Todd McCarthy

Arresting at first but gradually trails off under the weight of its hyper-derivativeness and anxiety to please.

May be a shade too serious and contemplative to completely enchant the thrill-seeking masses, while simultaneously seeming too mainstream-minded and genre-bound to be entirely embraced by highbrows.

Goes down like stiff medicine, leaving one feeling exhausted relief when it's finally over.

Valerie Breiman’s exceedingly slick feature is one of those cutesy items in which the characters talk about nothing but relationships and themselves.

Taymor makes the action clear and easy to follow with her bold physicalization of the story and forceful direction of an astutely chosen cast.

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.

As impressive as the industrial-style special effects may be, they're both too much and not enough for this mild mild West.

Harmless, but also, unfortunately, almost entirely mirthless, this putative comedy about an unsuspecting man obliged to transport a pachyderm cross-country aspires to a winsome charm that never crystallizes, leaving what’s onscreen to wilt before it ever blossoms.

But where most rugged he-man films feature a few action sequences scattered throughout, director Renny Harlin keeps the adventure stuff in this reputed $ 65 million production coming at an astonishing pace.

The story, while derivative, isn't half bad, and the picture gains in finesse and confidence to the point where Johnson more or less pulls off his peril-fraught exercise.

On its own terms, the plotting of "Devil" is absorbing, and the pieces actually fit together pretty decently. On the other hand, when scenes directly call to mind similar ones in "Chinatown," this effort's stepchild relationship to the classic is forcibly demonstrated.

The antics here are strained, graceless and tiresomely crude, the sorts of things audiences feel they're supposed to laugh at rather than well-developed situations that generate genuine amusement.

A pounding, pulsating thriller that provides an almost constant adrenaline surge for nearly two hours.

Falls somewhere in between standing on its own feet as a real movie worth the price of a ticket and merely being a glorified TV episode refitted for theaters.

Kasdan's direction here is even less energized than his writing.

An uncommonly smart, sharp and irreverent American picture.

Some mordant comic touches would have been welcome throughout the picture, which has a somber tone that suffers a bit from lack of modulation and nuance.

Staying at the top of his game when most of his contemporaries have long since hung up their gloves, Clint Eastwood delivers another knockout punch with Million Dollar Baby.

Like a trot around the track for the thoroughbreds involved, and one of the results is that it takes them far too long to get to the finish line.

The perennially insecure world of two-bit character actors is humorously and knowingly explored in With Friends Like These.

The pervasive chill, ugly feelings and downward spiral of the narrative make this a work that requires an equally sober, serious-minded attitude on the part of the viewer.

After the accomplished smoothness of "Match Point," it's back to more ragged form in Scoop, despite the almost identical posh settings, and the return of Scarlett Johansson as leading lady.

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

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

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

Oddly misanthropic, occasionally amusing but thoroughly cheerless holiday attraction that is in no way a family film.

Ever-youthful in his looks and energy, Bridges now stands as one of Hollywood's great old pros, incapable of making a false move.

Cute, rambunctious, generally amusing rather than outright funny, this clever mix of live action, highlighted by the unequaled skills of basketball superstar Michael Jordan, and animated Looney Tunes antics will be a must-see for kids.

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.

Reserved, careful and largely predictable in the way it plays out its wrenching emotional crises.

As overblown as it is overlong, Bad Boys II is an enervating case of more is less.

Intelligent and highly respectful of its central character and his titular landmark poem, HOWL is an admirable if fundamentally academic exploration of the origins, impact, meaning and legacy of Allen Ginsberg's signal work.

Manages the difficult feat of being an intimate, even delicate tale played with an appealingly light touch against an epic backdrop.

An intense, precision-controlled psychological mystery built around a very creepy lead performance by Christian Bale.

Although it will most readily appeal to cinephiles…offers sufficient reality-based incident and ponderable cultural issues to attract curious audiences.

