth (shown in all of its excruciating beauty) is enthralling, and the cultural details, however staged, provide a vivid window into a world that is fast disappearing.

The colorful cultural history lesson in an idiosyncratic key is entertaining and informative, if a little indulgent in its adoration of Roth and his counter-car culture.

Garcia's dialogue is wonderfully crafted, short, sharp and resonant, and her elegant direction is delicate and handsome.

Behind the dry humor is a sense of hollowness in the two men who obliviously fall back into old patterns of reckless, loveless sex without missing a beat.

This is full of talk in the European art cinema tradition: intellectual conversations (often in multiple languages at once), gentile dinner conversation with an international all-star guest list.

Haggis drops exclamation points after his symbolic gestures, but in the rush to drive home his message on the confused mission in Iraq he offers a queasy revisionism that all but denies the legacy of Vietnam. Considering Deerfield is a Vietnam vet, it feels doubly false.

Looks to be this season's family animal comedy.

Kassovitz directs with an unrelenting intensity that helps you to suspend disbelief almost all the way to the credits.

It all feels like a performance for the camera: von Trier as madman producer taunting the elder filmmaker.

As dazzling as they come, a visual pageant of strange undersea creatures hunting and scavenging and floating across the screen.

The messy emotions and illogic of human nature defines this drama.

Imagine the sequel to "Clueless" reconceived as a peroxide "Paper Chase" and punched up with a valley girl version of "My Cousin Vinny" for the climax.

Silverman is funny and, more often than not, so is the film.

It's the strength of the actresses and their nurturing community that makes this Eden so satisfying.

A welcome return to the courtship, cuddling and sweet nothings of yesteryear.

An impressive, adrenaline-boosted action showcase.

What's left at the end is an emotionally restrained vision of harsh, impoverished lives, more thoughtful than affecting, and never less than gorgeous, but so unfocused it leaves only scattered impressions.

Plays largely like a performer's showpiece, with all the showboating and not so surprising character twists that entails, but Stettner comes out the other end with a pleasantly modest and satisfying revelation.

So stuffed with Maddin-ess that it never manages to get past the glorious surfaces. McKinney strides through his role with a knowing wink, and the sheer volume of creative imagery is as distracting as it is entertaining.

It's crowd-pleasing stuff, to be sure.

For all the testosterone-driven soap opera, this entertainingly confused coming-of-age story is a seductive fantasy, a rare portrait of urban underworld machismo without the violence and the viciousness.

No more or less than it appears to be: a paean to the benevolent fate we'd like to believe watches over us.

It's still too shrill and silly to take seriously, but the high spirits and naïve message of tolerance and pride is oddly, innocently winning.

Ultimately feels hollow and slapdash.

Wholesome, warm and energetic -- if predictable.

Playful, predictable and more than a little precious, this entertaining if slight romantic farce makes it's hard not to mourn the loss of the adult romantic comedy.

It's so earnest it hurts.

The texture of Manic feels honest and the chemistry of the kids is well observed, but even the modest breakthroughs are dramatic conventions that favor the symbolic over the genuine.

Most Bond parodies tend to flatten because they fail to evoke the production design overkill and slick cinematic style of its target. Johnny English is no different. Director Peter Howitt delivers action like a journeyman, but Atkinson saves him time and again.

Yet for a film so affectingly steeped in loss, resignation and the ghosts of memory, the revelation that pulls it all together, while satisfying and even touching, lacks emotional resonance.

A thoughtful and often evocative drama of identity and assimilation, but she leaves Nazneen so cocooned in her protective shell of disconnection that we can't connect emotionally.

For all it's warmth and wonder, it carries little more power than a storybook fable.

As exasperating as it is conventionally satisfying.

Part treasure hunt, part disturbia.

Is it too much to ask that the fictional scenes have at least some of the complexity and unpredictability of the real-life theater?

Never quite transcends its origins as a high-concept action thriller, but the clean professionalism of Donner's direction, the low-key turn by Willis and the street-level heroics make it a satisfying piece of genre filmmaking.

This isn't the Bollywood blast of color and song or the brassy razzle-dazzle of "Chicago," but a quieter, sweeter approach that works against the chaotic comedy while humanizing the characters.

