The actors do a pretty good job, though not good enough to sustain 133 minutes.

This insidiously complex satire is filled with apparent digressions, and our complete identification with the man occurs so gradually that it's impossible to pinpoint just when our previous disdain becomes a position of relative comfort.

Despite the familiar story, both kids are three-dimensional characters, and first-time director Patel embraces their generational dilemmas with feeling and wit.

I have no objection to soap opera when it's delivered with conviction and a sense of urgency, but this sappy tale ... held my interest only moderately.

Though the premise seems obvious and facile, the execution and the delineation of the various characters (all recognizable Hollywood types) are likable and funny, and the cast is great.

Allouache's script is so packed with incident that the characters have little time for debate, but the tension between fundamentalist and modern morality is woven into the action.

Cokliss's direction strains for a stylishness it doesn't achieve, yet his fundamentally straightforward style brings out the abstract design of the plot. Is this the first cubist thriller?

Young French director Luc Besson (Le dernier combat) aims for a little American slickness in this relentlessly empty action film: it zooms along from one arbitrary sequence to the next, and its only aim is to keep the audience pumped up with kinetic stimulation.

Mitchell Leisen, the director, hadn't yet developed the light touch with actors he would display memorably later in the decade, though some of his trademark pictorial effects are in evidence.

But aside from a few overblown production numbers, Columbus respects the show's smaller scale, and the property itself is a knockout, with great tunes and engaging portraits of East Village bohemians in the AIDS-ravaged late 80s.

Another takeout—untidily slapped into a Styrofoam container—is more like it. Aimed at less discriminating viewers, this sequel to the 1987 Stakeout, again directed by John Badham, isn't too bad if you're looking for nothing more than good-natured silliness, low comedy, gratuitous tilted angles, and protracted dog jokes.

The beloved 1938 children's book about a house painter who becomes guardian to a dozen penguins has been turned into a standard-issue children's comedy with Jim Carrey.

Director Mike Barker elicits a marvelously agile performance from Hunt, who's well matched by Tom Wilkinson as her new admirer.

In the end, his deadliest weapon turns out to be other people’s trust, something with grimmer philosophical implications than all his acts of violence combined.

There are plenty of funny moments, as well as a sweet subplot involving the unkempt drummer and the guitarist's no-nonsense mom (Christina Applegate).

In a recent "Sun-Times" article Jeff said he purposely avoided taking a son's perspective, which leaves him without much perspective at all.

Provocative but never challenging.

Terra-cotta gnomes, the sort that decorate people's lawns, are the characters of this bizarre feature animation, which lampoons the British obsession with gardening and upholds a long tradition of cartoons pitched to tots and stoners.

Being taken under Apatow's wing may have been a big career break for writer-director David Wain, but this lacks the sharp personality of some of his earlier movies.

[Brooks's] second Williams adaptation (1962) is literally a form of emasculation that offers little indication of what made the original play interesting (especially in Elia Kazan’s stage production), despite the fact that Paul Newman and Geraldine Page are called on to reprise their original roles—as a hustler returning to his southern hometown and a Hollywood has-been—and do a fair job with Brooks’s hopeless script.

It's astounding to see Arthur Penn's name attached to this piece of cheese.

This is well staged and photographed, with stirring aerial images and balletic pans and dolly shots, but the story is muddled by the arrival of a free-spirited girl and her musician pals, 60s-style longhairs battling a government conspiracy.

I'd hate to guess whether most Americans know, any more than these fictional partygoers, what soldiers go through in Iraq. But if the market for movies about the war is any indication, they don't want to.

The sepia-toned palette gets a little wearying, but the dialogue is hilarious, the violence is crunchy, and cameos by Tom Waits and topflight Brit character actor Michael Gambon are worth the ticket price alone.

Luhrmann's squirrelly, five-exclamation-point stylings mercifully subside after the first 20 minutes or so, leaving behind a palatable big-screen confection.

In this uproarious and often scathing debut feature, writer-director Frank Novak charts the dissolution of a working-class marriage.

Enjoyable action comedy from the Clint Eastwood mold, though the comic elements are more fun than the action.

This is smooth and at times even sensual -- a well-oiled machine.