Steven Rea

The humor and chops are there, but the story isn't quite.

There are no good guys in Miss Bala, just bad guys of different stripes.

Albert Nobbs is a quiet, minor-key work. The period finery is Masterpiece Classics-y, the parade of upper-crust and lower-tier eccentrics predictable. But Close's performance as this poor, wounded fellow resonates with depth and poignancy.

The real 3-D experience of the season is Pina, Wim Wenders' shockingly beautiful and moving tribute to the late German choreographer Pina Bausch.

It's small. It's real. And it's deeply moving.

The Grey, whose clipped title, grim swagger, and lost-in-the-outback themes conjure up visions of that Alec Baldwin/Anthony Hopkins classic, "The Edge," devolves into a predictable man-against-nature, and man-against-fellow man, affair.

At once a deeply personal film and an important historical document, The Man Nobody Knew leaves us with an incomplete portrait of a man. Did Colby have a moral core? Did he know what was truth, and what was a lie? Did he sanction assassination plots? Did he love his family? Was he even capable of love?

There isn't a real, flesh-and-blood figure in the bunch. Everything about Red Tails - the breaking down of racial barriers, the military achievements, the courage and sacrifice - is diminished in the process.

Disarmingly laid back for this kind of fare, with a jazzy musical score (courtesy of David Holmes) and a sleek, straight-ahead style, Haywire may not make much sense plotwise, but it's a rollicking 90 minutes.

Yea or nay, love or hate, the portrait that Streep delivers in Phyllida Lloyd's impressionistic biopic is astonishing.

There's an icy chill, a detachment, to A Dangerous Method, too. Of course, there are no talking cockroaches (Naked Lunch), no naked steambath knife fights (Eastern Promises), and that may have something to do with why this all feels so un-Cronenbergian.

Think "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?," but then think fun.

A big comedown from "The Fighter," Contraband finds Wahlberg in default mode: With his Popeye biceps and broody stares, the actor can do a character like Chris without even thinking about it - and that's what he does here.

Represents a brave undertaking on Jolie's part. It's impressively steady filmmaking for a first-timer, and a powerful, powerfully disturbing subject to take on.

Strangely, wonderfully, The Artist feels as bold and innovative a moviegoing experience as James Cameron's bells-and-whistles Avatar did a couple of years ago. Retro becomes nuevo. Quaint becomes cool.

Even if you get lost - in the spyspeak, in the codes, in the comings and goings of grim-faced men with satchels full of documents they should not have - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is worth getting lost in.

Spielberg and his team - composer John Williams, as always, cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, screenwriter Richard Curtis - never forget their mission: to pull at heart strings, jerk some tears.

And if there's a problem with Tintin, it's that it's too big and booming.

This beautifully taut and terrifying thriller is faithful to its source in just about every way that matters.

Virtually every set-up and set-piece in this extravagantly tedious adventure is misleading, or worse, irrelevant.

A pitch-black comedy steeped in bitterness and regret.

Has a certain cartoonish vibe. That's OK, because Brad Bird's brand of toonage (The Iron Giant, The Incredibles, Ratatouille) owes much to the rigors and traditions of live action, not only in the way he references other films, but also in his visual approach - sweeping, swooping camera pans, wide vistas, jolting perspective.

There are big, jaunty gusts of music, and there are big, jaunty gusts of acting: the Heath Ledger-esque Alexander Fehling pumps up his Johann Wolfgang von Goethe with brash, boyish verve and stormy emoting.

While The Sitter isn't that dumb, or dreadful, there really isn't much going on here.

And talk about transcendent parenting moments: When Lindberg's girls pull out their Barbies, the Pennywise singer goes and gets his Devo doll to play with them.

'As long as there are Muppets," muses a little felt guy named Walter, "there is still hope." And indeed, there is something hopeful about The Muppets - Disney's rollicking reboot of the late Jim Henson's furball franchise.

What about the kids and families who have no connection to Méliès, little familiarity with Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton? Will Hugo keep them in their seats? I'm not sure.

Into the Abyss is a true-crime drama, to be sure, but in Herzog's hands it becomes something much more: an inquiry into fundamental moral, philosophical, and religious issues, and an examination of humankind's capacity for violence - individual and institutional.

Feels more like a postscript than a probing, provocative documentary.

