Wedding Crashers is unashamedly profane and, for its first two acts, very funny, a classic guilty pleasure that revels in its basest elements.

There are times when his message threatens to overwhelm his story line, and the last 15 minutes or so of Blood Diamond demonstrate what happens when sentimentality wins out over style and grit.

Freedom Writers is the rare inspirational-teacher film that is filled with genuine, jaw-dropping coups of real-life poetry.

It does offer that most pleasant and valuable of viewing experiences: A message movie in which story and character come first.

You never believe that Paltrow's character is insane, even when she herself does. She has too sturdy a core.

Even at its most hyperactive, Peter Pan has a core of good and bad feeling that will hit home to kids and to adults with honest memories.

Full of wit, charm and wonder. It's so hilarious, you might blow a gasket.

At its best, The Mystic Masseur is like a tall tale that grows more beguiling and credible the taller it gets.

Replete with so many wisecracks, puns, double entendres and visual jokes that you almost need a flow chart to keep up with them all. But try; the effort is definitely worthwhile, and the results are hilarious.

If you put the word Tired first, it would perfectly describe the movie.

Shortbus is nothing if not over-the-top, replete with consummated sex acts, both gay and straight.

Fast Food Nation offers no easy answers, but plenty of food for thought.

If you're looking for a pleasing, reassuring film, try this one.

A film of so much daring, a film that takes so many chances, it's impossible not to be impressed.

As good as Willis is, he's no match for Mos Def.

A remarkable film about a remarkable man who's lived the kind of life usually reserved for adventure novels and pulp fiction.

Whenever the movie threatens to become just another visit to hillbilly-land, the music starts up and the film's gentle, irresistible wonder takes hold. Songcatcher is a film very much worth catching.

American movies are generally so skittish about sexuality that Adrian Lyne's appetite --and aptitude -- for exploring it in Unfaithful is a relief.

This compelling account of the explosive growth of Lyme disease grows to encompass all the peculiar politics, corruption and inertia of American medicine.

The movie has trouble getting beyond the winking stage and is always letting you know that these are the soon-to-be famous Beatles. [22 Apr 1994]

What's hilarious about the build-up is that Secretary proves to be the softest, most middle-of-the-road movie that could have been made about this subject.

Overblown sanctimony and sentimentalism as corny as the Fourth of July.

For 45 minutes, it zings along on perfectly pitched overstatement.

The shows themselves are extraordinary, especially Japan's Ichigei group, which has the all-out fun and athleticism of a vitaminized Twyla Tharp troupe.

It makes for quite a rumpus, but the material never catches fire.

What sucks the wind out of the movie's sails is the vacuum at its core.

Sarah Silverman says things you wouldn't expect a nice, attractive Jewish girl to say. But that's only half her appeal.

Part irritating, part inspired.

For anyone who has ever had to balance what the heart yearns for against what the head insists must be, this film should hit home.

There's tremendous energy in How She Move, so much that the audience can't help but be swept up.

We don't experience the drama from the inside out because everything is on the surface. Redford is the only one who supplies internal life to Spy Game.

Despite the cunning mixture of live-action footage and animatronic effects in Two Brothers, there's more imagination and wonder in a good old Sabu picture like "The Jungle Book" (1942). Two Brothers is more like a tacky jungle comic book.

To discover why movie fans are screaming for more Will Ferrell, and to savor the work of improv wizards like Carell, go see Anchorman.

The result is a film that plays like a creaking melodrama, with good guys and bad guys and precious little in between.

The original Rocky would have found a way to ground that encounter in reality, to engender honest emotion and give audiences an Everyman hero both noble and believable. This film is too busy worshiping its hero to bother.

A first-rate sail into Adventureland.

The Assassination of Richard Nixon makes Bicke suffer the greatest indignity: it turns him into a relentless bore.

Drags on and on and could frighten little kids. But Kenneth Branaugh is one bright light in Chamber of Secrets.

Stripped of texture, even the sharpest comments come off as bromides.

The violence is muted and discreet, never appalling, and the sexual tension between Streep and Bacon has been dialed way down. What they want is what they get: a nice, tidy, polite thriller. [30 Sep 1994]

It's an unusual and engaging romantic comedy because it's mostly about how these women ready each other for real love.

Beautifully mounted and shot, Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book still feels somewhat callow. Its title aside, it never really deals with the issues that the great Kipling raised continually in his distinguished body of work.

This movie's biggest contribution to film history will be resurrecting Davies' reputation as a natural comedian stuck in deadly costume pictures because her lover wanted her placed on a pedestal.

The year's most unsettling movie experience - and in this case, that's a very good thing.

This movie asks us to "accept the good" in life - not a bad message. But to overpraise Things We Lost in the Fire would be to accept the mediocre.

It's doubly disappointing that all the subplots about Ace and Wallace and their fathers intertwine in increasingly predictable ways.

Short on details and long on extreme, unflattering close-ups.

Screwball farce, romance, domestic tragicomedy and literary frolic rolled into one.

Original, unfailingly entertaining marital-breakup movie.

As the threesome's movie games push them into an incestuous menage a trois, the movie loses its grip.

With all the good will in the world, I couldn't warm up to Kit Kittredge. The movie is like a 1930s or 1940s short about Americans pulling together, stretched out to feature length.

