Todd McCarthy

Director Alan Parker has done a dazzling job creating screen images to accompany the wall-to-wall music, resulting in a musical fresco that is much closer to a sophisticated filmed opera than to any conventional tuner.

As overcranked as it is -- the film is directed as if it were an action drama, with two or three times more cuts than necessary -- People Like Us has a persuasive emotional pull at its heart that's hard to deny.

Well-observed and superbly cast picture is the filmmaker's best in quite a long time.

A rich dramatic tapestry lightly stained by some strained comedy, rigorous political correctness and perhaps more adherence to Disney formula than should have been the case in one of the studio's most adventurous and serious animated features.

A peppy little joke machine, The Incredible Jessica James exists for the one and only reason of providing a showcase for the evident talents of its leading lady, Jessica Williams.

A very loose and contemporized remake of one of the more celebrated late '40s films noir, Kiss of Death is a crackling thriller that feels unusually attuned to its lowlife characters.

As carefully constructed, handsomely crafted and flavorsomely acted as a top-of-the-line production from Hollywood's classical studio era, Francis Ford Coppola's screen version of John Grisham's The Rainmaker would seem to represent just about all a filmmaker could do with the best-selling author's patented dramatic formulas without subverting them altogether.

By the time the film begins approaching the two-hour point, the feeling sets in that perhaps Whannell is stretching his conceit a bit too far for its own good. But it’s hard to deny his ingenuity and flair with genre tropes and keeping his audience somewhere approaching the edge of its collective seat.

A well-observed and deftly performed examination of upper-middle-class emotional deep freeze, The Ice Storm is an intelligent, adult American film.

Considerably grimmer and grittier than the previous pictures.

Its sharp writing and essential credibility make this small, intimate tale fresh and involving.

A beautifully observed, small-scale study of personal foibles, romantic uncertainty and two sides of the sadly predictable male animal.

The only problem is that the great majority of screen time is devoted to the kind of loutish, drunken, small-minded, confrontational macho posturing that, in assorted ethnic stripes, has been paraded across the screen innumerable times in recent years.

Dominating it all is Cumberbatch, whose charisma, tellingly modulated and naturalistic array of eccentricities, Sherlockian talent at indicating a mind never at rest and knack for simultaneously portraying physical oddness and attractiveness combine to create an entirely credible portrait of genius at work.

Has a casual, freewheeling nature in contrast to the creeping grandiosity of some of Disney's A-list animated titles.

Much of the dialogue is good, and Smith does a decent job of presenting the emotional fallout from every major participant's p.o.v.

What is gratifying about the film is Volf's obvious love for and devotion to Callas, as well as his completist's urge to track down and include every scrap of footage at all relevant to telling her story and documenting her greatness.

A smart sex comedy that successfully swims upstream to spawn and score.

Director David Gordon Green has created some fresh, penetrating, beautifully drawn scenes of one-on-one intimacy…But some of what surrounds these interludes is variously misguided, fuzzy and borderline pretentious.

With unappealing one-note characters, retread concepts and implausible motivations, Chappie is a further downward step for director Neill Blomkamp.

Impressively, first-time filmmaker and former Google commercials creator Aneesh Chaganty has also made a real movie, the story of a family that morphs into a crime drama that gradually ratchets up the tension as all good thrillers must, one that’s well constructed and acted as well as novel in its storytelling techniques.

Holes will no doubt speak clearly and appealingly to its intended early teen audience.

May or not be Robert Altman's best film in years, but it is certainly his most pleasurable.

Spiked with wonderfully funny sequences and some brilliantly original notions, The Big Lebowski, a pseudo-mystery thriller with a keen eye and ear for societal mores and modern figures of speech, nonetheless adds up to considerably less than the sum of its often scintillating parts.

Inspirational on the face of it, Clint Eastwood's film has a predictable trajectory, but every scene brims with surprising details that accumulate into a rich fabric of history, cultural impressions and emotion.

The return of the legendary swordsman is well served by a grandly mounted production in the classical style.

Apart from startling, out-there comic turns by Robert Downey Jr. and Tom Cruise, however, the antics here are pretty thin, redundant and one-note.

Performed with matchless aplomb and made with plush professionalism, pic serves up pure pleasure from beginning to end.

A passably entertaining hodgepodge of old and new animation techniques, mixed sensibilities and hedged commercial calculations.

Although the humor helps, the Groundhog Day-like repetition gets tedious; it makes you feel more like a hamster than a groundhog — or rather a hamster's wheel, going round and round, over and over again.

Their scenes together are the film's best, with Theron and Oswalt, who have very different tempi and temperatures as performers, parrying and thrusting with great expertise.

Nicholson is outstanding as he gradually but tellingly sketches in aspects of a man driven by a mission that outstrips his instincts as a professional lawman.

River of Grass works much better as a jokey , theoretical piece of genre revisionism than as a real movie.

Dragon Tattoo is too neatly wrapped up, too fastidious to get under your skin and stay there.

Reasonably engaging as far as it goes, Searching for Ingmar Bergman evinces great appreciation for the writer-director's legacy and offers the testimonies of numerous eminent enthusiasts, but it leaves a good deal to be desired.

Engaging, refreshingly human in its humor and becomingly modest in its aspirations, this hip look at being out of it announces some promising new talent and will play well with young audiences looking for comfortable entertainment that doesn't feel manufactured.

This low-rent, R-rated "Rush Hour"-ish comic caper could have been several notches better with more charismatic leads and some dialogue upgrades but still would have felt like a genre hand-me-down.

A complex look at an illicit affair that ends in disaster for everyone in its vicinity, "Damage" is a cold, brittle film about raging, traumatic emotions. Unjustly famous before its release for its hardly extraordinary erotic content, this veddy British-feeling drama from vet French director Louis Malle proves both compelling and borderline risible, wrenching and yet emotionally pinched, and reps a solid entry for serious art house audiences worldwide.