Clooney has never been better, subtler, more deeply rooted in a performance than he is in The Descendants. And he's funny, too.

No walk in the park, Tyrannosaur is a character study steeped in the British (and Irish) tradition of social realism, and the experience of watching this skillfully made film is, well, exhausting.

In short, Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life is a charmer.

Most disappointing, Eastwood's decades-spanning portrait reveals little about the man himself.

This heavy-handed muddle of a cop thriller is just impossibly bad.

The music, of course, resonates. And so does this exquisite heartbreaker of a story.

Devoting more time to the setup than to the follow-through, Tower Heist doesn't really build suspense so much as it builds impatience - for the thing to be over.

In Time is that kind of movie: Philip K. Dick for knuckleheads.

Jazzy and colorful, full of men and women in swell clothes driving cool cars, The Rum Diary has a bit of a seedily exotic Graham Greene vibe, and Robinson moves things along at a nice, casual clip, even in the film's more overheated moments.

Moves from its protagonist's dream state to her memories to her waking present in imperceptible shifts - the effect is disorienting, at first, but ingenious.

Melancholia is a remarkable mood piece with visuals to die for (excuse the pun), and a performance from Dunst that runs the color spectrum of emotions.

Take Shelter, which, it should be said, boasts haunting but seamless visual effects, is a movie for this moment in time, this moment in our lives.

It's hard to feel compassion for these Masters of the Universe. I'm not even sure Chandor wants us to, but if he doesn't, then what's the point?

An astoundingly senseless thriller.

Watching Shepard work his pony down a snaking mountain pass, playing a mandolin and singing the blues, or seeing him sitting, stone-still, beneath a railroad water tank, waiting for something to happen - these are scenes to be cherished, from an actor who has found the soul of the character he's playing.

As remakes go, Footloose is fine, serving up slightly fresher batches of cheese and corn. But why? Why?

A heartfelt project, scrappy and engaging, The Way has its way with audiences despite, not because of, its sentimental excess.

This taut cautionary tale explores the dark side of American politics. And leaves the viewer to wonder - if anyone's still wondering - is there a bright side?

If illuminating dawns and dusks had basked Mia Wasikowska and Henry Hopper in a rosy glow, the mopey cuteness of Restless would have been too much to bear.

By the end of Machine Gun Preacher, its title character has become a cartoon.

A must-see for Pearl Jam fans - and for folks keen on gleaning insights into the pressures that come with megastardom.

Like some murderous version of "Working Girl," the ruthless exec and the seemingly naive underling go at one another - turning the film, at a pivotal moment, into a satisfying whodunit.

Loaded with careening car chases and rooftop runs, glass-shattering shootouts and exploding fireballs, Killer Elite offers more than enough to keep action junkies happy.

Funny, furious, and full of front-office drama.

Circumstance is more interesting for its cultural views than for its insights into love, sex, family angst, and rebellious youth.

The two leads, Edgerton and Hardy, pull off their respective roles - rising above the cliches and the melodrama - with ferocity and focus.

By the time this globe-hopping, movie-star-crammed disaster saga - directed with petrifying efficiency by Steven Soderbergh - comes full circle, you'll never want to touch a subway pole or elevator button or ATM again.

Until Seven Days in Utopia sucker punches you with a surfeit of faith-based platitudes, its upbeat brand of golf mysticism isn't altogether unappealing.

Completely unappealing people.

What the three pairs of actors lack in semblance (or resemblance), they make up for to a great extent in their performances.

Despite the potential for some supernatural grandiosity, the tone here remains understated and quiet, and Gainsbourg's performance feels lived-in, and deep, and right.

While this hugely likable cast is, indeed, hugely likable, no one's sweating things at all. The comedy's relaxed, moony rhythms imbue it with a certain charm, but can result in a certain stop-and-start awkwardness, too.

Joltingly graphic and atmospheric (Nixey and his crew at least know how to set up a few good shocks), Don't Be Afraid of the Dark fails to involve us in any meaningful way with its characters.

Exhilarating and tragic.

With the exception of a few stakes and crosses jumping from the screen, some bloody sprays here and there, and one creepy, claustrophobic car ride, the 3-D glasses are a hindrance, not an enhancement.

It's the lysergic soap opera going on among Kesey, Neal Cassady, and various pals, scribes, spouses, and hangers-on piled onto the rainbow-hued school bus that's at the heart of this rollicking road pic.

