Stephen Cole

Starbuck is unapologetic genre filmmaking with a winning performance from its lead, Huard ( Bon Cop, Bad Cop), a shambling, likeable comedian who can flip, flop and fly off a diving board while maintaining his sex appeal.

Bourne fans will find much to enjoy about The Bourne Legacy, even if they are forced to do without the title character.

Though only 85 minutes, the film captures an entire, bewilderingly extended family and way of life inside a sturdy frame.

The Intouchables works as a crowd-pleaser not because it's true, but because it's a plausible enchantment.

The star of Sound of My Voice is co-screenwriter, female lead Brit Marling, who plays Maggie with melancholy, amusement and scorn. Compulsively watchable, she can change who we think she is by simply turning her face. In profile, she's Vanessa Redgrave. Laughing, she becomes Debbie Reynolds. Marling might become a great character actress. Let's hope the movies use her well.

A surprisingly tender look at San Diego Comic-Con.

The result, which could be entitled There's Something About Curly, is an unabashedly moronic celebration of slap shtick.

Though often fascinating and beautiful to look at, Surviving Progress falls into the adapting-a-book-into-a-movie trap. Trying to do too much too fast.

Yes, The Mysterious Island is everything a 12-year-old boy could want – endless adventure involving a reckless adolescent hero, with a pretty girl in a clinging T-shirt around to watch him struggle.

Noir connoisseurs, however, will receive Moverman's latest like a double-bourbon from heaven. Rampart is the best crime-movie fix from Hollywood since "Gone Baby Gone."

Playing a blonde with her roots showing, Beckinsale seems up for a scrap, but the film gives her nothing to do but get clobbered.

Dragonslayer documents what happened when California stopped dreaming.

The Mill and the Cross may thrill you. But be prepared for a fight. Twenty minutes in, your companion may throw up his or her arms and complain, "This is like watching a painting dry." They wouldn't be wrong.

Chandor's shrewdest bit of business is figuring out how to make an A-list movie with a $3.5-million budget. Solution: buy low, sell high. Hire last decade's A-list – Spacey, Irons and Demi Moore – and give them their best parts in years.

Trespass is at least a suitable rest stop for his (Cage) anguish. An unapologetic B-movie that comes with lots of flashbacks, gunplay and shouting, it can easily be savoured and forgotten inside 90 minutes.

The most gripping war movie you'll see this year, We Were Here tells first-hand the story of how AIDS attacked San Francisco, killing more than 15,000. Whole peer groups were happy, healthy, and then dead in months.

Detective Dee is the action flick of the year, a two-hour epic that blows the "Pirates of the Caribbean" to the Bermuda Triangle.

It's no fun looking after a determined, self-justified alcoholic; or even watching him waste away. Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life accepts its subject on his own terms. And the compromise feels like capitulation before its hero's last record spins to a close. The death of a ladies man is pretty grim sport after the ladies have gone.

Warrior is a weirdly affecting hybrid, a 100-proof melodrama that's two-thirds Sylvester Stallone and one-third Eugene O'Neill. Think Rocky's "Long Day's Journey into Night."

Contagion isn't meant to provide delicious roller-coaster chills. Released two days before the 10th anniversary of 9/11, it's a film meant to scare the bejesus out of us.

In art there are no rules, just stuff that works. And for the second film in a row, Marsh has created a movie we can't keep our eyes off.

As Blank City proves, the all-night, every-night party was fun while it lasted.

Alas, the filmmaker, maybe because he had to account for every week of his more than year-long visit to the Times, has crowded his film with too many subplots and way, way too many cameos of all the usual suspects, wringing their hands over what will become of newspapers.

It is our tour guide that makes Cave of Forgotten Dreams an often thrilling experience. His producer, Erik Nelson, has joked Herzog is the first filmmaker to use 3-D for good, instead of evil. There is no question that the technology enhances our visit, giving perspective and shape to the jagged Chauvet Cave – an open mouth the size of a football field.

Gass-Donnelly is good at capturing stalled rural lives, from church hymn-sings populated by the elderly, their voices fragile as April snow, to dead-end afternoons at corner cafés, where bored patrons stretch lunch hours with coffee and gossip.

Jumping the Broom also benefits from a great soundtrack (Al Green, Aretha, El DeBarge, Curtis Mayfield).

A film with enough sexy one-liners to tempt Mae West from the grave.