Low on plot but high on charm and personality, Next Stop Wonderland is a sly, hand-crafted indie that is very alive and attentive to its characters' feelings and foibles.

Given the challenge of solving a problem like Bathsheba, Mulligan succeeds, more than Christie did, in providing an answer.

It’s technically striking filmmaking, to be sure, but what it’s presenting is nothing that many people will want to look at.

Director Spike Jonze's sharp instincts and vibrant visual style can't quite compensate for the lack of narrative eventfulness that increasingly bogs down this bright-minded picture.

Lacks narrative push...atmospheric drama that casts a minor but distinctive spell.

Occupying a dramatic, philosophical and sensory twilight zone that casts a considerable spell, this intensely focused piece soars not only on the director's precision-tooled style but also on the outstanding interplay between leads Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx.

A faithful, powerful and superbly acted adaptation of Andre Dubus III's international bestseller.

An indigestible gumbo of Southern Gothic ingredients seasoned with snake oil, biblical hash and thoroughly unpalatable spice.

A study of the urban dope-dealing culture and its toll on everyone who comes in contact with it, the picture has an insider's feel that is constantly undercut by the filmmaker's impulse to editorialize.

Woody Allen once described himself as "thin but fun," and the same could be said for his latest effort, Manhattan Murder Mystery. Light, insubstantial and utterly devoid of the heavier themes Allen has grappled with in most of his recent outings, this confection keeps the chuckles coming and is mainstream enough in sensibility to be a modest success.

The homily-laden wrap-up, stressing the upside of bad days, is enough to make you hold your nose, but it only lasts a moment, which is suggestive of the way Arteta and the cast provide the energy and momentum to get the job done but not overstay their welcome.

Sorkin both entertains and makes you lean in to absorb every detail of this wild tale, which boasts a stellar cast to help tell it.

Ominously atmospheric study of police corruption dangles danger and sinister motives at every turn.

Lucid and engaging, Sketches of Frank Gehry provides the enormously gratifying opportunity to spend an hour-and-a-half with an artistic giant.

A game and winning performance by Melinda Page Hamilton is the only saving grace.

Has plenty of problems. But most stem from a young filmmaker overswinging on his first time up to the plate and hitting a deep fly out rather than a home run.

The mix of commentators is unusual and lively, hardly the usual crowd that often pops up in documentaries like this, the clips are illustrative and on point in addition to often being eye-popping, and the film looks certain to please Keaton aficionados. Most importantly, it's likely to induce newcomers to investigate the great stone face for themselves.

Ambitious, well made but not exactly rousing.

A bland and dour screen version of Sebastian Faulks' highly engrossing bestseller.

Lacks an edge of danger or excitement that might have brought the subject alive in more than a cerebral way.

Danny Boyle has great and plainly evident fun adding twists and curves and tunnels and endless style to his modern London noir Trance, but he makes so many left turns that the film turns in on itself rather than going anywhere.

Adds relatively little insight to the public understanding of wayward military behavior more incisively analyzed in "Taxi to the Dark Side."

A Judd Apatow clone that's one of the few recent R-rated raunch fests the ubiquitous auteur of larky crudeness actually had nothing to do with, I Love You, Man cranks out the kind of lowball humor that makes you gag on your own laughs.

So consistently odious, diabolical and simply anti-humane is Cohn’s lifetime portfolio that you really feel the need of a cold shower afterwards. But this kind of dark brilliance is always fascinating, and the doc is able to trade on this all the way through.

Saving some of the best for last, director Philippe makes outstanding use of footage of what in the trade is called the money shot, the startling payoff that everything has been building toward — in this case, of course, the scene featuring the “chestburster.”

A rambunctious look at a struggling New York tabloid, "The Paper" is Paddy Chayefsky lite. With every member of the all-star staff battling personal life crises as they race to put the next edition to bed, Ron Howard's pacy meller can't help but generate a fair share of humor, excitement and involvement.

Friday Night Lights is the "Black Hawk Down" of high school football movies. As exclusively as Ridley Scott's picture was about combat, this film concerns football and nothing but.

Ultimately, however, the film's ambition, urgency and acute observations prevail over the many stock elements to forge an estimable work that is notably serious and analytical for a Hollywood-produced film in this day and age.

Offers potent romantic fantasy elements for men and women and a cast that should produce the best commercial returns for a Woody Allen film since "Match Point."

Oddly, too, the film is somewhat shortchanged by its great star, Johnny Depp, who disappointingly has chosen to play Dillinger as self-consciously cool rather than earthy and gregarious.

In what does have to be perversely honored as some kind of special accomplishment for Moss as a performer, Becky sustains such an abusive, mad, pathetic and immature display for well over an hour that you just want to bolt. What edification can possibly be gotten from such a grotesque form of exhibitionism?

That the film mostly falls flat has far more to do with the largely unconvincing material rather than with the co-stars, who are more than game for often clownish shenanigans Black and his co-writer Anthony Bagarozzi have concocted for them; in fit and starts, the actors display a buoyant comic rapport.

The Bronze is a strident comedy made in accordance with the sole guiding principle of, when in doubt, go even more vulgar.

Both a stimulating social satire and, for thinking people, a depressing commentary on the devolution of the American political system.

This odd, epic tale of a man who ages backwards is presented in an impeccable classical manner, every detail tended to with fastidious devotion.

A coming-of-age piece that is slight to the point of anemia, Unstrung Heroes sports a willful eccentricity that almost immediately becomes annoying.

