Genz and Erling have constructed a story so clever that the pleasure of following its twists is enough in itself.

Mangold front-loads the action, but near the end there’s a first-rate fight atop a bullet train between Wolverine/Logan and some especially pesky ninjas. It puts the train fights in the recent “The Lone Ranger” to shame.

Most moviegoers will leave buzzing about the climactic Battle of Helm's Deep. But in my eyes, this is Gollum's show more than anyone else's, even the special-effects wizards behind the scenes.

With all this going for it, Vicky Cristina Barcelona should be better than it is. But there's something intriguing going on here. It's a movie about the sacrifices that people make to be happy.

Despite the film’s emphasis on Ryota’s transformation, the most piercing moment for me came in the scene in which his wife anguishes over her guilt in not realizing right away, as a mother, that Keita was not her birth son.

Don't miss this harrowing movie if you're in the mood for adventure more thrilling than anything Hollywood has to offer these days.

The rags-to-riches-to-rags trajectory is shopworn, but the sibling rivalries are cantankerous and goofy and Bernal's Tato, who fancies himself a pop singing star, wouldn't make the first cut on "American Idol."

It's hard to find a current release that so effectively teases the mind and emotions.

May not make you laugh out loud - it's too sly and subtle for that - but it will have you smiling every minute, and often grinning widely at its weirded-out charm. Nerdiness will never seem the same.

Still, I prefer a bit more drama in my political docudramas. The Conquest never really breaks out of its genre in the way that, say, "The Queen" or "Il Divo" or the more fictionalized "In the Loop" did.

Mahieux gives a bravura performance as the title character. Director Garrone keeps the story involving even though it doesn't quite live up to the star's strong talents.

The film's underwater views are breathtaking, as are its drawings and photographs of the Titanic's original splendor.

Hovering between vivid countryside documentary and understated melodrama, this almost wordless film is a unique excursion into fascinating territory.

The White Crow fitfully does justice to Nureyev’s overwhelming desire to be an artist, and that’s not a negligible achievement.

The result is what you might call a mass-audience art film. It doesn't entirely succeed, but it's certainly a change from today's standard mysteries and horror movies.

This dramatic comedy is an Italian style "Mean Girls" when Castellito isn't stealing the show as a dysfunctional dad.

Joffe for the most part amps up the melodrama without tearing Greene's complex weave, but everything unravels toward the end with some staggeringly bad staging. It's as if the film itself had been mugged.

Anthony doesn't have a large emotional range as an actor, and neither does Lopez. Still, the musical numbers, which constitute a hefty portion of screen time, are thrilling.

Movies like this are meant to amuse and entertain, though, not instruct. Meyers's latest is worth seeing for its offbeat story, its tantalizing settings, and most of all, its spot-on acting, especially by Keaton and Nicholson.

At its best when it gets into the cutthroat dynamics of academic competition, which are both horrifying and amusing.

Francis Ford Coppola has directed the legal drama with his usual keen attention to atmosphere and texture, although his adaptation of John Grisham's bestselling novel leaves out connective material that would have made the tale smoother and savvier.

The film is good enough to keep all the Marvel Comics crazed audiences out there deliriously happy while keeping the rest of us earthbound types in moderate thralldom.

Hanks's extraordinary acting keeps the adventure involving even though the beginning is predictable, the middle is uneven, and the finale slips into Zemeckis's patented brand of "Forrest Gump" fuzziness.

Will Tarantino, who is more talented than he allows, ever break out of his perpetual adolescence and make a movie that does more than glorify his love of schlock? Will we ever get a "Tarantino Unchained"?

Still packs an entertaining punch with its blend of old-movie formulas, new-age philosophies, and video-game visuals. A small amount of new material, added for the 20th-anniversary reissue, is fun to look for but doesn't make much difference to the story or its impact. [Special Edition]

My favorite voice/animation combo, however, is Stephen Colbert's very terrestrial president of the United States.

Excellent acting and a finely tuned screenplay spark this genuinely offbeat melodrama.

Plays out its drama with enough old-fashioned sobriety to lend the proceedings a classical air, offering the comfort of familiarity rather than the thrill of discovery. [13 Aug 1992]