This immaculately made first feature from noted musicvid and commercials director Mark Romanek provides Robin Williams with one of his creepiest, atypical roles, and the comic star responds with an unusually restrained performance that is, in the end, quite moving.

Recycles familiar adventure and cartoon devices with minimal wit and flair, and the lack of imagination will seem all the more dramatic to audiences in comparison to the winningly sophisticated "Shrek."

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

A furiously paced popcorn picture whose outrageous implausibility is somewhat amusing, Volcano delivers enough spectacular action to get it off to a hot B.O. start, although like the lava in the picture, it may not flow quite as far as anticipated.

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.

Credibly and absorbingly relates the tale of journalistic fraud perpetrated by young writer Stephen Glass at the New Republic five years back.

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.

Created as a comic vehicle for the lead actor, pic depends entirely too much on Wayans to carry the day, but at this point he is far more eager and willing than he is funny.

Like a light buffet of tasty morsels rather than a full and satisfying meal; all the episodes are more or less agreeable, but as a whole it lacks a knockout punch, one dynamite sequence that will galvanize viewers.

A thriller more contrived than it is exciting.

"Boogie Nights" meets "Goodfellas" in Middle Men, a relentlessly sleazy but undeniably intriguing tour of the bottom-feeding netherworld where porn and organized crime do their mutual bump-and-grind.

By underplaying the melodrama in the presumed hope of seeming subtle when Kelley Sane’s script is so baldly melodramatic, the “Tsotsi” helmer drains the life out of an obviously explosive subject.

This isn't the Star Wars we've always known and at least sometimes loved.

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

Stylistically audacious in the way it employs six different actors and assorted visual styles to depict various aspects of the troubadour's life and career, the film nevertheless lacks a narrative and a center, much like the "ghost" at its core.

Lively performances, pungent New York City atmosphere and an abundance of dramatic incident keep this story of an irrepressible lowlife hustler ripping along.

If imitation is the highest form of flattery, then “Point of No Return,” a soulless, efficiently slavish remake of “La Femme Nikita,” creates a whole new category of homage-paying.

Phantom is easily consumable eye candy, but it contains no nutrients for the heart or mind.

Ron Howard has never before made a picture this raw and alive. At the same time, this tale of the desperate pursuit of the kidnappers of young women makes for a fundamentally grim and unpleasant experience.

Disturbing because it is so believable, Kids goes well beyond any previous American film in frankly describing the lives of at least a certain group of modern teenagers.

Snappy and unusually funny under fundamentally serious circumstances, without being contrived or sitcomy.

As a rich, gum-chewing matron who tools around in her canary-yellow Rolls-Royce, Flanagan is the picture's real scene-stealer.

An intermittently powerful and meticulously crafted drama that falls short of its full potential due to considerable over-length and some shopworn, simplistic notions at its center.

Virtually bursts with visual goodies, and writer-director Stephen Sommers scarcely allows the actors, or the audience, a moment to take a breath during the nonstop action of the final hour.

Good silly fun, Alien Trespass is a dead-on spoof of cheapo '50s sci-fi programmers done with plenty of self-deprecating humor.

Coolly absorbing without being pulse-quickening.

More palatable than most pictures of its ilk due to its keen awareness of its own preposterousness, a self-knowledge exuberantly expressed by a mostly live-wire cast.

Although it exists primarily to send an audience into a bloodthirsty frenzy and has major credibility problems in the bargain, "Unlawful Entry" is still a very effective victimization thriller. Strongly following the "Fatal Attraction" pattern--to the point of having a very similar climax--well-crafted concoction trades in the sorts of elemental concerns and fears that get people mightily worked up. This, combined with controversy pic may engender based on its prominent plot element of excessive police violence, gives it the potential to become a summer sleeper hit.

Respectable when it should be thrilling, honorable when it should be rough and ready.

Part absurdist drama, part personal observational commentary and part hormonal explosion, all seen through the filter of previous war pics, Sam Mendes' third feature has numerous arresting moments but never achieves a confident, consistent or sufficiently audacious tone.