The insistent crosscutting suggests there is something powerful between the two stories, but apart from vague connections of jealousy, emotional tension and conversations that constantly dance around the real issues, they don't resonate across the years.

Salva spins a backwoods serial killer setup into something really scary.

Less a story than a film of emotional textures, this is a study in stasis.

The film never earns the irony of the title or offers anything profound in its observations of fractured family dynamics in an atmosphere of lingering resentment, but Allen and Costner enrich and elevate the film and give the growth of their characters a hard-earned gravitas.

It's often helplessly hilarious in its adolescent gross-out way, yet the cast periodically invests the film with sweetness.

Robinson makes these characters breathe, and they bring the film to life.

There's nothing sophisticated or inventive about it, but Cube has fun with his characters and first-time director Marcus Raboy drives the film with enough momentum and energy to make the gags flow together almost like a real story. That's enough to carry it through another Friday.

I'd like to think it's all a joke, that far from a dream this is actually Linklater's idea of a nightmare.

It's not the dance but the kids' passion, and the boisterous support of their friends and family in the audience, that makes the contest so entertaining.

Verbinski, Depp and company just want to make it the best ride you've had all summer. If that's all you demand of a frothy summer blockbuster, then this delivers the goods.

At its best, The Good Girl is a refreshingly adult take on adultery, where the dark humor and offbeat fringe characters don't get in the way of the consequences or the quiet declarations of devotion slipped between the words.

The lack of irony, let alone ambiguity, in an upside world in which mobsters are the underdogs, should sink the film, but Lumet's laid-back professionalism and Diesel's big-hearted performance give it an affable buoyancy.

How She Move is the latest urban music drama from MTV Films, and it manages to give a familiar story a vivid jolt of character.

What Spottiswoode lacks in subtlety and restraint, he balances with a heartfelt passion for the material.

Zack and Miri is funny, and Rogen is a natural as Smith's alter-ego, spewing profane dialogue like he was born to it.

All about the thrill of the chase, and Friedkin challenges the antiseptic spectacle and fantasy flamboyance of computer-enhanced blockbusters with a lean, mean manhunt thriller and gritty, hard-edged style.

An excellent documentary equal parts extreme sports and social anthropology.

There's not a lot of story here and the dialogue lacks the snap one usually gets in New York stories of affluent young adults, but the characters have an authenticity.

For such a harrowing portrait, Mandoki remains oddly distant but for a few scenes. He makes his points boldly when he should be making his points sting.

It's often quite funny (when it's not spinning its wheels in rehashed skits and recycled gags), but when Myers gets his mojo working and his mind out of the toilet, he's capable of better.

It is charming and at times disarmingly surprising.

Blunt, somewhat artless, but very effective.

Delivers a clever confidence game, if not much else.

It's messy and painful, eased only the admirable modesty of Stockman's writing and direction.

It's colorful and determinedly kooky, with "Kung Fu" references and an H.R. Pufnstuf interlude between performances.

Charged with raucous energy and a satirical slant, this witty history lesson is preaching to the converted, sharing a knowing wink with everyone who's ever inhaled.

The sentiment smacks of "Titanic" for teens, but that doesn't make it any less valid, or the quietly told coda any less lovely.

There's a dark and demented little psychodrama of self-inflicted madness beneath the narrative contrivances. Vigalondo's direction makes it work more like a waking nightmare than a genuine experience, and he gives it the quality of madness.

The snappy wit of the script make Ol Parker's British romantic comedy the equivalent of comfort food a pleasant cinematic snack.

It delivers everything you expect on a timetable you can predict to the minute. It's filmmaking as a cross between a carefully choreographed dance and an elaborate pageant.

This gory, ghoulishly funny horror goof is shameless fun in its own right.

It may not be original, but it's often shamelessly funny and more clever than I expected. Not much, mind you, but enough to catch me off guard with a few surprise throws.

A good-natured movie.

The script doesn't always find the most effective way to the heart of the conflicts and Berg struggles to balance the mix of tones and the conflicts of man and superman, but he never sacrifices the integrity of his characters or their relationships for an easy ending. That alone makes Hancock the most adult of the new wave of superhero dramas.

They try too hard to be funny. It's hardly a damning fault, but it has a tendency to drown out their satiric observations.

