Todd McCarthy

Like his previous efforts, Jarmusch's sidelong take on Western conventions relies upon quirky tone, hipsterish performances and a highly refined visual style to put it over.

Picture is impressively crafted and acted but far too narrowly and benignly conceived to satisfy even on its own terms.

This is one of those pictures that unavoidably becomes part of the zeitgeist due to its coincidental arrival at a precise moment in history when its themes play into current events.

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

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.

A demolition derby starring some of the most expensive cars on Earth, Redline portrays a world so drenched in wealth it gives off a stench.

This franchise-hungry champion of the underdog brings no sense of fun to his pursuit of bad guys; it's just the fate he's stuck with.

Compensating for the technical faults is the writer-director's unmistakable and undiluted need to express the issues he feels are at the heart of his community.

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.

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.

Silk is a snooze. Vacuous, arid and terminally dull, this adaptation of Alessandro Baricco's freak bestseller hasn't a trace of real life or energy to it, and is hamstrung by a lethargic lead performance by Michael Pitt.

Through immaculate use of picture, sound and time, the director adds another panel to his series of pictures about disaffected, disconnected youth.

Takes plenty of liberties with the material and never generates much genuine excitement, but provides an agreeable ride without overloading it with contemporary filmmaking mannerisms.

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

A film that is continuously enjoyable from its action-filled opening to the dazzling final shot, one that offers a very generous welcome to newcomers to the play, and reminds those familiar with it of its heady pleasures. Only real drawback, and not an insignificant one, is pic’s visual quality, which is unaccountably undistinguished, even ugly, especially considering the sun-drenched Tuscan location.

The Hudsucker Proxy is no doubt one of the most inspired and technically stunning pastiches of old Hollywood pictures ever to come out of the New Hollywood. But a pastiche it remains, as nearly everything in the Coen brothers' latest and biggest film seems like a wizardly but artificial synthesis, leaving a hole in the middle where some emotion and humanity should be.

A tasty if wildly far-fetched thriller, Out of Time proves far stronger in its characterizations than in developing genuine suspense.

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.

Dismally unfunny...It's clear from the first few minutes that the performers are fighting an uphill battle against lame material, and the situation never improves as pic labors on.

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.

A borderline pretentious, overly inflated picture.

The Basketball Diaries is a weak-tea rendition of Jim Carroll's much-admired cult tome about his teenage drug addiction. Leonardo DiCaprio's committed lead performance deserves a better context than this gloss on the source material.

The dramatic trajectory is frightfully obvious, the characters tediously one-dimensional, the dialogue banal.

Represents that filmmaking rarity -- a third part of a trilogy that is decisively the best of the lot. With epic conflict, staggering battles, striking landscapes and effects, and resolved character arcs all leading to a dramatic conclusion to more than nine hours of masterful storytelling.

Neither the establishing dramatic linchpin nor the final conversion of conscience is terribly convincing, leaving this pared-down rendition of the original work diminished in power and meaning as well.

Viewers looking for old-fashioned movie thrills as a change of pace from the glut of alien and digital-oriented features might paradoxically enjoy the feeling of being back on terra firma with this airborne adventure.

The picture is lacking in the uproarious humor that might well have ensued from the material, which instead inspires occasional laughs but, much more often, bemused fascination and wonderment at the bizarre imaginations and impressive skill of the filmmakers.

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

A cocoon of somber self-seriousness envelopes some fine performances and intelligent craftsmanship in Nell.

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

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.

This vigorous, colorful and clever melodrama smartly rethinks both the play and the character, making her a far more proactive figure than Shakespeare did in addition to entirely reimagining her fate.

An eye-popping but incoherent extravaganza of morphing and superhuman martial arts.

Less turgid and aggravating than its predecessor, this cleverly produced melodrama remains hamstrung by novelist's Dan Brown's laborious connect-the-dots plotting and the filmmakers' prosaic literal-mindedness in the face of ripe historical antagonisms, mystery and intrigue.