First-time helmer Jan De Bont, the ace lenser of most of Paul Verhoeven's films as well as "Die Hard" and numerous other large-scale pix, handles the action with great nimbleness and dexterity; film can hardly be faulted for its visual presentation of very complex action.

A very earthbound comic fantasy, a racially flip-flopped "Heaven Can Wait" redo stuck in a purgatory with just enough meager laughs to keep it from a more fiery fate.

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.

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.

Unfortunately, the operative word is bland, as the newcomers don't add much to the formula, leaving it to their nemeses to enliven the proceedings. Narrative drive and humor are also in short supply, which creates a serious sagsag in the middle when the novelty of the fresh components has mostly worn off.

This is one vintage film that fully lives up to its classic status and should play with outstanding success to contemporary audiences of all ages.

Rebounding from his biggest career flopflop with "Havana," Sydney Pollack has done an ultra-pro job in giving spit and polish to this star-driven, sure-fire commercial project.

All smoke and mirrors. With his third straight excursion into the supernatural, M. Night Shyamalan has begun revealing the hand that works his spooky tricks so much that the lack of substance is plainly seen.

Just compare their superficiality to the complex characters in "From Here to Eternity" and what's missing here becomes terribly clear.

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.

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.

While the director's avid fans may be disappointed, upscalish mainstream auds, particularly women, will eat up this well-acted, emotionally focused adaptation of Jennifer Weiner's popular novel.

An irresistible treat with enough narrative twists and memorable characters for a half-dozen films.

The film is ultimately too glib in its suggestion that Hitler's discovering his career path was a matter of sheerest chance, even an accident.

Artistically pretentious, thematically fuzzy and almost sinister in its deterministic view of the human condition, this unusually ambitious and serious-minded major studio release is simply too negative in every possible way to find a receptive audience.

Has moments of power and imagination, but the overworked style and heavy socially conscious bent exude an off-putting sense of self-importance, making for a picture that's more of a chore than a pleasure to sit through.

Spielberg is such a talented director it’s a shame to see him lose all sense of subtlety and nuance.

The film is ice cold, never finding a way to invite the viewer into the story, and Richard Gere doesn't convince as a Jewish biblical scholar.

Streep single-handedly elevates this sitcomy but tolerably entertaining adaptation of Lauren Weisberger's bestselling 2003 roman a clef about a personal assistant's year of chic hell under the thumb of the dragon lady of the fashion world.

A handsome but pallid affair aimed squarely at a young Disney audience. Those who have never seen a previous "Musketeers" adaptation or a truly exciting Hollywood adventure in the grand style may be swept along, but the mechanical feel of this outing is too evident to ignore.

Begins as though the filmmakers imagine that they're making a daringly anti-p.c. serio-comedy, but long before it's over, the picture is wearing its bleeding liberal heart all over its sleeve.

Genre fans always looking for something new and awesome may feel like they've seen most of this before, but the conceptual and emotional strength of Summit's Nicolas Cage starrer largely carries the day.

Clever and jokey in a vaudeville sort of way, but lacks the heart and sheer imagination of the company's best work for Disney, "Toy Story 2" and "A Bug's Life."

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.

Nair's approach never entirely convinces, and the adaptation of the 900-plus-page book becomes increasingly episodic, making this Vanity Fair more a collection of intermittent pleasures than a satisfying emotional repast.

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.

A consistently amusing action romp.

The Ugly Truth is an arch, contrived, entirely predictable romantic comedy assembled with sufficient audience-friendly elements to put it over as both a good girls' night attraction and a date-night lure raunchy enough to leave couples in the right mood afterward.

Unfortunately, story's tension climaxes a half-hour before the film is over, and thereafter dissipates much of the charge and good will generated up to that point.

