These scenes of debauchery and lust that make up the film's centerpiece are among some of the most powerful and disturbing ever put to film.

Ingenious in its simplicity.

A fairly uninspired, albeit entertaining, Muppet movie that falls short of the original outing from Jim Henson's creature shop while still managing to bring in a few lesser chuckles.

Amidst the rubble of political rhetoric that underlies Arlington Road, one thing is clear: The enemy is us.

A go-for-the-lowest-common-denominator grab bag of raunchy sex gags and freakish outbursts. The cool thing is that it works.

An intelligent, viscerally kinetic throw-down, a jolt of pure adrenalized Spike that holds more than a few touches of genius in its overripe storyline.

The script by S.S. Wilson and Brent Maddock (Ghost Dad) is so jumbled and the direction so chaotic that it's often hard to tell what's going on -- where, when, and why.

Gross-out funny, over-the-top offensive, and just as amusing -- or idiotic -- as you find that Comedy Central sitcom.

A laugh-aloud film that exemplifies the snap-crackle-pop of exquisite comic timing.

For Sandler's core audience of developmentally arrested males, it may all be a little too cute.

Although the villainous parts of this Tarzan are a bit hazy and the animal attraction between Tarzan and Jane a bit chaste, the film, nevertheless, works both for children and the adults.

This big-screen version of Wilde's stylish match of deceit and honor, loyalty and betrayal, is more parry than thrust.

The rush subsides, however, the minute the movie ends, and leaves the viewer with the faint aftertaste of a processed sugar high.

Highly recommended for graduate psychology students in aberrant sexuality, but others can probably skip sans regret.

There's no denying the fact that Jackson is woefully miscast here, and as a result spends much of his time struggling to define his role as a “serious” collector of objets d'art in this muddled-though-gorgeous omnibus film.

It's all fab, baby, a kicky, wiggy sequel that scores on all levels, from the sexy to the sublime.

Buena Vista Social Club is obviously intended less as a concert film than as a set of cinematic liner notes about the vanishing musical culture.

There's plenty of solid, intelligent content here to stir the mind and heart, assuming you're able to overlook the distinctly patronizing presentation.

Excellent performances and the steadying camerawork of Haskell Wexler make Limbo a supremely engaging work, but this place to which Sayles condemns his viewers is just one rung removed from Purgatory.

Fumbles on so many levels it's just plain silly. To paraphrase the film's tagline: The Thirteenth Floor: You can go there, but why would you want to?

Funny, bright, sly, and unabashedly romantic, Notting Hill combines fluffy, fairy-tale fantasy with big laughs, snappy dialogue, and small moments of pain and unease to create a surprisingly satisfying two hours.

This is a gutsy, oddly inspiring film that embodies both the risks and rewards of artistic boldness.

If you can tune into its somber, hypnotic wavelength, you may be surprised at the raw emotional impact it delivers in key scenes, and at its ability to provoke your imagination long afterward.

The entire film is curiously soulless, with major characters making their entrances and exits (some of which are unexpectedly final) as if they were breezing in from some other screening next door.

For my money the most gloriously, enchantingly trivial play in the Shakespearean canon, A Midsummer Night's Dream may also be the most screwup-proof of the bard's works.

Franco Zeffirelli's contrived autobiographical film about his youth in fascist Italy has little social grace -- it's embarrassingly awkward, like a dilettante playing the doyenne.

Contemplative, though riddled with humor, After Life reveals itself gradually.

Make no mistake -- this Mummy is an effects film all the way.

Green and Henson make an inspired comic team, Sawa has the befuddled stoner thing down pat, and Alba is, in a word, yummy.

Mamet's dialogue is still on the mark, rapid-fire, and as cutting as an antique straight razor.

If it's a good heist movie you're after, there are surely better ways to go than with this limp caper.

It's a glorious mess, though, with genuine bits of comic genius strewn amidst the rubble, not unlike a plane crash in its own way.

An inoffensive, eminently forgettable bit of fluff.

In the game of eXistenZ it's not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game.

A fine, near-seamless film that finally suffers slightly from an inability to wrap up its tale.

This Life may not be everlasting, but it sure gives us a good run for our money.

