Sean Axmaker

Doyle's handheld camerawork is intimate and curious and his hazy colors radiate off the screen.

Competently directed by Christian music producer Steve Taylor, it's a sincerely (if not exactly subtly) performed spiritual drama with a faith-based lesson in humility and the practical charity of offering a helping hand.

Pitt won the Best Actor award at Venice for his Jesse...Yet it's Affleck who impresses most as the wary, skittish Bob.

One of the Coens' more playful projects, much lighter and significantly slighter than "No Country for Old Men" or "Fargo," but it's put together with such perfection that you can't help but be won over.

The new parody from the comedy troupe Broken Lizard, takes another swipe at the corpse armed with the same old weapons. This time, rigor mortis has set in.

Think of this corrective to Kipling as "The Longest Yard" meets "The Seven Samurai" with cricket bats, choreographed dance numbers, romantic triangles and a rousing call to solidarity.

It's all quite deftly played with a maturity and introspection that may take you by surprise, though Sachs is perhaps too restrained in parts.

Emitai (1971) remains Sembene's masterpiece and his most important achievement. [03 Aug 2001]

No style, no irony and no smarts, just a vicious streak that lasts 90 minutes.

Stephen Brill's flat-footed script begins as an idiot comedy with the gross-out gags of a Farrelly brothers film.

The result is like a "Waiting for Godot" for the video-game generation.

All that's left are cute animals with animated mouths spitting out fitfully inspired one liners, sophomoric sexual innuendo and enough poop gags to last a lifetime.

Too bad the film, which Kennedy spun from a stand-up skit, remains as blissfully unaware of its possibilities as B-Rad is of his absurdity.

Coupled with the flavorless dialogue of the inane script and a leading man who registers all the glow of a black hole, there's nothing to anchor this mindless mess of a film.

The Divine Intervention of the title lies somewhere between hope and fantasy. In a world in which Santa Claus is assaulted in Nazareth, what do you have left?

Has neither the raucous energy and impudence of "Animal House," the defiance of "If ...," nor the grace and wit of "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle."

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?

It's filled to overflowing with mischievous gags for kids and adults alike, tickling the periphery of the story and crammed into every frame with playful abandon. It gives potty humor a good name.

Splashy and sweetly romantic, if hopelessly unimaginative.

A deliciously vivid adventure fantasy.

It's funny. Dumb, yes, but funny.

Danny Aiello is right at home as owner Louis, a paternal Italian father to all but his own son, reigning over the throng from his corner table like a benevolent lord and maybe underworld gangster.

Gunnarsson masterfully weaves these strands into a bold, multilayered tapestry surrounding a powerful story.

Sensitive and vivid response to the tangled issues of teen violence, race and self-esteem.

To call the haphazard string of gags a story is to give it far too much credit, but it is funny in a blunt, profane frat boy way, thanks to the bulldozing energy of Ferrell, the smarmy manipulations of Vaughn and the anything-for-a-laugh excess of Phillips.

For an ostensibly personal film, this plodding portrait of the self-involved flailing for meaning in a mercenary world has little of Soderbergh's insight, empathy or generous personality.

It could be more involving, but it's funny enough that you won't care.