Overly familiar in its themes, though still somewhat potent in its depiction of an alienated 14-year-old boy from a well-to-do family who's preoccupied with video technology and winds up commiting a monstrous act. In some ways, the portrait of his parents is even more chilling.

Frank Whaley and Philip Seymour Hoffman play minor characters so annoying they might as well wear T-shirts reading "Eat My Brain."

Most of the observations about suburban malaise (down to the Ayn Rand-style, self-empowering "solutions") suggest "American Beauty." Yet this is often quite affecting for its portrait of midlife crisis and Gibson's personal investment in the role.

Sometimes come together exquisitely.

Brutally honest and brilliantly acted.

Inspired by a true story, this slight but charming and nicely balanced comedy tells the tale of a group of middle-aged women in a Yorkshire village who decide to pose nude for the dozen photographs in a fund-raising calendar.

Allen gets a chance to unload all his usual patronizing contempt for and middle-class "wisdom" about his own working-class origins.

A provocative and stirring climax to the Corleone saga, as well as an autonomous work that sometimes shows Coppola at his near best.

"A Film by David Schwimmer" is not the sort of credit that fills me with anticipation, but I must admit he's done a solid job with this queasy drama about the rape of a 12-year-old Wilmette girl.

The concept itself is so strong - particularly as a revenge fantasy for anyone who's ever resented hypocritical exploitative shrinks - that it winds up working pretty well anyway.

Henry Hübchen is dynamic as the title character.

Mined for comedy and milked for drama, though what results is diminished by the very framing device contrived to punch it up.

Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island becomes a rousing SF adventure in this animated Disney feature.

With Mallick as one of the producers, this Boogie Nights wannabe benefits from an insider's knowledge of how online commerce was born but suffers from a seemingly endless voice-over by the Wilson/Mallick character steering our sympathies in his direction (it's the sort of middle man the movie could have done without).

Their inexperience with thrillers is evident here in the cluttered exposition at the beginning and wholesale revelations at the end. In the middle, though, there's a pretty suspenseful stretch.

As usual, Tarantino's sense of fun is infectious but fairly heartless.

It's more sophisticated than the usual run of Disney product, but it lacks the inventiveness that could endow it with genuine charm.

Your enjoyment of this picaresque tearjerker may depend on how much you can tolerate its shameless contrivances and didactic social realism, whereby the story exists only to illustrate the plight of illegal aliens. I was ultimately more moved than appalled, but it was a close contest.

The rest of these animated sequences...depend on gimmickry, cuteness, or facile ideology, and don't come close to demonstrating the complex relationship between sound and image found in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice."

Scary and exciting.

Fascinating group portrait of soul and R & B legends who are still touring 40 years after their original fame, enduring even after they've been relegated to the nostalgia circuit.

Funny, moving, and insightful look at questions about identity and community.

The main characters are a couple of revered high school table-tennis champs (one short and aggressive, the other tall and moody), and their efforts to win a big national tournament accommodate plenty of Zen aphorisms, glaring showdowns, and slow-motion paddle swinging.

With no personalities established and nothing at stake, it's no more interesting than a pickup game on your local court.

The bolder stroke comes from screenwriters Roger Avary (Pulp Fiction) and Neil Gaiman (the graphic novel Sandman), who’ve turned the arthritic legend into sort of an Arthur Miller play in chain mail.

For a family picture this is still superior.

Cillian Murphy gives a tour de force performance.

Given how bogus the movie is whenever it departs from formula, it's not surprising that the funniest bit (in which Peter Parker becomes a disco smoothie) is stolen from Jerry Lewis's "The Nutty Professor" or that the best special effects, involving a gigantic Sandman, dimly echo "King Kong."