Arguably the most critic-proof picture of the decade, Barney's Great Adventure will delight everyone who can't wait to see it and be a grin-and-bear-it experience for those who must accompany members of the former group.

Amiable but no more, Bee Movie puts a hiveful of potent talent at the service of a zig-zigging, back-of-an-envelope story that's short on surprise and originality.

A very mild animated entry from Disney with a distinctly recycled feel.

The rough power, as well as the humor and sensitivity, of pop phenom Eminem is delivered intact in 8 Mile.

Made mainly by Yanks and New York-based Dominicans, the vibrant film bursts with local color and trades in very specific aspects of criminality, island-style.

Stephen Daldry's film is sensitively realized and dramatically absorbing, but comes across as an essentially cerebral experience without gut impact.

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

A flighty and unnecessary send-up of reality television.

Genuinely funny, randy and moving by turns, breezily enjoyable throughout.

A not-bad futuristic actioner with three or four astounding sequences, an unusual hero, a nifty villain and less mythic and romantic resonance than might be desired.

Could use a little extra comic poundage. The Farrelly brothers' latest sees the team tapping a sweeter, milder vein of humor than their outrageous norm.

The story of a veritable devil who comes to test and destroy a family of faith, The King is a noxious film morally and an aggravating one dramatically.

If you're going to ask an audience to sit through a three-hour, nine-minute rendition of an oft-told story, it would help to have a strong point of view on your material and an urgent reason to relate it. Such is not the case with Wyatt Earp, a handsome, grandiose gentleman's Western that tries to tell evenhandedly more about the famous Tombstone lawman than has ever before been put onscreen.

2 Days in the Valley will rank high on any list of films containing the greatest number of scenes in which people are threatened at gunpoint. Marked by a wearying amount of hostile and antisocial behavior by its criminal and civilian characters alike, writer-director John Herzfeld's debut outing features a measure of unexpected humor and some good character work by the ensemble cast.

The teasing tale is told with such dispatch it will carry willing audiences along; genre staples of action, macho attitude and corruption through the ranks are delivered intact.

Wickedly funny.

Errol Morris delivers a compelling, thoughtful and entirely involving documentary in The Fog of War.

Lively, sometimes funny and, inevitably, provocative.

The stylistic fun Stone has in dramatizing this crime of passion thoroughly revitalizes the well-worked genre.

Well made but unlikable and dramatically absurd picture.

Adaptation of Ian McEwan's 1997 novel takes a surprising number of liberties with the text, given the author's stature, but his name on the credits as associate producer would suggest his stamp of approval.

As computer game-derived features go, it sure beats "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider."

Notable for Kimberly Elise's ferocious lead performance and for the bigscreen exposure pic affords the charismatic Bishop T.D. Jakes, who plays himself and upon whose works the film is based.

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.

A flat-out hilarious mainstream comedy.

This entertaining confection possesses the substance of the TV show, the pacing of a Hong Kong actioner and the production values of a James Bond thriller.

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

Egoyan's pedantic, lecturing approach makes the film a bit of a slog, although the basic material has an intrinsic interest that makes one at least want to know more about the historical events.

It's hard to dislike a movie this light-hearted, but there's something terribly ephemeral about it as well; it's a film of complete weightlessness.

Feels like the most shameless effort yet in the renewed exploitation of the youth market.

An agreeable Middle American comedy intent upon reviving oldfashioned virtues, George Gallo's second feature doesn't serve up the big yocks needed to make it a breakout sleeper.

A genuinely ominous and suspenseful thriller.

Brolin's work is superlatively expressive of the inchoate impulses roiling inside his sorry character. But good as most of the cast is, the show belongs squarely to Penn.

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

An effervescent entertainment that marks a welcome return for "Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" director Stephan Elliott after a nine-year absence.

Amusingly eccentric rather than outright funny.

Outstandingly realized on all levels.