A provocative premise, virtuoso direction and two dazzling lead performances go a long way toward offsetting a lack of dramatic structure and a sense of when to quit in Face/Off.

Walk the Line is a strongly acted, musically vibrant, conventionally satisfying biopic of country/rock/blues legend Johnny Cash and his second wife, June Carter.

Good old-fashioned virtues of three-dimensional characters, fine dialogue, recognizable life situations and meat-and-potatoes content.

It's a quick trip from whimsy to silliness in Be Kind Rewind, a notably ephemeral work by Michel Gondry, whose flights of fancy can't overcome the egregious illogic of the premise.

Nine very good actors are wasted, if not embarrassed, by the thoroughly unconvincing shenanigans perpetrated by first-time writer-director Michael Clancy, while a tenth -- Zooey Deschanel -- somehow manages to float ethereally above it all with her dignity intact.

A generic suspenser that doesn't taste bad at first bite but becomes increasingly hard to swallow, The Saint comes off more as a pallid imitation of Paramount's Eurothriller "Mission: Impossible" than as anything resembling the further adventures of Leslie Charteris' charming rogue.

More than an embarrassment, it's an insult.

A deeply metaphysical film by contempo Hollywood standards, this middlebrow trifle may engage the emotions of a certain tier of young professional women.

Walks the line between conviction and camp with a not entirely steady step.

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.

An astonishingly good and daring film that richly develops several intertwined thematic lines, The Crying Game takes giant risks that are stunningly rewarded.

Fey is a delight to watch throughout.

Dreary, lachrymose and incredibly poky tear-jerker that makes its audience wait and wait and wait until nearly the last second for its jerking.

A thick slice of bogus inspirational cheese that only makes itself look bad by recycling so many golden movie memories.

A junior-league "Superbad" with an aftertaste of "The Pacifier," Drillbit Taylor is a just passable pubescent comedy with a modest laugh count by Apatow factory standards.

Lacks the antic energy and inspired imagination that might have put this over as a sharp-witted community comedy in the Preston Sturges vein.

The Getaway is a pretty good remake of a pretty good action thriller.

Much of the confusion, as well as the lack of dramatic rhythm or character development, results directly from Bay's cutting style, which resembles a machine gun stuck in the firing position for 2 and a half hours.

The sense of evil overkill is entirely representative of the picture itself, which repeatedly looks ready to blow all its fuses due to sensory overload.

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.

Mostow's smart speculative suspenser imagines a time when people can live through ideal versions of themselves while they sit wired up at home.

Jackson undermines solid work from a good cast with show-offy celestial evocations that severely disrupt the emotional connections with the characters.

Penn's magnetism and hesitant line delivery create what interest there is, although the whole picture suffers from a central figure who can never get it together on any level.

A good, old-fashioned suspenser.

Visually, the film is without flair or ambition, conveying no sense of atmosphere or mood. But the performances put it over.

Schneider hams it up as a paunchy middle-aged Hawaiian stoner in an eyebrow-raising ethnic caricature that more than once calls to mind Mickey Rooney's unfortunate Japanese turn in "Breakfast at Tiffany's."

Design aspects are arresting and the filmmaker's abilities are obvious, but the basic survival story remains slight, just as the general setting, no matter how artfully imagined, is by now pretty familiar.

Classy, decorous and well acted, directorial debut by Hollywood producer Pieter Jan BruggePieter Jan Brugge is nicely crafted but too buttoned up to generate more than polite interest, much less the urgent excitement a kidnapping story might be expected to trigger.

(Stone's) most accessible and purely enjoyable film in years.

A wonderful, serious-minded romantic comedy-drama.

Deliberately anachronistic in its heightened style of romance, villainy and destiny, the epic lays an Aussie accent on colorful motifs drawn from Hollywood Westerns, war films, love stories and socially conscious dramas. Some of it plays, some doesn't, and it is long.

But it doesn't quite all come together here as it did onstage, and relentless scabrousness, heavy claustrophobia and a vaguely dated feel are among the elements that will keep mainstream audiences away.

