Film noir has seldom been so blanc.

I wasn't exactly engaged, but this time boredom never took over.

An epic about the Irish patriot (Liam Neeson) during the last years of his life (1916-'22), it clearly represents a lot of thought on Jordan's part, yet it's dramatic and cinematic sludge.

As a literary bodice ripper this is better than average, partly because of its glimpses of early-19th-century bohemianism in France and Italy but mostly because Juliette Binoche and Benoit Magimel manage to keep the story hot and unpredictable.

Neil LaBute delivers his most interesting and powerful film to date, though it's also his most unpleasant and disturbing.

This is more like "The Sixth Sense" writ large: we are all dead but don't know it.

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

It's much more of an action flick than either "Metropolis" or "Blade Runner," but there's a provocative and visionary side to this free adaptation of Isaac Asimov's SF classic that puts it in the same thoughtful canon.

The setup for this Oliver Stone drama keeps its iconic villain so far removed from the financial action that he seems like a dog tied up outside a restaurant.

This is brisk and fun to watch, thanks to the actors...But once you catch the main drift of the plot, it becomes awfully ho-hum.

Kondracki relies on sharp, quotidian detail to show how such atrocities become business as usual; she also makes a point of humanizing the victims of trafficking to emphasize the obscenity of the crimes.

In trying to cover so many bets, Petersen has created a film without an identifiable style or subject of its own.

The show ends with a moving declaration of faith by the star, who was raised in the church, but there's no denying that his funniest moments spring from impulses that are less than charitable.

Perhaps too simple and damply nostalgic to rank with Mulligan’s best work, but still illuminated by an intense identification with adolescent confusion, beautifully communicated by Mulligan’s subjective camera technique.

Duras has reportedly disowned the film, and it's not hard to sympathize with her chagrin. By stripping away the voluptuous veneer of her language and the gauze of her memory, Annaud's adaptation has reduced her artful tale to a white woman's wet dream.

Even Herzog loyalists will have to concede that this fact-based 2009 hostage drama is a serious dud.

This highly uneven comedy by writer-director Adam Brooks might be easier to take if it were less infatuated with its own cuteness.

Elmo's obsessive reaction is never examined, compromising the ability of this rambling minor spectacle to put across its obvious lesson about sharing.

The battle scenes are bloody, visceral, and expertly edited, though arterial spray consumes so much screen time that the numerous subplots, involving 11 legendary Siamese defenders well-known to Thais, may feel perfunctory to Westerners despite some strong performances.

Even Cinerama (its original format) can't expand on the poverty of comic invention.

Miller and coscreenwriter Julien Boivent have a gift for aphoristic, if glib, dialogue, and Nicole Garcia and Ludivine Sagnier do their best to flesh out hopelessly one-dimensional characters.

Something in me admires George Stevens's perversity in shooting this film about entrapment and compression in 'Scope, but that's the only interesting quirk in this otherwise inert work, which represents Stevens at the height of his pretentiousness and the depths of his accomplishment (1959).

The Davis-Spacey-Leary triangle and their unmanageable contempt is something to see and hear. Which is another way of saying this is the funniest comedy so far this year.

Assorted ladies, a few quick lines, and one good chase, making for a mediocre entry in the series.

Kurt Russell and Kris Kristofferson, both graceful and naturalistic actors, are the best things going in this formulaic drama.

Drew Barrymore is that rare movie starlet who can handle the comedy end of romantic comedy, but she coasts through her underwritten role as a goofy plant sitter recruited by Grant to write his lyrics.

On the other hand, the brutality and sadism it delivers at every opportunity, which we're supposed to take for granted as part of the "fun," left me feeling that any civilization that can create such an entertainment may not deserve to survive.

Highly recommended if you want to see a distinguished cast of British character actors tarted up in garish Victorian costumes and badly executing a Three Stooges-style cake fight.