Odd and intense, very well acted, and impossible to dismiss.

Regaled for 50 years by the stupendous idiocy of the American version of Godzilla, audiences can now see the original Japanese version, which is equally idiotic.

I can imagine it as a sex comedy, as a romance, as a bittersweet exploration of lonely people. Schleppi has a little of all three elements at work here, but it's Tim Blake Nelson's character who keeps the plot from spinning out of control.

A brave film in the way it shows two people who find any relationship almost impossible, and yet find a way to make theirs work. The problems with the film come because it overstays its welcome.

It isn't a successful movie but is sometimes a very interesting one, and there is real charm and comic agility by the two leads.

This is the documentary that caused a sensation at Sundance 2004 and allegedly inspired McDonald's to discontinue its "super size" promotions as a preemptive measure.

Black somehow feels reigned in; shaved and barbered, he's lost his anarchic passion and is merely playing a comic role instead of transforming it into a personal mission.

It's a thriller, a bad thriller, completely lacking in psychological or emotional truth.

Then they annoy us by trying to deny the attraction while the plot spins its wheels, pretending to be about something.

Mean Girls dissects high school society with a lot of observant detail, which seems surprisingly well-informed. The screenplay by "Saturday Night Live's" Tina Fey is both a comic and a sociological achievement.

Tells this story in a straightforward, calm way that works ideally as the chronicle of a man's life but perhaps less ideally as drama.

Tells a story of conventional melodrama, and makes it extraordinary because of the acting.

The effect is strange and delightful; somehow the style lends quasi-credibility to a story that is entirely preposterous.

Jennifer Garner is indeed a charmer, but she's the victim of a charmless treatment in 13 Going on 30.

Employs superb craftsmanship and a powerful Denzel Washington performance in an attempt to elevate genre material above its natural level, but it fails. The underlying story isn't worth the effort.

Seibei's story is told by director Yoji Yamada in muted tones and colors, beautifully re-creating a feudal village that still retains its architecture, its customs, its ancient values, even as the economy is making its way of life obsolete.

After his murder, Michele Montas goes on the air to insist that Jean Dominique is still alive, because his spirit lives on. But in this film Haiti seems to be a country that can kill the spirit, too.

Put the two parts together, and Tarantino has made a masterful saga that celebrates the martial arts genre while kidding it, loving it, and transcending it.

Plays like a genial amateur theatrical, the kind of production where you'd like it more if you were friends with the cast. The plot is creaky, the jokes are laborious, and total implausibility is not considered the slightest problem.

The Punisher is so grim and cheerless, you wonder if even its hero gets any satisfaction from his accomplishments.

The film, written and directed by Michael S. Ojeda, shows a sure sense of noir style and a toughness that lasts right up to the very final scene, which feels contrived and tacked-on.

This is an almost Dostoyevskian study of a man brooding upon evil until it paralyzes him.

It somehow succeeds in taking those pop-culture brand names like Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie and giving them human form.

A high-spirited charmer, a fantasy that sparkles with delights.

This is a dishonest, quease-inducing "comedy" that had me feeling uneasy and then unclean. Who in the world read this script and thought it was acceptable?

A fog of gloom lowers over The Whole Ten Yards, as actors who know they're in a turkey try their best to prevail.

I'm Not Scared is a reminder of true childhood, of its fears and speculations, of the way a conversation can be overheard but not understood, of the way that the shape of the adult world forms slowly through the mist.

The movie itself is genial and unfocused and tired.

One of those rare movies that's not only based on a comic book, but also feels like a comic book. It's vibrating with energy, and you can sense the zeal and joy in its making.

It's only 76 minutes long, but although kids will like it, their parents will be sneaking looks at their watches.

The Prince & Me has the materials to be a heartwarming mass-market love story, but it doesn't assemble them convincingly.

Johnny Knoxville, famous for "Jackass,"...is, in fact, completely convincing and probably has a legitimate movie career ahead of him and doesn't have to stuff his underpants with dead chickens and hang upside down over alligator ponds any more.

I believe it is as cruel and senseless as the killings in "Elephant," but while that film was chillingly objective, this one seems to be on everybody's side. It's a moral muddle.

