Even as trick movies go, Confidence feels surfacey to a fault.

A lively, compulsively watchable but ultimately sobering film about the men who make their living off prostitution.

Dawn of the Dead may depict the end of the world as we know it, but rarely has watching doom proved such a kick.

Barbershop 2 makes you want to know what happens next. In its own way, it's the Ivory Soap of sequels: 99 and 44/100% pure.

Moves along with great speed and verve, and it's got just enough of a sci-fi sheen to make things interesting, if not provocative. Philosophers and true believers may be disappointed, but for movie fans, I, Robot mostly delivers the goods.

All three actresses are appealing, but Fisher, proving her scene-stealing turn in Wedding Crashers was no fluke, shines brightest.

Elmo graciously shares the stage with a cast of players who will not only delight youngsters but will come as sweet relief to grown-ups.

The trouble with The Ref is that it keeps running out of steam, so it seems to develop a new plot wrinkle every seven minutes. Typically, it'll run through the new idea until it runs out of steam again, then invents yet another one. One feels it continually re-imagining itself, and as the minutes flee by, the re-imaginings become thinner and thinner.

Heartstrings are pulled mercilessly in Dreamer.

This movie doesn't pretend to be anything more than a cheerful night out, and on that count it scores.

True, the movie tends toward the treacly at times, and the children's mischievousness seems a bit forced. But Thompson's turn as a glammed-down Mary Poppins with an even more no-nonsense attitude is hard to resist.

The cinematic equivalent of a careless foot fault.

A derivative little tale with enough good intentions to recommend it, but not enough substance to embrace it.

If you have a sneaky taste for the monstrous and a hearty appetite for the outlandish, the pulpy yet engaging Night Watch should leave you merrily sated.

Supple, eloquent and enchanting.

If it worked, The Fast and the Furious would put viewers in the same position as the policeman protagonist, attracted to speed but appalled by crime. Instead it sentences you to an hour and a half in a high-decibel limbo.

Yet [Smith] can't keep the movie from stopping cold with another hour left to go.

Anderson sees her subject as little more than a game-show contestant. One suspects the real Evelyn Ryan deserved far better.

The Mist contains nary a dollop of wit and irony. As adapted and directed by Frank Darabont, there's no ambiguity either.

Whether the entry is good, great or (in this case) indifferent, it's always stimulating to return to the high-flying X-Men series.

Caught up in its own macho symbolism, Jarhead fights a losing battle to show the human cost of warfare.

The political correctness of Class Action verwhelms its sense of life. It turns into just another movie. [15 Mar 1991]

So much love has gone into the physical details and the music of Robert Altman's Kansas City that it's a shame the movie isn't up to the effort. It's a movie you yearn to care for, but it refuses to allow you: It's too busy being singular to be good.

The Reader is ponderously self-important and smugly Socratic, brimming with unfinished sentences and pregnant pauses; if a single character would only say what he thinks, the movie would be over in 30 minutes

As gripping as Hard Candy is, one can't quite shake the feeling that we're the ones being exploited by its mordant blend of kinky revenge fantasy and push-me-pull-you moral vision.

The movie leaves you in an awful tangle of amazement and disbelief: Amazement that Tuvia Bielski did turn a group of civilians into a nimble fighting force and a commune that could defend itself, but disbelief at his accomplishment's stagey and banal rendering.

Breaks no new ground in romantic comedy. But it finds ways to make the tried and true scenes -- a hilarious break-up in a restaurant, a nearly disrupted wedding -- new and funny.

While Bresson's insistence on juxtaposing brute force with sublime grace isn't subtle, it is effective.

Thanks to Daniel Craig, the most Byronic of 007s, who, with scarcely any help from the filmmakers, manages the astonishing task of rooting an outlandish yet sober-sided movie in reality and bringing it an air of wicked amusement, too.

Looming large over all this is Jackson, who glowers and growls and acts the hero better than any actor out there.

