There's no denying the music's magic.

Amaro is so lacking in gravitas that there's no opportunity to explore the intense emotionality of the church in Latin America --which is the source of its temporal power.

Just about everyone in this sharp, passionate feature is chillingly good.

Despite some amateurish moments, Pulido displays genuine visual intelligence, using repeated static angles to emphasize the blandness of the family's anonymous tract house and moving with the characters as they try to individualize themselves.

The movie has some of the braggadocio of its white-trash hero, building to its competitive climax as if it were a gladiatorial sporting event, and it carried me all the way.

A rich but regrettably lumpy pastry, with moments of genuine drama redeeming an almost defiantly hokey plot.

This brilliantly and comprehensively captures the look, feel, and sound of glamorous 50s tearjerkers like All That Heaven Allows, not to mock or feel superior to them but to say new things with their vocabulary.

If you decide at the outset that this needn't have any recognizable relationship to the world we live in, you might even find it an unadulterated delight.

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

Television director Michael Lembeck maintains a tidy pace suitable for commercial breaks, and though the committee-written script cites fuzzy logic, eBay, and Utah marital customs, it predictably avoids any mention of Christ.

Jonathan Winters voices Santa with no edge whatsover, while Ben Stein deadpans a droll tour guide.

Poignant if familiar story of a young person suspended between two cultures.

Whereas "Posession" was relatively light on its feet, this is so overloaded from the outset that it can only sink.

Birmingham and coscreenwriter Matt Drake adapted a short story by Tom McNeal, elaborating on its plot but beautifully capturing its low-key poeticism.

Buffeted by the usual car crashes and explosions, Wilson and Murphy never develop any comic chemistry.

Kidd has a great ear for dialogue, and he throws in a few unexpected twists. But the real fun is watching an established pro and a newcomer run with the script.

The movie's "Beverly Hillbillies" humor had me laughing moderately, and by the end I wasn't even looking around to make sure no one noticed.

If Wahlberg in a beret is your idea of fun, don't let me get in your way.

This is the Classics Illustrated version of Kahlo's story--fun mostly for the sets and the clothes.

A hokey but highly entertaining tale of corporate greed that should be especially satisfying if you're pissed off at big business.

Paid in Full isn't a complete success; still, it moves beyond many cliches to create an honest portrait of several Harlem drug kingpins on their way up and inevitably down.

A better name for it would have been the Herschell Gordon Lewis: the godfather of gore himself couldn't have topped this succession of grisly deaths.

Unfortunately I can't give this a thumbs-up or thumbs-down; I haven't yet developed an aesthetic that will accommodate a guy firing a bottle rocket from his ass.

A comic and moving examination of life in an impoverished South London housing complex, features marvelous performances, especially from Leigh stalwart Timothy Spall.

If you think 85 minutes devoted to a "difficult" French philosopher is bound to be either abstruse or watered-down middlebrow stuff, think again.

Gentle, low-key first feature.

This is effective as straight-ahead, action-packed storytelling, losing some of its energy only in the final stretch.

Stephen Gaghan, who scripted this turkey, landed in the director's chair after Edward Zwick (Glory) bailed out, and you can almost smell the flop sweat.