A meditation on mortality, on loneliness, on the way technology and narcissism have intersected to create a fascinating monster, The Future is all of this and more. What Frank Capra would have made of it, who knows? But he would have liked its star.

The dialogue is smart, screwball, sublime.

Eisenberg (who starred in director Fleischer's far better Zombieland) does his usual Eisenbergian thing, more slacker and less hacker, but still hitting the same notes. And Ansari squawks and yelps, like a parrot with a grudge.

A breakneck French thriller, Point Blank is so ridiculously successful at keeping its momentum going - and keeping the audience tense with suspense - that it's likely to leave you with your heart pounding, gasping for breath.

A shamelessly fun B-movie with A-movie effects.

Another Earth has heft - emotionally, intellectually.

This is one of the smarter, more honest scripts to be filmed in quite some time. And Jenna Fischer, star of "The Office," gives one of the smarter, more honest - and vulnerable, and tough - performances by an actress on the big screen in an even longer stretch.

Neither fish nor fowl (nor extraterrestrial), and that's a problem. Craig, handsomely craggy, plays it straight, and like Eastwood's Man With No Name, he doesn't have much to say.

There's nothing mean-spirited, or judgmental, about the way Morris goes about his business - he must have been kicking himself with glee as one bizarre strand of the story unravels to reveal the next.

Instead of gleaning something from real life, the great minds behind Friends With Benefits slapped their ideas together based on screwball classics, "Sleepless in Seattle" bits, and a keen analysis of Hollywood hackery.

Before Trollhunter is done with, the truth about these fairy-tale creatures - they gnaw on trees and truck tires, can be turned to stone by exposure to light, and have something against people who believe in Christ - is revealed.

The paper's motto is "All the News That's Fit to Print." But all that news doesn't necessarily fit neatly into a 90-minute doc.

Too cute for its own good, Larry Crowne is nonetheless hard to dislike.

A raunchy comedy that's funnier to think about than to watch.

The Last Mountain, more than anything, asks us to consider where our energy comes from, and how we can bring about changes that benefit all of us and the planet we live on.

It's a relentless and relentlessly funny game of one-upmanship as the two men, playing somewhat exaggerated versions of themselves, roam the hills and dales, posh inns and poetic ruins of England's Lake District.

The real reason to see Blank City is to catch snatches of the now-decades-old films - priceless DIY numbers that capture all the wild energy, humor, and rage of, if not a more innocent time, then certainly a cooler one.

Still, somehow, The Tree of Life - impressionistic, revelatory, elliptical - works.

Chuan's unsettlingly beautiful black-and-white, wide-screen account of those nightmare six weeks, re-creates that horror in ways that are at once allusive and lucid, mixing cinematic impressionism with documentary-like detail.

An elaborate origins story with more datelines than an issue of Condé Nast Traveler (Oxford! Miami! Argentina! Poland!), X-Men: First Class has some fun trying to explain how Professor X, Magneto, and all those mopey mutants came to be.

Exhilarating and, ultimately, filled with a sense of existential dread.

Director Jennifer Yuh Nelson, who oversaw the elegant title sequences from the first film, likewise gives Kung Fu Panda 2's series of flashbacks a different look, harking back to Chinese shadow puppetry and delicate watercolors. With its mix of vibrant CG and classical elements, the movie dazzles.

Reverberates with the power and passion of Greek tragedy.

Frankly, the wow factor isn't that great.

Hesher has its genuinely affecting scenes, but too much of the time it feels false and shallow.

13 Assassins is, at turns, thrilling and funny, visually exquisite and emotionally charged.

This is an indie film with big stars - but also an indie films with big ideas about bringing real people to life.

I wanted to like Meek's Cutoff more than I did. Reichardt and her writer, Jonathan Raymond, bring a quiet, watchful sensibility to their work, allowing the actors room to reflect and riff. But the stilted language and rectitude of the times don't always mesh with the acting.

And how can you not reflect about time, and change, and physical and spiritual being, when confronted with such a stunning visual record of human existence?

A beautiful, head-spinning mystery that requires keen attention - and rewards it with a tricky and poetic payoff - The Double Hour is a topflight Euro thriller right up there with "Tell No One."

Hickernell's film aesthetic is straightforward, narrative-driven.