Aside from Dillon, who brightens every scene he's in, the delightful surprise here is Selleck, who brings wonderfully mischievous, energizing and self-deprecating qualities to the role of the dirt-digging but ultimately on-the-level broadcaster.

It's a small, peculiar film, one unlikely to appeal much to women, non-sports fans and mainstreamers, but its uncomfortable comic insights should win it a loyal following.

The result is an effects-laden goofball comedy in which anything goes and nothing matters. Not that this is an entirely plot-free extravaganza or just an excuse for comic riffs. But the filmmakers are so cavalier about the idea that any of this is supposed to make any sense that there's a certain liberation in not burdening two human-brained insects with the fate of the entire universe.

For sheer plotting and audience involvement, this is a notch above any of the other Avengers-feeding Marvel entries, the one that feels most like a real movie rather than a production line of ooh-and-ahh moments for fanboys.

A modern immorality tale with a keen, observant edge.

Deliberately unvarnished shock piece designed to give pause to anyone with a daughter approaching teenhood.

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.

Put together by Tucker and his co-director/editor wife Petra Epperlein without a hint of artifice, docu offers up its sounds and images bluntly, and they are very much sounds and images worth having as part of the record.

With Mexican star Gael Garcia Bernal energetically playing a vulnerable graphic artist with a hyperactive imagination and little confidence with women, picture has an overriding quality of sweetness that will prove endearing to audiences, especially younger females.

Achieves some glancing poetic effects during its first hour, but becomes gross and exploitative during the shooting rampage of the final act.

Awfully funny at times.

Like "Waiting to Exhale" except more so, film jerks from scene to scene with little sense of rhythm, continuity or dramatic shaping.

Butler is in no way a hot-headed or contentious piece of agit-prop, unlike so many other election year documentaries; like Kerry himself, the film speaks to the mind, not the emotions.

Diverting and for the most part agreeably amusing, Late Night is about as mainstream and conventional a movie as could be made right now about the timely issues of women and minorities finding equal footing in the workplace.

A randy, irreverent, slice-of-life no-budgeter that's played for laughs and gets them.

The pressure cooker plot calls for intense performances all around but first among equals are Winslet and Ehle.

A scorching blast of tense genre filmmaking shot through with rich veins of melancholy, down-home philosophy and dark, dark humor, No Country for Old Men reps a superior match of source material and filmmaking talent.

Bears all the earmarks of a magnum opus for Martin Scorsese: Fascinating and fresh material about his beloved New York City, an epic reach, an equally epic gestation period, a dynamic criminal element, combustible socio-political-religious elements, outstanding actors and sophisticated allusions to cinema history that inform and enrich the experience.

There is unquestionably enough lively material here to snare one’s attention but, even at just 76 minutes, many will feel that this cruise has gone on plenty long enough.

A violent fairy tale, an increasingly entertaining fantasia in which the history of World War II is wildly reimagined so that the cinema can play the decisive role in destroying the Third Reich.

Effectively building dread and emotional tension as tragic incidents triggered by human stupidity and carelessness steadily multiply, this film, like "21 Grams" in particular, employs a deterministically grim mindset in the cause of its philosophical aspirations, but is gripping nearly all the way.

The film is offbeat, silly, disarming and loopy all at the same time, and viewers will decide to ride with that or just give up on it, according to mood and disposition.

The best blue collar action movie in who knows how long, this tense, narrowly focused thriller about a runaway freight train has a lean and pure simplicity to it that is satisfying in and of itself.

Visually stunning and strongly voiced, but doesn't take any real risks.

A near-perfect case study of the ways in which film is incapable of capturing certain crucial literary qualities, in this case the very things that elevate the book from being a merely insightful study of a deteriorating marriage into a remarkable one.

The sheer quantity of often outrageous stunts should help overcome franchise mustiness to entertain.

Snappy, nasty, deftly acted and perhaps the fastest paced film ever directed by a 78-year-old, this adaptation of Yasmina Reza's award-winning play God of Carnage fully delivers the laughs and savagery of the stage piece.

The best feature film directed by someone named Coppola in a number of years.

Roos’ talent for vivid, jump-off-the-screen dialogue remains unquestioned, but his direction is considerably more spotty.

Wayne Kramer's sexy and often humorous feature directorial debut surrounds its sweet center with the energy, flash and risk of the gambling capital. Sterling performances by William H. Macy and Maria Bello as the long-shot lovers and Alec Baldwin as a temperamental casino operator.

Alive to cinematic ideas, generous to its actors and peppered with unexpected humor, this ultimately sweet-natured low-budgeter is nonetheless riddled with enough off-putting and digressive material.

Smartly shaped and vigorously told by prolific documentarian John Scheinfeld (Who Is Harry Nilsson, The U.S. vs. John Lennon), the film bulges with insights offered by everyone from family members and close collaborators to the likes of Cornel West and Bill Clinton.

Smart, droll and dazzling to look at and listen to, writer-director Tony Gilroy's effervescent, intricately plotted puzzler proves in every way superior to his 2007 success "Michael Clayton."

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

In revisiting his darkly comic 1998 ensembler "Happiness," Todd Solondz may have made his best film with Life During Wartime.

An unsuccessful attempt to get inside the head, under the skin or through the looking glass of Bush administration Secretary of Defense and Iraq War proponent Donald Rumsfeld.

Breezy, enjoyable romp gratifyingly zigzags in directions that aren't apparent at the outset and features some intriguingly personal subtext for longtime Woody watchers.

Lee has made a brutal but sensitively observed film about the fringes of the Civil War.

A short, funny and illuminating interview-based documentary that will leave theater and film mavens both satisfied and hungry for many additional courses.

Lee takes a conventional, talking-heads-and-archival-clips approach to the material, but rewardingly establishes an intimate connection with his subjects by devoting considerable time to the personalities and families of the four victims.

