Tom Keogh

Pali Road — an engrossing psychological thriller with a trapped damsel’s very sanity on the line — demonstrates how an enigmatic story can unabashedly overflow with disorienting puzzles and perverse twists, all for the sake of blurring the line between reality and illusion.

Brother Nature at least enjoys moments of deep-end mania from Killam and Moynihan.

Perhaps in an effort to tell a PG story about an all-ages storyteller, Te Ata lacks vitality, pulling its punches and sometimes resorting to a cheesy shorthand. (A scene featuring Greene’s reservation leader and a racist senator is especially cheap.) Despite that, Te Ata lingers in the memory as a tale of an artist’s promise — and fulfillment.

Bell can sculpt a funny moment to polished realization, but deprive it of oxygen at the same time. It’s not until late in the film’s third act that a different feeling emerges, a looser hand that provides room for characters to be more warm and human than pieces in a constricted design.

The effects never really get ahead of the characters or the script's layered personality.

The film's light success really comes down to Shannon, though, the exuberant "SNL" star whose alter ego actually seems more real and sympathetic here than she does in brief TV skits.

Doesn't go the distance in either story or style, unwilling to liberate itself from real or presumed expectations about what it takes to sell a movie featuring teenagers.

Look to the cast as the best reason to see this film.

If you're paying close attention, there is reason enough to find Up at the Villa a fascinating experience, almost an experiment in some ways, but it's not a fully realized work of cinema.

About two lives in which transformation is a constant, destabilizing threat to freedom and sanity. That's a very provocative premise, though halfway through the movie Doyle and Walsh abandon its potential to go for easy laughs.

It is an ostensibly serious story about being young and struggling to wrest control over one's life from the hands of fools, yet it doesn't behave like a serious drama that wants to lead us anywhere.

All fleeting charm where it could have been one of the most memorable films of the decade.

Jim Carrey is magnificent as Kaufman.

The true star of this film, funny and often breathtakingly lovely, Zellweger carries virtually every scene in which she appears -- which aren't nearly as plentiful as one might like.

A mixed bag, all in all (casting Huey Lewis was not the best idea), but worth seeing.

Streep delivers another of her chameleon-like transformations in appearance, accent, and manner.

The film is simplicity itself.

Shaft is a decent popcorn movie and Jackson rises to the responsibility of appearing bigger than life.

It does yield solidly comic performances.

Comes across as a deceptively streamlined comic-drama; an unnervingly violent, gritty film noir with a wink.

The would-be emotional centerpiece of his three-hours-plus adventure flick is the most juvenile romantic tale of 1997.

This is still Ron Shelton in good -- not great, but good -- form here, and the rewards are plentiful.

What the film doesn't have, ironically, is a soul.

A dark comedy that squanders its potential and never quite, as they say, suspends disbelief.

Simply a case of severe overreaching and the illusion that an overstuffed movie is an epic movie.

Ripped works best as a middling series of gags about being far too many tokes over the line.

Despite promising elements of mixed-genre thrills, the film is finally the underwhelming sum of too many plot devices.

An authentically spirited popcorn movie.

Ross might have been better served by dismissing verisimilitude altogether and going for a real fable-fable to make what is essentially a very simple point about the dangers and rewards of accepting life's beautiful risks.

The filmmakers went for cheap laughs as well as for some a little harder-earned. The only thing pure about this film is the dog, and he's magnificent.

The story, ultimately, is about the classic conflict between a desire to cherish and protect one's unique gifts from a brutal world and a more practical instinct to compromise beauty.

The film’s bleached colors and Reeves’ trademark woodenness add to its emotional remoteness, though Basso, Zellweger and Belushi create a convincing family in crisis. Zellweger, especially, delivers a fascinating, complex performance as a damaged survivor.

Once at sea, The Perfect Storm collapses in a heap of spectacle and a dubious piling-on of scary incidents.

While we may like what we see, it's impossible to comprehend what much of it means or why we should care.

The script by Liu Zhenyun becomes ponderous and redundant, kept on oxygen by its lead actress’s complex performance as a child-woman with enigmatic wisdom.

