I like the movie on a simple physical level. There is no deeper meaning and no higher skill involved; just professional action, well-staged and filmed with a certain stylistic elegance.

It is not inspired, but it's cheerful and hard-working and sometimes funny, and--here's the important thing--it's not mean.

The movie subtly darkens its tone until, when the horrifying ending arrives, we can see how we got there. There is a final shot that would get laughs in another kind of film, but May earns the right to it, and it works, and we understand it.

The movie is all about behavior, dialogue, star power and wiseass in-jokes. I really sort of liked it.

'Return of the Jedi' is fun, magnificent fun. The movie is a complete entertainment, a feast for the eyes and a delight for the fancy. It's a little amazing how Lucas and his associates keep topping themselves.

Burt and Verona are two characters rarely seen in the movies: thirtysomething, educated, healthy, self-employed, gentle, thoughtful, whimsical, not neurotic and really truly in love.

There are moments of surprising tenderness in Fading Gigolo, and Turturro gives us some beautiful shots of a city he clearly loves. But this film is all over the map, veering from pathos to absurdist comedy to romance to weirdness for the sake of weirdness.

Hey, it's no masterpiece. It is what it is: soft-core eroticism. But on that basis, it succeeds, which is why I am giving it three stars. All criticism is subjective, all star ratings are relative, and if you have read this far you want to know if "Sex and Zen" is a superior example of its genre. It is. If there is the slightest doubt, stay around for the closing credits, which begin with gigantic block letters reading: "Recommended by Penthouse." The possibilities for additional recommendations in other kinds of movies are tantalizing.

Once you get past the amazement this thing was made at all, the movie itself is an intermittently clever but mostly tedious, convoluted David Lynch knockoff that wanders all over the place.

Where it succeeds is as the story of a chapter in history, the story of how one coach at one school arrived at an obvious conclusion and acted on it, and helped open college sports in the South to generations of African Americans.

Flash Gordon is played for laughs, and wisely so. It is no more sophisticated than the comic strip it's based on, and that takes the curse off of material that was old before it was born. Is all of this ridiculous? Of course. Is it fun? Yeah, sort of, it is.

Nine to Five is a good-hearted, simple-minded comedy that will win a place in film history, I suspect, primarily because it contains the movie debut of Dolly Parton. She is, on the basis of this one film, a natural-born movie star, a performer who holds our attention so easily that it's hard to believe it's her first film.

There are times the family-friendly slapstick comedy and heavy messaging about the heartbreak of animals in tight, dark, cold captivity don’t exactly mesh. But the visuals are truly impressive and the story has an uplifting arc, and oh do these actors have fun hamming it up.

The result is too much formula and not enough human interest.

The film indulges in sentimental and sensational tropes. The manipulative touches do more than dis­­­­­­tract, they irk. This story could have been retold without resorting to all the unfortunate formulas used in prime-time and cable fare.

An expensive, exhaustive, 150-mintue odyssey that doesn’t so much conclude as cross the finish line and collapse. It has been outfitted with expensive stars and a glossy production, but it doesn’t really make us care.

Problem is, the more we know about these two, the less we care about what happens to them.

A perfectly cast film that depicts a moody world of jazz musicians, drugs and self-destruction.

The movie unleashes all sorts of considerations it doesn’t really deal with, and the material edges closer to horror than it probably intends.

This is a good but not great Star Trek movie, a sort of compromise between the first two.

Of course, the aging-hit-man theme is hardly original, and at times Asher feels almost TOO familiar — but thanks to the great performances by Perlman and the supporting cast; a knowing and literate script by Jay Zaretsky, and the slick direction of Michael Caton-Jones, this is a sparkling black diamond of film noir.

A film that grows in reflection. The first time I saw it, I was hurtling down the tracks of a goofy ethnic comedy when suddenly we entered dark and dangerous territory. I admired the film but did not sufficiently appreciate its arc.

De Niro is so good at playing a man who has essentially emasculated himself because of fear of his anger, so that sex and anger may be leashed in precisely the opposite way, as in "Raging Bull." And Norton, the puppetmaster - it may not even be freedom he requires, but simply the pleasure of controlling others to obtain it.

The screenplay is dense with crackling dialogue, and the performances are uniformly excellent, with Shea Whigham leading the way in a badass anti-hero performance.

Dial of Destiny has a few clever ideas and some well-crafted action sequences, but the main plot line is creaky, corny and contrived, and the final action twist lands the story in such disastrous, B-movie territory that not even Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones can rescue it from collapsing in a dusty heap of mediocrity.

Janet Montgomery is heartbreakingly good as Emma.

In its amiable, quiet, PG-13 way, The Invention of Lying is a remarkably radical comedy.

It's that ambiguity that makes the film interesting.