Wesley Morris

Tom Six's movie has the freakiness and sadism of its genre, but it's so heavy with self-appreciation -- Dude, we had the craziest premise for a movie! -- that it can't lift off into the perverse ecstasy of decent exploitation. That was also the problem with "Snakes on a Plane.''

A monumentally graceful union of two extremely dissimilar stars, one inspired cinematographer and an exceptionally patient, curious, independent-minded director.

Another gorgeous and immensely satisfying reminder that there are few better directors than Téchiné when it comes to capturing the vagaries of the heart.

Nothing momentous happens here, but Philibert has a magical sense of how to find the simple poetry lurking in the universal routine of being a kid. A lot of the film's lyricism is extracurricular.

Like so many of these farm-raised films, this one looks polished, but takes no risks, offers no surprises, and contains a final sequence that's laughable for its lack of courage.

Between fights, the film can't even rely on the luxury of Lindo, Isaiah Washington, Russell Wong, Rottweiler rapper DMX or the scary Henry O as Han's father to make it watchable - the dialogue is wreaking more havoc than Li.

The movie fails to conjure the wonder of the Ray Bradbury short story that inspired it.

A triptych whirling on a Lazy Susan of revolving character perspectives.

For kids strung out on Anthony Horowitz's 007-lite adventure series, this maiden adaptation is a pleasant enough diversion from having to flip the pages.

A patient, suspenseful exercise in genre craftsmanship

The idea is to share with us that this show happened. But gluttons for these artists and for music festivals in general might wonder, as I have, whether there's any way the filmmakers might share more of the remaining 123 1/2 hours.

Breaks new ground both as an abominable enterprise in guy-talk and as no-budget hackwork.

A lot of the credit for what's right with 'The 40-Year-Old Virgin goes to the screenplay, which Carell and Apatow wrote. They like these characters and, when it matters, they dare to give them feelings, none truer than Andy's.

Burton, who directed the film with animator Mike Johnson, has rarely been in brisker, friskier form.

Moore can't help but be rotten. She has no grace and little nuance, which is why she's always best as a hard-ass in movies.

It's an interesting, if dissatisfying rumination on the working people of industry -- how they labor, how they rest, what they think and feel.

The movie sets Ferrell's assaultive and juvenile physical comedy in a less-combative playground, and the result might leave the Ferrell-intolerant exiting the theater on a high.

Nathaniel fares well with his father's fellow masters, although Frank Gehry seems evasive.

This movie brings to mind much better cable TV shows like the marijuana comedy "Weeds,’" the one-on-one psychodramas of "In Treatment," and the astonishingly cinematic "Breaking Bad."

The endearing and cheeky ensemble works hard, and Ken Scott's script finds ways of wringing irreverence from the apparent good nature of the situation.

Studding your movie with friends, admirers, and sycophants is having a ball; it does not bring us to question the illusory power of cinema or the politics of entertainment.

He doesn't just kill a good buzz. He bludgeons it.

There is much to learn from Picasso and Braque Go to the Movies. First, a wealth of sharp professorial minds and great artistic eyes is no guarantee of equivalent documentary moviemaking. Second, when making a sort of thesis statement, it helps to have a thesis.

What Little Children understands so well, and so poignantly, is a kind of parental existentialism that hits 30- somethings with kids: How does having children make you such a less interesting adult?

Urban and Bloodgood make the most of their parts, locking eyes and arms, and occasionally using American English as if the snowy 10th century were another way of saying, "Where the après ski?"

I Stand Alone has the ghastly stink of a rotting corpse. You can smell the cess as clearly as you can see the blood vessels striking like lightning around the pupils of its malefactor's eyes.

It's a glimmering hunk of fractured brilliance riddled with Orwellian paranoia encased in a production design seemingly pieced together from the shared dreams of Franz Kakfa and Salvador Dali, and shot from cruelly low angles.

These movies are more about the experience of hearing girls and women who should know better holler at the screen. They could just as well be at a concert.