Distinctive and amusing turns by Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali make Peter Farrelly’s first solo feature outing a lively and likable diversion.

Whedon and his cohorts have managed to stir all the personalities and ingredients together so that the resulting dish, however familiar, is irresistibly tasty again.

A balanced, evenhanded film about a subject who has always managed to provoke intemperate reactions.

Crudely made, somewhat overlong and larded with plenty of things that don't work, pic stands as proof positive that a comedy can be far from perfect and still hit the bull's-eye if it delivers when it counts in its big scenes.

A creepy-little-kid suspenser decked out with sufficient class to lend it a certain distinction.

Closer to a straight-ahead medieval battle picture than the fantastical, other-worldly journey depicted in "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," this new entry is a bit darker, more conventional and more crisply made than its 2005 predecessor.

This reflection on the past, love and death through the prism of layers of theatrical endeavor is both serious and frisky, engaging on a refined level but frustratingly limited in its complexity and depth.

Like hard-edged "Masterpiece Theater."

Beautiful to look at, this is nothing more than a Little Engine That Could story refitted to accommodate aerial action and therefore unlikely to engage the active interest of anyone above the age of about 8, or 10 at the most.

A clever twist on superpowers and hand-held filmmaking that stumbles before the ending.

Moppet appeal of the present feature rests in three can't-miss concepts -- cool gadgets, the desire to see grownups disappear and space travel. Pic delivers on all three points and doesn't have to do a whole lot more.

A riveting, thematically probing, richly atmospheric and just occasionally troublesome work, a deeply inquisitive consideration of the extent of trust and mutual knowledge possible between a man and a woman.

On its most successful level, the film represents a slashing dramatic essay on the dismaying human tendency not to accept full responsibility for one's actions.

A charming, if lightweight, Coen brothers escapade flecked by plenty of visual and performance grace notes.

Pairing his usual boundary-pushing sex-and-drugs fixation with a vital presentation of wildly exuberant dance and movement, Gaspar Noe has made a film that’s seductive in its rhythms and bold visualization of his young dancers’ sometimes beautiful, other times brutal somatic expressiveness.

The film offers up more than enough in terms of intelligence, insight, historical research and religious nuance as to not at all be considered a missed opportunity.

Bright, glossy, grandly scaled and dramatically stolid, 79-year-old writer-director Jerzy Kawalerowicz's longtime dream project mixes earnest religiosity with the depraved cruelty of Nero's Rome in the classic De Mille tradition.

The young cast, led by Tom Holland as the bashful web-slinger and Zendaya as a shy girl slow to lose her inhibitions, is plenty appealing as well as funny. But without a proper, full-on villain, as well as an adequate substitute for Robert Downey Jr.'s late, oft-mentioned Tony Stark, this comes off as a less than glittering star in the Marvel firmament.

This is a gorgeously made character study leavened with surrealistic dimensions both comic and dark, an unsparing look at a young man who, unlike some of his contemporaries, can’t transcend his abundant character flaws and remake himself as someone else.

The film’s small scale is more than compensated for by its insights into adolescent awareness, the passions stoked by global causes and the moral hypocrisy of the ideologically righteous.

After building up a narrative head of steam, the film relaxes too much back into expository documentary form. What might have been thrilling is merely entirely engrossing.

An absorbing and colorful, if not particularly convincing, excursion into a demi-monde of fighters, scammers, promoters and self-styled modern samurai, Redbelt gives the impression of Mamet coyly toying with the idea of making a populist little-man-against-the-system sports melodrama without actually attempting to create a film for the masses.

A shoot-'em-up exploitationer with a few interesting ideas floating around in it, Guncrazy lacks the exhilaration of a first-class lovers-on-the-run crime drama. After a promising beginning, competently made indie effort settles into a surprisingly somber mood that suppresses the possibilities latent in the story and actors.

The pain feels cushioned and secondhand, the characters are not terribly sympathetic or interesting other than for their misfortune, and the film shows little interest in analyzing the situation other than to point fingers at greedy CEOs.

A vibrantly crafted evocation of a convulsive moment in 20th century American history, Chicago 10 is far less interested in offering a fresh, probing look at what took place on the streets during the 1968 Democratic National Convention and the circus trial that followed than it is in celebrating the stars of the anti-war movement and rallying the current generation to follow their examples.

A strange, fun and densely textured work that gets better as it goes along.

An unusually fresh-feeling indie with a nice sense of style. The potentially predictable story of a young man who undertakes an impromptu journey to resolve some unfinished family business emerges as an appealing tale of personal growth with hand-crafted contours.

Garcia’s take, however beautiful physically, is intellectually opaque and creatively cautious, leaving the interested viewer, whether or not a believer, with much to wonder about but little to actually chew on.

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.

Given the intelligent restraint of the treatment, this is about as fine an adaptation of this material as one could hope for, although there is still something of a gap between the impressive skill of the filmmaking and the ultimately irredeemable aspects of the source.

While Icarus technically doesn't break any news, it certainly scores many points by showing a diabolical wizard so surprisingly laying his secrets on the table.

As she did in her breakthrough film Winter's Bone, Jennifer Lawrence anchors this futuristic and politicized elaboration of The Most Dangerous Game with impressive gravity and presence, while director Gary Ross gets enough of what matters in the book up on the screen to satisfy its legions of fans worldwide.

Genial middle-brow fare that coasts a long way on the charm of its two stars

This is minor Herzog, to be sure, but alternately amusing and disarming nonetheless. It also makes an implicit request: Analyst, analyze yourself.

Director Peter Berg and star Mark Wahlberg deliver the goods again with a rugged drama about an incident that created an environmental disaster and a worldwide scandal.