It took guts to bring this story to the screen, but at its core it has the wrong stuff.

Partially financed by the liberal Move On.org, speaks most eloquently when it lets Fox News do the talking.

Many inspirational sports movies provide only junk food for thought; this one contains some authentic reflections of sport in the civil rights era.

Actually moves, whisking the audience on a funny, sad and extraordinary journey through a singularly compelling moment in American pop culture.

The Safety of Objects is just another stilted comic-dramatic essay examining the mold in the white bread.

It's a gimcrack assemblage of gags, action scenes, favorite moments from the first hit and diorama-like views of high and low Victorian culture.

Veggie Tales is one amusing salad.

This picture boasts a story about a yarn-spinning Southern father (Albert Finney) and a sober-sided son (Billy Crudup) that gives it ballast and staying power beyond anything in previous, precious Burton fables like "Edward Scissorhands" or "Ed Wood."

So much of "Thunderheart" is so good and its intentions are so noble that it pains me to reach the ultimate judgment that the movie is a mess.

Prime serves as yet another showcase for Streep; to prove how expertly she plays a Jewish mother with a Ph.D. in psychology, just imagine Barbra Streisand in the role -- you'd have a farce only a step above slapstick. With Streep, you get a smartly observant comedy that never overplays its hand.

Connery and Cage are a compelling team and redeem the film from ruin despite the mechanical plot, an excessive body count and a miraculous recovery (you'll know it when you see it).

There's a ton of joy in The Legend of 1900 -- but it's laid on so thick that one ends up more numbed than stirred, overcome by one too many Hallmark moments.

The whole cast is good. It's too bad all that good work isn't in service to a better, or certainly more original, script.

Ask the Dust is more than an amorous period piece. It's a strongly bitter, strongly sweet poem in prose and motion.

So far in this year's cartoon feature sweepstakes, Shrek the Third rules.

It's lumpy, odd and tonally all over the place, but its vision gets to you, and its payoff delivers a tough kid's catharsis.

Few directors are able to showcase actors with fast-cutting techniques. Hill is an ace at it because everything about his action is organic.

Jet Li and Bridget Fonda form a terrific bond in this action film. And the choreography adds a nice kick, too.

An uninteresting take on a tired formula that is only occasionally funny and usually pretty gross.

You don't want to look at anything else when Zeta-Jones is on-screen.

Maya Rudolph's subtle, lyrical portrait of a patient wife and expectant mother enlivens and elevates Away We Go, an erratic couple-on-a-quest film.

The end result is more a lecture than a film; audiences may come away understanding what went on, but for most, the emotional connection will be lacking.

The movie felt slow and didactic; it lacked the kind of forward thrust that a narrative mechanic such as Spielberg would have engineered.

Rambles and sometimes wobbles like a runaway movie. But Schreiber's instincts keep the film frolicsome and vital.

The cascade of ideas proves to be both pleasurable and frustrating. As the movie retreats into a happy-ever-after ending, even its outrageous lies seem more like little white ones.

Caan is so good as a man who watches helplessly as everything he's worked for crumbles around him, that he steals the picture from both Wahlberg and Phoenix, the ostensible stars.

Garry Marshall, old pro that he is, couldn't be more endearing as the grandfather, struggling gamely to make things right.

A quirky and satisfying love story.

David Hyde Pierce is hilarious as Drix, a take-charge dose of medicine. No performer is better at wringing laughs from an unflappable --- make that semi-flappable - delivery.

What we have here is a suburban-legend movie stripped of rough edges and cut off from any depth that might have made it insidiously haunting.

Combine the title with the image of a dazzling female and a frazzled male, and you've got the movie perfectly.

The movie's already peaked, even before the opening credits.

Good intentions are no substitute for good filmmaking, and Spy Kids 3D is nothing more than a retread in flashier clothing.

Leonardo DiCaprio brings straight-razor reflexes and rooted emotion to the role of a deceptively rugged CIA man.