Merendino's film is lacking the streamlined cohesion it needs to spike itself in your cortex as hoped, but it is about as accurate a punk film as I've seen in some time, especially when it comes to the horrors and boredoms of small-scene life.

Rare two-for-one Chan special.

Relentless and mercurial, this new outing by "Swingers" director Liman takes off somewhere around Mach 3 and never lets up, leaving you with either a pounding headache or a wicked grin, or perhaps both.

Manages to get by on wry smarts, barbed asides, and plenty of Barrymore's comic grace.

Close is a true joy. Without question, she's the heart and soul of Cookie's Fortune.

A slight, oddly lifeless movie with dubious appeal for even the most incorrigible Simon devotees.

Unnerving and occasionally witty, were it not for its weak third act, Nolan's film might fall just short of genius. As it is, though, it's unique nonetheless.

Junger has a deft touch with light comedy such as this; he manages to keep the film's convoluted plot spinning without resorting to too much gimmickry or descending to the level of so many teen comedies.

Doesn't just raise the bar on sci-fi and action films, it rips that sucker off and sends it spiraling into the sun.

Neither a revelation nor a total wash, EDtv is instead solid comic filmmaking. I just can't help but think it could have been so much more.

A sketchy, half-baked, stylistically inconsistent movie that scarcely even pretends to care whether it makes sense or not.

Pamela Gray's script and the way these actors bring the characters to life are the film's real treasures.

In the end, Forces of Nature is a creampuff of a film, it being a scrappy romantic comedy of the purest stripe, what's so wrong with that? Not a thing.

Bird's grim, picture-perfect direction -- the Sierras are more character than backdrop, and everything else looks like it's already been digested and expelled -- augments what is frankly a small, albeit lusterless, gem of a horror show, for once with as many smarts as body parts.

Shabby, nondescript hack job.

When Eastwood is at the top of his form -- as he is for much of this film -- there's no more spellbinding storyteller in American cinema.

While much of the film is taken over by enormously entertaining dogfight sequences … much of it also rests on the narrative drive, which seems clipped part and parcel from one of those old “Why We Fight” documentaries that Frank Capra doled out to keep our G.I.s in fighting mode.

Never fully taps your empathy or your fears; it plays like a movie that's always about someone else.

Trekkies is a hilarious work, mining the psychology of the average and not-so-average Trek fan, and coming up with the answers to all your burning questions about the show and its devoted following.

Toils in high school hell and doesn't even manage to come up with one good shock.

Trying to encapsulate the movie's storyline is not possible; it doesn't appear to have one.

Though Foley is adept at handling the action, the film is a grim washout peppered with too many earnest, good-cop/bad-cop conundrums and not enough solid police work.

As enjoyable as it is, it's hard to escape a sense of Analyze This being the work of competent talents who knew exactly where the good-enough line was and didn't feel particularly inspired to push far beyond it.

It works only sporadically, and more as a comic outing than as a vicious battle of sexual predation.

With such a frenetic, brain-melting load of images to ponder, it's easy to forget that there are also some terrific actors at work here, not the least of whom is the amazing Vinnie Jones.

Predicated as it is on Huppert's pensive, provocative blankness, the action moves a bit slowly, although, as is often the case with Jacquot, events make more sense after the movie is over. Dares to provoke rather than titillate in its delineation of love's strange ways. As the French might say, “L'amour, l'amour, toujours l'amour.”

Bizarre, trenchant, and unexpectedly hilarious, this is one regular guy's foray into the lonely world of love. Were that all budding relationships came out this well.

As forgettable as a puff off a generic-brand butt: filtered, flavored, and ultimately unsatisfying.

There's little to recommend this movie, which is part and parcel with Marshall's schlock-dominated body of work.

The storyline is something of a hodge-podge but what the narrative lacks in honing and straight-ahead storytelling it more than makes up for with well-aimed barbs and acutely focused observations...this funny, funny satire gets us where we live.

October Sky falls flat (despite its rich tone and some startling cinematography by Fred Murphy) due to its all-too-obvious third act and the vague fact that, really, not that much happens.

Jawbreaker has all the heart and soul of last week's mystery loaf (a dish that made the weekly rounds at my alma mater, sadly). And like that unidentifiable bovine by-product, the film is a chilly, messy anti-treat, sweet on the outside, sickly on the in.