Limbo is half-priced Sayles. After a promising opening in which numerous interesting aspects of life in modern Alaska are laid out, the potentially fascinating social dynamics are dropped in favor of a thinly realized survival tale that falls flat dramatically and cinematically.

Mel Gibson is always good for a surprise, and his latest is that Apocalypto is a remarkable film. Set in the waning days of the Mayan civilization, the picture provides a trip to a place one's never been before, offering hitherto unseen sights of exceptional vividness and power.

Sometimes shticky biopic overcomes its cornball conventionality to become a genial entertainment, thanks to Anthony Hopkins' exceptionally engaging performance.

Befitting the subject's personality and entertainment predilections, What She Said is adamantly engaging, full of lively, appreciative voices that, more than anything else, bring her enthusiasm and keen-mindedness back to life.

Academic in its approach but very informative as well as surprising in the degree to which it addresses the man's foibles and ethical shortcomings, the film turns a welcome spotlight on a resourceful and singular artist who was forced to do everything from scratch in the absence of any local industry infrastructure.

This beautifully crafted film intrigues as a story never told before and ratchets up dramatic interest through a succession of unexpected turns.

Constant shock cuts and souped-up music and sound effects will keep small fry in a state of moderate petrification, while the trio of tweeny leads plus attitude-redolent cohorts will make teens feel welcome.

Depp's instinct for observing, underlaying and keeping things in, then letting it all out when required, pays big dividends here in a performance far more convincing than his previous big gangster role, John Dillinger in Michael Mann's Public Enemies; it's unexpected, very welcome at this point in his career, and one of his best.

The film only intermittently displays the snap, precision and stylistic smarts a mixed-tone project like this requires; a half-good effort is not enough where buoyancy and a sly-to-mean spiritedness are required at all times.

There is absolutely no doubt about who wrote the elaborate, pungent, profane and often funny dialogue that a fine cast chews over and spits out with evident glee, nor as to who staged the ongoing bloodbath that becomes a gusher in the final stretch.

A bizarre story of intrigue, magic and murder in turn-of-the-century Vienna casts a considerable spell in The Illusionist.

Nowhere to be found is any dramatic surprise, heightening of the pulse or genuine pulling of heartstrings. Gary Winick's direction consists of button pushing, and the mechanics are palpable at every step.

Director Craig Brewer has given his second feature film a vibrant pulse amplified by an outstanding cast led by Terrence Howard.

It’s Hauser who carries the film in a rare and unlikely role, that of a presumed loser in life (the man did die just a few years later, at 44) who suffered very unwanted attention — but who, when he needed to, found a way to rise to the occasion.

A first-rate thriller with grit and intrigue to spare.

Both as a writer and director, Layton delivers the dramatic goods here with the skill of a pro at the top of his game while adding the rueful perspective of time's reassessment of youthful indiscretions; this has to rate among the most accomplished and fully realized big-screen debuts of recent times.

Campbell Scott's latest foray behind the camera most excels as a subtly observed study of how the dynamics within a close-knit family can shift over time.

Land Ho! is appealing for not going the route of easy gags and dumbed-down humor.

Eventually, the impression is created of notes for good scenes full of pungent observations and sharp asides, but without fully developed drama or emotion, leaving a sketchy, wispy feeling when all is said and done.

With so many ingredients to stir into this overflowing pot, you have to hand it to the two experienced teams of Marvel collaborators who had a feel for how to pull this magnum opus off.

Cronenberg assumes a distinctly clinical approach to the emotional, social and business shenanigans on display here, a perspective that has brilliantly served some of his overtly psychological, horror and sci-fi pieces but gives this one a brittle and airless feel.

Dramatically and philosophically void and unprovocative on the grand scale of apocalyptic speculative fiction, this low-budget indie is somber and dreary on a moment-to-moment basis and leaves its talented cast stranded with few opportunities to alleviate the sense of stasis.

Another theme park ride of a movie without an ounce of emotional credibility to it, Twister succeeds on its own terms by taking the audience somewhere it has never been before: into a tornado's funnel.

Conservatives score a few political points but aren't very funny in An American Carol, a cheesy spitball directed at the very large target of a Michael Moore-like filmmaker.

Strong action, special effects and by far the most credible ape "performances" yet seen will spell box office to inspire chest-thumping in all markets.

Stealing the show is Jane, whose rage-fueled rants and scarcely concealed mutterings are loaded with sarcastic bon mots that are delivered to the hilt by McDormand.

About twice as good as the original...bigger and more ambitious in every respect, from its action and visceral qualities to its themes.

Kikuchi manages to make Kumiko interesting company no matter how far the character recedes into herself, using subtly expressive body language that would have been at home in silent movies to create a very strange self-imposed social outcast.

The gambits in Ghost Dog seem simply like literary and cinematic games devoid of any larger meaning.

Emerges as the best in the overall series since "The Empire Strikes Back."

One of the best Westerns of the 1970s, which represents the highest possible praise. It's a magnificent throwback to a time when filmmakers found all sorts of ways to refashion Hollywood's oldest and most durable genre.

A superb, comically gifted cast helps writer-director Jim Strouse lift this quite a few cuts above his previous work as well as above the general run of films about modern life and relationships.

Darren Aronofsky wrestles one of scripture's most primal stories to the ground and extracts something vital and audacious, while also pushing some aggressive environmentalism, in Noah.

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.

Even when it's clear Scorsese has decided to employ fakery and allow it to be obvious, it's done with elegance and beauty.

John Mathieson's widescreen cinematography is magnificent, and the pacing across 2½ hours is well modulated.

The overall enterprise, for all its intrigue and visceral impact, feels overly thought out, affected and forced in its stylization.

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.

Summer of Sam is never less than absorbing but feels just a bit like yesterday's news, both narratively and cinematically.

