A visual tour-de-force; it's just that there's not much else to sink your teeth into once the pretty colors fade from view.

Well worth seeing if you have even the slightest interest in guns and sex and the interplay between the two (and who doesn't?), Burnt Money also has, you'll forgive the pun, style to burn.

The pictures are gorgeous, and the words, well, if you listen hard enough, the words say exactly what one needs to hear: that is, to wake up and live.

Pulls out every stop to fool the eye.

The splendid performance by Sobieski, who ends her long run as industry-mag buzz princess and arrives as a full-fledged star.

The only actors who walk away unscathed are Kattan -- the best thing in a very bad movie -- and former cover girl Shaw.

Relax, sit tight, and enjoy the ride.

A must for any Deadhead and of genuine interest to any music fan, even if its documentary chops hit a few sour notes.

Dahl, who really does know what he's doing when it comes to investing a scene with both heebies and jeebies, is a notch or two above most.

It's kinda funny and pretty cute. Sometimes that's all it takes.

A razor-wire-taut (and extremely violent) exploration of what happens when good guys go bad, badder, baddest.

A frenetic affair, busy and silly enough to make family froth like "The Princess Diaries" look like Grand Illusion.

Doesn't necessarily make for a crowdpleasing experience, though it is a provocative and uncomfortably authentic one.

Its warm humor and love for its characters ultimately wins us over to its side.

A pleasant and often surprising ensemble dramedy set almost entirely within the walls of a busy, fashionable Tribeca trattoria on a spectacularly busy Tuesday night.

I had looked forward to seeing King's low men and their hideous yellow coats and monstrous high-finned automobiles, but what we've got here is less King than Goldman, and less fun to boot.

Zoolander's consistent, blissful stupidity is a comic, mental Xanax, soothing in its gormless sense of inspired wack.

Murphy's screentime takes a back seat to Douglas', of course, but from that back seat she makes a very big noise.

Unforgivably tedious tale.

As usual with anime features, just because it's animated doesn't mean it's for kids; heads roll and blood spurts, so know that going in, mom and dad. For the older crowd, though, it's gory and gorgeous bliss.

Never devolves into the type of “man's man” adventure story that has become so fashionable again over the last couple of years, but instead trusts the power of its unembellished images and words to tell its tale.

Barely even worthy of a straight-to-video release, as simplistic and silly as it is.

Assure Patient, who has paranoid delusions about Jennifer Lopez being molded into the new M______ C_____, to rest easy because Lopez has never made a film as bad as Glitter.

No doubt this effort will find its fans, as it should, but there's a lot of lost potential.

It is truly one of the year's dumbest movies.

When the boys are tossing balls around and bopping in time to Notorious B.I.G., they -- and the film -- are right-on.

Unspeakably awful.

A paradox, balancing the contradictions and ambiguities of its characters and setting with a careful hand that rarely falters, even though the film seems dramatically thin at times.

A bracing ode to the city -- a place of aching beauty and poverty, encompassed by a disconcerting halo of ancient culture and modern nihilism.

It's a goofy, tongue-in-cheek, my-gawd-how-could-we-be-so-dumb shrine, but a shrine nonetheless.

A satisfying Cinderella story in which its outcast crew finally get their glass slippers, if not handsome princes. In the greatest of storytelling traditions, it is a true fairy tale with a happy ending.

There's a deep, bone-weary melancholy to the proceedings, offset by the mad parties and vicious displays of machismo.

If "The Others" is this year's paean to “quiet” horror, then Jeepers Creepers is its down 'n' dirty, punk rock, rip-your-throat-out-and-feed-it-to-you bastard child.

Only a quite over-the-top character played by Raquel Welch strikes any false note. Otherwise, Tortilla Soup is a real chef's special.

Prinze, Lillard, and Biel are all pleasant enough to look at, but the film's Romeo and Juliet tropes are shopworn by now, and the movie gives us nothing else.

Together's portrait of its social moment is right-on.

It keeps you off balance, all right, but not enough to obscure the sad fact that Ghosts of Mars is a muddled, derivative disaster straight on through.

Scorpion fails to connect on anything but the most basic comic level. Despite Allen's usual excellent direction, it all plays like a TV-movie version of something else, Allen-lite.

Gleefully silly fun, with a few core concepts on the nature of time, space, and la-la-la-love thrown in for good measure. And who can resist a puffin, anyway?

It's hit-or-miss comedy of the very broadest sort, but those who groove on deciphering obscure film-geek in-jokes will find their work more than cut out for them.

It's a shame if the controversy surrounding Bubble Boy distracts people from what a smart, subversive, and genuinely good-hearted film it is.

The originality of Innocence makes it stand apart from the romantic pack.

Instead of true grit and gutshot black-hatters, director Les Mayfield has crafted what may well be the world's first Tommy Hilfiger Western.

Neither a badly miscast Cage nor an oddly dispassionate Cruz remotely suggest the ardor of love's passion.

Has an unerring eye for the banal intricacies of 1950s pre-planned suburban neighborhoods, à la Levittown.

A delight when its comic elements are in high gear.

It's all patently ridiculous, but it's also ridiculously fun.

A spare, discomfiting score and uniformly excellent performances, and you have a quiet little masterpiece of dark and chilling beauty.

The ideas are there, hints of genius, but no one ignites them. Add Osmosis Jones to that list of universal enigmas, and, more specifically, how the Farrelly Brothers could have done so little with so much.

