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]

Who wants to watch any film where Sarandon, the sexiest 60-year-old woman alive, is first prize in a corn-eating contest?

Are any of his stunts funny? Yes, one scene is worthy of Borat and Mack Sennett's Keystone Kops.

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.

What's so distressing about Michelle Pfeiffer taking a mooning calf for a lover, though, is that it robs her of the quality that has always made her such an interesting actress.

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.

There is no getting these boys down. They are just like Lloyd and Harry in the Farrelly brothers' breakthrough 1994 hit, "Dumb & Dumber." Except that they are never, ever funny.

Scott means for his entertainment package to be hip, hysterical fun. But his stylistic embellishments and indiscriminate appetite for sensation crowds his title character right out of the film.

More than anything, the film lacks a rapport with its audience.

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.

Once Bullock's character clears her head at the top of the thrill ride, Premonition becomes inescapably dull because it is her mental health, not her purposefully dull husband's fate, that interested us.

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.

Barrymore's charm helps make Beverly Hills Chihuahua a congenial family outing.

Fails to ever come alive as a human comedy in the manner of the best mockumentaries.

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

Still, what makes Sly's new film fascinating is that, 35 years after he created and starred in the ultimate little-boy fantasy, "Rocky," Stallone remains such a guileless, big-dreaming innocent.

Best when Fraser is on screen. Ian McKellen, who starred with Fraser in "Gods and Monsters," called him the most natural actor he'd worked with, marvelling at Fraser's ability to disappear into roles.

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.

Though elegantly staged, Silk is badly written and indifferently cast.

It is hard to say what is more despicable about The Condemned: the overtly racist portrayal of Brekel-Goldman as Jewish-media bloodsuckers, or the film's sleazeball attempt to pass off lovingly attentive sequences of ritual torture - often scenes of incredible hulks bashing cowering women - as a critique of media violence.

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

A convincing, reasonably co-ordinated action movie. Nothing special, but lovers of the genre will enjoy the workouts, especially if they bring night-vision glasses.

Today, the 1985 novel is the No. 1-selling paperback in North America. Sadly, the movie is a bonfire where the novel was a blaze of fireworks.

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.

The film has enough laughs to stock a 90-minute entertainment. Unfortunately it throws out enough material to fill five comedies. And most of the jokes die in silence, throwing off a flop-sweat tsunami that carries away Short's best work.

Why bother suffering through 90 minutes of bad company for a few moments of holiday cheer? Especially when you can still stay home alone and watch "A Charlie Brown Christmas" somewhere on TV.

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.

Frozen would get props for a novel plot, except that its storyline appears to be ski-lifted from the "Curb Your Enthusiasm" episode where Larry is stuck on a chairlift with an Orthodox Jewish woman who is terrified of being seen with a man after sunset.

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.

The movie feels like something parents want their kids to see. Harold and Kumar wouldn't want anything to do with Beth Cooper or Denis Cooverman. You're probably not going to like them much either.

Though The Stoning of Soraya M.'s heart is in the right place, its head is lost in storm clouds of anger.

David Bowie, flaunting a Marianne Faithfull hairdo, stars in Jim Henson's latest puppety film, the flagrantly unoriginal Labyrinth. [1 Jul 1986, p.A1]

The film's broad attempts at humour are all mouldy bits from Hollywood films.

Broken Arrow conforms faithfully to the tongue-in-cheek, post-Die Hard action genre, with the usual spectacularly choreographed action sequences and rudiments of a story line. Even considering the meagre demands of the genre, though, character and plot seem woefully underbaked and the reliance on improbable solutions soon makes the groans of incredulity outnumber the gasps. [9 Feb 1996, p.C1]

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.

Still, even Romero's staunchest fans might conclude their hero is going through the motions here. Yes, almost like a zombie.

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.

Hugh Grant's Martin Tweed is nowhere as menacing (or interesting) as the callous bruiser who makes every episode of American Idol a chilling psychotic adventure.

As provocative as it is timely.

As for children's entertainment needs, well, having seen both "The Golden Compass" and Alvin and the Chipmunks with a full theatre of four- to 12-year-olds, this reviewer is honour-bound to report that Alvin wins the kids' vote, paws down.

A lamentably slack and dishonest genre exercise.

A superior entertainment to both "RE 1" and "Alien vs. Predator."

Too much diary, not enough movie.

All of this is interesting, but not all that entertaining.

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

Unfortunately, both Bridges and Anderson are only intermittently in the movie. And when they're not around, How to Lose Friends loses its satirical edge, becoming an alarmingly safe, almost corny romantic comedy.

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.

Despite an evident appetite for mayhem, however, Bay is not the right guy to produce slasher movies. Horror requires intimacy.

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.

Sorry to disappoint anyone who saw the cast list of this film and presumed Julie Andrews was going to play the horrific serial killer Tooth Fairy from the Hannibal Lecter movies.

A botched adult romantic comedy that strands its leading player, and its audience, in a wearying, sitcom-slight battle of the sexes.

Nothing short of mesmerizing.

The best part of Jonah Hex is Josh Brolin on a horse. Especially when he's not saying anything, just moseying into or out of town. Too had he never moseys into a better movie.

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.

Anyone interested in hearing the artist's heart-to-hearts properly translated is encouraged to seek out Leonard Cohen's flamenco serenade, "Take This Waltz."

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

The plot feels both familiar and far-fetched.

It's possible to admire the performances of stars Charlize Theron and Kim Basinger in The Burning Plain , even as you backpedal from the film, hoping the ponderous megasoap will just go away.

A comedy should provoke more than smiles. Should have characters instead of show-offs. Although often charming, Micmacs seems so pleased with itself that it hardly needs an audience.