Reasonably intelligent, well-crafted and dramatically understated.

It all moves along briskly, with a degree of visual grace and a solid feel for 3D.

Bears some telltale signs of Pixar's trademark smarts, but still looks like a mutt compared to the younger company's customary purebreds.

It also expresses the anxiety and insecurity of comics conscious of the big issues in life they are expected either to avoid or make fun of in their work. Rogen and Goldberg take the latter approach here, in an immature but sometimes surprisingly upfront way one can interpret seriously. Or not.

Pic fails to provide any hard facts or make any incriminating connections that a reasonably informed person doesn't already know about, so intellectually Moore is largely preaching to the converted in this blatant cinematic 2004 campaign pamphlet.

A wildly ambitious and gravely serious contemplation of life, love, art, human decay and death, the film bears Kaufman’s scripting fingerprints in its structural trickery and multiplane storytelling.

Charlie Wilson's War is that rare Hollywood commodity these days: a smart, sophisticated entertainment for grownups.

Last year's "The Prisoner of Azkaban" seemed dark, but this excellent fourth film derived from J.K. Rowling's books is the darkest "Potter" yet, intense enough to warrant a PG-13 rating.

The cutting-edge perfection of effects in Cameron and Spielberg films is replaced here by work that looks more homemade, particularly toward the end in some faintly cheesy composite shots.

Juliet, Naked never truly achieves comic lift-off. Instead, it bumps around from one mild laugh, awkward encounter and bewildering decision to another without ever building up an exhilarating head of steam.

Lin's nicely turned out picture is sometimes both predictable and a bit far-fetched narratively, but still provides a generally absorbing look at a slice of society normally taken for granted, both in life and onscreen.

An impeccably made and genuinely moving account of how Scottish author J.M. Barrie came to write "Peter Pan."

The script makes no attempt to assert its plausibility or realism; it is, instead, refreshingly frank about what it is, a simple, workable framework for the melees and mayhem.

First-time screenwriters Taylor Allen and Andrew Logan have done their homework in organizing the material but haven’t brought an argument to the table that might have zapped the film to life; everything is methodical, it covers most of the bases, but passion and vitality are crucially missing from director John Curran’s treatment.

Possesses charm, as well as visual and musical appeal, on the bigscreen. But as with many short-form TV entities when sextupled in length, "SpongeBob" proves more palatable as scrumptious fast food than full-scale repast.

An intensely scenic, refreshingly humanistic oater that dares to be sincere and open-hearted.

Wonderfully acted and slickly mad. Acutely written with an eye to the motivations and ambiguities involved on both sides in such a relationship.

Although too devoted to matters literary, theatrical, operatic and sexually outre to make it with general audiences, this adaptation of Jonathan Ames' novel exudes the sort of smarts and sophisticated charm specialized audiences seek.

Achieves a certain poignancy through its sensitivity to mortality in a context where illness and death are often thought of primarily in terms of gossip, blown deals and lost money.

Feels too piecemeal and ultimately inconsequential.

Watching a bunch of people take a drug trip is seldom either entertaining or edifying, but Chilean director Sebastian Silva manages to make it at least tolerably amusing.

At a certain point, anyone who reads Bowers’ book or sees this film has to decide whether to believe him or not. At this stage, there is no reason not to; Scotty does not seem remotely like a braggart or someone desperate for a sliver of late-in-life fame.

A funny and unexpectedly beguiling account of the outrageous humorist's unlikely rise to the pinnacle of radio celebrity.

Geremy Jasper’s dynamic debut crackles with energy and grassroots authenticity. But it wouldn’t have worked at all without the right leading lady, which it found in Danielle Macdonald, whose rapping seems convincingly born of her character’s rough life experience.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 plays like a second ride on a roller-coaster that was a real kick the first time around but feels very been-there/done-that now.

The performances are all sincere and solid and the situation is easy to respond to emotionally. But as a case history in the annals of political repression, it feels like a bit of a side show.

Sometimes becomes too self-consciously clever, and it doesn't entirely resolve its own central dilemma. But it remains inventive and funny to the end, features fine performances from Will Ferrell and especially Emma Thompson.

A credibly drawn central character is trapped inside a half-cooked dramatic stew in Hello I Must Be Going.

Although Nava's screenplay hits the subject of every scene right on the head and doesn't ask for much subtlety or subtext, Lopez is wonderful to watch in the dramatic sequences as well as in the numerous musical interludes.

The bawdy jokes score big points, but it's the rueful acknowledgement of adolescent embarrassment and humiliation that most distinguishes Superbad, another ultra-raunchy and commercial sex comedy from the Judd Apatow laugh factory.

Staggeringly cornball and squeaky-clean even when flirting with such issues as interracial sexual rivalries.

The film maintains its edge because el-Toukhy serves up this unsavory dish cold, without any mollifying humanistic judgments or reassurances that people are actually better than this. The central character is as heartless as any treacherous double-crosser in a film noir, but without the constant stylistic reminder that we live in a nasty, dark, dog-eat-dog world.

A pleasurable throwback to the sort of gritty, low-tech international thriller that was a staple of the 1960s.

Despite a sprinkling of laughs and eye-catching moments, this adaptation of a popular comicstrip reps a middling effort from the house that "Shrek" built, a rather narrowly conceived tale that makes only modest hay from the overworked conflict between wildlife and encroaching humans.

Despite its undeniably pure and earnest intent, Solaris is equally undeniably an arid, dull affair that imposes and maintains a huge distance between the viewer and what happens onscreen.

A sporadically funny romantic comedy with all the dramatic plausibility and tonal consistency of a TV variety show.

An oddly schizophrenic fantasy thriller that ultimately succumbs to a fatal case of sentimentality.