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

A tad crasser and pushier than its predecessor, Ice Age: The Meltdown is still an entirely serviceable follow-up to the 2002 hit that will thoroughly amuse kids and get a rise or two out of parents as well.

Earnest and well-intentioned.

It's hard to find the genuine heartfelt moments in The Lucky Ones.

Robert Redford's handsome, smartly constructed new film stands likely to capture the imagination of the educated, culturally inclined public.

A full-blown musical that commutes between Disney's patented cartoon universe and the "real" world with cleverness and grace, this splashy production reminds one of nothing in the Disney canon so much as "Mary Poppins," not least due to the "star is born" aura that surrounds Amy Adams here, just as it did Julie Andrews 43 years ago.

A searingly visceral combat picture, Steven Spielberg’s third World War II drama is arguably second to none as a vivid, realistic and bloody portrait of armed conflict.

Carey Mulligan shines in a captivating performance.

An intensely imaginative piece of conceptual filmmaking that also delivers the goods as a dread-drenched horror movie.

An endlessly sentimental fable about sacrifice and redemption that aims only at the heart at the expense of the head. Intricately constructed so as to infuriate anyone predominantly guided by rationality and intellect.

Ultimately a mess of diverse ingredients that sorely could have used a rigorous screening process to eliminate all the chaff.

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

The imaginatively illustrated but precariously precious film offers up a string of minor pleasures but never becomes more than moderately amusing or involving.

Lacks the special creative spark needed to lift it to an uncommon imaginative level.

A romantic comedy as lamely generic as its title.

A picture that, even more than the previous two, feels like a bunch of gags tossed together. The laughs are here, to be sure, although even some of the best of them are retreads and the Swinging '60s recycling act is now feeling a bit past its zeitgeist prime.

A stillborn would-be comedy.

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

Tells an old-fashioned boys' adventure yarn in an equally old-fashioned way.

An intermittently compelling and occasionally hilarious road movie.

Unswervingly sincere and dramatic without surprise or revelation, screenwriter Joe Eszterhas' longtime pet project may be personal, but it offers little to audiences that hasn't been served up in quantity in the past.

The effects are snazzy, even if they pass by quite quickly, and there's enough going on to keep audiences watching, if not entirely happy. Smith, Theron and Bateman capably handle the main roles, but such is the skimpiness of the scenario that no further characters make any impact.

Laura Linney’s beautiful performance is most of the story in p.s.

A script as fresh and distinctive as any produced in the States in recent memory.

The picture serves up intermittent pleasures but is too raggedy and laid-back for its own good, its images evaporating nearly as soon as they hit the screen.

One of the more absorbing and palatable entries in the rather disreputable "Death Wish"-style self-appointed vigilante sub-genre.

Bloody but anemic story.

A crudely funny farce that covers no new ground but sees its talented players running some surefire plays.

A mostly standard-issue latter-day Arnold Schwarzenegger actioner spiked with a creepily plausible cloning angle.

A lighthearted yarn designed to stand out by virtue of its intricate structure and trippy time-travel element. But the fanciful material wears thin pretty quickly, the air leaking out of the balloon long before party's over.

Engagingly intriguing throughout most of its slightly overlong running time, and perhaps the strangely mesmerizing mood Lynch has orchestrated for the entire "Twin Peaks" undertaking should not be underestimated at this juncture. But the feeling persists that, to a considerable degree, Lynch is marking time with this project, creating new riffs and variations on themes he had already largely worked out.

The characters in The Thomas Crown Affair are cool -- too cool, in fact, for the film to develop much of a pulse.

Ending is on the conventional side, more so than anything else in the picture , but script by Ann Biderman and David Madsen keeps the tart surprises coming throughout most of the picture with only occasional lapses into red herrings and artificial manipulation.

Delivers enough thrills, kicks and cool moments to satiate geeks, fans and mere general viewers worldwide -- until the "Revolutions" installment wraps up the trilogy in November.

