Within the limitations of the genre, the film succeeds fairly well, with enough giddy sophomoric humor, stunning fights, titillating sex, and exotic sets and costumes to keep an audience entertained.

Neither the crime nor its detection is especially interesting, and screenwriter Tony Gayton doesn't appear to be aiming for psychological insights.

The actors are charismatic, particularly Ricardo Darin.

Crudup takes a riskier path: his architect isn't very nice and is possibly irredeemable. His performance is subtle, complicated, and fresh, and it's a shame the movie doesn't live up to it.

Julie-Marie Parmentier is fetching as the vulnerable younger sister, and the duo generate considerable erotic tension; unfortunately Denis' detached and indifferent camera never gets inside the story, its characters, or its milieu.

The 3-D effect is fun: during a thrilling launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, hurtling debris cracks the camera lens, and I found myself checking my goggles for damage.

I was periodically put off by a certain self-conciousness in delivering this material.

Characters remain stuck in their cliche profiles, and the direction -- by music video specialist Michel Gondry -- doesn't improve matters.

Only the epilogue, a happy ending tacked on to counter the cascading disappointments, seems contrived.

Jackson's portrait of impotent rage is tremendous, and Affleck, who drops his usual smugness, is surprisingly good.

It's good old-fashioned rural gothic that would make Flannery O'Connor proud, with tricky switcheroos that keep shaking up our assumptions about what's going on.

If it speaks with a quieter voice than many of Bogdanovich's early pictures, what it has to say seems substantially more personal and thoughtful.

The film is far too appreciative of its own jokes to let the audience discover anything on its own.

Suffers from suspense-killing righteousness.

Cattaneo proceeds gamely, though without much spark, through this familiar fare, but at least Nesbitt, with his sly, oddball charm, is fun to watch.

Goldfinger touch on many grand issues (theater rivalry, anti-Semitism, child labor, the generation gap, Israelis' hostility toward the Yiddish tongue) but stop short of exploring them, focusing instead on a family that personifies a dying tradition.

Stylish and effective, if slightly overlong, thriller.

It's a letdown from the man who brought us "Men in Black" and "Addams Family Values."

Painfully unfunny.

There aren't many movies that deal with middle-aged women, and this one manages to do so with a fair amount of wit and heart.

All the uplift could easily get cloying, but director John Lee Hancock knows how to keep things in control, and the whole is surprisingly satisfying.

Seems more theatrical than cinematic, needing the kind of direct address that only a stage can provide.

Powerful.

If you like being shaken up and don't care too much why or how, this is probably for you; Huppert gives her all to the part, and you won't be bored.

It's hard to pinpoint where things go wrong.

This moves back and forth between slightly clever and dopey or silly, kept vaguely watchable by the charming leads.

I was never bored but only occasionally interested.

I didn't feel I was wasting my time but I started looking at my watch long before it was over.