There are enough diverse personalities in this unexpected film to generate a degree of interest in a subject few have probably ever thought about.

A beguiling romantic fantasy about the creative process and its potential to quite literally take on a life of its own, Ruby Sparks performs an imaginative high-wire act with finesse and charm.

Sure to turn off general viewers due to its emotional inaccessibility, multitude of narrative problems and preoccupation with a torture Web site.

A whimsical piece of deadpan drollery, Whisky plays like Aki Kaurismaki, South American style.

Often a gutsy, intelligent writer, Toback has yet to prove himself decisively as a director, and this, his first fictional effort behind the camera in a decade, shows his talents to be as variable as ever.

A deliriously trashy, exuberantly vulgar, lavishly appointed exploitation picture, this weird combo of road-kill movie and martial-arts vampire gorefest is made to order for the stimulation of teenage boys.

An often lively comedy-drama that lands some nice jabs at the mega-corp ethos, In Good Company makes for pretty good company until going soft when it counts.

A potentially fun premise soon turns into no fun at all in Cop Car, a seriously imagination-challenged low-end action thriller.

T3 delivers the goods. A hard-hitting, straight-ahead sci-fi actioner with none of the pretentions and ponderousness that have put at least a portion of the public off of "The Matrix Reloaded" and "Hulk."

Avengers: Age of Ultron succeeds in the top priority of creating a worthy opponent for its superheroes and giving the latter a few new things to do, but this time the action scenes don't always measure up and some of the characters are left in a kind of dramatic no-man's-land.

So fetishistic about high-powered weapons that it qualifies as an NRA wet dream, G.I. Joe: Retaliation pretty accurately reflects the franchise's comic book and cartoon origins, which is both a good and a bad thing: good if you're a 12- to 15-year-old boy, bad if you're just about anyone else.

Schrader directs with a very smooth hand, providing a good-natured and frequently amusing spin to eventually grim material that aptly reflects the protagonist's almost unfailing good humor.

Never less than watchable and loaded with trademark negativity so extreme it's sometimes funny, the new film is nonetheless saddled with a protagonist so narrowly and unlikably presented that, in the end, he doesn't seem worth the time devoted to him.

Slack and unexciting compared to Ryan Coogler's blisteringly good 2015 reconception of a 1970s icon for modern audiences, this follow-up is an undeniable disappointment in nearly every way, from its dreary homefront interludes to a climactic boxing match that feels far-fetched in the extreme.

Some will say that Nina Wu is a courageous work for exposing the abuse powerless young actresses face when trying to break into an acting career, while others will no doubt feel that, by what it shows, the movie remains part of the problem. As unevenly presented here, it’s a wobbly tightrope.

Life may be as unfair and arbitrary as Solondz portrays it, but it is arguably more diverse in its moods and its ups and downs. The pic may not be a dog, but nor is it likely to become anyone’s best friend.

The story is undoubtedly weird, but perhaps more so on paper than on the screen, since Russell and his actors have played it mostly straight in attempting to confer psychological validity on all the untoward developments.

Cheeky in its approach as well as spirited and good-natured, this enterprising adaptation of the author’s relatively unfamiliar early novella Lady Susan remains buoyant through most of its short running time but lacks the stirring emotional hooks found in the best Austen works, on the page as well as the screen.

Coppola’s attitude toward her subject seems equivocal, uncertain; there is perhaps a smidgen of social commentary, but she seems far too at home in the world she depicts to offer a rewarding critique of it.

Amusingly eccentric rather than outright funny.

The gifted fantasy/sci-fi/horror specialist has made a film that's very bloody, and bloody stylish at that, one that's certainly unequaled in its field for the beauty of its camerawork, sets, costumes and effects. But it's also conventionally plotted and not surprising or scary at all, as it resurrects hoary horror tropes from decades ago to utilize them in conventional, rather than fresh or subversive ways

In every sense, The Great Museum (Das grosse Museum) imparts a feeling of privilege — privilege on the part of those (the Hapsburgs) who built and opened Vienna's extraordinary Kunsthistorisches Museum in 1891, privilege among those lucky enough to work at such a rarified establishment and privilege on the part of any viewer of Johannes Holzhausen's wonderfully evocative and droll documentary.

The film represents the director in a more pensive, even philosophical vein, less interested in propulsive cinema and more reflective about what would seem to mean the most to him—dreams, and the ability to make them come true. This is what The BFG is about but, unfortunately, that is basically all it’s about and by a considerable measure too explicitly and single-mindedly so.

The tense drama eventually becomes off-putting when it becomes clear almost every scene hinges on an unpleasant or ugly racial interaction.

Crude, repetitive and rigorously single-minded, the popular actor’s writing and directing debut lays it all on a bit thick, as the few points the film has to make are underscored time and time again.

Such heart-tuggers have their appeal to some people in any era, but earnest hokum of this nature has become increasingly rare. And for a reason.

Blanchett gives this dynamo of intelligence and doggedness a real human dimension that allows the propulsive drama to breathe; it’s another stellar performance that rates among her best.

The sensitive macho Schoenaerts is pretty much center-screen throughout this sleekly made suspense piece based on a script more loaded with holes than the numerous bad guys he either shoots or stabs to death.

What they have done is taken a few second-hand ideas from noir and speculative fiction and mixed them in occasionally striking ways, even if, in the end, the result isn't all that much fun.

It’s thin stuff, but the ingratiating naivete of the characters and the aw-shucks friendliness of the cast are disarming, and it becomes easy to just let this go down as a country tune with some moonshine on the side.

Tony literary material, a fine cast and intelligent script and direction.

A technical tour de force for director Kathryn Bigelow and her team, pic is less accomplished in putting over its characters, emotions and dubious sociopolitical agenda.

