While few of the paper-thin characters register long enough to make much of an impression, Diesel carries the movie.

This special-effects animal-action comedy is for heavily identified pet owners.

Strictly routine as filmmaking, adhering fairly consistently to the sound-bite approach. But given the subject, there's still a great deal of interest here about the life, art, milieu, and political activity of Ginsberg. (Review of Original Release)

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.

Well-acted drama.

Brad Pitt has fun with his secondary part as a pontificating lunatic, but I wish I'd enjoyed the rest of the cast more.

All in all, an entertaining (if ideologically incoherent) response to the valorization of greed in our midst, with lots of Rambo-esque violence thrown in, as well as an unusually protracted slugfest between ex-wrestler Roddy Piper and costar Keith David.

Neil Diamond's remake of the 1927 Jolson vehicle isn't very good, but neither is it the vacuous, sentimental ego trip it's been painted as.

Shot at the same time as "The Matrix Reloaded," this last installment is the shortest of the bunch at 129 minutes, but I still succumbed to special-effects hypnosis in the last hour.

The international Asian stars gamely tackle their English-language roles, aided by superior costumes, makeup, and set design. But despite all the hothouse intrigue, the film lacks passion.

The problem, as always, is that when you try to mix cliches with more complicated data it's often the cliches that win out.

Director Anne Sewitsky aims for quirky humanism along the lines of Finland's Aki Kaurismaki; she's helped along considerably by Kittelsen's sunny performance, though the film crosses over into Scandinavian kitsch with a series of country-swing interludes sung a capella by a male quartet.

It's an interesting experiment Cronenberg's attempted, if ultimately in the wrong direction.

The English cast is fun; but this is more spectacle than story, and the Steve Kloves script deserves better handling than director Chris Columbus -- plus any number of studio deliberators -- gave it.

Winterbottom and screenwriter Tony Grisoni were clearly motivated by conscience, but I can't help thinking that Stephen Frears's "Dirty Pretty Things," a much more conventional and contrived movie about third-world refugees, will have a greater social impact than this murky art-house item.

Roberts never surmounts the cracker-barrel contrivance of the plot, but his low-key humor, clear affection for the characters, and strong cast are enough to put this gentle drama across.

I was periodically put off by a certain self-conciousness in delivering this material.

Mills pulls off the nonchronological structure with uncommon sensitivity; unfortunately, he also confuses sensitivity with preciousness (recurring scenes show the hero confiding in a Jack Russell terrier).

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.

Boorman deserves credit for trying out some new ideas, even if most of them backfire. Visually, it's fascinating—sort of a blend of Minnellian baroque and Buñuelian absurdity—but the dialogue is childish, the story is incomprehensible, and the metaphysics are ridiculous. Still, an audacious failure is preferable to a chickenhearted success. More than worth a look, if only out of curiosity.

The cast is good and the story affecting, though at times Michael Mayer's direction makes the production seem a little choked up over its own enlightenment. Sissy Spacek is memorable in a secondary role.

There are enough plot points to fill an entire soap-opera season, but writer-director Chi Muoi Lo, who also plays the son, somehow manages to juggle them all, turning seemingly superfluous elements into workable drama and metaphor.

This eerily dry drama bravely attempts to show, without resorting to the literal staging of contradictory scenarios, how much perceptions of the same situation can vary.

The CGI effects are so slick that they undercut the movie's shock value, and the action moves too quickly to instill a real sense of fear, but this is still visually impressive, with spectacular make-up, costumes, and cinematography.

Predictable but sincere.

This sequel ups the ante, asking whether urban renewal means anything now other than turning neighborhoods into giant malls.

Writer-director Mark Brown ruptures and restores the realism in this romantic comedy with ease, dispensing earnest wisdom with a little tongue in cheek instead of undermining it with a lot of irony.

Grisman presents, with a sense of humor, the apparent contradictions of a complex personality.