The scenes of his incarceration and escape from the place are gripping, thanks mainly to Michael Bowen as the hard-ass staffer who wants to break him. But the movie slides toward melodrama with some stale business about the hero spreading his late father's ashes.

One of the better Halloween carbons, thanks to an unusually appealing cast and generally good pacing by director Amy Jones.

This heart-warmer by Robert Benton has some of the tender wisdom and humor of his other features (e.g., Nobody's Fool).

The paltry theme is that we can't predict the future, but I spent part of the time calculating how many more feeble movies Allen will make, based on his productivity rate (one per year), his batting average (four duds for every success), his current age (74), and his father's longevity (Martin Konigsberg lived to be 100). Are you ready for 20 more remakes of "Manhattan"?

Those who miss the wildness of his premainstream work will probably be only partially appeased.

This odd-couple comedy reunites Galifianakis with Todd Phillips, who directed "The Hangover," but don't expect anything like the other movie's novel plotting or wild slapstick.

Comic book stuff, helped out by the presence of Rae Dawn Chong as an airline stewardess whose sarcastic commentary adds some comic counterpoint to the deliberately overscaled action.

Mott Hupfel II's noirish photography, Pete Beaudreau's smooth editing, and McAbee's wry script are all wonderful, and Dawn Weisberg's costumes are especially killing.

Mostly it's an overearnest examination of emotional and sexual fidelity.

The performers are fresh and offbeat, with the diminutive Peter Dinklage (Elf, The Station Agent) especially funny as a gay wedding planner named Benson Hedges.

Most of the film is set in an abandoned house, where enjoyably murky intrigues abound, and the last ten minutes feature a chase sequence with miniatures that is almost as much fun.

Hitchcock disliked the film, but it offers an unusual glimpse of the master before he settled into thrillers.

You won't find many surprises in the equally funny U.S. remake from producer and star Chris Rock.

The film ultimately comes up short when it has to deal with Hickok as something other than a legend; Hill is hampered as usual by his fixation on iconography.

David Mackenzie, who directed the remarkable Scottish drama "Young Adam" (2003), delivers another masterful, disturbing tale of illicit passion, erotic obsession, and sudden death set in the 1950s.

The situation—a mother and daughter switch personalities for a day—is rife with possibilities, but since this 1977 comedy is a Disney film, said possibilities are scrupulously squandered...Not so bad as Disney goes, but it's better left to the kiddies and other forgiving types.

The most subtly revolting aspect of the movie is how it manages to exploit violence for cheap thrills, in part by equating submission with love.

As in other Ivory-Jhabvala adaptations, ritzy consumerism is very much on display, but what makes this better than most is Johnson's amused admiration for nearly all her characters, regardless of nationality.

The film flits from one relationship to another, dispensing some well-acted bedroom scenes and a fair amount of angst and philosophical dialogue in a neighborhood bar.

The draggy narrative of this 1997 comedy is tough to sit through--there are even several overproduced musical numbers--but it does have an intriguing subversive element that I don't want to give away.

It's too bad that Pakula allows this 1993 movie to dawdle after its climax, but prior to that he's adept at suggesting unseen menace and keeping things in motion.

The character interactions are strong, especially for this depleted genre, and Hill's tight, efficient styling recovers a lot of lost formal ground: his framing and crosscutting are as sharp as ever, and the bloodbath finale is, improbably, a model of intelligent restraint, the classicist's answer to Peckinpah baroque.

All singing! All dancing! All squealing! The money-minting Broadway musical has been adapted into the year's most aggressive chick flick, with a score of irresistibly catchy ABBA tunes sweetening the dumb story like peaches in cottage cheese.

Screenwriters Keith Merryman and David A. Newman interweave four asinine, underdeveloped plot lines, and Tim Story's prosaic direction reduces their script to a shambolic nightmare.

High-spirited martial arts and comedy, with heavy doses of Star Wars and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

As an undiscovered beauty who frequents open-stage night at the local performance-art club, her rack hidden under paint-spattered overalls, her chiseled face obscured by glasses, Rachael Leigh Cook is charming and sincere, and ultimately so is Prinze, whose character's realization that he's not as shallow as he'd thought is convincing.

The story has its hokey moments ("There's something very fishy about that girl"), but the sincerity and focus of the storytelling compensate.

Moderately watchable but awfully predictable.

There's still plenty to recommend it, including memorable characters, solid storytelling, and accurate period detail.

Uys's juggling of the separate yet interlocking plotlines is fairly adroit, and his whimsy continues to be good humored, although once again it's purchased with a sentimental and complacent view of African life designed to flatter the viewer.