More weirdly fascinating than genuinely good, this beautifully made, bracingly eccentric and often arch film will generate a measure of strong support but will bewilder more.

Although thin character motivation and some far-fetched plotting strain credulity in the late going, for the most part The Edge is a tense, visceral battle-of-wits thriller played out against a spectacular wilderness background.

This study of a disastrous reunion of two sisters feels more like a collection of arresting scenes than a fully conceived and developed drama.

While skillfully crafted to maximize visual excitement and dramatic fireworks through the first hour, relentlessly paced pic sports a fancy new package for a rather shopworn doomsday scenario that unravels to increasingly familiar effect as the finale breathlessly approaches.

A tour de force of artifice, a dazzling pastiche of musical and visual elements at the service of a blatantly artificial story.

Paul Schrader hits a low water mark with Forever Mine, a strenuously straight-faced film noir wanna-be that edges perilously close to self-parody.

On a scene-by-scene basis, in terms of performance and the grave issues under consideration, the film is quite absorbing.

Intelligent, vastly appreciative of its subject and conventional in approach, Pavarotti can scarcely go wrong due to the charisma of its subject, the gorgeous music that wallpapers the entire film and an arc of success arguably unmatched in the opera world. If the film is all but engorged with goodies, one can hardly object that this is in some way inappropriate to it subject.

After exhibiting an almost craven fidelity to his source material the first time out, Jackson gets the drama in gear here from the outset with a sense of storytelling that possesses palpable energy and purpose.

A bit more discipline would have helped this one, which struggles to hold viewer interest across two full hours but would likely register more strongly with 15-20 minutes removed.

Marshall is a solid, straightforward courtroom drama with proud liberal credentials, one that could have been made by Norman Jewison around 1967.

Duplass and Moss are put to the test to carry the film entirely on their shoulders and unquestionably carry it off... On the other hand, viewers will have widely disparate reactions to spending 90 uninterrupted minutes with these characters.

It takes a little while to get in gear — or perhaps just to adjust to what's going on here — but once it does, Deadpool drops trou to reveal itself as a really raunchy, very dirty and pretty funny goof on the entire superhero ethos, as well as the first Marvel film to irreverently trash the brand.

For all its far-fetched formulations, this new entry maintains more of a dramatic throughline and has the bonus of a villain played with unsparing meanness by Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Affleck gives the impression of intimate familiarity with the anguish and self-disgust that dominate Jack’s life; this character and project clearly meant something important to him, as the title bluntly suggests, and he gives it his all without overdoing the melodrama.

Pitch Perfect is an enjoyably snarky campus romp that's both wildly nerdy and somewhat sexy.

Remarkably eerie yet annoyingly larded with cheap horror-film shock effects, I Am Legend stands as an effective but also irksome adaptation of Richard Matheson's classic 1954 sci-fi novel.

What fans will get here is loads of action, great effects, good comic relief, stunning locations (Iceland, Jordan and the Maldives) and some intriguing early glimpses of the Galactic Empire as it begins to flex its inter-galactic power.

The tone, casting and material form a less-than-perfect match in Married Life, a period domestic drama that never quite decides if it wants to be a credible marital study, a noirish meller or a sly comedy.

Although clearly coming from an antiwar perspective, the story's emotional effectiveness and family grounding give the film a real shot at connecting with general audiences across the political spectrum.

Inspiring if not inspired, Lee Daniels' The Butler is a sort of Readers' Digest overview of the 20th century American civil rights movement centered on an ordinary individual with an extraordinary perspective.

The script is faithful, the actors are just right, the sets, costumes, makeup and effects match and sometimes exceed anything one could imagine.

Worst of all, it just feels tired and recycled.

The caustic wit and brute force of Patrick Marber's acclaimed play come across with a softened edge in Mike Nichols' bigscreen version of Closer.

The Client is a satisfactory, by-the-numbers child-in-jeopardy thriller that will fill the bill as a very commercial hot weather popcorn picture.

Filmmakers take a shotgun approach to comedy, inundating the viewer with wisecracks that, more often than not, don't go over. But those that do still add up to lotsa laughs, and the sheer weight of them eventually builds an atmosphere of mild lunacy that it's useless to resist.

In essence, every dramatic goal is achieved far too easily, every opponent is ultimately made of straw. The characters are never truly challenged, as if the filmmakers are afraid that any credible peril might prove too frightening for some little kid.

Tailor-made for maximum inspirational, historical and educational impact, The Great Debaters shines a bright spotlight on a remarkable example of black achievement long forgotten in the sorry history of the Jim Crow South.

A perfectly diverting romp that happens to showcase some of the best 3D work yet from a mainstream animated feature. Colorful, clever enough, free of cloying showbiz in-jokes, action-packed without being ridiculous about it and even well choreographed.

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

A constantly imaginative, stylistically lively but dramatically inert chronicle of cultural and sexual rebellion.

Director Phil Alden Robinson demonstrates an agreeable flair for low-key comedy, changing tones, and the orchestration of complicated logistics until falling into the black holes of gaping plot gaps and an insincere jokiness worthy of Sinatra's Rat Pack.

Although it becomes a bit contrived and conventional toward the end, writer-director Theodore Witcher's debut feature shows quite a few good moves, and Larenz Tate and Nia Long make an attractively hot couple at its center.

This is not "E.T.," nor is it a kid's film nor even necessarily a major mass-audience film, although Spielberg's name, high public anticipation and the child-oriented campaign will make it perform like one.

With Ledger onscreen more than might have been expected, the film possesses strong curiosity value bolstered by generally lively action and excellent visual effects.

An intelligent, insidiously plotted Hitchcockian thriller directed in souped-up, modern expressionistic style.