Stephen Hunter

It's not as good as "Eat Drink Man Woman," for no imitation ever surpasses its original; but it's so brimful of life you can't say no.

Crank" is "D.O.A" on methamphetamines.

It's a stunner that sadly grows tiresome at the end.

A provocative experience that lights you up even as it brutalizes you. And I don't even like Brad Pitt very much.

Enter the world of the sociopathic killer and enjoy.

As entertainment of a tawdry but compelling sort, The Contender certainly delivers.

The movie is both exhilarating and depressing. The trouble is, I can't figure out which is more important.

Modest and winning.

Here are old people in all the magnificence of their elderliness. The movie doesn't pretend like getting old is any fun. But it's about the transcendental power of -- well, yes, music; and each of these folks has a talent whose expression is a fuel to survive.

It's got a subtext but not a subplot.

It is surprising that no matter how much we know what will happen, we never stop watching.

It lacks Altman's wisdom, but its sense of humor is corrosive, if dispiriting, and its willingness to show the human animal at his most disgusting has a kind of anti-grandeur to it.

It's fast and furious, and it proves that crime doesn't pay, unless you know how to do it right.

Le Petit Lieutenant shows how good French movies can be when they stay French and don't try to go international.

Anyone who doesn't smile is probably either too adult to count or too dead to care.

The movie is small but sensational. I don't know what writer-director Frank E. Flowers might lose by trying to take his career international, but he has real talent.

The result is a big, gushy, emotional, secret-driven, family-obsessive casserole, perhaps facile in some of its resolutions, but so full of good heart and love -- the real kind, which is scratchy, awkward, difficult to express and doesn't conquer all but just some -- that the movie is difficult to resist.

Powerful, depressing and very, very long. At close to three hours, it virtually enslaves an audience, which may be part of the point.

So good it breaks your heart for not being better. It is kept from brilliance by a soggy climax and a clumsy central narrative device.

I don't think the ending is up to the rest of the movie, but Grant and Barrymore are great together, and the movie has both zing and song.

As coherent storytelling, Skins isn't that tightly wrapped, but as an excoriating look at the plight of the modern American Indian, it bites hard.

The suspense may be fraudulently manufactured but it captivates us nevertheless, and by the end we're reduced to the bloodlusting anonymity of the true culprits in all this jaded junk, and that is the TV audience.

The film boasts all the hallmarks of the '50s historic epic save the presence of Tony Curtis.

Far from an amusing romp.

While one might have wished for a better movie, and a few smarter decisions regarding the screenplay, generally it's a riveting, even inspirational account of an American feat of arms about which few know but about which many more should.

What The Page Turner lacks in scale and ambition, it makes up for in precision. It's a small French delicacy, tart, acerbic and cynical, that focuses on three or four characters and yet manages to bring them and their dilemmas to vivid life.

An end-of-the-world movie like no other.

Statham isn't the best thing in Transporter 2; he's essentially the only thing.