Hopped up like a kid on a sugar rush, Hoodwinked Too! tries to emulate the "Shrek" formula - mashing Hans Christian Anderson and the Brothers Grimm with pop-culture references and wisecracking anthropomorphic sidekicks.

Blissfully, brainlessly satisfying.

Tavernier pulls all this off with elegance and style; his battle scenes are tough and bloody, his châteaus grand.

The offbeat comedy is not entirely devoid of charm, but its derivativeness is almost embarrassing.

Is Spurlock selling out by pulling off this stunt? Is he biting the hand that feeds him? Is he working both sides against the middle? And does he think JetBlue is the best airline in the world? You bet.

Shot on the cheap, with cheesy animated credits and comic-panel "Bams!" and "Pows!" splashed across the screen, Super has a jokey, low-rent quality (or lack of quality) that could be endearing, if Wilson's performance weren't so nihilistically dull, and if there were somebody in the picture who had a soul.

For genre geeks, this can be fun - although nothing in Scream 4 is quite as clever as the filmmakers seem to think it is.

Hanna is a goofy and exhilarating mash-up of all sorts of things. Luc Besson's "The Professional" comes to mind, as do the propulsive synth-syncopations of "Run Lola Run" and the dark allegorical menace of Grimms fairy tales.

That this purposefully twisting exercise takes place amid the sun-burnished cypresses and towns of Tuscany - where ancient statuary is as commonplace as pasta and wine - only makes this playfully enigmatic meditation the more pleasing.

If your idea of a fun night out is to be manipulated by freaky sound effects, jumpy edits, and point-of-view shots of ceiling fans whooshing menacingly, Insidious is the film for you.

The same kind of keen, empathetic observations that made "The Station Agent" and "The Visitor" so illuminating are at play here, too.

Stevenson is big and swarthy and not altogether without credibility, but he's got as much charisma as a potato.

Hands-down the most nightmarishly awful film of the year.

The meaning - and irony - of Kaboom's title doesn't become clear until a beat or two before the end credits roll, and even then it's hard to say what exactly Araki is getting at.

It's an observation of crushing truth.

Limitless rocks.

Even the Rain strikes a deep and resonant chord.

Seyfried holds the camera's attention, playing this storybook business pretty much straight, although David Leslie Johnson's script puts the actress sorely to the test.

Yun's performance is remarkable. The journey Mija takes is painful and hard and - for us, watching - sublime.

Beastly offers a thoroughly dopey reread of the "Beauty and the Beast" fairy tale.

Nostalgia for the '80s - big hair, Madonna, cocaine, big hair, Duran Duran, more cocaine - is all well and good. Unless it's practiced with the charmless ineptitude of Take Me Home Tonight.

To say that The Grace Card piles it on is an understatement of profound dimensions.

It's all very Hitchcockian, at least for a while. And clever and exciting, too, even if the convergences begin to strain credulity, and, when you think about it, defy logic, too.

With clunky dialogue...I Am Number Four puts the burden on its special effects (passable) and the chemistry between Pettyfer and Agron.

It's a sorry spectacle, watching garden gnomes being robbed of their dignity.

Sandler, shambling and smirky, delivers another of those one-take performances of his - likable and lazy, forever on the verge of cracking himself up.

Biutiful is strong stuff, it will leave you shaken. There's poetry here, and catastrophe.

Grisly stuff. The movie, shot in Australia with an Aussie and British cast, makes "127 Hours" look like a walk in the park.

As Hopkins himself goes wild-eyed and FX-ed with popping veins, The Rite gives up on asking us to take it seriously.

It'd be nice if Jason Statham and Ben Foster, The Mechanic's mentor/protege duo, could crack a smile. Once.

An enjoyably trippy Japanese animated feature.

Gorgeous, and full of bittersweet whimsy.

OK, first off, anyone who shares his or her life with a dog, or has done so in the past, go see My Dog Tulip.

Ultimately, Somewhere may be too static, too minimalist a tale. But there's grace here.

What distinguishes The Dilemma in this genre is its resounding unfunnyness, its emotional dishonesty, and the general unlikability of its cast of characters.

Cage appears as a knight of the Crusades, slogging across the continents, slaying infidels and unbelievers and anyone else who gets in his way. There isn't a minute when it looks like he's having fun.