Stupid, vicious, and pretentious, though you may find it worth checking out if you want to experiment with your own nervous system.

The end result is "Mission: Impossible" meets "Speed": high-tech gizmos, exotic European locales, and hair-raising stunts, many performed by Statham himself, who, when he's not shirtless, looks spiffy in Dior.

What's really fun about this silly but spirited comedy isn't just the ribbing of "swinging London" fashion and social attitudes but the use of the compulsive zooms and split-screen mosaics of commercial movies of the 60s.

A pleasure.

Griffin's stand-up material is consistently upstaged by sequences of him interacting with old friends and family members.

Assume that viewers are too hungry for mindless thrills to care whether dead characters spring back to life or live ones change their personalities according to the needs of the moment.

Though Casino Jack never lets its protagonist off the hook for his misdeeds, it does underline the hypocrisy of those politicians who were content to take his money but then ran for cover in February 2004 when the Washington Post began to expose his fleecing of six different Indian tribes.

Directed by Katt Shea Ruben from a script she wrote with producer Andy Ruben, this starts off with some spark and drive, in part because of the writing and playing of Gilbert's character, but gradually sinks into cliche and contrivance as the familiar genre moves take over, dragging down the characters, plot, and style.

Despite the cast -- Kevin Bacon, Matt Dillon, Neve Campbell, Denise Richards, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Theresa Russell, Robert Wagner, and Bill Murray -- I found it preposterous.

This tender and funny feature benefits from an appealing cast--in particular Stadlober, who brings depth and honesty to what could have been a formulaic coming-out chronicle.

The main compensation is Harrelson's well-judged and finely shaded performance; the secondary ones are the ladies he hangs out with -- Lauren Bacall, Lily Tomlin, and Kristin Scott Thomas. But the rest of this mainly drifts.

Offers a steady supply of clever lines but suffers from the patina of self-loathing common to industry lifers and the unfortunate miscasting of straight-arrow Broderick as a depressed, cynical hack.

Peter Weir's 1986 adaptation of Paul Theroux's best-selling novel is literally that - an adaptation without much character of its own.

At times the plot developments in this post-Tarantino story seem so random they suggest automatic writing, but the characters and some of the settings kept me interested.

On its own modest terms, this romp delivers.

A good concert film might have been culled from Vaughn's 30-date LA-to-Chicago tour in September 2005, which showcased stand-up comedians Ahmed Ahmed, John Caparulo, Bret Ernst, and Sebastian Maniscalco and included bits with Vaughn, Jon Favreau, Dwight Yoakam, Justin Long, and Keir O'Donnell. But this is more like a DVD extra for that film.

John Cromwell, an excellent filmmaker in other circumstances (The Fountain, Since You Went Away), doesn’t have the taste for extremes that film noir requires; he softens the emotions and dims the motivations.

Chicago native Steve Conrad, who scripted "The Weather Man" and "The Pursuit of Happyness," makes his feature directing debut with this low-budget comedy, which isn't as broad as its premise might suggest.

Julianne Moore proves game for anything in this pitch-black true-crime reconstruction.

So few movies these days concern themselves with ideas of any sort that a drama like this one, about a man humbled by the consequences of his own intellectual breakthrough, seems even more powerful.

The main problem here is the gross inferiority of the new version to the old: compare Tracy's handling of the opening monologue with Martin's and you'll get a fair indication of what's become of commercial filmmaking over the past four decades.

Heckerling still has some of the sensitivity she showed in handling actors in Fast Times at Ridgemont High and she has a deft way of illustrating her heroine's fantasies about possible mates without any fuss.

Despite a provocative climax, the movie settles into a ponderous collection of soliloquies.

A pretentious, unfocused, and fussy mess, in which director Darren Aronofsky manages to make Hugh Jackman unattractive and unsympathetic… Even fans of Aronofsky's incoherent, flashy “Pi” and somewhat more coherent, flashy “Requiem for a Dream” will be scratching their heads.

The 1980 sequel to Every Which Way but Loose, and a better film—smoother, more controlled, with more time for the casual elucidation of place and character. Though it's a loud, vulgar, and occasionally brutal comedy, it never succumbs to the fashion for facetiousness: Clint Eastwood always takes his work seriously, even in a relatively impersonal project like this, and there are moments of moving emotional candor amid the slapstick, flashes on loneliness, forgiveness, and loyalty.

Smart and fast-paced.

I guess one out of three ain't bad.

The narrative kept me glued to my seat.

This kind of wheel spinning comes from having the desire to speak but nothing much to say, and Smith, who's made a slight movie about his being a slight filmmaker, seems to know this.