An overly abstract mystery about the difficulty of really knowing another person, "Dream Lover" is too rarefied for a popular thriller and too hokey for an art film. Directorial debut of notable screenwriter Nicholas Kazan displays more of an awareness of film's visual possibilities than a flair for them, and while there are any number of interesting ideas bouncing around here, pic falls between stools both artistically and commercially.

James Mangold's remake walks a fine line in retaining many of the original's qualities while smartly shaking things up a bit.

While pic remains sympathetic and appealing, the endless dialogue and repetitive settings become wearing through the couple's one long night together, and the artifice of the premise may contribute to the difficulty the film has in coming to romantic life.

As gooey and lacking in protein as a chocolate holiday bonbon, Valentine's Day plays like a feature-length commercial produced by the Friends of the Valentine Promotional Society.

The gradual dilution of fresh humor is further undercut by a queasy sense that the picture, in the end, is quietly endorsing all the psychoanalytical mumbo jumbo that it has been poking fun at all along.

A lightweight, modestly engaging yarn sporting reductive mystical and philosophical elements that are both valid and borderline silly.

What neophyte scripterscripter Jeff Maguire's plot comes down to, however, is the cat-and-mouse game between Horrigan and Leary, and the craftiness and strategies involved on both sides, while not exactly ingenious, are tantalizing enough to compel interest.

For Altman, this is a major statement about American hypocrisy and society’s haves and have-nots, in line with many of his films, but issued in a kind of offhand way that delivers only glancing emotional impact.

This hokey thriller reps what one can only hope will be a one-of-a-kind hybrid between a World War II actioner and a ghost story outfitted with innumerable false-alarm shock cuts and shot with enough colored lights and filters to delight Baz Luhrmann.

This handsome, not unappealing look at a Scottish legend of nearly 300 years ago is too solemn, wooden and dour for its own good, and feels oddly of another era.

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.

There is no one to become attached to in The Four Feathers, no interest or sympathies appealed to or engaged.

Nobody's Fool is a gentle, flavorsome story of a loose-knit, dysfunctional family whose members essentially include every glimpsed citizen of a small New York town. Fronted by a splendid performance from Paul Newman as a spirited man who has made nothing of his life, Robert Benton's character-driven film is sprinkled with small pleasures; the dramatic developments here don't take place in the noisy, calamitous manner that is customary these days.

A strange international odyssey that becomes more complicated and loony by the moment. Some viewers will undoubtedly tune out early, others will follow as far as they can -- and a privileged few might make it all the way.

A frothy, lightweight romantic comedy that strives to seem richer and more complex than it really is.

Jolting, superbly acted film.

Fukunaga refrains from artificially amping up excitement for its own sake, maintaining an intimate, observational style that offers up a host of things to look at and think about.

The constant repetition of these shock tactics, in lieu of genuine suspense, makes The Wolfman feel cheap, despite the vast amounts obviously spent on Rick Heinrichs' opulent production design, the extensive visual effects, the more-than-effective special makeup effects, Milena Canonero's luxurious costumes, Danny Elfman's insistent score and the tony cast.

In a very demanding role demanding a vast emotional range from clueless innocent to confident role player and emotional adventurer, Gyllenhaal is outstanding.

Montenegro carries the film su-perbly with her portrait of gritty strength being worn down to a state of tattered vulnerability, while newcomer de Oliveira, a shoeshine boy who won the role over 1,500 other aspirants, is engagingly natural and happily doesn't beg for viewer sympathy.

Without the pleasure of watching Cate Blanchett continue the role that launched her to stardom, there would be little to recommend this latest of many cinematic and television accounts of the celebrated monarch's life.

Conventional where it should be bold and mild where it should be wild, 10,000 BC reps a missed opportunity to present an imaginative vision of a prehistoric moment.

Narrative complexity and momentum make this a true cinematic equivalent of an absorbing page-turner.

Memories of dreary Sunday school classes come flooding back courtesy of The Nativity Story.

A blustery, bombastic, visually arresting account of the Battle of Thermopylae as channeled through the rabid imagination of graphic novelist Frank Miller.