From a performance p.o.v., Aselton and Shepard hold the screen well and are most watchable, and Aselton does a fluid directing job within the limited challenge she set for herself production-wise.

Brandishes physical verisimilitude and intelligent seriousness but proves unable to really get inside its chameleon-like central character.

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.

An eye-popping visual spectacle that serves up a vivid picture of what the planet might have looked like when reptiles ruled the Earth.

Almost too much of a good thing, Peter Jackson's remake of the film that made him want to make movies is a super-sized version of a yarn that was big to begin with, a stupendous adventure that maximizes, and sometimes oversells, its dazzling wares.

Eastwood's latest picture boasts tight storytelling, sharp acting and an eye for unexpected, enlivening detail.

What might have been an effective fantasy if handled with sophistication and insouciance is instead weighed down by ponderous pacing, overstuffed production values and an instance of miscasting.

A disarmingly pulpy, eye-popping disaster movie during its first half, and an increasingly dull survival melodrama during its second.

An intriguingly plotted mystery that unfortunately forgets to put the noir in film noir. A drab, pale-looking affair without a trace of visual style, this cross-country pursuit yarn fights a losing battle to sustain viewer attention via narrative alone, so much does it flounder for lack of imagistic flair.

The 72-year-old star, who is centerscreen throughout, makes this rather far-fetched yarn go down much more easily than it otherwise might have.

Fun, almost endearing in its cheeky irreverence, but also rather mild and scattershot in its satiric marksmanship, Serial Mom provokes chuckles and the occasional raised eyebrow rather than guffaws and gross-outs.

Beautifully made pic will spur newsy media coverage and possible consternation on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide, but members of the general public will be glancing at their watches rather than having epiphanies about world peace.

Evinces no interest in such niceties as credible dialogue, character motivation or forward momentum.

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

Pic's happiest surprise is Tobey Maguire in the title role, as the young actor provides an emotional openness and vulnerability that gives this $120 million production its most distinctive flavor.

Replete with smart, capable characters and crimes so bizarre that they lend the film a suspiciously lurid nature, this tony suspenser is hampered by the presence of a villain who is all too obvious from the very beginning.

By far the least ambitious, and certainly the least interesting, animated feature to come out of Disney in quite some time.

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

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."

Seems bent on creating equal-opportunity offense to many groups, but more often than not is appalling simply for its silliness and lack of comedic control.

An artistically experimental, ideologically apocalyptic blast at American values that is as obvious in intent as it is murky in aesthetic achievement.

Literate, sober-minded and almost rigorously chaste, First Knight sweeps the viewer up in the doings of these impressive, larger-than-life characters and offers a credible portrait of regal personages whose priorities are well sorted.

A powerfully intimate domestic drama, Ordinary People represents the height of craftsmanship across the board.

Shows the sort of edge in places that will be appreciated by horror fanboys of all ages, but is mostly too overwrought and over-the-top.

Refreshingly revisionist in the sense that it takes a relatively clear-eyed view of the messy lives and equivocal circumstances of many of the key participants.

Blandness and lack of daring characterize nearly every minute of the very long two hours, which are marked by a high degree of professionalism at the service of little content.

Vastly entertaining.

Darker and more dramatic, this account of Harry's troubled second year at Hogwarts may be a bit overlong and unmodulated in pacing, but it possesses a confidence and intermittent flair that begin to give it a life of its own apart of the literary franchise, something the initial picture never achieved.

The picture's constant forward movement and breezy sense of amusement about itself provide a certain mild sort of diversion.

Despite excellent lead performances and numerous memorable scenes, this still feels like two different movies in one.

Tartly written and vividly performed by a fine ensemble cast, Gary Fleder's bracingly entertaining first feature covers familiar ground in a fresh, breezy way.

Remains exciting as long as it stays on the mountains.

Aside from spasms of brutal violence, however, there's nothing rousing or new here.

Overstays its welcome by at least a half-hour after never getting very high off the ground in the first place.

