This is the usual cartoon of hound dogs, roadhouses, antebellum mansions, and Civil War reenactments. Aside from that, it's not a bad date movie.

Silberling has the nerve to play it for laughs -- This is clearly an actor's movie, but only Sarandon and Holly Hunter (as the attorney prosecuting the murderer) rise to the occasion.

Provides a valuable refresher course in our less-acknowledged methods of meddling in the affairs of other countries.

By the time the high-octane ending arrived I didn't even care what happened to the kid.

The conflict between Hawn, who prizes her freedom, and Sarandon, who values her family, is pretty rich; it reminded me of the friendship between Shirley MacLaine and Anne Bancroft in "The Turning Point."

The film's opening and closing moments are weirdly reminiscent of "Black Hawk Down," another tale of Western soldiers in over their heads on the dark continent -- clearly no one these days understands manifest destiny.

Wicked little black comedy.

Though Ahola's acting is unschooled, to say the least, Herzog shrewdly uses his blunt sincerity to counterpoint Roth's spectacularly icy performance.

Before seeing this film I couldn't understand why the producers had given it a subtitle; afterward I realized "Ecks vs. Sever" was probably the full script.

The dazzling star power of the French screen royalty Ozon has assembled and the film's sheer exuberance in its own artifice make this a delight from beginning to end.

Enchanting and impressively crafted.

As long as Miller simply crosscuts between the machinations of the three mothers, the sociological and psychological parallels are intriguing, but when they're forced to share the same story line, the contrivances and coincidences begin to seem fussily elaborate.

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.

Misses a chance to use the Manhattan setting to add to his protagonist's displacement, instead treating the city as a bland backdrop.

Some of the verbal jousts are hot, and a Laurel and Hardy routine involving a stolen ATM is fitfully hilarious, but this reminds me of a pilot for a cable sitcom.

Unfortunately Jia --a rather limited actor, judging from the movies excerpted here -- has trouble either articulating or projecting the existential crisis that ultimately landed him in a mental institution, which leaves the emotional center of the film inert.

Director Bruce McCulloch, an alumnus of the Canadian TV show "The Kids in the Hall," lacks the sense of scale and timing needed for a feature film, and Lee's voice-over about fate that brackets the narrative only highlights its shapelessness.

De Niro sinks this crime drama with his vacant, inattentive performance as an affectionally challenged homicide detective.

This is a twilight film, full of sorrow yet lyrical, beautiful, and dark.

Shameless exercise in high-tech sadism.

At 165 minutes this is a pretty long haul, and the shifting alliances mapped out in the dark and claustrophobic first part can be difficult to follow; the payoff comes in the second part, which opens out into dramatic locations and bloody battle as the Mongols lay siege to Otrar.

Fontaine and Jacques Fieschi collaborated on the screenplay, and Jocelyn Pook's chilly string score nicely evokes the menace underlying the film's plush settings.

Notorious on the festival circuit for its excruciating scenes of self-mutilation.

The film never quite achieves the sharp edge satire demands, largely because director Andrew Niccol, who was so good at managing tone in "Gattaca," can't decide whether to go with nasty or hilariously farcical.

In short, I never quite believed the story, but this movie is more about feeling than thinking.

Watchable if relatively threadbare movie.

The plot is as skimpy as their bikinis.

I was wooed by its sexy romanticism all the way through to the mysterious and beautiful coda.