It's more thrill ride than movie and Wong plays it that way: no sentiment, no complications and no pesky story to get in the way of an arsenal of flashy special effects.

A handsome documentary on a brutal subject.

A gentle and often beautiful study in opposites.

Under De Palma's cool disconnection is an anger, and it's this anger that drives his act of political theater.

Many will be left scratching their heads at the point of the entire enterprise, but fans of Jarmusch's askew view will clink coffee mugs and toast to the glories of human eccentricity.

It's nothing new, but Hawke captures some evocative textures and honest moments.

All the furiousness doesn't really add up to anything, but there is grungy fun to be had in gizmo-laden art direction and the increasingly bizarre battle of wits of the weirdly warped South Korean sci-fi black comedy.

Like many of Chen's movies, which are so precise and composed and lush, it's not really emotionally engaging. It is, however, a dazzling and dynamic spectacle that risks being ridiculous to create an unreal world of the romantic imagination.

Ingeniously engineered, self-consciously clever and directed with snazzy style, it's played as a violent black comedy with often-gruesome punch lines.

It's the warmth and resolve and humility of the young men that keeps us going. It may be more ennobling than introspective, but these three earn their nobility.

The film's greatest triumph, at least on a technical level, is the amazing texture of the water, which has never looked so dramatic or convincing in an animated film.

It's entertaining if not exactly enlightening.

Sommers is a pure pop Steven Spielberg who's put his deft technical skills in the service of the ultimate rollercoaster movie ride. It's sometimes more exhausting than exciting.

Tries to both spoof the fairy tale and retell it from a fresh angle. Curiously enough, its strength lies in the clever approach, and not the goofy comedy around the edges.

It's inconsistent and it fudges the script's murkier details, but Lawrence keeps the story on track and doesn't cheat the world of Constantine."

At more than two hours, Kippur is something of an ordeal.

It's so ruthlessly witty and meticulously plotted -- unexpectedly so, given its messy dramatic sprawl -- that it delivers a satisfying kick.

A film of minor pleasures.

It's just the kind of film that you'd expect a jury led by Quentin Tarantino to choose, a bloody and brutal revenge film immersed in madness and directed with operatic intensity.

You can't help but root for Akeelah as she reclaims the pride in her talents and her achievements. That's an idea worth spelling out to a young audience.

Woven from such promising threads that you wish it was better.

Highly entertaining.

This a rapid-fire romp through "War of the Worlds," "Saw," "The Grudge" and "The Village," cut up into skits and pieced back together in some mutant jigsaw puzzle with a few pieces missing, delivers a barrage of low-minded gags with high-spirited energy.

Don't expect a meaningful resolution, just a bouncy comedy with some hilarious moments in the stray ricochets.

It's part Jules Verne arms-race nightmare, part James Bond gadget war and part boy's own adventure.

A pointed satire of the dumbing down of network TV with a sour tone and a broad execution.

A date film with a hook for men.

Aviva emerges undamaged for all of her trauma. That may be the most compassionate, human act Solondz has offered in his career up to now.

The guys of the Broken Lizard comedy troupe (of "Super Troopers" fame) are neither subtle nor especially ingenious. But in the age of gross-out gags and high-concept gimmicks, they throw themselves into the raucous, rude style of '70s film comedy with shameless glee.

When Rock hits he's dangerously funny. If he didn't try so hard to be liked, he'd be even more dangerous.

Cute and often clever, there's nothing particularly memorable in this computer enhanced rerun, but this harmless little comedy has an unexpected warmth that melts the frozen plot.

The resulting political thriller is more intriguing than riveting, flattened by Jewison's plodding direction and distracting use of British actors to play French characters.

The gags hit more than they miss, and Stiller has moments of inspired absurdity, but he's capable of something more cutting and clever. It's junk food moviemaking: fun to snack on, but hardly a substantial meal.

For all its impressive set pieces and breathless momentum, it's neither passionate nor urgent.

The anger and betrayal hanging in the wake of shattered relationships and conflicted identities leave an admirable untidiness where most films would force resolution. There are no easy answers here, and it's not for lack of questions.

As much a call to action as a documentary, it's a compelling and sobering lesson in the devastating effect of human industry on the planet. But a lesson nonetheless.

