Stephen Hunter

An anti-capital-punishment polemic that won't change a single mind anywhere on Earth but will entertain well enough everywhere on Earth.

"Lost" star Matthew Fox pitches in with a strong performance as a coach who, by the laws of whimsy, didn't take the final flight home and had to struggle with survivor's guilt.

It's the last thing anyone expected: an old-fashioned monster movie with a heart.

Isn't particularly scary. No, it's much harder on you than mere fright: It's . . . creepy.

There are plenty of reasons to like the movie, such as its genuinely gentle wit, its occasional capture of the absurdities of aging and its endorsement of the permanence of lust, but one factor in particular is its brilliant cast of discarded '70s-era Hollywood stars.

The movie doesn't so much end as reach a stopping point and limp hurriedly off-screen, like a bad stand-up chased out by boo birds. But God, is it funny.

It's a brilliant movie, fluent, spectacular, breathtaking and basically, uh, wrong.

It's so spoofy it's difficult to call 'good' or even 'bad'; just say it's smooth.

A few others have compared this to a James Bond movie, but it's more of a piece with a Tom Clancy movie; it never leaves the real world that far behind, it has a fair sense of documentary reality, and the action sequences -- from shootout to car chase to a commando takedown of a tanker on the high seas to a final knife fight -- are extremely well managed.

You may not enjoy The Mother (I certainly didn't), but it's a movie so heavy on truth, its spell cannot be denied.

If nothing else it's a wonderful essay on the meaning of freedom and the courage it takes to wrestle it from despots. In that sense, it feels more political and cultural than religious.

It's hard to hate, because as a rabble-rouser it is superbly effective, driven forward by two powerhouse actors.

The much ballyhooed movie, far from great and far from short (2 1/2 hours!), is still great fun.

It's not a great movie by any means, but it grips tighter than a chokehold and it cuts as deep as a knife.

It pulps you, but it doesn't enlighten you.

A big, fat, gorgeous, mesmerizing mess.

Until that sugar coating at the end, Out of Time is clever, believable and gripping, and seems to be headed to a wondrous, bad place as it carefully modulates classic '40s themes.

It's a long and relatively underdramatized film, but it's powerfully true.

A surprisingly lush, well-produced film.

Leconte is always a deliriously clever director; his "Ridicule" and his "The Girl on the Bridge" stand out as vivid films on subjects no one in America would even consider. Possibly he's trying too hard here to be liked, just like Francois. But as long as he's merciless, he's great fun.

The movie is taut, fast, achingly authentic and terribly melancholy.

He treats jocks like humans, not stars or superheroes, and in the end has managed something unique for documentaries these days: It's as entertaining as it is fair.

Petersen leaves out, largely, character, back story, anecdote and warm personal relations. Poseidon isn't cute, funny, warm, nice, inspirational or uplifting. It's about the incredible labor of survival in a world turned totally sociopathic in an instant.

One of those rich girl/bad boy things that defy understanding and leave you on the outside. Fascinated, but on the outside.

The remake is directed by another slickster, the Irishman John Moore, who is no deep thinker (as his "Behind Enemy Lines" confirmed) but, like Donner, he's an able hack -- smooth, stylish, clever, soulless and a hoot. And so's his damned movie. And it is damned.

The movie is almost devised like a rat-in-maze experiment at the Yale psychology department. Each few minutes some new obstacle comes up for Chris, threatening to obliterate his dreams, at which point the film stands back and watches him improvise brilliantly on the run.

It's a handsome thing, familiar and new at once, thoroughly entertaining if hardly memorable.

What the movie lacks in clarity, it makes up for in honesty, toughness, relentlessness and passion.