The actors are gifted at establishing character with just a few well-chosen strokes (as a short story writer must also be able to do). We learn as much about each of these women in half an hour as we learn about most movie characters in two hours.

Plunges far beneath Todd Solondz's territory and enters the suburbs of John Waters' universe in its fascination for people who live without benefit of education, taste, standards, hygiene and shame. I

Brimming with invention and new ideas, and its Hogwarts School seems to expand and deepen before our very eyes into a world large enough to conceal unguessable secrets -- What a glorious movie.

Perhaps this movie was so close to Egoyan's heart that he was never able to stand back and get a good perspective on it -- that he is as conflicted as his characters, and as confused in the face of shifting points of view.

It goes through the motions of an action thriller, but there is a deadness at its center, a feeling that no one connected with it loved what they were doing.

Interlaces interviews with the surviving Funk Brothers with new performances of many of the hit songs, and some sequences in which events of the past are re-created. The flashback sequences are not especially effective, but are probably better than more talking heads. Or maybe not.

It's more of a melodrama, a film that doesn't say priests are bad but observes that priests are human and some humans are bad.

Eminem survives the X-ray truth-telling of the movie camera, which is so good at spotting phonies. He is on the level.

Yes, the movie is corny, but no, it's not dumb. It's clever and insightful in the way it gets away with this story, which is almost a fable.

Julianne Moore, Dennis Quaid and Dennis Haysbert are called on to play characters whose instincts are wholly different from their own. By succeeding, they make their characters real, instead of stereotypes.

This is pure filmmaking, elegant and slippery. I haven't had as much fun second-guessing a movie since "Mulholland Drive."

Has zest and humor and some lovable supporting characters, but do we really need this zapped-up version of the Robert Louis Stevenson classic? Eighteenth century galleons and pirate ships go sailing through the stars, and it somehow just doesn't look right.

The movie is not a special effects extravaganza like "The Grinch," but in a way that's a relief. It's more about charm and silliness than about great hulking multimillion-dollar high-tech effects.

The actors are splendid, especially Sarah Polley and Sean Penn, but we never feel confident that these two plots fit together, belong together, or work together.

We might quarrel with the crucial decision at the end of Tully, but we have to honor it because we know it comes from a good place. So does the whole movie.

The movie comes to life when Murphy and Wilson are trading one-liners, and then puts itself on hold for spy and action sequences of stunning banality.

A perfectly good idea for a comedy, but it just plain doesn't work. It's dead in the water. I can imagine it working well in a different time, with a different cast, in black and white instead of color--but I can't imagine it working like this.

The movie, written and directed by Dylan Kidd, depends on its dialogue, and like a film by David Mamet or Neil LaBute has characters who use speech like an instrument. The screenplay would be entertaining just to read, as so very few are.

Another one of those road comedies where Southern roots are supposed to make boring people seem colorful. If these characters were from Minneapolis or Denver, no way anyone would make a film about them.

The plot is essentially a backdrop, as it was in "Charade," for Paris, suspense, romance and star power -- If it is true that there will never be another Audrey Hepburn, and it is, I submit it is also true that there will never be another Thandie Newton.

Sometimes we feel as if the film careens from one colorful event to another without respite, but sometimes it must have seemed to Frida Kahlo as if her life did, too.

The movie is ambitious, has good energy and is well-acted, but tells a familiar story in a familiar way. The parallels to Brian De Palma's "Scarface" are underlined by scenes from that movie which are watched by the characters in this one.

Is the film worth seeing? Depends. It breaks no new ground as horror movies go, but it does introduce an intriguing location, and it's well made technically. It's better than you expect but not as good as you hope.

There are moments in All or Nothing of such acute observation that we nod in understanding -- The closing scenes of the movie are just about perfect.

A moody, effective thriller for about 80 percent of the way, and then our hands close on air. If you walk out before the ending, you'll think it's better than it is.

Pitiless, bleak and despairing -- The Grey Zone refers to a world where everyone is covered with the gray ash of the dead, and it has been like that for so long they do not even notice anymore.

Enormously entertaining for moviegoers of any age -- But for young women depressed because they don't look like skinny models, this film is a breath of common sense and fresh air. Real Women Have Curves is a reminder of how rarely the women in the movies are real.

A fourth-rate "Pulp Fiction" with accents you can't understand.