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

Though bathed in ecclesiastical light and a work of obvious craft and ambition, Bee Season is grimly serious and rather full of itself.

An ugly, strictly-for-meatheads comedy that can only be recommended to couples who wear matching Tie Domi Toronto Maple Leafs jerseys out on a date.

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.

Sounds promising. What a disappointment then to report that Just Like Heaven is more like purgatory, a sweating, straining attempt to marry the wisecracking fury of the modern sitcom to the classic Rock-Doris, Cary-Kate romantic comedy.

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.

A mess of a movie – a sprawling PowerPoint argument that covers too much ground way too fast, dispensing Wikipedia-calibre essays on a variety of subjects, from a blurred bio of J. Robert Oppenheimer, creator of the atom bomb, to an unsatisfying sidebar on A.Q. Khan, the world's first door-to-door nuke salesmen.

Aniston's constituency will enjoy seeing her again in Love Happens . She's lovely and fun to be with, as always.

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.

So here’s an idea: Maybe filmmakers should shoot what Ashton’s up to off-camera, because not many laughs are making it to the screen.

A stylish, sharply observed erotic mystery.

Except for one memorable interlude, the film just doesn't have near enough fun blasting spitballs at "Pirates of the Caribbean."

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.

The script is terrible - a confounding mish-mash of action-thriller chases, sci-fi travelogue and phony political intrigue.

If this sounds intriguing, we should add that System of a Down is a lousy live band. And director Garapedian, for all her public-minded zeal, isn't capable of corralling her interviews and opinions into a coherent polemic.

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.

Theodore Braun's work may well reach and convert one thousand more Adam Sterlings. Here's hoping it does. There is, however, a difference between a worthy cause and a worthy film.

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

Handsomely mounted, emotionally involving sci-fi movies don't often show up in the darkened galaxies of our theatre chains. So Alvart's English-language debut is definitely a film you want to catch on the big screen. Just don't sit too close, lest you end up with a dose of pandorum.

It’s a corny, old fashioned boy-dog love story, as adorable as anything Walt Disney ever signed off on.

What’s missing in Get Him to the Greek are the supporting characters that made "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" so engaging.

Actress Helen Buday is coolly persuasive in the seesaw role of an unbalanced housewife who jerks from despair to anger.

Perhaps the young performers are in such a good mood because they're liberated from having to play straight-as-a-ruler teen melodrama.

There is no energy here. No sense of movie invention or fun.

Few directors working today make films with the grace and magisterial power of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's best work.

Actually, as Eddie Murphy PG comedies go, Meet Dave isn't bad. In fact, it's kind of sweet, innocent almost – kid-friendly in the best sense.

A 105-minute cringe-a-thon that reduces the Katharine Hepburn of her generation to a sitcom harpy presiding over a brood of Valley Girl chicks.

Hatchet is further evidence of the decline of Western civilization.

For all its fuss and fury, Flight of the Red Balloon succeeds magnificently.

At two hours and 34 minutes, CC2C is too much by a half: too much dancing and fighting and too much footage of the Great Wall of China. It does, however, have a vulgar energy and many of the jokes work.

Todd Solondz isn't for everyone, maybe not even most people...he's a comic filmmaker whose idea of entertainment is shredding chum into a shark tank.

Three years in the making, seems fussed over and, occasionally, a little dull.

There is no narrative tension in the film, however, just a variety of grisly crucifixions. And the morality tales are blood-stained window dressing.

Fans of both Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe should not be too bummed with the mild sedative that is A Good Year.

Benefits from one standout performance: Timothy Olyphant ( Deadwood ) plays the part of Nick with ingratiating comic relish.

If all this sounds familiar, it should. Fathers seldom fare very well in family comedies.

Formula sequel right down to its zany subtitle -- Armed and Fabulous. Bullock deserves better. We deserve better. Rev up that '57 Chevy.

Contains fascinating footage – material from the 1980s that looks to be the work of angry, ancient Norse warriors. There is, however, almost no perspective here. Perhaps the filmmakers succumbed to a condition associated with a city east of Oslo – the Stockholm Syndrome.

Think of Sleepover as a girl gang movie with training wheels.

The film's greatest achievement is that it allows us to know Ray.

Young male earthlings should like everything about Race to Witch Mountain. Just make sure you race your caffeinated charges to the washrooms right after the movie to defuel so there won't be any accidents on the space shuttle home.

The Trotsky goes down easily and, for what it’s worth, is better mannered than most contemporary youth comedies.

It's really a lazy comedy that is content telling a crude and corny Hollywood story with a Mexican accent.

Shutter has the look and feel of a proper J-horror film. Tokyo is seen as a series of gloomy gun metal skies. And the acting is more subdued than in Hollywood horror movies.

Good Hair is also about how African-Americans spend $9-billion annually chemically treating and straightening their hair, buying 80 per cent of America's hair products. It's such a fascinating, complex tale that you hope one day some probing filmmaker will make a conclusive documentary on the subject.

No, there isn't anything wrong with comfort entertainment. Then She Found Me could have, should have been something special - a "Knocked Up" for weary boomers. The only hitch is that it isn't all that entertaining. Nor comforting for that matter.

Machete is a drinking man's "The Expendables."

The narrative line itself rambles increasingly down a path toward tawdry melodrama, defeating the impact of the handsome visuals and finely etched performances. [13 Jan 1995]

An uncommonly tender and observant documentary on the phenomenon that is "A Chorus Line."

So Dead Snow fulfills one zombie-movie prerequisite. It's different.

In a better entertainment world, Owe would have won a special Buster Keaton Great Stoneface award at last year's Academy Awards.