Most of the action is played for broad laughs, and Hogan demonstrates the ability to generate them, even if the humor is very base and often cruel, making fun of people's looks and ineptitude.

A gemlike picture crafted with rare and immaculate precision.

An impudently comic, stylistically aggressive and, finally, very thoughtful manner.

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.

At best an honorable failure, an intelligent and ambitious picture that crucially lacks dramatic flair and emotional involvement.

Entirely respectable in every way, it nonetheless has a very cool body temperature and thus likely will inspire polite admiration rather than excitement among viewers.

Dramatically powerful, surprising in its strong narrative differences from previous cinematic tellings of "the greatest story" and bold in the extent to which it presents Jesus as a confrontational and threatening figure in the Judean context of the time.

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.

Gere breaks through with what may or may not be his best performance.

Senselessly long at two-and-three-quarters hours and with a protracted climax that eradicates any goodwill established in the fastidious first couple of reels.

Callahan mostly overcomes its grungy technical quality with entertaining dialogue, nervy confrontation scenes, decent thesping and some truly spectacular shooting on the green velvet.

A sharp-minded, plenty entertaining toon that will keep children of all ages wide-eyed and on their toes.

An intensely whimsical shaggy-dog crime story that ricochets between goofy violence and some endearing personal moments.

Saddled with a sentimentally "sincere" subject and lacking the stylistic and humorous cachet of the recent computer-animated smashes.

Martin Scorsese’s energetic account of a Stones concert at Gotham’s Beacon Theater in fall 2006 takes full advantage of heavy camera coverage and top-notch sound to create an invigorating musical trip down memory lane, as well as to provoke gentle musings on the wages of aging and the passage of time.

Dazzlingly well made and perhaps deliberately less fanciful than the previous entries, this one is played in a mode closer to palpable life-or-death drama than any of the others and is quite effective as such.

An absorbing, shades-of-gray look at home-front intrigue in Nazi-occupied Denmark during World War II. Ole Christian Madsen’s accomplished fourth feature plays out on a much larger canvas than he’s used previously and offers nuance and ambiguity in equal measure with violence and tragedy.

An engagingly up-to-date melodrama steeped in local color and steered by a treacherous sense of morality.

Outrageously grungy and whacked-out walk on the wild side.

A shrill, mechanical comedy.

Despite her (Judd's) efforts and those of a generally talented cast, picture just pokes along and offers nothing out of the ordinary in terms of drama, characterization or insight. Judd's presence notwithstanding, this one would be more at home on small than on big screens.

The script dares to go deep and confront what is going on in the hearts and minds of all three family members, but it does so articulately and without hysteria.

Frank Langella's meticulous performance will generate the sort of attention that will attract serious filmgoers.

A disappointingly routine thriller that prefers to lean on tired Hollywood conventions rather than to explore fresh dramatic and stylistic territory.

The submarine goes deep but the story never does in U-571, a good old-fashioned WWII picture that is exciting in only the most superficial way.

Scorsese has met most of the challenges inherent in tackling such a formidable period piece, but the material remains cloaked by the very propriety, stiff manners and emotional starchiness the picture delineates in such copious detail.

After a buoyantly funny first half-hour, stylish animated comedy takes a breather before ramping it up again for a rambunctious, girrrl-power finale that provides a convenient springboard for further adventures to come.

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.

Instead, director Jon Turteltaub has taken the easiest road, emerging with a soppy, soft-headed disease-of-the-week-style piece that sentimentalizes or opts out of every interesting issue the script raises.

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.

Engrossing but psychologically shallow tale.

Del Toro clearly knows his way around the camera, but the shadowy eeriness that saturates the early going slowly becomes monotonous and winds up being just dull, and even partially obscures the action in the long underground finale.

Intermittently engaging but dramatically slack, this tale...is more interesting around the edges than it is at its core, thanks to the dull nature of the lead character played by Matt Damon.

Absorbing in a low-key way but more dramatic where its secondary characters are concerned than its leads, and capped by climactic incidents that are less than entirely convincing.