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.

Lively and quite funny without being obnoxious, this follow-up smoothly mixes the original's New York Zoo escapees with a number of engaging new characters.

Loaded with pleasures, the greatest of which derive from the on location filming in Prague, the most 18th century of all European cities.

As smooth as a good mojito, as stylish as an Armani suit and as meaningful in the grand scheme of things as yesterday's Las Vegas betting odds, Ocean's Thirteen"continues the breezy good times of the first two series entries without missing a beat.

Daylight is a lower-echelon disaster thriller, in which the best character is knocked off early on and the leading man runs out of ideas with a third of the picture still to go. Noisy, technically proficient actioner about a group of people trapped in the Holland Tunnel after an explosion gets off a few decent blasts, but is just too limited in scope, imagination and excitement to burst out as a major B.O. winner domestically.

A great title in search of a movie to live up to it, this startlingly uneventful compendium of thick-headed boy-talk and female tolerance squanders a fine cast on incredibly ordinary characters and situations.

Another tale of out-of-it working-class men cooking up a harebrained scheme to improve their lot in life.

A weighty and deeply intriguing look at the many-tentacled beast that is the international oil industry. Wide-ranging and restlessly probing, Stephen Gaghan's second directorial effort uses the same mosaic storytelling technique as in his Oscar-winning screenplay for "Traffic."

Careens from decade to decade, and from relative dramatic realism to frequent hilarity, in often-winning fashion.

More numbing than exciting.

Carlos Lopez Estrada’s debut feature brandishes brash exuberance and stilted storytelling tropes in roughly equal measure, yielding a result that stimulates just as it cheapens itself dramatically.

Brandishes the sort of intelligent wit and bracing nastiness that will make it more appealing to discerning adults than to teens who just want to have fun.

A compelling look at the great cinematographer Haskell Wexler by his photojournalist son Mark.

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.

An ideal rainy day matinee attraction for well-to-do ladies of a certain age.

None of the characters is given much depth or meaningful backgrounding, leaving the capable thesps with plenty of anguish and emotion to play but not much else.

A self-described abstinence comedy that is funny, sexy and silly in equal measure.

Sophisticated, sexy and stylishly decked out, Rob Marshall's disciplined, tightly focused film impresses and amuses.

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 sense of strain envelops the proceedings this time around. One can feel the effort required to suit up one more time, come up with fresh variations on a winning formula and inject urgency into a format that basically needs to be repeated and, due to audience expectations, can't be toyed with or deepened very much.

A dramatic situation that should be wrenching is mostly tedious in Reservation Road.

A somber, absorbing thriller that treads familiar psycho serial killer terrain with style. Elegantly made and comparatively restrained in cramming sick and grisly stuff down the audience's throat.

Even if the film itself is relatively conventional, its exposure of a squalid city's most benighted neighborhood and its introduction of hope into nearly hopeless lives give it strong human interest value.

The wealth of behavioral detail and observational humor make for some rewarding drama that will resonate with many viewers.

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

George Lucas has reached deep into the trove of his self-generated mythological world to produce a grand entertainment that offers a satisfying balance among the series' epic, narrative, technological and emotional qualities.

A high-energy performance by Richard Gere and an intensely brooding one from Lena Olin engage attentive viewer interest, but the stars are forced to overcompensate for a rather slow pace and lack of plot.

A modern immorality tale with a keen, observant edge.

As a study of stasis and of people conscious of not living the lives they had imagined for themselves, the picture offers a bracing undertow of seriousness beneath the deceptively casual, dramatically offhand surface.

A noxious little tale of Wall Street types whose amorality knows no limit, Rick takes smarmy knowingness to ludicrous extremes.

A tense, sharply made thriller about a family held hostage during a river rafting vacation.

Well-crafted but thoroughly unsuspenseful.