It was sweet, but it should have been better.

Lack of imagination or subtlety.

Petrie (Richie Rich) has crafted a snuffling dog of a comedy that's far too reliant on less-than-amazing CGI effects.

Eminently resistible, an unclassifiable cinematic leftover best left untasted.

Helgeland's film positively seethes with bad vibrations; it's kicky, nasty urban sangfroid with pointy little teeth and a serious case of the angries, an existential hand grenade disguised as a heist film.

Shoddily constructed out of bits and pieces of previous genre triumphs, She's All That is as dull and droning as the fluorescent lighting in your old study hall.

While the somewhat indefatigable Stone may survive this misfire (she's survived plenty of others), Lumet may not.

The poverty that is at the heart of the situation is in prominent relief, yet there is a happiness about their lives that defies sheer gloss. Here is a brother and sister who truly love each other and are bonded by their complicity.

Playing by Heart is, above all, an actor's movie: lots of monologues, lots of engaging conversation, lots of opportunities to shine without pouring it on too thickly. Everyone has his or her moment, although it is the older folks (Connery and Rowlands) and the youngsters (Jolie and Phillippe) who come off best, giving affecting performances in roles that serve as generational bookends in the film.

It's dead in the water.

Its vague stabs at moralizing and goofball shenanigans are an odd mix. It's not the high school experience I had, nor is it probably like yours.

Director Irwin Winkler and his cast obviously hope to shed light on the boundaries of love, and instead come up with a walloping case of the preachies.

Despite this film's narrative lapses, Malick has a unique way of distilling the poetry from the commonplace -- and for that precious gift we should say amen.

In this magnificent, profoundly tragic film, Nolte and Coburn each turn in career-best performances as a father and son who embody the ancient, seemingly ineradicable male pathology of violence, retribution, and the slow death of the soul.

For all its knock-'em-dead acting and aggressively stylish direction, Hilary and Jackie is still best described as arthouse comfort food.

A slam-bang, sci-fi actioner, relentlessly paced and edited, with a pounding soundtrack and some ingenious aliens courtesy of Berni Wrightson and KNB Effects.

These characters are too remote, too pretty, and too unrealistic to move us in any lasting way.

The underlying problem is the mainstream film format's length constraints, which seem to have forced a rude bowdlerization of the story.

Audiences may find this pap brimming with heart and sympathy for the little guy, but as prescriptions go, Patch Adams is pure placebo.

Paxton, as always, is thoroughly engaging, and Theron is coming into her own as an actress, but the bottom line here is that the film lacks the original's goofy good humor. Less effects and more humanity are in order before this remake can even get within spitting distance of the original.

Down in the Delta, like a gratingly platitudinous self-help tape, sugarcoats the complex one-step-back, two-steps-forward nature of personal and social progress. And like the drugs and booze it condemns, it provides a warm rush of euphoria, but no real answers.

A valentine to the happenstance miracle of lovers and other strangers, a movie that regards modern romance as something that is, ultimately, old-fashioned to its core.

DreamWorks has gathered for the movie and for these extracurricular projects an amazing collection of voice talent that complements the film's stunning technical achievements.

Funny, scabrous, disturbing, tragic, and improbably life-affirming, The General travels its own idiosyncratic path with more real style and substance than the past half-decade of Hollywood gangster movies combined.

It's not perfect -- Thornton's slack-jawed yokel Jacob is played a bit wide of the mark and Fonda continues to irk in some indefinable way -- but it's a revelation for longtime Raimi fans. And it's a hell of a ride too, for both Raimi fans and newcomers alike.

A muddled, gimpy mess, filled with the worst sort of Trek clichés and ill-timed humorous outbursts.

The end result is a delightful, though a smidge too long, reminder of one of the reasons we so enjoy going to the movies: perchance to dream.

Filled with brilliant, stand-out performances.

Be it the use of faux snow that looks like the dog ends of previously owned Q-Tips or the successively worse series of blue-screened visuals, the film is shoddy from frame one.

The decibel level in Little Voice ranges from a delicate whisper to seismic bellowing; aurally speaking, it traverses the spectrum of human sounds.