Lawrence's style is purely will-it-stick-the-wall-or-not, and when it doesn't he looks pretty puny up there on the big screen.

The Charnel House is watchable, even if you can tell very soon what’s really going on behind mysterious doings.

All such good intentions collapse by the third act, when Mission to Mars becomes a tediously late pastiche of chimerical nonsense from the early 1980s.

In the tradition of "Sunrise" and "Eyes Wide Shut," crises set the characters on a kind of dreamy, nocturnal journey through chaos and fear.

Not a waste of time, but not quite in control of its destination.

So mired in his own ludicrous equation for contemporary action pictures that it's constantly stuck in first gear.

When Phillips is out of the zone, however, Road Trip slows down, awaiting another redemption.

This is a pretty leaden cinematic experience.

For Stallone, and his original script for Driven reflects a more mature, self-effacing perspective.

Rounders is more involved with the insulated, arcane world of a gambler than it is with the things that actually make a movie work, such as characters and relationships and a script that connects all its dots.

The film's very premise, while initially promising, doesn't hold up to lengthy scrutiny.

This much-anticipated but terribly underwhelming black comedy represents a seriously squandered opportunity.

Rob Schneider's stab at an "Ace Ventura"-like gamble for stardom.

That’s a lot for a viewer to take in, and as pleasing as some aspects of Your Name can be, there’s no question Shinkai’s overstuffed movie often trips over itself.

The basics of Draper’s story hold promise, but the film derails because Jack and Oliver just aren’t charming as social pariahs.

Despite the stakes, Mendeluk can’t scare up any particular urgency, largely because everything is so contrived and inauthentic.

Can anyone but a lapsed Catholic possibly be interested in this unpleasant, anti-Papist creepshow?

Gun Shy can't rise on wobbly legs, and its real potential is lost for good.

Looks plain silly without an appropriate tone or sustaining context.

Pours on some of the most ridiculous dialogue heard in a feature film in a long time.

Overpraised, intellectually soft, narratively unfocused, and thematically ambivalent.

In all, this film is a major disappointment with a few powerful highlights.

It's a complete drag.

An excruciating misfire.

Don't be surprised if you exit Here On Earth feeling both moved and incredulous.

As with most non-Disney animated features, Trumpet of the Swan does make the Mouse look like a genius.

What we have here is a small story in an oversized setting.

Heckerling fails to crack the outer shell of the story and its key relationships.

The collapse of Office Space's second half is so egregious that one can't help but suspect Judge's Achilles heel may be his writing. It's not that he can't write -- it's just that his ideas tend to shine better within a pool of fellow scribes, as proven in his television career.

Watching Left Behind's plodding screen adaptation may make you feel the Deity has already abandoned us to a shockingly dull post-apocalypse.

There's a lost opportunity here.

Nearly incomprehensible story.

It's insulting and devalues the experience of watching not just this film but all films.

Looks and moves like a film whose vital organs were yanked before shooting commenced.

A painfully unfunny movie.

I don't like Say It Isn't So, but I understand its karmic inevitability.

It's sporadically funny but often unfunny, the latter worse than not being funny enough.

Dreadful suspense piece that has "Mystery Science Theater" appeal written all over it.

Custom-made for an audience of mouth-breathers.

Could have afforded to be a little loftier and still be quite funny. Instead, it's a waste.

D’Souza manipulates viewers’ passions while telling them who to blame for their bile. As for Hillary, D’Souza asserts she wants to nationalize all our industries and steal all our money. His lack of evidence undercuts his message.

I would rather have been scraping gum off my shoe than sitting there another minute.

A black comedy that never gets black enough to inspire Farrelly-style decadence.

A sequel from hell.

Merely reconfigures the same predictable gross-out jokes, sentimental platitudes, and decorative sex that figure into half the screenplays in circulation.

This is pretty much a lazy film with a few lighthearted moments and no substance.

God-awful.

We don't even have Joe Eszterhas to blame for this one.

We're forced to listen to misogynistic rantings devoid of wit, entertainment value, or even authenticity.

The film isn't merely bungled. It's starved and battered by Lichtenstein.