Like a boulder bouncing down a long hill, the momentum keeps the film barreling along to the tragic inevitability promised in the opening titles.

Ghost Town reworks "Ghost" as a romantic comedy with a miserable hero who sees dead people and is really annoyed by them.

John Travolta is nothing if not cool as Chili Palmer.

A dumb film with a great conceptual hook from a director who visualizes better than he dramatizes.

It makes for a sweet and heartwarming story even as it celebrates and justifies the entire ridiculous phenomenon that Deruddere has been spoofing all along.

So familiar you may have moments of deja vu.

A loving tribute to Hong Kong stuntmen by one of their own, the directorial debut of stuntman-turned-actor Robin Shou ("Mortal Kombat") is a wince-inducing behind-the-scenes look at the way contemporary Hong Kong action cinema is created.

A B-movie goof on an A-minus budget, Returner is a mini-epic tweaked with computer effects and one blazing gun battle after another and set to an anonymous techno-beat.

A convincing and compelling community of characters with a sure comic sense and an at times screwball sensibility.

The charisma of L'il Bow Wow's spirited screen presence turn a contemporary Cinderella gimmick and a by-the-numbers script into a better film than anyone would have expected.

Never quite shakes itself free of the tired cliche that street people are quirky, sometimes cute, and somehow privy to a spiritual purity lost to us social folk.

Gozu is prime evidence in the argument that gonzo gangster movie maverick Takashi Miike is a major director goofing on minor works.

In a summer of cardboard figures in splashy spectacles, that makes for a refreshing change, an intriguing, entertaining and altogether sweetly mystifying misfire. In other words, another quintessentially Alan Rudolph picture.

It's a passionate film powered by the righteous anger of injustice.

At best, it's an inspired piece of free-association pop art held together by sheer momentum, at worst a noisy mess of juvenile nonsense passing itself off as a movie.

Uncompromising, unpleasant and emotionally brutal, this twisted love story of emotional bondage is oddly compelling.

Empowers its 14-year-olds and comes through with a Cinderella story sure to charm every girl who isn't part of the cool clique.

This coming-of-age tale is ultimately about self, not sex.

It feels too self-satisfied, but the prickly personalities and relationships have the ring of experience.

Never quite escapes the Euro-centric blinders of its characters, but its engagement with their evolving sense of identity and story of empowerment and acceptance is nonetheless rousing.

It's a reductive moral to a story full of fascinating contradictions, but Bailey and Barbato draw a convincing line between the social and political atmosphere of the film and the culture wars of today. The issues are still very much alive.

This a film where men on both sides of the line are seasoned and efficient. Men after Mamet's own heart.

Techine has a delicate touch and these lovely moments flow with a life that Martin's heavy, stumbling psychodrama can't match.

But if her wisp of a story rushes the simple connection between the women, the actresses fill in the details with an easy, unforced intimacy.

The annoying shaky-cam style so common to such indie dramas is toned down to a dreamy sway and the image drifts in and out of focus in scenes of heightened emotions. It's like waking from a daze and getting your bearings; the effect is both unsettling and calming.

Rodriguez has the chops of a smart-aleck film school brat and the imagination of a big kid, and they come together to remake the world in the image of its young audience. It's more amusement park ride than adventure, which in this case is exactly the demographic he's reaching for.

Amanda Peet exudes her patented mix of charm, beauty, humor and smarts as the best friend who may become more than a friend.

The story is slim but the script is snappy and the film moves with a fluid rhythm that charges up to a rollercoaster pace.

The perfectly dressed surfaces couldn't be more lovely, but the long fashion show to the finale smothers the emotions under the length and the look, and Lee's insights into the messy feelings that simmer and stew in the hothouse of sex are, frankly, fairly mundane.

An acid movie flashback a la Oliver Stone.

The "guest cast" includes Philip Seymour Hoffman, Allison Janney and Sarah Jessica Parker, but all are upstaged by Greg Hollimon's cheerfully corrupt Principal Blackman and Sedaris.

It never achieves the bleak poetry and tawdry tragedy of the best examples of the genre, but the understated humor is nicely played by Cusack and Thornton.

A sweet little comedy, as easygoing and warmly innocuous as the benign irony of the title.

Beautiful but empty.