Liv Tyler is a very particular talent who has sometimes been misused by directors more in love with her beauty than with her appropriateness for their story. Here she is perfectly cast.

The Coens' Ladykillers, on the other hand, is always wildly signaling for us to notice it. Not content to be funny, it wants to be FUNNY! Have you ever noticed that the more a comedian wears funny hats, the less funny he is?

Lars von Trier exhibits the imagination of an artist and the pedantry of a crank in Dogville, a film that works as a demonstration of how a good idea can go wrong.

Never Die Alone is [Dickerson's] best work to date, with the complexity of serious fiction and the nerve to start dark and stay dark, to follow the logic of its story right down to its inevitable end.

Hickenlooper's film evokes what the Japanese call mono no aware, which refers to the impermanence of life and the bittersweet transience of things. There is a little Rodney Bingenheimer in everyone, but you know what? Most people aren't as lucky as Rodney.

What I felt as I watched Scooby-Doo 2 was not the intense dislike I had for the first film, but a kind of benign indifference.

Despite jumping through the deliberately disorienting hoops of its story, Eternal Sunshine has an emotional center, and that's what makes it work.

A certain genre of thriller depends more upon style and tone than upon plot; it doesn't matter if you believe it walking out, as long as you were intrigued while it was happening.

My only complaint is that its plot flatlines compared to the 1979 version, which was trickier, wittier and smarter. Romero was not above finding parallels between zombies and mall shoppers.

That it succeeds is some kind of miracle; there's enough material here for three bad films, and somehow it becomes one good one.

This is a grand, confident entertainment, sure of the power of Adjani, Depardieu and the others, and sure of itself.

A movie like this touches everyday life in a way that we can recognize as if Turkey were Peoria. I can imagine a similar film being made in America, although Americans might talk more.

Apart from funny supporting work by the inventor of the Mind Control and the guy in the "Q" role, the movie is pretty routine.

The story is more entertaining as it rolls along than it is when it gets to the finish line. But at least King uses his imagination right up to the end, and spares us the obligatory violent showdown that a lesser storyteller would have settled for.

The patter is always fascinating, and at right angles to the action. [Mamet]'s like a magician who gets you all involved in his story about the King, the Queen and the Jack, while the whole point is that there's a rabbit in your pocket.

A warm human comedy.

As a viewer, we intuit that it is more, or less, than it seems: That in some sense, the whole project is a scam.

A surprisingly funny movie, the best of the 1970s recycling jobs, with one laugh ("Are you OK, little pony?") almost as funny as the moment in "Dumb and Dumber" when the kid figured out his parakeet's head was Scotch-taped on.

But if you do not have some secret place in your soul that still responds even a little to brave cowboys, beautiful princesses and noble horses, then you are way too grown up and need to cut back on cable news.

Has just a little too much of the whodunit and the thriller and not enough of the temper of its clash between cultures, but it works, maybe because the simplicity of the underlying plot is masked by the oddness of the characters.

All of this has a fascination, and yet Red Trousers is a jumbled and unsatisfying documentary.

There will be better movies playing in the same theater, even if it is a duplex, but on the other hand there is something to be said for goofiness without apology by broken lizards who just wanna have fun.

[Garai and Luna] must be given credit for their presence and charisma in Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights, and together with the film's general ambiance, they do a lot to make amends for the lockstep plot.

Walks like a thriller and talks like a thriller, but it squawks like a turkey.

A comedy, but a peculiar one. Peculiar, because it never quite addresses the self-deception which causes Christiane to support the communist regime in the first place.

This is not a sermon or a homily, but a visualization of the central event in the Christian religion. Take it or leave it.

Against the Ropes meanders until it gets to the final third of its running time, and then it catches fire.

Hackman could charm the chrome off a trailer hitch. Romano is more of the earnest, aw-shucks, sincere, well-meaning kind of guy whose charm is inner and only peeks out occasionally. They work well together here.

It is whimsical, bittersweet, wise in a minor key.

The movie doesn't have the complexity and depth of "Groundhog Day" (which I recently saw described as "the most spiritual film of our time"), but as entertainment it's ingratiating and lovable.