Conveying an astonishing array of information across a long narrative arc while still maintaining dramatic rhythm and tension, this adaptation of Robert Graysmith's bestseller reps by far director David Fincher's most mature and accomplished work.

Whit Stillman's stiff directorial approach ill suits the sensual ambiance of the club scene so intently depicted, and the mostly self-conscious, uptight characters seem to have made a left turn out of "Metropolitan" and walked through the wrong door to turn up in this flamboyant druggie scene.

Just about everything Mann has chosen to present is valid, substantial and convincing, but by the end, the feeling persists that while certain essences have been grasped, only part of the story has been told.

It stands as a unique film-within-a-film, of significance for the historical value of the raw images, the memories they spur and internal evidence of how the Nazis staged scenes long assumed to be real.

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

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.

While After the Sunset is never exactly dull and is smartly cut to a brief running time, it never quickens the pulse.

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

What seemed like a dubious proposition on paper plays even more dubiously onscreen, as Cutthroat Island strenuously but vainly attempts to revive the thrills of old-fashioned pirate pictures. Giving most of the swashbuckling opportunities to star Geena Davis, pic does little with its reversal of gender expectations and features a seriously mismatched romantic duo in Davis and Matthew Modine.

This is a sloppy stew in which the ingredients of battle action, murder mystery, little-kid sentiment and history lesson don't mix well.

If the director has gone out of his way to avoid the usual Hollywood biopic conventions, he has also withheld any suggestion of why the charismatic doctor, fighter, diplomat, diarist and intellectual theorist became and remains such a legendary figure; if anything, Che seems diminished by the way he's portrayed here.

Lars von Trier cuts a big fat art-film fart with Antichrist. As if deliberately courting critical abuse, the Danish bad boy densely packs this theological-psychological horror opus with grotesque, self-consciously provocative images.

The increasingly broad strokes with which the story is painted serve to simplify rather than deepen it, and to make it seem more artificially constructed than need be.

More evident than ever the film is inherently a deeply flawed work that was far from fully realized in both script and shooting.

A useless remake of Mike Hodges' 1971 British gangland cult classic.

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.

Like a Rousseau painting splattered with carnage of warfare.

This ultra-low-budget, Godardian "homo movie" feels like a step backward to his earlier group mopes rather than an advance beyond his provocative last film, The Living End.

Very clever and imaginative indeed, and its pictures are so gorgeous that they alone could warrant a second viewing.

Director Christine Jeffs, who previously helmed "Rain" and "Sylvia," tries to strike a balance between the yarn's dark currents and offbeat comedy, but the result is often uneasy, with the humor receding as things progress.

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

Sexual suspicion and game-playing spiral down from the exotically intriguing to outright silliness in Chloe.

An exceedingly safe and conventional Chris Columbus comedy.

Lives up to its name by serving up a fraction of what audiences are used to getting in this department from PixarPixar and DreamWorks -- little originality, little humor and little ingratiating characterization.

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

The major jolt is saved for the very end but, like much else in the film, it is overexplained and underlined when more simplicity and quiet would have provided the revelation with the power of a depth charge.

A rather ordinary account of youthful summer misadventures that goes down easily thanks to a sparky cast, more than 40 pop tunes that anchor the action in the late '80s and characters who get high both on and off their jobs at a tacky amusement park.

Breaking through any period-piece mustiness with piercing insight into the emotions and behavior of her characters, the writer-director examines the final years in the short life of 19th-century romantic poet John Keats through the eyes of his beloved, Fanny Brawne, played by Abbie Cornish in an outstanding performance.

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.

Emotionally powerful and stylistically sure-handed, this true story-inspired drama begins small with the disappearance of a young boy, only to gradually fan out to become a comprehensive critique of the entire power structure of Los Angeles, circa 1928.

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.

Teasingly enjoyable rubbish through the first hour, Orphan becomes genuine trash during its protracted second half.

It's raffish, flashy, energetic, entertaining and not very deep.