Michelle Monaghan's clowning response to her boyfriend's sudden histrionics lends the drama a giddy fizz.

Once it becomes clear that the new Diary of a Wimpy Kid is an equal-opportunity offender, and that it is the politically correct modern family that is being picked on, rather than young Greg, the film becomes cheerfully mischievous fun for everyone.

Patricio Guzmán's documentary, Nostalgia for the Light, pays equal attention to the astronomers and searchers, regarding their quest as the same – a search for life.

It's amazing to see, but potentially unsettling. Green is now 37. And it may be more than some mothers can take, imagining themselves cleaning up after their "little boy" when he's crowding 40.

No matter who you side with here, Waste Land – the title should come with a question mark – is a fascinating adventure, populated by memorable characters.

Guy and Madeline is a decidedly modern film, whose frightened, impulsive, charming characters could walk into our lives tomorrow.

An okay thriller with lots of smart flourishes, The Next Three Days has us hooked early on but never quite gets us in the boat.

An impressionistic work that is perfectly in tune with its subject’s hallucinatory music.

Will Ferrell is a scream, no doubt about it. And Anchorman contains some of his best work. But, Knights of Columbus! Wouldn't it be great if TV-based comedians weren't afraid of making movies that were funnier than they are?

Von Trier's proficiency at the quicksilver business of comedy comes as a surprise, given the grinding seriousness of earlier films.

Anyone who likes pop music or wonders how bands like the Rolling Stones got rolling will enjoy the ride.

A welcome rarity: an amiable film comedy that leaves you feeling good as opposed to feeling for your wallet.

Death Race is our unshaven Brit hero's inevitable comeuppance: The Prison Job.

In classic B-movie style, The Dark Hours was created in a fever, written in two weeks and hurriedly shot in 16 mm (blown into a crisp 35 mm print). Nevertheless, the film provides evidence of talent everywhere.

The best thriller of 2003 was made in 1979.

The film lacks the comic ingenuity of the best in CGI critter movies. It's not fun-for-the-whole-family, like "Shrek." Still, it's a howl and amazement for anyone under 12.

It is a work of great beauty that rewards continued visits.

We don't get a good look at a painting until 35 minutes into the film biography of Séraphine de Senlis, the early 20th-century French painter discovered by German art collector Wilhelm Uhde. The film Séraphine is not about paintings.

Horror fans anticipating grisly laughs are in for a jolt. Because the new Last House, though terrifying, is never, ever fun.

Letting Shrek get grumpy again has freshly animated this cartoon series.

A miraculous, American-made Hindi film that is every bit as tranquil as the blue-green reservoir that serves as its abiding metaphor.

For all North Country's blockbuster elements, the film remains a curiously uninvolving affair.

Robocop isn't going to win Verhoeven any medals - the focus remains on action, guns and gore - but it's a flashy movie with enough wit to be more than just another dumb bucket of bolts. [17 Jul 1987]

The film is never as powerful or convincing as it should be.

By hiring James Earl Jones to narrate, Disney has prepared youngsters to understand that man is equally capable of heroism and villainy.

Like "Rebel", directed by Nicholas Ray, this film excels at capturing the nervous posturing of adolescent boys marking their territory by pissing on each other's shoes.

There is also a capable, wisecracking stewardess (Julianna Margulies) and, what a surprise, a steward who appears to be doing a Paul Lynde impersonation.

As expected, it has gaping holes where back stories used to be. Still, it's a historical war movie with impressive sweep, strong characterizations and the kind of idiosyncratic flourishes that made Woo such an irresistible storyteller.

We leave this movie hoping to see Miller and Lewis together again soon.

Your Mommy Kills Animals works best as a fast-moving carnival of faces and feature stories. Like most amusement-park rides, it lets you off dizzy and confused, whereas the best documentaries leave you feeling that you've come to a settled perspective on a subject.

It's Duvall and Murray who make Get Low a small, wonderful thing.

A splendid adventure sure to thrill children and fantasy buffs, while leaving everyone else passably entertained.

A little bit of "Crime and Punishment" and a whole lot of "The Postman Always Rings Twice," Revanche, the Austrian candidate for last year's Best Foreign Language Film, is a surprisingly unruffled tale of love, thievery, murder and revenge.

Tetro is Coppola's best film since Apocalypse Now because the filmmaker has abandoned conventional drama – what for him had become a straightjacket – indulging in a collage style that allows him to honour favourite filmmakers.