Tries to break free of formula but finally succumbs to the warm glow of predictability.

The film is ugly on so many levels—from art direction to human values—that it's hard to know where to begin.

The film never transcends the racist, sexist, neofascist implications of its base material, but it works entertainingly within them, and even manages a bit of auto-analysis in John Candy's ironic, adolescent narration of the "Den" episode. Better than it had to be, for which some honor is due.

The most underestimated commercial movie of 1987 may not be quite as good as Elaine May's three previous features, but it's still a very funny work by one of this country's greatest comic talents.

The characters and themes are redolent of earlier and better Williams works, and the story unexpectedly putters out at the end--but seeing it now, you can't help but treasure the simple, lyrical dialogue and sure-handed narrative thrust.

In these dusty American settings, the wistful melancholy of Wong's earlier movies seems fairly contrived.

Better than you might imagine, though it still has its silly aspects.

Foley has a fine sense of shading in depicting a slightly dysfunctional family. The problem with this subgenre is the way it has to demonize and dehumanize its villains in order to produce the desired effect, which brutalizes the spectator along with the story and characters. If you can accept this limitation, this is a very efficient piece of machinery.

Not at all bad for a toy commercial.

A hollow view of hollowness with a very polished surface.

The dialogue is dumber than dirt, and the plot crumbles at the halfway mark, but the movie does what a loud summer blockbuster should, which is loudly bust blocks.

A bright, funny family movie that gets everything right, from story to production design to cast (both human and canine).

Queen Latifah's warmth has boosted middling movies like "Beauty Shop" and "Last Holiday," but she and costar Common can't strike enough sparks to ignite this weak romantic comedy.

Entertaining but forgettable action flick.

The thriller plot, while serviceable, registers as somewhat gratuitous, but the Buenos Aires locations are nicely used.

This is based on actual events, but it feels a lot like television.

Thoughtful, sexually charged, and sometimes brutal, this Australian drama by director Geoffrey Wright updates the setting of Shakespeare's play but stays true to its themes, offering fresh insight into the characters and verse.

Reasonably entertaining if utterly familiar entry in the long-running SF franchise.

In this eerily tranquil psychological thriller, Nicole Kidman's placid countenance is like a Rorschach: you'll project onto it what you want to see.

The film is flat, dull, and sloppy.

There's also some gallows humor about the record and newspaper industries, but overall this is a light, genial comedy about denial and self-defense.

Unfortunately the complicated thriller plot--with the regulation suitcase full of illicit cash--hinders the characters' emotional interactions without ever becoming credible on its own terms.

Only in the last third, when he gets down to the business of telling a story, does The Brown Bunny become a porn movie -- though not in the sense you'd expect.

Most of the gags misfire, though some scenes are memorably tawdry.

The darker aspects of tribalism come under scrutiny here as nonconformists (unmarried men, women alone) are shown being marginalized.

Overlong, stiff, and about as suspenseful as a detergent commercial, The Bad Seed has one small asset, Patty McCormack as the child, but that's about it.

The movie's suggestiveness gives way to a certain thinness and lassitude.

Unlike Stanton's memorable animation features, this is surprisingly devoid of humor or winning characterization, though the special effects are fantastic.

Cowriters Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen (Gladiator) saddle Neeson with indigestible dialogue and preposterous situations.

Surrounding and ultimately subsuming this ethical struggle is a fair amount of pediatric-cancer horror and mush, though Cassavetes is frequently bailed out by his cast (Diaz is admirably unpleasant as the controlling mother, and Joan Cusack is unusually tough and restrained as the presiding judge).

Ferrell and Reilly get more mileage out of juvenile pouting and bickering than any other performers I can imagine, but that's about as far as this goes.

Provides an interesting introduction to a compelling figure in contemporary pop music.

Still, this is irresistible as self-knowing camp: the players ham it up in high fashion and the script crams at least one lurid revelation into every scene.

The film certainly held me, and even fooled me in spots (when it wasn't simply confusing), but when the whole thing was over I felt pretty empty. It would be facile to say it substitutes style for content; actually, it substitutes stylishness for style.

This movie is too pedestrian for camp, and too scattershot for an action comedy.

A hearty style of self-referential filmmaking that only adds to the persuasiveness of Lillard’s stunning performance.

This insufferable romance-adventure includes vague comedy as well as unintentional humor, and its target audience seems to be preadolescents who won't notice the calculated enthusiasm with which it sidesteps sexuality.

Its depiction of teenage behavior appears calculated to seem irreverent while satisfying expectations.

De Niro sinks this crime drama with his vacant, inattentive performance as an affectionally challenged homicide detective.