Entertaining and fabulously imaginative in many ways, this second bigscreen rendition of the late author's modest morality tale on the wages of unbridled excess sports excesses of its own.

A wannabe horror classic that turns deadly dull once the sense of anxious expectation wears off.

But the filmmakers have invigorated and enriched the story through the use of a thousand details, a strong sense of time and place, outstanding characterizations and a display of energy and cinematic flair that marks an advance on "My Left Foot."

The picture comes up short in several departments, notably in pacing and in giving a strong sense of why this man became such a legend.

Technically superb and witty in an old-fashioned, veddy British way that will delight many adults but will sail over the heads of young audiences.

Tries to mix the messy realities of mismatched relationships with the structural neatness of a musical-comedy view of the world, with mild, occasionally diverting results.

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

Disappointingly, Death of a President shrinks from its promise as a piece of genuinely radical or adventurous speculative fiction.

Generates tension from the get-go, albeit of an increasingly unpleasant variety, on its way to a disappointingly generic climax.

Dennis the Menace isn't really appropriate for anyone over the age of 12. Very young children may find the numskull, by-the-numbers gags here amusing, but teens will consider this kids' stuff and adults will be pained.

A superbly wrought yarn set in the milieu of first-generation Russian mobsters in London that is simultaneously tough-minded and compassionate about the human condition, Eastern Promises instantly takes its place among David Cronenberg's very best films.

More than anything a fascinating portrait of how much New York has changed in 35 years, the film delivers the goods in excitement and big-star charisma.

A very vulgar pro-faith comedy rather than a sacrilegious goof, Dogma is an extraordinarily uneven film.

Few pretty actresses have so thoroughly discarded their vanity in an outright vanity piece as Jenny McCarthy does in Dirty Love, so it's unfortunate for her this exercise in comic self-abnegation, which she wrote for herself, falls so awfully flat.

Staccato, Mamet-style dialogue exchanges, breathless pacing and remarkably healthy, well-fed-looking actors create a cumulative sense of artificiality that seriously undercuts the devastating effect clearly being sought.

Pushes its dark, smart, clever, cynical, satirical, nasty, provocative and sarcastic instincts to the point of heavily diminished returns -- to the point where the very amusing premise just isn't funny anymore.

Awfully lame bigscreen debut for pop diva Britney Spears.

Opulently produced, fittingly enough, and quite entertaining as a surface ride through the up, down and somewhat up again life of one of the New Hollywood's most colorful characters.

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

Handsome, respectable and well cast, elaborate production lacks the excitement and magic that would elevate the film to beloved status, and sheer abundance of CGI work weighs on it too heavily.

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."

Harmless tale of the giant pooch helping out some itinerant performing animals while longing for home will go down smoothly with the preschool faithful, but anyone over 5 will feel antsy even given the brief running time.

Cage supplies beaucoup energy, but his highly compromised hustler cop character provides little else in which he can invest his talent. Sinise wears an increasingly grim demeanor in a part that comes to make no sense, and John Heard's role as a local power broker gets lost in the shuffle.

Spawn is a moodily malevolent, anything-goes revenge fantasy that relies more upon special visual and digitally animated effects for its intended appeal than any comics-derived sci-fier to date.

Unfortunately, after a relatively promising warmup, pic actually proceeds to flatten out the characters in the latter sections and to make them less dimensional and interesting than they initially seemed.

This butterfly just doesn't fly. Icy, surprisingly conventional and never truly convincing.

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

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.

Just two weeks after successfully targeting boys with "Holes," Disney is giving girls something they want with this mild, quasi-romantic romp.

A lot of talent on both sides of the camera operating in low gear.

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.

Lusterless trifle.

Visually resplendent but dramatically uneven.

Chick agreeably captures the feel and flow of on-the-move young professionals in New York.

Shrill, strenuous and entirely without charm, Ron Howard's attempt at a Christmas classic is an elaborately wrapped empty box that will fool many people into buying it but will not greatly please its recipients.