The best Brit noir since "Croupier" is a complex, marvellously twisty thriller.

Succeeds because the subject knows she's a showbiz monster and plays her role to the hilt. She's Norma Desmond in "Sunset Blvd." or "Mommie Dearest's" Joan Crawford up from the grave.

It is filmmaker Assayas who is the star here. France's most important contemporary director has created a work of almost magisterial calm.

An enjoyable time-waster, distinguished by an unexpectedly sharp comic turn by McConaughey, lots of boisterous horseplay and some stirring emotional clinches. All in all, an entirely serviceable night out for buddies looking to locate hidden feelings.

Watching 9 , we know how 8 feels. Sci-fi fans will find heaven in Shane Acker's feature-film debut.

The Hunting Party does a good job of illustrating Winston Churchill's observation, "There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at without result."

Yes, it’s really complicated, life with the Rizzos. City Island probably has too many moving parts. Still, writer-director Raymond de Felitta (Two Family House) understands that a proper farce, like a good campfire, needs plenty of friction to get started.

The movie's big kick – what makes Enchanted live up to its title – is that the further Giselle progresses in New York, the more we feel like we've tumbled into a timeless Disney Neverland.

Rallies in the last reel.

If Under the Same Moon is formula melodrama, the film is well acted and its lead character perceptively drawn.

Although In My Country is charged with moments of grace and feeling, the film is ultimately betrayed by the clunky Jackson-Binoche romance.

The Israeli film works best in isolated spots early on as a series of intriguing character studies. Upon reaching to become a lesson to the world, however, Walk on Water goes off the deep end.

As provocative as it is timely.

There's the roller-disco music and skating, which isn't so much hot as a hoot.

A third of the way into Soul Plane, maybe earlier if you're in the right mood or with the wrong company, you might actually start to enjoy disliking the movie. Like, say, Prince's "Purple Rain," certain Joan Crawford movies, and Leslie Nielsen at his best worst, the film inspires cathartic ridicule.

The film's best and most carefully shaded performance belongs to Bacon.

A typically hypnotic, slow-coiling drama from 80-year-old French filmmaker, Jacques Rivette.

An amused and affectionate look at the writer who formed a crucial link between the New Journalism of the 1960s and today's blogosphere.

One of this enlightened B-movie's many pleasures is French director Jean-François Richet's handling of atmosphere and setting. Shot almost entirely at night in a blinding snowstorm, the crime drama is an intriguing remodelling of a classic film noir.

Another angry, searching document about pedophile priests, Deliver Us from Evil makes for unexpectedly gripping drama.

Nothing short of mesmerizing.

After witnessing the wearying parliamentary debates among good and bad senators in recent Star Wars episodes, it's a pleasure to watch a sci-fi movie where more than just the spaceships move quickly.

Watching Moon is kind of like seeing a booster rocket thrust seventies' sci-fi films deeper into orbit.

Though not as memorable as the series on which it is based, it does the job as big-screen entertainment.

Here's something you don't see every day: a high-school comedy for old poops.

A chilling film best experienced bundled up in a sweater and scarf.

Surely the real story of Enron is that so many accountants, lawyers, bankers and politicians were willing to call a dog a duck in order to remain happy insiders in the world's biggest pyramid scheme.

In a better work, the filmmaker would talk to hardcore punks about their parents, affairs, regrets, dreams and day jobs in an effort to explore the fledgling movement. Here, however, we get little more than a marathon MTV rap session, as Rachman drives about North America, yakking with aging punk heroes about the good ol' bad ol' days.

A stylish, sharply observed erotic mystery.

The rare sequel that is better than the original.

An astonishing multimedia diary.

Palindromes is a cracked American picaresque.

Few movies have captured the intoxicating effect of pop culture on kids better than Son of Rambow.

The story of Canada’s tragically unhip – Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and Neil Peart, charter members of a group that has sold 40 million or so albums and discs since 1973, without ever getting a whole lotta love. Never mind the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; Rush never even made it on American TV until funnyman Stephen Colbert invited them on The Colbert Report in 2008.

A quirkily efficient genre exercise that knows exactly where and when to administer its cattle-prod shivers.

Like most modern action films, Shooter is too explicit, more interested in mayhem than motive.

A fantastic holiday toy that, amazingly enough, doesn't require batteries.