Tonally, Casino Jack is all over the place: exaggerated comedy, cartoonish high jinks, then heavy-handed melodrama (a third-act face-off between Abramoff and his wife, played with no center of gravity by Kelly Preston, comes out of nowhere).

Murderously unfunny.

A beautifully mopey adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's much-praised novel.

This Santa Claus story is for a midnight movie crowd, not the kiddie matinees.

True Grit is probably the least ironic picture in the Coen Brothers' worthy canon, but that doesn't mean it's devoid of their signature oddities, that it doesn't take a few dark, strange turns.

There's a loose, vérité vibe here, and times when both Williams and Gosling root down deep to deliver something resonant and true. But this modern-day kitchen sink drama is ultimately too painful, too labored, to care much about at all.

All Good Things is a "true crime" drama with speculative scenarios and a kind of deliberately murky aura. It's a strange, thrilling tale begrimed by bad memories, by bad deeds.

McGregor, playing his lover, is a perfect foil: gentle, funny, magnetic.

A darkly comic, piercing, and occasionally painful study of a young woman's quest for identity.

The Fighter is funny, ferocious, sad, sweet, pulpy, and violent. Sometimes, all in the same minute.

Megamind has momentum and dazzle.

Scott shoots and edits Unstoppable with roller-coaster momentum and an eye (and ear) on that roaring tonnage of steel.

There's no adroitness, no grace in the handling of the pitching emotions - funny, sad, icky - that such a story presents.

Monsters, like a serpent eating its own tail, comes back on itself in ways that haunt, and hurt.

While White Material is very much the story of this one woman, it is also a story of postcolonial Africa, a place where Europeans staked their claim, and where disorder and destruction upended everything. A mournful, frightening, powerful film.

An alarmingly charmless attempt to evoke the elegant romance and jaunty, jet-setting intrigue of the aforementioned titles, The Tourist is notable for the total absence of movie-star heat that movie stars are paid unseemly sums to radiate.

It's not a very good title, Waste Land - this isn't a bleak film, at all - but just about everything else in Lucy Walker's documentary works, and illuminates.

Flat and predictable.

Wild and woolly, the movie is a breathtaking head trip that hails from a long tradition of backstage melodramas: "42nd Street," "A Star Is Born," "All About Eve," and, yes, that kitschy '90s relic, "Showgirls."

Wild Target is the sort of farce where nothing, essentially, is at stake, even as cars crash (including an original Mini Cooper), bullets rip, and knives get hurled with deadly velocity.

The Next Three Days is genre fare - no pretensions, no nonsense.

Client 9 speaks plenty of truth - about politics, power, human nature - even if you don't buy into the hit-job hypothesis.

When it works - and it doesn't half the time - it's as if Monty Python were back, putting its merrily imbecilic stamp on the dark world of terrorism.

Watts gives a deep and Oscar-worthy performance here, displaying the steely composure that made Plame a valued NOC (non-official cover operative).

Mostly, Doremus' movie rings true, as some truly jerky behavior ensues.

Mostly The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest belongs to Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist), the tall and intrepid magazine journalist who is determined to clear Lisbeth's name, and who goes about doing so - and making espresso and checking his e-mail - with zeal.

Eastwood and Morgan's movie, with its epic natural disasters (and a terrifying, man-made one) is optimistic. Hokey, even. But it's beautiful, too.

It's a noble enterprise, and a remarkable story, but it's not a movie that will set you free.

From the street corner to the boardroom to the White House, the same paradigms are in play, Brown argues.

Year of the Horse is an appropriately edgy, ragged salute to a rock-and-roll band that refuses - happily - to say die. [31 Oct 1997, p.04]

Doesn't overdo it on the 1950s period charm -- lots of tweed, old cars and bikes, great woolly sweaters and painted rowhouses -- and the performances never get out of hand, even when the plot does.

Wildly ridiculous and thoroughly entertaining thriller.

Farley, with his bowl-cut of strawberry hair and grinning double chin, does have a certain airhead charm, but Spade and his slackeresque, snooty weenie shtick, is, at best, an acquired taste. Farley seems to enjoy Spade's company, and Spade seems to be enjoying his own company, and SNL kingpin and Black Sheep producer Lorne Michaels obviously believes these guys have a future together . . . but I don't know, give me Stan and Ollie, or Bud and Lou or Dean and Jerry. Or a nice big scoop of Ben and Jerry's, for that matter. [2 Feb 1996, p.13]

If only RocknRolla's characters were at all believable - even in the context of its own cartoon universe.