The movie turns cruel and ugly, and hasn't paid the dues to earn its last scenes. Parigi had me there for a while, but when he lost me, it was big time.

An uncommonly engaging comedy with ripe tragic undertones.

A surprisingly effective film, touching and knowing and, like Deneuve, ageless.

Brave dissenting Islamic filmmakers are risking their lives to tell the story of the persecution of women, and it is a story worth knowing, and mourning.

Did I like the film? Yeah, kinda, but not enough to recommend. The first film arrived with freshness and an unexpected zing, but this one seems too content to follow in its footsteps.

Catch That Kid respects all of the requirements of the genre, and the heist itself is worthy of "Ocean's Eleven" (either one; take your pick).

Although playing a hockey coach might seem like a slap shot for an actor, Russell does real acting here. He has thought about Brooks and internalized him.

The film is extraordinarily beautiful. Bertolucci is one of the great painters of the screen.

The photography, the dialogue, the acting, the script, the special effects and especially the props (such as a spaceship that looks like it would get a D in shop class) are all deliberately bad in the way that such films were bad when they were REALLY being made.

It is a Kafkaesque story, in which ominous things follow one another with a certain internal logic but make no sense at all.

You may be able to find parallels between these characters and those in "The Breakfast Club." On the other hand, you may decide life is too short.

One of the sly pleasures of Latter Days is the sight of this gay-themed movie recycling so many conventions from straight romantic cinema, as if it's time to catch up.

The movie doesn't work. It meanders and drifts and riffs.

Kate Bosworth holds it all together with a sweetness that is beyond calculation.

The most harrowing movie about mountain climbing I have seen, or can imagine.

There's so much flashing forward and backward, so many spins of fate, so many chapters in the journals, that after awhile I felt that I, as well as time, was being jerked around.

There isn't a lot in the movie that is funny.

The first three minutes convince us we're are looking at a commercial before the feature begins. Then we realize the whole movie will look like this.

An animated film both harrowing and heartwarming, about a story that will never, ever, be remade by Disney.

The Tracker is one of those rare films that deserves to be called haunting. It tells the sort of story we might find in an action Western, but transforms it into a fable or parable.

Surprisingly good in areas where it doesn't need to be good at all, and pretty awful in areas where it has to succeed.

No one should have to endure the life that Aileen Wuornos led, and we leave the movie believing that if someone, somehow, had been able to help that little girl, her seven victims would never have died.

It may be a deeper film experience than many audiences can withstand: too cynical, too true, too cruel and too heartbreaking. It is about the Algerian war, but those not interested in Algeria may substitute another war; The Battle of Algiers has a universal frame of reference.

A rare item these days: An erotic film made well enough to keep us interested. It's about beautiful people, has a lot of nudity, and the sex is as explicit as possible this side of porno.

Gradually the full arc of Toni Collette's performance reveals itself, and we see that the end was there even in the beginning. This is that rare sort of film that is not about what happens, but about what happens then.

Lighthearted fun.

By the end of the film, you admire the artistry and the care, you know that the actors worked hard and are grateful for their labors, but you wonder who in God's name thought this was a promising scenario for a movie. It's not a story, it's an idea.

Begins with a thought-provoking idea from Philip K. Dick, exploits it for its action and plot potential, but never really develops it.

tT never grow up is unspeakably sad, and this is the first Peter Pan where Peter's final flight seems not like a victory but an escape.

Why did it take me so long to see what was right there in front of my face -- that The Company is the closest that Robert Altman has come to making an autobiographical film?

This is one of the greatest performances in the history of the cinema.

The characters involve us, we sympathize with their dreams and despair of their matrimonial tunnel vision, and at the end we are relieved that we listened to Miss Watson and became the wonderful people who we are today.

McNamara speaks concisely and forcibly, rarely searching for a word, and he is not reciting boilerplate and old sound bites; there is the uncanny sensation that he is thinking as he speaks.

It stands with integrity and breaks our hearts.

It's the kind of sweet, good-humored comedy that used to star Margaret Rutherford, although Helen Mirren and Julie Walters, its daring top-liners, would have curled Dame Margaret's eyebrows.