His height didn't stop independent writer-director Thomas McCarthy from casting his friend in The Station Agent, scoring a triumph for both.

It's theoretically possible to make a fascinating film about a thieving, self-indulgent, freebasing, treacherous scumbag who pimps his girlfriend to a gangster and contributes nothing to society. Wonderland isn't that film.

Without Essel, this might have been a run-of-the-mill dark comedy. With the 86-year-old British thespian, it's a wickedly funny and audacious movie in which she puts her capable co-stars in the shade.

Peter Berg directs the action sequences cleverly at first. Then he starts to behave as though a hornet flew down his pants at the instant he aimed the camera. He's not much of a dialogue director, but there's not much dialogue.

Could there really have been a black evangelical church in rural Georgia where half the congregation consisted of whites who stomped, flung their hands in the air and rocked along with their brethren of color 15 years after forced integration? Just asking.

These pros lift this button-pushing blob of faux folksiness to a higher plane than it deserves.

However much Underworld recycles elements from other films, it carries us into a well-constructed, convincingly scary world worth visiting.

Asks questions worth pondering. I only wished the writer-director-editor answered more of them.

This film might have been daringly funny 10 years ago, even with its broadest elements intact. Now it's comfortable as old slippers and unthreatening as a sleeping kitten.

If this story has a moral -- though unlike many horror films, it doesn't seem to -- it's that humans are likelier to destroy themselves than help each other.

Coppola lacks a firm grip on this material, and it starts to get away from her midway through.

The worst horror sequel of this or many another summer.

It's the cheapest looking, least exciting, least funny Chan project I've ever seen.

Despite Hunter's terrific acting, the mom seems too unaware.

Since there can be no suspense, the point is to enjoy the hewing of limbs and the severing of necks, to delight in chopped-off fingers and gouged-out eyes. The title characters are embodiments of utter evil, right?

A feature film as odd, personal and sometimes mundane as his (Pekar) comics.

Nobody smells of sagebrush, campfire coffee, tobacco (smoked or chewed) and saddle soap like Duvall.

Is this just silly filmmaking, or have Ivory and Jhabvala succumbed to the Francophobia that gave us "freedom fries" in the congressional cafeteria?

The strongest parts of the film aren't these money shots, but the buildup to the gunplay.

This is the first real family comedy I've seen in a long time: one honest enough to satisfy teens, wryly funny enough for adults and zany enough for little kids.

A rarely honest, funny movie.

This isn't really a narrative: It's a collection of mostly unrelated scenes, about half of which pay off.

After five minutes, Christopher Walken vanishes. We wait vainly for the next 90 minutes for someone, anyone to bring that kind of danger, unpredictability and vitality to a story as drab as army fatigues.

It's not the dark comedy it wants to be - that would be "M*A*S*H" with a more modern setting and more gruesome consequences - but it's worth a look.

On first acquaintance, Seabiscuit seems to be about anything but horse racing: the disappearance of the American frontier after 1910, our love affair with automotive speed, the passing of a rural way of life, homelessness during the Depression.

Director Stephen Frears...drops down to the underclass in "DPT," examining the ways in which educated illegals fight off despair, poverty and extradition.

Embodies all that's wrong with the sellout culture of Hollywood.

Juuso, who made her film debut at 22 in this movie, is spunky and funny. The two guys play off each other like bickering old pals, and so they are: They and the director have worked together on three movies and a TV show over the last decade.