The violence is suggested in a way that's neither overwhelming nor insulting to a child's intelligence as this crafty fairy tale ultimately finds a way for human and vampire characters to live and let live.

Alexander Payne has won an Oscar for best adapted screenplay (Sideways), but you'd never guess that from this clumsily written drama: characters keep explaining things that their listeners would already know, and the first couple reels are so thick with expository voice-over that you may think you're listening to a museum tour on a set of headphones.

An innocuous, passably entertaining effects extravaganza.

For the grown-ups there are sweet, sincere performances by Ginnifer Goodwin, Sandra Oh, and, as Ramona's endlessly game father, the likable John Corbett, relieved for once of his drippy rom-com duties.

Differs from other authorized Hollywood musical biopics in one striking detail: its subject, still alive when most of this was made, is almost never shown as a likable person.

It's extremely competent, shot in 'Scope (Boorman's best screen format), and though it kept me absorbed it failed to win me over.

This is mildly entertaining for its cheery sacrilege (crucifixes that turn into throwing stars, etc), but once the premise has been rolled out, the movie is about as surprising to watch as the Stations of the Cross.

The punchy, nonstop visual effects (including an animation segment and stylized subtitles that sometimes suggest an online chat) crowd out coherent storytelling.

You can tell from the credit sequence—when Paul Newman takes four minutes to execute a simple expository gag—that this Stuart Rosenberg sequel to Harper is likely to be an interminable drag. And the opener is really the high point of an alleged thriller that wastes the talents of Newman, Joanne Woodward, Murray Hamilton, and Tony Franciosa, and telegraphs all its narrative twists with the subtlety of a Chicago building inspector explaining how to avoid a violation.

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.

The film is soon bogged down by fake hugs and a faker climax.

"The Illusionist" also centers on a 19th-century magician, and the elegant contours of its story are even more impressive compared with Nolan's clutter of double and triple crosses.

An effects vehicle disguised as a metaphysical meditation (or a metaphysical meditation disguised as an effects vehicle?), this strikingly unimaginative 1998 movie contains visuals that can barely assert their niftiness amid the vacuous themes.

This documentary tells this story reasonably well, though one might question whether director Eric Bricker's jazzy montages, collages, and rapid camera movements are appropriate to the contemplation of still photographs.

Newly updated but shamelessly hokey, Steven Spielberg's version of the 1898 H.G. Wells yarn about murderous invaders from outer space starts off as a nimble scare show like "Jaws."

A story that's reminiscent of the seminal "Panic in Needle Park."

The vile sadism of the Saw movies has been replaced by decorative references to Saint Augustine and Immanuel Kant, and there's a beautiful but brainy police profiler (Waddell) on hand to dispense a thick layer of psychobabble.

Though the climax of the story is a little forced and sloppy, with both lovers behaving way out of character, this movie is aware enough of the conventions it's using that it's more moving than cloying.

On the whole there's not a lot of flesh on these cynically haphazard bones.

The modeling of human figures and the sense of depth are both impressive; the characters themselves are mainly idiotic.

By the time Herzog tried to pass off jellyfish as Dourif's old pals, my indulgence was nearing its end--but then so was the movie.

This manages to make the real seem generic, rather than the other way around.

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).

Poor execution sometimes points up the difference between the telling of a story and the story itself--in this case, without diminishing the power of the latter.

Sometimes it's hard to tell what's mere overreaching and what's nostalgia for Hollywood's former grandiloquence.

With its flashy, pretentious visual effects, this is really a 98-minute dream sequence--though it's worth recalling that the most effective dream sequences tend to be only a few minutes long.

Screenwriter Akiva Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind) pelts the viewer with so many factoids and allegations about the early Catholic church, goddess worship, the Crusades, painting, cartography, and code-breaking that the movie's big revelation turns out to be neither grand nor shocking.

It might have worked if Apted were as adept at creating an emotional atmosphere as he is in his portraiture of the suburban milieu, but too many unshaped scenes and redundant dialogue passages take their toll.