Reasonably intelligent, well-crafted and dramatically understated.

Executed to near perfection in all artistic departments, this superior adaptation of the perennial favorite novel will find its core public among girls , but should prove satisfying enough to a range of audiences to make it a solid performer for Warner Bros.' family entertainment banner.

Universal’s attempt to find gold by bringing to new life one of the mustier items in its vaults is pure hokum and scarcely of the first order.

A half-broken adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's great modern Western novel. Neither dull nor exciting.

You can virtually see the mystique peeling away while beholding the turgid melodrama, patchy plotting, windy dialogue and, yes, spectacular combat effects of this grand finale.

An ultra-smart-mouthed comedy about a planned adoption that goes weirdly awry.

A well-upholstered but hopelessly contrived romantic comedy, Picture Perfect is too ineffectual to tickle either the funnybone or the heartstrings.

Robin Williams and Billy Crystal can each provoke a lot more laughs in a minute of standup than they jointly manage during the entire running time of Fathers' Day.

Grant carries the day as the fortysomething lad still living off his youth and just about getting away with it.

Misses its comic targets as often as it hits them but is endearing all the same for the good-natured cheer with which it skewers the eminently skewerable.

Towelhead is transgressive without being effectively subversive, gutsy to no particular end. It simply lacks style, which counts for so much in this sort of thing.

A dazzling delight.

Artistically on a plane with or near the vet filmmaker's best work, this period drama about a woman slowly discovering her metier is an artisanal creation par excellence.

Graced with well-chosen location eye candy, Tom Tykwer's biggest production to date is proficient but lacks the added tension and characterization to put it anywhere near the top tier of contempo action suspensers.

From a filmmaking point of view, this is a work that the old Hollywood moguls themselves would have been proud to present.

A simple repast consisting of sometimes strained slapsticky comedy, a sweet romance and a life lesson learned, this little picnic doesn't amount to much but goes down easily enough.

More gentle and modestly insightful than it is exhilarating or revelatory.

An immediately involving yarn of an ace Marine sharpshooter set up to take the fall for an attempted presidential assassination, picture saddles itself with stereotypical villains, hokey contrivances and too-expedient crisis solutions.

The novelty value is completely gone the second time around.

Baker does an amazingly sensitive job with the ticklish part and is joined in this by Read, who is superlative as his inquisitive young son.

As dull and arid as a hike through the desert.

Given that the story’s trajectory isn’t very surprising, it’s up to the character details and local color to imbue it with life, and in this the film largely succeeds.

007 is undone by villainous scripting and misguided casting and acting in a couple of key secondary roles.

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

By getting Tyson to open up as he has, Toback has succeeded in illuminating one of the most polarizing, complex and -- the film almost forces one to admit -- misunderstood figures of our time.

Overall, the filmmakers’ take on the subject is highly esoteric and fails to suggest either why Wild Bill has remained such a famous figure, or the irony in the fact that he has done so.

This unlikely collaboration between actors Stanley Tucci and Campbell Scott is extremely well directed, making for a smartly made, delightfully acted period piece whose sensibility neatly straddles art films and the mainstream.

Beautifully made production lacks the emotional depth and dramatic tension needed to command audience attention beyond the level of a talented curiosity.

Undeniably funny, outrageous and boundary-pushing, this further documentation of Sacha Baron Cohen's sheer nerve will draw an abundant share of "Borat" fans.

For geeks, action freaks and sensation-seeking teenage boys of all ages, the price of admission will provide a one-way ticket to hard-boiled heaven.

Sheer energy and audience allure to burn, even if numerous speed bumps cause many of the comic possibilities to go tumbling overboard.

Nunez achieves a rare, and rarely earned, emotional depth that rewards the moderate demands he makes on contemporary viewers' short attention spans.

A self-indulgent drama about a Harlem drug kingpin trying to go straight, Sugar Hill plays like a dreary variation on New Jack City.