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.

A farther-fetched fantasy: In addition to asking we believe our loosely packed academic can play Rocky, Here Comes the Boom imagines a world in which butterball Everyman Scott and the fabulously lush Bella (Salma Hayek) might argue and bill and coo and eventually fall in love.

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.

Piranha 3DD is overcrowded and pointlessly mean. The stunt casting of David Hasselhoff playing himself, riffing off his infamous 2007 drunken home video, gets in the way of the storyline.

Try not to be in the same room as Jesus Henry Christ. At the very least run when the first fire alarm sounds.

Dark Shadows only meaningful relationship is between Depp and his audience. He's a persona now, no longer an actor. And the kick here, as always, is watching him try on funny accents and hairdos.

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.

Adolescent boys will savour My Way's bombast and solemnity. Cringing adult audiences will more likely beat a retreat before final call.

A surprisingly tender look at San Diego Comic-Con.

The mistake filmmakers Tucker and Epperlein (Gunner Palace) make here is assuming that fighters reveal their true characters in discussing their craft, when in fact just the opposite occurs.

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

Halfway through, everyone starts drinking heavily and the film turns into agreeably sloppy fun. (Isn't that always the way – class reunions often perk up when someone spikes the punch.)

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.

What a disappointment.

What the film needs more than anything is Perry's alter ego, Medea – a rampaging bowling ball who might knock all these stiff, upright characters spinning.

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."

The Viral Factor is deliriously far-fetched. And one wishes director Dante Lam (The Beast Stalker) could have at least had some giddy fun smashing all his toys around. But his new film is tediously overwrought and drably made, with scenes punctuated by synthesized drums out of eighties American TV drama.

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.

Though beautiful to look at and graced with moments of ticklish camp, The Skin I Live In is also sluggish, arbitrarily conceived and, especially in its sagging middle, unaccountably dull.

If 1911 doesn't impress as historical spectacle, neither does it rank high as a Jackie Chan film.

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.

All outrageous stuff. Gatien's story is worth telling. Which makes it all the more unfortunate that director Billy Corben presents it in such a methodical fashion.

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.

The film has one sly, ominous touch Peckinpah would have liked. David is writing a script on the defence of Stalingrad, a battle that swallowed two million lives. Otherwise, the new version is a vigilante action film bereft of subtlety or restraint.

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.

3D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy fails to live up to either its promise or title.

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.

There just isn't the same zingy rapport. Seth Rogen's praying mantis and Jackie Chan's monkey have no more than a dozen lines between them. Even Jack Black's Po is more subdued.

Last Night is a New York morality play: A film in love with (lower) Manhattan that is suspicious of real romance. What it lacks is Allen's sense of horseplay; his appetite for lunatic adventure. When you take a bite of the Big Apple, you're not supposed to nibble.

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

The 131-minute, car-racing film is adolescent guy date histrionics – screaming tires, snappy putdowns and, because we're in Rio, an occasional influx of bodies beautiful in Band-Aid bikinis.

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.

A big, bloated, though frequently engaging gangster movie, Kill the Irishman should properly be viewed late night on TV, flipping back and forth between the film, David Letterman and a west-coast ball game.

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.

Has a provocative, ticklish premise – five North England Muslims become suicide bombers, but can't decide who or what to take with them.

They're not much company, our Marcus and Esca. But there we are, mucking through crazy Scotland with them.

The Super Bowl MVP is awarded a trip to Disneyland. Maybe in the future, he should be awarded a part in an Adam Sandler movie. There is no bigger male fantasy land.

Anyone interested in a no-seatbelts, out-of-control action flick will find much to enjoy in Faster; although even they may prefer seeing it in Blu-Ray at home, which would allow for trips to the fridge for fuel when the film begins to idle in the last reel.

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.

Max Manus (the title role is played by Aksel Hennie) feels so familiar that audiences watching it are likely to experience a numbing sense of déjà vu. Nothing seems particularly fresh or involving.

It's like flipping through five years of dog calendars.

The Boondock Saints II does, from time to time, display a vulgar charm. Or maybe it just wears you out.

An inferior "Napoleon Dynamite." Call it Napoleon Firecracker. The film steals one of the best laughs of Jon Heder's surprise 2004 hit, the scene where Napoleon nosedives over a bicycle jump, and stretches the gag into an 86-minute movie.

Cold Souls begins to lose its comic focus, however, when Giamatti comes to realize that he needs his soul back.

Doesn't work because it isn't much of a ride. The action scenes are strictly by rote. The incidental characters are all incidental.

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?

Fails as a comedy-drama because it’s neither funny nor involving. But it fails as a buddy movie because Willis and Morgan make for a dull couple.

It should be a better, more authentic movie, considering that screenwriters Maupin and his ex-partner, Terry Anderson, are retelling parts of their own story here.

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.

A film willing to cheat whatever way necessary to scare you... The good news is that once you leave the theatre, you'll never think of Boogeyman again.

As for Vaughn, he seems exhausted by his strenuous efforts to bring a few sparks of spontaneity to such an overcalculated Christmas product.

A bad-cop, worse-cop movie.

Can anyone still be rooting for Rocky or Rambo?

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.

It's a bright, busy imitation of independent moviemaking. But it's hardly an independent film. Hopefully, next time out, director Crowley, a promising storyteller, will find his own story to tell.

One smart thing Green's character Ezekiel does is split from Sex Drive as soon as his two scenes are over.

Leaves us with is sporadic showers of laughs for kids under 10. That's a shame, because the film could have been a delight for everyone, if only it hadn't learned to behave.

How to Eat Fried Worms arrives just in time to placate preteen boys who resent being unable to see the frankly more adult though equally immature "Snakes on a Plane."

The best thriller of 2003 was made in 1979.

A meagre, occasionally funny affair.

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.

The Virginity Hit is another slice of "American Pie," one more youth comedy that encourages its cast (and audience) to ridicule a fumbling, well-meaning teenager.

If you have kids who are easily frightened, bring them to Alpha and Omega, a 3-D movie with training wheels. Kids may not like it, but they'll never fall off the ride.

A football story that deserves a penalty flag every other play for piling on the sentiment.

One of those purposefully glum studies in alienation that Hollywood occasionally produces as blue-state specials for disenchanted liberals.

It's an action-comedy. It's in 3-D. There's a video-game tie-in. Throw in a fluorescent Slushie from the candy counter and your eight-year-old will be in heaven.

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.

A furious 90-minute trailer of a movie that exceeds the speed limit for action films established by Quentin Tarantino's recent "Grindhouse."

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

The humour in Accepted is maddeningly safe.

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.

Brian and Dom could drive from L.A. to Mexico City and back blindfolded, but would require a GPS to find the zipper of a dress. The only time they smile here is when they are alone in a garage, tinkering with their dream cars.

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]