Todd McCarthy

Ewan McGregor’s directorial debut, in which he also stars, is decently performed and delivers some potent scenes of inter-generational discord between a concerned father and a radicalized daughter who becomes a murderous terrorist. But the filmmaking is prosaic when it should crackle with tension and disruptive undercurrents,

Robinson's script is alive to the material's literary roots, although there is a sense that the brakes have been applied so as not to push into territory perceived as too esoteric for American teenagers.

Odd mixture of ultra-sleek visuals, psychological probing, "Paper Moon"-like father-daughter swindling, self-improvement efforts and abrupt tough-guy stuff keeps the picture percolating, even if it seems too artificial to genuinely convince on an emotional or dramatic level.

Craig Zobel effectively sets all its surface parts in motion but, crucially, doesn’t sufficiently develop that turbulent undercurrents of tension and intrigue that are called for in the hothouse circumstances.

Director Rob Cohen has pulled together a simple yarn of an itinerant dragonslayer who decides to team with his prey to rid the land of an evil ruler who has betrayed them both. Tale’s poignancy stems from the fact that fire-breathing, armor-plated, high-flying creature is the last of its kind; when he dies, dragons will have passed entirely from Earth.

Elaborate, sporadically amusing but awfully lightweight followup, which has close to the same tone as its predecessor but makes one realize that freshness had a lot to do with its impact.

Although The Postman conveys a thoroughly imagined vision of a future society, its basic concerns are actually far from those of traditional sci-fi, as it quickly comes to feel more like a Western than anything else.

The doc swells with wonderful archival footage that immerses you in the hedonistic environment the principals occupied, but in ranging wide it somehow doesn’t go deep, or at least deep enough, into its twin protagonists to satisfy as the full story.

Highlighted by a strong and sensual performance from Salma Hayek as the doomed heroine, elegant pic's muted quality and the central character's vexingly contrary behavior will keep auds from connecting with characters who themselves have trouble establishing bonds.

This paean to youthful irresponsibility applies the right crude and rude 'tude to its bulging sack of gags to have the desired effect on its target audience.

A heaping serving of metaphysical gobbledygook wrapped in a physically striking package.

A minor affair, a confection based on dalliances and the way a set of sophisticated theater people handle them, that lacks true distinction.

The blood and grunge run thick on the mean streets in Romeo Is Bleeding. This heavy dose of ultra-violent neo-noir gives Gary Oldman a face-first trip through the gutter that would make Mickey Rourke drool, but the far-fetched plotting eventually goes so far over the top that pic flirts with inventing a new genre of film noir camp. Gramercy release will find a cadre of devotees who will groove on the hot cast, high style and low-down macho fantasies, but more people will be turned off by the excessive gore and progressive facetiousness.

There is a trumped-up quality to the action climaxes that is disappointingly perfunctory, and the story's final revelation is simultaneously far-fetched and unsurprising.

Intelligent scripting, solid thesping and eye-catching location shooting aren't enough to make a compelling modern film of The Painted Veil.

Mildly engaging but very far from being for 50 Cent what "8 Mile" was for Eminem, this lurchingly structured story of survival against the odds looks to get off to a strong start thanks to the singer's large following.

Stories of resistance to oppression will never become obsolete, but this feels like a picture that should have been made a long time ago.

After lightly going through the motions of a plot, it all ends up in the quarry, where assorted machinery provides the excuse for a parade of slapstick gags and amusement park-like predicaments that seem mostly lumbering.

The mildly engaging silliness of its premise is never transformed into something more substantial, and the attempt at a fine-tuned "Clueless"-like tone is only sputteringly achieved.

The central premise is arresting, as is the style, but there's a lot more that could have been done with it than just show how one ill-defined individual instantly opts to join his country's lowest form of life.

A film of gorgeous surfaces and negligible emotional resonance, this third rendition of a perennial sentimental favorite is easy on the eyes and has its share of beguiling moments in the early going, but crucially lacks a compelling climax and any sense of urgency in its storytelling.

A desperately slight romantic comedy marked by contrived romance and little comedy.

Cheesy homage to a level of horniness Austin Powers could only imagine will be a dream movie for many a teenage boy.

A purist's delight, something the millions of die-hard fans of his Lord of the Rings trilogy will gorge upon. In pure movie terms, however, it's also a bit of a slog, with an inordinate amount of exposition and lack of strong forward movement...There are elements in this new film that are as spectacular as much of the Rings trilogy was, but there is much that is flat-footed and tedious as well, especially in the early going.

A creepy, well-acted story of contagious evil, Apt Pupil has more than enough chilling dramatic scenes to rivet the attention but suffers from some hokey contrivances and underlying insufficiencies of motivation.

Despite a sensationally attractive cast and an array of well-staged combat scenes presented on a vast scale, Wolfgang Petersen's highly telescoped rendition of the Trojan War lurches ahead in fits and starts for much of its hefty running time, to OK effect.

Jewish and academically inclined audiences worldwide will respond to numerous aspects of this unusual drama, although it is paradoxically both too broad and too esoteric for the general art house public.

A witty and sometimes surreal sci-fi comedy, Men in Black is a wild knuckleball of a movie that keeps dancing in and out of the strike zone.