Despite numerous surface pleasures, including a beguiling pop soundtrack and presence of rising star Cillian Murphy in the lead role, dramatic shortcomings spell a mixed overall reception.

The battle of the sexes is restaged to clever but inconsequential effect in Conversations With Other Women. Very much a case of old wine in a new bottle.

Unquestionably the most sexually graphic American narrative feature ever made outside the realm of the porn industry, John Cameron Mitchell's ambitious attempt to merge his characters' active sexual lives with more conventional emotional content is playfully and provocatively entertaining for roughly the first half, but loses staying power thereafter when investment in the uncompelling characters' problems is requested.

Absorbing, exciting at times and undeniably entertaining, and is poised to be a major commercial hit. But great it's not.

A Eurotrashy vidgame knockoff that misses its target by a mile. Numbingly unthrilling as it lurches from one violent encounter to another, the pic's dark roots in an electronic, non-dramatic medium are plain to see, and unsuspecting gamers lured to theaters will soon wish they were back home participating in the action themselves.

Entirely unpredictable and marked by audacious strokes of directorial bravado.

If films about coping with memory loss and/or reverse-order storytelling now constitute a mini-genre, then Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is arguably the best of the lot.

Cute and clever though the plot may be, everything is played out in the broadest possible terms without an iota of nuance or subtlety.

Tightly made and populated by a uniformly larger-than-life cast of characters , pic is a total delight for every second of its running time.

An unusual film that intelligently avoids numerous potential pitfalls even if its central earnestness is ultimately inescapable.

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.

As a young lady who can't say no to a beautiful dress or accessory, Isla Fisher is not to be denied, and her irrepressible comic personality overcomes a number of the film's impediments.

A good, complex story unravels in disappointingly over-the-top fashion in "Gang Related." Premise, about two homicide cops caught in a trap of their own making, is a grabber that sustains interest for quite a while, and pic's exploration of the gray area where law enforcement and criminality overlap is intriguingly developed.

This is definitely his edgiest, rawest work in a good while. Acting is of a very high caliber across the board, but Judy Davis, in a very meaty part compared to her previous walk-on for Allen in “Alice,” is incandescent, revealing a whole new side to her personality that has never surfaced onscreen before.

Smartly plotted, convincingly acted and brilliantly executed technically, this engrossing thriller adds some clever modern wrinkles to the time-tested formula of sinister intruders threatening innocents in their home.

At this stage, Pritikin shows considerably more aptitude for writing than for directing, and the exuberant eruptions of humor lead one to suspect he should try for outright comedy next time and forget the sentiment.

This botched remake of "The Day the Earth Stood Still" seriously dishonors the seriously fine 1951 sci-fi landmark on which it's based.

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.

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

Color of Night is a knuckleheaded thriller that means to get a rise out of audiences, but will merely make them see red. It's confounding and sad that director Richard Rush waited 14 years to make another film after his striking "The Stunt Man," only to choose a script as dismal as this.

Has the distinction of being one of the most amateurish features ever released by a major studio.

If it were a normal holiday animated film, The Nightmare Before Christmas would be an entertaining, amusing, darker-than-usual offering indicating that Disney was willing to deviate slightly from its tried-and-true family-fare formula. But the dazzling techniques employed here create a striking look that’s never been seen in such sustained form, making this a unique curio that will appeal to kids and film enthusiasts alike.

There are moments, especially when Welles is alternating between acting as Brutus and directing everyone else, that it’s possible to forget you’re watching an actor and really believe you’re beholding Orson Welles at work.

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.

A literary adaptation of exceeding intelligence, beauty and concentrated artistry, but one that remains emotionally remote and perhaps unavoidably problematic dramatically.

Both sharp and fleet, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street proves a satisfying screen version of Stephen Sondheim’s landmark 1979 theatrical musical.

A shrill, strained and shallow riff on a tired idea.

The sight and sound of Lawrence in fat-lady drag remains engaging throughout; script may often let him down, forcing him to keep things afloat almost single-handedly.