This peculiar film is more than one beer short of a six-pack. It's part massive folly, part screwball tract and part steel nerve, even a little heroic. [25 May 1994]

Roos suffers from fallen archness in his interminable new movie Happy Endings. He wants to be mischievous and ambitious and "human," all at the same time. He ends up with delusions of tragicomic grandeur that leave an audience fed up and dissatisfied.

The best thing about 13 Going on 30 is that an ever-game Jennifer Garner is cheerfully convincing as a 13-year-old in a 30-year-old body. The worst thing is the feeling we've seen this movie before, done better.

The movie is so determinedly lightweight that it floats above the fray, stopping only for the occasional mild chuckle.

A third of the way through Smart People, I channeled Randy Newman's "Short People" and thought, "Smart people got no reason to live."

The year's big dramatic gambling hit, 21, is all plot, no personality; The Grand, a comedy that follows six contenders into the finals of a poker tournament, is all personality, no plot. I'll take personality.

Kung fu purists may scoff, but escapists with a sense of humor should romp through The Forbidden Kingdom.

Benton's version of The Human Stain feels under-energized and modest to a fault. Yet it still delivers a genuine sad sting.

Soars on the strength of strong acting and a script that stubbornly refuses to go all sappy and preachy.

It's first-class entertainment for bookish lads and lasses of all ages - and for those who never have or never will crack a paperback's spine. And it might inspire today's nascent artists to open up their sketch-pads as well as their hearts and minds.

Madagascar doesn't do much, except make you laugh. All hail such a minimalist approach.

Taymor conjures images that are as indelible as they are wordlessly articulate.

Hannibal isn't art. But for filmgoers with a taste for the absurd and a tolerance for the blackest of black humor, it's one heck of a thrill ride.

A toothless series of vignettes rather than an insider satire on par with, say, "Bowfinger."

It's a thrill ride not to be missed.

The movie is untainted by surprise or originality. It seems built from a blueprint, not a script. Anyone who listens to sports talk radio could write just as good a movie, no kidding. [29 Jun 1994]

Strangers With Candy -- a perfect title -- is filled with straight-faced loonies. It's a nutcake you actually want to eat.

First Knight is sublime summer entertainment, from the passion and beauty and grace of its stars to the thrust of its drama to the awe of its spectacle. [07 Jul 1995]

High School Musical 3 wore me out, but I'm not the target audience. My favorite high school musical was "Hamlet 2."

Confetti overdraws on an audience's generosity.

The narrative is engrossing enough, but it diverts from what is strongest about Traveller, its title characters. [2 May 1997]

The film marks Braff as a talent to watch, blessed with the sort of natural, everyman appeal that audiences eat up.

Genteel but ultimately unnecessary entertainment.

This movie is genial, forgettable piffle about the perhaps-beginning of a maybe affair. It's a romantic daydream so slim that it barely leaves the requisite sweet aftertaste.

Dark Blue is one of those totally happy surprises that moves so quickly and curves so sharply that it leaves this era's hyped critical hits looking like beached whales.

It's exhilarating in an authentic, pathos-streaked way to see Kearns, through Greg Kinnear's inspired characterization of a wary obsessive, representing himself during his trial against Ford Motor Co. for stealing his design.

A lovely, mischievous Casanova that will sweep you off your feet.

For movie fans who despair of the state of American cinema, the in-jokes are hilarious.

It's mindless, which is rarely true of French cinema, dull, which is rarely true of Hong Kong films, and portentous, which shouldn't be true of any film about a man-eating dog.

Reiner should have had faith in his sensational material to make its points without a minister in the pulpit. The movie would have been much better, and much shorter, too. [03 Jan 1997]

Berg doesn't let up on the tension, even when the action is bloodless.

It moves so confidently and brightly that it's ticklish as well as chilling - and, in its own dark way, enthralling.

Perfume offers eau de crud.

How much adorable can one person take?