The footage is spectacular, the colors electric, the life aquatic trippier than anything you'll see in even the most wildly imaginative animated fare.

Clash of the Titans is ancient Greece at its cheesiest. It's a big hunk of feta comin' at ya in 3-D.

Full of kerplunkingly unfunny jokes and ex-"Saturday Night Live" cast members turning up to do shtick.

A mix of "Alice in Wonderland" and William S. Burroughs, "Psycho" and the psychotic. It's pretty much a squirmy experience all around.

Quite simply, a revelation.

Too bad Chocolat isn't as seductive as its leading lady.

By movie's end, it seems like the only one giving a truly genuine performance is Bianca. Mouth-agape, steadfastly mum.

Bringing a wily, slow-burn energy and a southern accent to the role of Lyle, Dennis Hopper adds just the right touch of warped malevolence to Dahl's film. [29 Apr 1994, p.5]

A deadpan delight.

As entertaining as it is exasperating.

As soon as it's over, and you find yourself back in the harsh light of the workaday world, you'll be hard-pressed to remember what happened. Except that you'll remember enjoying yourself - immensely.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith kicks off with panache and star power - and quickly wears out its welcome.

Easily the best computer-animated feature to come from Hollywood in a long while, Monster House is also one of the weirdest. A creepy-crawly, freak-show Halloween yarn.

Its grossness knows no bounds, and you'd have to be dead not to laugh.

The real problem is that there's nothing to George but the movie's props.

I'll be darned if I can think of a more excruciating, ponderous, remarkably unfunny and inert cinemagoing experience to come down the pike in ages.

What began as a bold and thrilling story descends into Hollywood cliché. But Crowe and Connelly's work rises above the mush. They make A Beautiful Mind go.

Totally lame.

In many ways, City of Men is like a Portuguese-language version of David Simon's "The Wire."

It's a view filtered through a prism of memory and emotion, but one well worth investigating.

A romantic comedy for anyone in love with the movies, and anyone, for that matter, who's in love.

A quiet, glistening love story - or not-quite-love story - adapted from Martin's novella of the same name, Shopgirl is such an atypical Hollywood affair that it's almost startling.

Kinetic and kooky, with a climactic shoot-out at a rail station that's daring in its ridiculousness.

They has a low-budget, generic feel -- but also enough sense to know that unseen menace is a lot creepier than explicit gore.

Lost in a time warp of its own doing (or non-doing), Hitchhiker's Guide just doesn't seem terribly original.

While there are similarities to the hardscrabble saga of "Angela's Ashes," Frears' film avoids the mawkish pitfalls of Alan Parker's screen adaptation.

There's not a believable character, nor line of convincing dialogue to be found.

Cool, clinical and not altogether convincing.

Not everyone's cup of tea, but a strong, heady brew.

A Kiwi nerd love story and loopy portrait of Down Under underachievers, Eagle vs. Shark offers a deadpan take on family, friendship, obsession and self-delusion.

Control doesn't claim to know the reasons Curtis killed himself. The act of suicide poses the question why, but rarely answers it, leaving the living to wonder, and to grieve. And there's certainly grief to be had in Control, but also joy. Really.

A "small" movie. But in its keenly observed examination of strangers who become intimates - and of family members who remain, in part, strangers - it has big things to say.

Tokyo! is a must-see for the Gondry segment, and a strange, diverting pleasure for the rest.

Envy makes a pretty entertaining three-minute trailer. If only they'd left it at that.

Ajami brings its audience into a world where the cultural conflict is fierce, emotions run high, yet the hopeful vision of peaceful coexistence shines through the cracks.

Whether it's simply the change of locale, or a change in Allen's psyche, something is up in Match Point. With a dark view of humankind, and of the vagaries of chance - bad luck, good luck, dumb luck - the filmmaker has crafted a wicked, winning gem.

T Bone Burnett's soundtrack has the appropriate twang to give Wenders' Hopperesque tableaux a nice, filmic poetry. But as arresting as the images are, Shepard's clunky, soap-opera banter brings most everything, and everyone, crashing down to earth.

The cast, especially The Game, does a fairly good job with this meager material, but it's like trying to make chateaubriand out of Spam.