Swinton is heartbreaking. She's not just craft; she's high art.

Audition's take on the war between the sexes is bleak and almost entirely devoid of hope. --It's enough to make you give up dating altogether.

It's not nearly as mediocre a two hours as the trailers would have you think.

Great fun to watch, thoughtful and timely, Thomas in Love is likely to generate some decidedly interesting post-film conversations as well.

The performances are likable and there's nothing really wrong with the story -- other than the fact that Nutley hardly has any story to tell.

Critic-proof moviemaking, a candy pink wish-fulfillment fantasy prominently peppered with pubescent pop platters.

Summertime popcorn pictures don't get much goofier than this silly sequel, which is everything you'd expect and nothing you wouldn't.

Such gorgeous explosions, such a terrible vision, such an amazing work of art. Go. Now.

And then there's the overacting. And then there's the hamminess of the script. And then there's

The Monkey's Mask is filmed with an eye toward an arthouse sheen, although Lang's dramatic pacing is sluggish and dull.

Simply put, Burton's film lacks the social and political gravitas of the original, a film that was wholly of its time.

It's an endearing romantic daydream, but misses the bus where matters of reality are concerned.

Big, dumb, and fun.

Its doomed portrait of guileless dreamers may be found lacking in plot activity and empathetic characters. But for anyone interested in a movie that wipes clean the grungy patina of self-delusionment, Jackpot hits solid pay dirt.

The tone of the film is in keeping with its most resounding image: Hilynur lying in the snow with a cigarette dangling from his mouth as the suicide note on his chest blows away in the wind as he wakes up.

At its heart the film wants nothing more than to make you giggle, and at that it succeeds admirably.

It's rougher stuff than most would expect, though not unrewarding in its own horrific way.

A screen spectacle that beseeches its audience for adoration and mass acceptance.

Ghost World resists convenient closures and summaries and some may take issue with its open-endedness. But anything else would have been phony, and Enid would never have stood for it.

When a cell-phone gag is the most exciting or inventive thing in a big summer dinosaur movie, you have to wonder if the species might not be ready for extinction.

Totally in the distance is the memory of "Swingers," whose hipster goof has been replaced by a stupid goof. This may be what is meant by the “dumbing down of America.”

Somewhere in that chirpy half-pint frame dwell some meaty comic chops. Goldie Hawn may have found her successor.

If it weren't so rivetingly realistic, it would be an easy film to dismiss. And if it weren't so easily dismissible, it would be an easy film to defend.

You get the sense that this elegant, tough-guy jazz caper is a movie Clint Eastwood might have been proud to make.

Unlike anything you've ever seen before, Final Fantasy is, finally, one for the history books, and tremendous fun to boot. It makes Lara Croft look like an old maid.

This is a garish, rocket-fueled slice of popcorn mayhem, and the perfect antidote to this summer's limp action lineup.

The magnificence of the film's pieces does not quite add up to a satisfying whole.

Isn't much more than a self-indulgent picture about the feeble delirium of a lovesick girl -- lightweight stuff that labors to seem terribly important.

The performances are extremely good, and the tone maintains a droll continuity throughout.

Inoffensive fun that kids will love and adults will likely love too, it's a middle of the road affair, but a far cry from roadkill.

The whole thing reeks of sequelitis, with an emphasis on the rude and crude.

It doesn't have the bite to be satire, the pratfalls to be broad comedy, or the wit to pass as a comedy of manners. What does that leave? The French cinematic equivalent of motivational coaching, and -- just like Pignon -- something spectacularly unspectacular.

Dull and unfunny claptrap.

Movingly captures the terrors and delights of being lovesick at 17. Would that it hadn't felt constrained to target only the 17-year-olds.

What we're left with -- Kubrick or no -- is a muddled, messy disaster of a film, something that seems more like a drastically edited miniseries, cut down to incomprehensible levels with whole sections missing.

If the sensitive coming-of-age love story is a well-worn tradition in gay cinema, Come Undone is at the very least a superior example of it.

As fluid and intellectually stimulating as the man himself, a tragic, heartfelt take on an event some 40 years old that feels as fresh as yesterday's Times.

It's a gorgeous albeit depressing mess, as distancing and despairing as a realpolitik wipeout.

Tykwer ends the film on a bizarre note that caught me off guard, a too-literal bit of salvation that is more bothersome than revelatory.

At its best, Dr. Dolittle 2 is an inoffensive mish-mash of cute talking animals and their somewhat less-than-cute human buddies.

Pure, unadulterated teen exploitation filmmaking at its best -- a heady, rocketing blast of fast cars, loud hip-hop, and a script so cheesy it might as well have “Made in Wisconsin” stamped on it.

To paraphrase Nathan McCall, this film makes you wanna holler.

Yes, this is the stuff of fiction, where individuals can drift in and out of another's life and make extraordinary, unbelievable things happen.

Bluegrass fans should have few complaints about this stellar concert film.

It's all infuriatingly simplistic, and the performances help matters little. Quinn and McTeer are wholly uncompelling.

The game is great fun -- the movie ought to be taken out back and shot.

It smarts, and shocks, and just for a moment blows your mind.

The eye candy can't quite compensate for the murky mess of a plot.

The jokes just aren't there, which makes it very hard for the stars -- who are trying very, very hard -- to really make a dent.