Meg Ryan does such an effective job of evoking her sexually hungry lonely girl that it might have been better to just follow that line and not distract her and the audience with the distraction of a crime plot.

Madagascar is funny, especially at the beginning, and good-looking in a retro cartoon way, but in a world where the stakes have been raised by "Finding Nemo," "Shrek" and "The Incredibles," it's a throwback to a more conventional kind of animated entertainment. It'll be fun for the smaller kids, but there's not much crossover appeal for their parents.

It’s a brilliant performance by Gyllenhaal in a film that veers from dark satire to tense crime thriller before the tires come off near the end, leaving the entire vehicle just short of worth recommending.

I might have enjoyed Desert Hearts more if it had been more subtle and observant about the two women. It might have been a better movie if it had been about discovery instead of seduction.

Filmmaker Todd Douglas Miller unfortunately adopts the format of prime-time docu-tainment.

The movie is so filled with action that dramatic conflict would be more than we could handle, so all of the characters are nice.

The curious case of two appealing performances surviving a bombardment of schlock.

Puenzo’s initial premise is more promising, though, than her sensational tone.

Too much action brings the movie to a dead standstill. Why don't directors understand that? Why don't they know that wall-to-wall action makes a movie less interesting -- less like drama, more like a repetitive video game?

I liked the movie without loving it. It's not great Woody Allen, like "Sweet and Lowdown" or "Bullets Over Broadway," but it's smart and sly, and the blindness is an audacious idea.

Ordinary Love gets everything right, but there’s almost nothing in the way of a major plot revelation or insightful flashback explaining certain elements from the past.

Unbroken is an ambitious, sometimes moving film that suffers from a little too much self-conscious nobility, and far too many scenes of sadistic brutality.

Without question, this movie does elicit “feel-good” emotions — largely driven by Garner’s ability to exude genuine maternal devotion and the charm of young Kylie Rogers.

The story, having failed to provide itself with character conflicts that can be resolved with drama, turns to melodrama instead.

I could see how, with a rewrite and a better focus, this could have been a film of "Braveheart'' quality instead of basically just a costume swashbuckler.

Adam wraps up their story in too tidy a package, insisting on finding the upbeat in the murky, and missing the chance to be more thoughtful about this challenging situation.

There are two strong stories here, in Africa and Denmark. Either could have made a film. Intercut in this way, they seem too much like self-conscious parables.

The plot of Touch sounds like a comedy. But the experience of seeing the film is subduing; the movie plays in a muted key.

A naturalist comic of inarticulate manners, writer-director Andrew Bujalski attempts the ensemble styles of Robert Altman and Christopher Guest to peer into a micro-culture in Computer Chess.

The interlocking stories are theoretically about people whose lives are associated; that worked in "Crash." Here the connections seem less immediate and significant, and so the movie sometimes seems based on a group of separate short stories.

Never quite lifts off. The elements are here, but not the magic.

Empire of the Sun adds up to a promising idea, a carefully observed production and some interesting performances.

It's only the movie's tendency to repeat itself and to stop for unnecessary scenes of character development that keep it from being a classically pure - which is to say, totally devious - caper movie.

The movie is quick and cheerful, and Spurlock is engaging.

Good fun, especially if you like Leone's way of savoring the last morsel of every scene. (Review of Original Release)

Derailed has a great setup, a good middle passage and some convincing performances. Then it runs off the tracks.

Not a conventional documentary about quantum physics. It's more like a collision in the editing room between talking heads, an impenetrable human parable and a hallucinogenic animated cartoon.

A cheerful comedy with just enough dark moments to create the illusion it's really about something.