A flat-out electrifying experience.

Although Toy Story 3 plays with themes of aging and obsolescence, it's really a straight-ahead action pic, with the toys planning, and attempting, their escape and rescue missions. (Hey, it's The A-Team!)

Offers dazzling cinematic family fun, and a mad medley of tunes.

Somnambulistic pacing, kerplunkingly unfunny jokes, and mugging thespians making fools of themselves. Truly torturous spectacle.

A bracing, unblinking work that serves as a painful elegy and sobering cautionary tale.

A riotously awful biopic rife with stereotypes and boxing movie cliches, Against the Ropes represents -- among other things -- a woeful turn in its star's career.

A likable, low-budget high school comedy.

Sensual, dreamlike, both intimate and epic, The House of Sand is a cinematic tour de force.

Informative, funny, sad and intriguing.

This startlingly lame tale about a young upstart challenging a veteran leader of the pack doesn't update the genre, it simply recasts it.

Brings too much of EVERYTHING to the table: It's the cinema equivalent of a long, winding, run-on sentence.

Unlike "Caché" and "Code: Unknown," where Haneke's investigations into societal and spiritual despair resonated with poetic force, The White Ribbon doesn't resonate at all.

Has the arc of a Shakespearean tragedy, and all the essential components therein: loyalty and betrayal, conspiracy and delusion, self-destruction.

Comes across as gratifying, not grating: the same way the familiarity of a well-crafted whodunit is part of the book's pleasures.

Quiet, finely etched and beautifully acted by Dina Korzun and the wise-beyond-his-years Artiom Strelnikov.

The Ice Harvest doesn't have much heft or resonance. But as an antidote to the sugary confections of the season, its hung-over cynicism works wonders.

Nat King Cole croons a Christmas chestnut, an opera wafts into the ether, Latin jazz sways. It's all terribly atmospheric, and if you're in the mood for atmosphere, 2046 delivers.

Favreau and Vaughn have chemistry to kill: comic, combative and engagingly goofball.

McKellen, Hanks and Tautou - and Alfred Molina, as a bishop with an agenda - are no slouches when it comes to emoting, but screenwriter Goldsman's rigorously faithful interpretation of Brown's flatfooted prose stylings is the filmic equivalent of putting big chewy baguettes in the actors' maws.

A whimsical tale of serial murder in the English countryside, Keeping Mum benefits immensely from the charm and pitch-perfect gravitas of Kristin Scott Thomas.

Lacking in subtlety and nuance, Broomfield's nerve-jangling movie nonetheless succeeds in showing the war from various vantage points. And from wherever one's standing, the view is profoundly disturbing.

The movie is near-perfect, suspenseful, heart-breaking, profound.

Plodding and virtually plotless (employee gets caught in maw of machine, blood squirts, boss tells everyone to get back to work, employee gets caught in maw of machine...), The Mangler might have been amusing if it had been played for laughs. Instead, this dreary yarn is hardly played for anything. [6 Mar 1995, p.D02]

The talented Hansen-Love, with clarity and economy, manages to avoid the maudlin.

Baron Cohen brings scary conviction to the performance.

Too cute by half (or maybe three-quarters).

Pays homage to a sack of Christmas movies, from the department store Claus of "Miracle on 34th Street" to a standing-on-the-bridge-contemplating-suicide moment, a la "It's a Wonderful Life."

Salt offers a sloppy concoction of story elements from '70s espionage classics - the sinister black ops of "Three Days of the Condor," the nuclear dread of "Fail-Safe," the political-assassination scenarios of "The Day of the Jackal."

It's the emotional equivalent of a big shrug.

It lacks the resonances of Gilbert's book.

It's been a long time since a film has conveyed a culture, and a sense of place, with such telling precision. At the same time, Winter's Bone thrums with suspense.

Rings true for the most part, and explores human nature - leashed and unleashed - in ways that resonate.

A little like a British Eric Rohmer film -- a lot of talk, and a lot of talk about love and relationships -- Lawless Heart has wit and a winning charm.

The trailers already have given away the "surprise" cameos in The Expendables, so try not to blink when Stallone goes into a church (shades of John Woo) to meet his mystery boss, played by a bald-pated, trademark smirking Bruce Willis.