With the standard Grisham formula having grown stale after so many books and film versions, Jury introduces ingredients that add zest to the old recipe and, in cinematic terms, open up increased possibilities for intrigue and narrative layering.

A breezy, sexy romp with a conscience that reflects in obvious but interesting ways on societal changes over the intervening 38 years.

While the surfaces, backgrounds and sense of constant motion are authentic to their tinselly cores, what goes on among the fictional participants resembles gag-reliant improv routines that haven’t been entirely worked out.

Feels like a film from several years ago, one of the many made in the wake of "Pulp Fiction" that tried and failed to be as clever as its progenitor.

Has a jaunty, cosmopolitan air that proves appealing for considerable stretches, and Chin's love of cinema and mostly humorous approach to weighty themes will win points with buffs who have seen the same films the director has.

A certain staleness hangs over the proceedings despite the best efforts of the cast and the fun-minded creative team.

Once the revisionist frisson of a black Jesus, not to mention Mary, Joseph and Judas, has worn off, one is stuck with more mundane matters such as story dynamics, visual style and character verisimilitude, much to the misfortune of the audience.

Films exist for different reasons, and the indisputable raison d'etre for About Schmidt is to showcase Jack Nicholson giving a master class in the art of screen acting.

An all-star remake of the all-star original, Ocean's Eleven is a lark for everybody concerned, including the audience. Breezy, nonchalant and without a thing on its mind except having a little fun.

King of the Hill has all the rich satisfactions of a fine novel.

The action is confusing at first and the hyperventilated editing style at times goes beyond the pale, so pic ultimately emerges as an erratic but not unworthy sequel to its gritty, genre-invigorating predecessor.

Ambitious, well made but not exactly rousing.

The Coen brothers tread into James M. Cain territory with The Man Who Wasn't There, but with less tasty results than either Cain or the Coens themselves at their best.

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.

Moderately inspiring in the way such true-life stories of "the indomitable human spirit" are always constructed to be.

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

Director Sturla Gunnarsson seems aware of the savagery intrinsic to the story, but is unable to mine it deeply, proving too genteel in the end to make a genuinely creepy or disturbing film.

Artfully evokes the physical realities of Irish poverty, but mostly misses the humor, lyricism and emotional charge of Frank McCourt's magical and magnificent memoir

The feel of a direct-to-video title that's been upgraded to theatrical status in the hopes of wringing a few extra bucks out of it and improving its not-too-distant homevid marketability.

Cleverly titled but noxious British comedy.

The subject being race relations, Manderlay is bound to stir considerable debate in intellectual circles, but given the director's abstract style and use of characters to enact an agenda, it's a discussion that will exclude the general public, who will ignore it as they did "Dogville."

A broad and obvious approach to ambiguous material that's virtually all plot mechanics with little nuance or characterization.

Story was originally conceived as an episode of Tales From the Crypt, and that is perhaps what it should have remained, as the thinness of the conceit shows throughout, painfully so in the first half.

A straightforward actioner that delivers the goods with no unnecessary frills or digressions.

Takes itself so seriously that it never has fun with its shopworn genre elements.

Blasting onto the screen at warp speed and remaining there for two hours, the new and improved Star Trek will transport fans to sci-fi nirvana.

Some fancy footwork in the writing and directing can't disguise the hoary "Ten Little Indians" origins of Identity.

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.

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.

Proficiently written and directed by newcomer Bart Freundlich, handsome pic brandishes traditional qualities in the areas of acting, character revelation and middlebrow seriousness, but operates within a familiar and narrow emotional range that provides little surprise or excitement.

Atom Egoyan's most mainstream and genre-oriented picture in his 20-year career applies a thick noir lacquer to a jumbled, time-jumping tale of a young female journalist prying the facts out of the aging entertainers and their cronies.

A classic piece of Americana, a down-home documentary that not only produces gales of laughter but also manages, by the end, to come together as a highly unlikely metaphor for the rigors of human existence.