Never thrills on an emotional level the way the best of sports films – a "Hoosiers," say – can, but it's a satisfying entertainment nonetheless.

Its characterizations are as bland as sand.

Serenity evinces the kind of swashbuckling bonhomie that made so many of us fall in love with the original "Star Wars" films, a love that was mightily tested by George Lucas' humorless prequels.

If you're not already smitten with all things Gaiman, you may well find yourself, like Helena, a stranger in a strange land.

It's thanks to Akhtar's standout performance that The War Within is as electrifying as it is.

An additional treat is seeing Hollywood good guy Henry Fonda playing one of the nastiest curs in the West. Once Upon a Time in the West is one of the great films in cinema history. (8/30/2000 Review)

As a filmmaker, Meredith has a strong, if derivative, visual sense, although his screenplay is packed with too many cliches and familiar riffs.

It's a knowing, dare I say sweet, little film that takes pains to let the characters speak for themselves, never rallying behind an implicit religious message, which may be the best message of all.

A History of Violence poses the right question: Are those who don't study history doomed to repeat it?

Flightplan should have remained grounded for repairs.

Despite a marketing campaign that appears bound and determined to make its subject look as grindingly dull as possible, Roll Bounce triumphs on almost all counts.

Daltry Calhoun's saving grace comes in the form of a snappy compilation soundtrack that spans from Johnny Cash to Serge Gainsbourg, a feat of all-inclusiveness that renders the film a moot point at best.

The movie's third act goes astray as the storyline shifts to Dorian's dating problems, which seem an overextended tangent to his coming-out story. Still, the film has a lot of playful dialogue and pixillated montages.

As in "The Pianist," Polanski is content to allow the film's narrative to evoke the emotions he wishes his audience to experience.

This is a bad movie, but one that awakens your senses every so often with flashes of originality and abundant self-belief.

Has a haunting afterglow, one that neither satisfies nor illuminates, but at least keeps the flame alive.

Loses something in its translation to celluloid.

Despite an ambitious script from Wadlow and Beau Bauman, it's extremely difficult to care, seeing as how these tropes have already been recycled enough to make Greenpeace proud.

There's a manipulative streak to the proceedings, and you'd have to be stone cold dead not to grasp the inevitable outcome long before the third act, but it's a professionally handled sort of emotional manipulation common to its genre, dating back to "Blithe Spirit" and, somewhat less memorably, "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir."

The movie is a strange amalgam of compelling visuals and fascinating vocational details forged with deep moral ambivalence and often hollow didacticism.

The dead have more fun than the living, again, in Tim Burton’s new stop-motion animated feature, a gift to gothlings everywhere and as exquisitely crafted as one of Federico’s post-mortem still lifes on "Six Feet Under," and just as melodramatically melancholic.

It's the kind of movie that lives and dies by a viewer's own idiosyncrasies.

Garçon Stupide is interesting enough to merit an audience broader than its intended niche, though it isn't perfect.

Like the best UK drawing room dilemmas, Separate Lies is more tart than bitter, with Fellowes, the Cambridge-educated son of a diplomat, acquitting himself grandly of cinematic boorishness.

Less a movie than a longform, live-action Celebrity Death Match between its leads, this wheezing comedy may herald the death knell of the interracial buddy-cop farce.

Thoroughly predictable from start to finish.

Derrickson's staid direction, coupled with Wilkinson’s sad-sack priest and a general air of dreariness make for a courtroom thriller that’s somewhat less apocalyptic than the "L.A. Law" episode involving the death of Benny's mom.

Its ultimate message is as French as they come: The family that lays together, stays together. What the hell, it's more fun than a riot.