A loud, abrasive comedy that squanders the talents of its three stars, The Ref is the sort of project that stands or falls on its writing - it needs to be deep and deliciously dark. But as scripted by Richard LaGravenese and Marie Weiss (he penned The Fisher King, this is her first produced screenplay) and directed by Ted Demme (Jonathan's nephew, making his feature film debut), all we get is superficial rage. [11 Mar 1994, p.03]

The film, in its early going, also has a nice light humor about it, and an engaging, albeit tragic, love story.

The screenplay of Open Range, credited to one Craig Storper, is an awesome compendium of cowboy-movie cliches. It borders on parody, and often crosses the border, rustling up a drove of oater aphorisms.

Has to be one of the nuttiest, sappiest (literally), most unintentionally hilarious spectacles to come down the time-travel turnpike in eons.

Boasts exciting competitive track cycling footage.

At a certain point, movies like Disturbia require suspension of belief. To its credit, that moment comes much later in the game than usual. Up until then, like "Rear Window" before it, Disturbia is sly and suspenseful and full of mounting dread.

The period details - the cars, the clothes, the old storefronts along Main Street - are attentively described. But it's Duvall, spooky, sly, and sad, who makes all the props and the plot twists seem real.

What's less clear, and more maddening, is how several generations of Ecuadorans have been left to live on toxic land, their health and livelihoods compromised, while lawyers file motions and counter-motions and blame is passed around.

DiCaprio provides one of those tailor-made Oscar turns - cocking his head at odd angles, twitching and gesticulating with childlike awkwardness, his face a mask of sweet innocence and uncontrollable tics. [4 Mar 1994, p.03]

Fast, funny.

And did I mention that it's long? It's long.

Blood-curdling stuff.

Directed by Clark Johnson in an efficient and occasionally exhilarating style that points to the Emmy-winner's TV cop-show pedigree ("Homicide," "The Wire," "NYPD Blue").

Terrific filmmaking, but it's hard to leave Moodysson's picture without feeling much of anything except hopelessness. Utterly.

Beautifully observed, and beautifully acted by the novice thespian Polanco (culled from a New York City public school), Chop Shop is at once a heartbreaker and a story of hope and the American Dream.

Assembles varied and remarkable digital video, archival footage, photographs, interviews and personal reflections and academics' perspectives to convey the scope and history of the Tibetan story.

This is a movie about friendship, about foolhardy endeavors that get your adrenaline going and make you feel life buzzing in your toes. Written with wit and concision and remarkable confidence, Bottle Rocket is a joyride worth taking.

A cool-headed thriller, and a richly detailed character study that traces the birth and evolution of America's foreign espionage bureaucracy, The Good Shepherd also marks a significantly more mature, assured directing turn from Robert De Niro.

Thanks to the evocative cinematography of Ed Lachman, it is bathed in a celestial light that cannot penetrate the existential darkness of its characters.

Pitch-perfect and profoundly moving.

Avatar delivers. Combining beyond-state-of-the-art moviemaking with a tried-and-true storyline and a gamer-geek sensibility - not to mention a love angle, an otherworldly bestiary, and an arsenal of 22d-century weaponry - the movie quite simply rocks.

It's a vivid way to contextualize Hypatia's astronomical musings, but it's kind of out there, too.

A bit of a one-joke wonder.

The fundamental problem with The Night Listener is the manner in which the boy, Pete, is depicted. Rory Culkin gets the tricky job of bringing the role to life, and he does it well, but it's still a trick. Or is it?

It's “The Wizard of Oz” with a viral infection.

It has its moments of swaggering camaraderie, but more often just feels generic, derivative and done to death.

Tobey Maguire, terribly miscast and squeaky (that voice - it belongs to a kid!).

Has a loose, improvisatory feel that rings true.

It's a shame about Ray, because Foxx is trapped in a movie that takes the music icon's unique story and turns it into cheesy, sentimental American Dream cliches.

Fairy-tale-like musing on true love in cynical times.

Alternately tedious, cliched and unintentionally funny.

A story of obsession and honor, deception and self-deception set against a sharply etched landscape of political upheaval and intrigue. Malkovich orchestrates all this with assuredness, and Bardem, looking weary and worn, inhabits his character with a realness, a truth, that's downright spooky. And beautiful.

Dumb, dumb, dumb - borrowing scare tactics from Hitchcock and other suspense masters, but forgetting basic story.telling essentials such as character development and logical exposition.