To make us begin to understand the anguish on display here, the movie needed more emotional layers and fewer obvious signposts.

This same premise holds for the remake, and it seems more pandering (and dated) than ever.

Zellweger is as charming as ever, and it's good to find LaBute working with a script by writers who don't fully share his crabbed, cramped view of human nature.

Almost every scene is pitched for dewy sympathy. Madsen, a strong actress who might have matched Freeman, is portrayed in varying shades of blandness. Even Freeman, good as his is, is held back here. His rock bottom isn't very rocky, and far from bottomless.

Ultimately, it's more an emotional hodgepodge than a compassionate look at real human problems.

Like many a Hollywood political drama, Lions for Lambs carries a full head of steam that is indistinguishable from a lot of hot air.

Much of the action seems more like warmed-over Quentin Tarantino than first-rate Steven Soderbergh.

If none of this seems particularly fresh, you're right. "T3" is strikingly similar to "T2" and "T," reflecting Hollywood's reluctance to tamper with a hit series.

The drama is long on 1950s atmosphere and complicated feelings, short on emotional depth and real psychological insight.

Joe Eszterhas's screenplay is vastly more thoughtful than his scripts for "Basic Instinct" and its ilk, but the storytelling is too spotty for the movie to become the effective moral tale it might have been.

The story evokes a lot of varied emotions, but none runs more than an inch below skin deep.

The omnipresent Benedict Cumberbatch plays Assange, stringy white-gray hair flowing, and Daniel Brühl is Domscheit-Berg. Condon and his screenwriter Josh Singer don’t quite know what to make of this duo, perhaps because the men didn’t quite know what to make of each other, either.

I can’t imagine a world without the Beatles, but I can well imagine a world without this movie.

Sweetie is imaginatively filmed, but it's sadly mean-spirited, too. For all its cleverness, it left a mighty sour taste in my mouth. [29 Jan 1990, p.11]

The story is slow and corny, but Whitaker gives commendable dignity to his everyday characters, and the acting is emotionally strong as long as the male romantic interest (Connick) isn't around.

The trouble with Chicago is the sense it conveys that nothing is really at stake -- there's no moral or ethical question that can't be turned into toe-tapping fun.

The Young Karl Marx disappointingly resembles for the most part a conventional biopic. It has little depth, either political or psychological.

Wesley Snipes is terrific as the hero.

The comedy as a whole is very slight.

The movie wastes a good opportunity to look at important questions, such as who's responsible for American policy when the president is busy killing terrorists.

An odd amalgam of soap opera and street-level realism, with, alas, the former trumping the latter.

Based on a novel by French provocateur Georges Bataille, an important thinker whose fiction rarely translates into good cinema.

Campion is an imaginative filmmaker, but here she reduces a fascinating subject to a two-character soap opera that often seems contrived on both spiritual and psychological levels.

Rodin, directed by Jacques Doillon and starring Vincent Lindon as the great Parisian sculptor, does not, to put it charitably, add to the very small roster of Great Artist movies (such as “Lust for Life” and “Vincent & Theo”).

Seems more clever than heartfelt, and whether you enjoy it may depend on how much you like Robert Altman's eccentric western "McCabe and Mrs. Miller," which it uncannily resembles.

The subject is crucially important, but the movie dilutes its impact with by-the-numbers filmmaking, and Cheadle's one-note performance displays few of his acting gifts.

Like its predecessor, it's a hugely ambitious picture...But also like its predecessor, it cares far more about action, adventure, and violence than feelings, relationships, and ideas.

It's a serviceable picture, but hardly a top-notch vehicle for Washington's remarkable gifts.