This Christmas is the rare movie about a cozy household at holiday time that's as funny and dramatic and poignant as any seasonal family get-together should be.

The script is clever and would be brilliant if it worked.

The movie contains few surprises but has plenty of heart.

Blessed with some outstanding performances, among them Ribisi's.

Bubble is the moviemaking equivalent of the worst narrative journalism. Every bit of "human interest" is so painstakingly planted, so determined to be applauded for its observation and sensitivity, it ends up seeming as slick and bogus as the worst Hollywood blockbuster.

Unlike so many movies directed at teens, ATL is not interested in exploiting its audience.

An only fitfully engaging L.A. soap opera.

Thank heaven for William H. Macy, whose portrayal of Happy's sheriff strikes the only honest note in a film that earns its laughs the cheap way.

The Wachowski Brothers once again they prove themselves our reigning masters of murk.

A glorious medieval war movie. It's about war as the ultimate pitch of conflict that tries men's souls, and women's, too.

A film not nearly as intriguing as it should have been, centering on a death that isn't nearly as intricately fascinating as the filmmakers think. Exacerbating the problem is a cast of actors who seem too self-consciously playacting.

Suffused with a sophomoric sensibility that belies its more serious underpinnings.

Where "Boyz N the Hood" cut deep, to bone, this one stays glibly on the surface. It's slick and routinely entertaining, if never quite persuasive. [06 Nov 1996]

The Breakfast Club meets Rear Window. The result should satisfy dating crowds from high school to night school.

Possesses memorable portrayals of thoroughly original characters and draws a beguilingly bleak portrait of its Rhode Island settings.

Sort of feel-good lesson kids will enjoy and parents should welcome.

This team has succeeded at making a film that opens a subculture without programming our responses to it.

Wristcutters: A Love Story is a lousy title for a lovely-loony picture about an afterlife for suicides. It's an off-road "road movie" about people who off themselves.

A bravura, resonant performance by Nicolas Cage, combined with some hard questions raised about American responsibility for the worldwide glut of firearms, make the film close to a must-see, if not a must-love.

Yet it's pretty in all the wrong ways: pretty slight, pretty preachy and pretty affected.

Martin's script offers plenty of opportunities, but Martin the actor never takes advantage of them.

Both a condemnation of torture as a political tool and a tribute to the bravery that exists within everyone.

It has enough humanity to let the humor tickle, and a subject that will evoke memories for anyone who has ever smoked a joint or just said no.

Made is an amateur-hour buddy movie.

The pleasures of Ocean's Thirteen are so slight as to be eminently forgettable. Most of the "twists" in the plot are of the ho-hum variety; it's not that one sees them coming, but that they don't amount to much when they show up.

The problem isn't the history that the filmmakers leave in, but how much they leave out.

Outside of a strong (and largely misused) cast and an abundance of moody atmosphere, there's precious little to recommend this exploitative mess.

Some adults may find the film unbearably simplistic, or its pace burdensomely slow. But it would be a shame if movie audiences have become so hyper-adrenalized that they can't appreciate a charmer like Curious George.

City Hall has plenty of smarts; it just lacks real wisdom.

A good film that, with a little extra care, could have been great.

Wildly entertaining.

Austin does have a psychedelic buoyancy and Dr. Evil an addle-pated sadistic goofiness that are original and engaging, but Myers doesn't build on their best stuff. That's where a real plot would help.

You don't see The Doors, you survive it. [01 Mar 1991]

It's affable entertainment -- a road movie with a smart map and characters who are unpredictable human beings, not just billboard attractions.

Yet what is most impressive about the movie are the odd notes of grace it provides its ostensible villains. [4 Aug 1995]

Although some clever touches are clearly directed at adults -- much of the film's humor is quite likely to go under your head. [20 Nov 1998]

Fans of anime probably will find Vampire Hunter D plenty thrilling. Non-fans, or those not familiar with the genre, will enjoy the film's gothic atmosphere, but may wonder what all the fuss is about.

Connery and Brown absolutely shine in their roles.

Seinfeld is the perfect figure to center a documentary called, generically, Comedian.

In Robert Gordon's script, Handler's hilariously literate bouts of psychological torture develop no consistent tone, voice or momentum.

It's too film-savvy for kids who won't catch the allusions to Clark Gable and W.C. Fields, but it's too film-simple for buffs and too boring for adults and too magenta-bright for critics. It's completely human proof! [26 Mar 1997]

There may be a plot somewhere in William Goldman's script, and there might even have been a structure, but Mel Gibson, James Garner and Jodie Foster are so highly charged, as they slide through riffs that have nothing to do with anything except their own enjoyment in being invited to the party, that it's magnetic -- at least for most of the time.

As a whole, The Matrix Reloaded is thin on magic, charm, surprise and fun. It's less like an all-out escape, or even a thrill ride, than a sensory workout. At best, it's a treadmill-like bridge to the hoped-for splendors of episode three, The Matrix Revolutions.

Takes a literary milestone of ambiguity and makes everything about it blisteringly obvious.

Sets up a mood of tensile suspense from the beginning and never lets it go.

Saved! is the audacious feel-good satire of 2004.

For those of us who wish that John Hughes' "The Breakfast Club" had kept the cheeky tone of Hughes' "Sixteen Candles," what ensues is the best Hughes farce that Hughes never made about adolescent snobbery and heartbreak as well as adult obtuseness.