If only Condon kept up the Q&A format, because when he ditches it the movie turns flat and familiar.

It has just enough "comedy" to qualify as crowd-pleaser.

Jones and Pepper are no Eastwood and Wallach, but the fact that one even thinks to make such a comparison speaks highly of the work here.

The lavish drama spans England, France, and Spain (shot mostly in Montreal), and Duigan elegantly paints a moving romance of errors amid torture, bloodshed, and terrible tragedy.

Combining the tragic and the comic, this drama is amateurish in places, but it's a triumph of atmosphere (the makers are both North Carolinians) and the acting is first-rate.

Cinema has done a fine job of documenting the anti-apartheid movement, even if too often the spotlight shone brightest on the white man through whom the black man's story was being told.

In short, the film is emotional, perhaps even sentimental, but it strenuously avoids the sort of blatant manipulation that marks cheap sentimentality.

Unlike some other soccer movies, there's no fancy editing -- excitement is generated strictly by the actual choreography and the commentary of an English announcer.

What the books suggest, the movie reveals and revels in--the songs, in other words, those brilliant, backbreakingly fast anthems.

Smith has fashioned a complex, contemporary Bible epic on his own terms. By turns crafty and clunky, pious and profane, it's clearly a labor of love.

Mostly it's just a sweet and lightly funny piece of highbrow piffle, as enjoyable as it is forgettable. There's no harm done, but there's not much else either.

The film is rich with real feeling. And Dench's performance is a heartbreaker.

It's this moralizing, this slamming down of a stop sign every time the movie wants to rev its engines, that keeps Lord of War from being great. But it's three-fourths of a great movie, if nothing else, it has more brains and balls than most studio releases, for which it's to be commended and recommended.

Despite the idealized portrait of Kelly and the very predictable plot, the film proves engaging, thanks in large measure to Ledger's sympathetic and believable performance.

Gaghan's a filmmaker for the gamer who doesn't need to have the plot follow a neat, linear path. Besides, you don't need to know precisely what's going on; no one else in the film does either. Which is Gaghan's point.

A piece of rock-and-roll history--but it isn't perfect.

It's neither the clean strike Coen-heads expected after Fargo nor the gutter ball anticipated by Coen-phobes like myself.

What results ultimately plays like a feature-length episode of an HBO comedy series like Sex and the City -- gratuitous nudity and all.

Just might be Jim Carrey's finest screen role...The rest of the movie, however, isn't quite up to Carrey's level.

The supporting cast is strong, featuring Dave Foley, Kevin McDonald, Bruce Campbell, Lynda Carter, and Cloris Leachman.

Actually, that shift in moral perspective is the freshest thing in the movie--it keeps the action absorbing even when the script keeps hammering us with lessons about the commercial exploitation of the news and TV audiences' craziness and gullibility.

It's a strange, entertaining little film that derives its weird tension from a blend of comic and serious tones.

Numbs as much as it unnerves.

To call Undertow a '70s-style revenge movie is accurate, but those unfamiliar with Green who expect a typical genre picture may wonder why it takes so long to get to the action.

Statham's totally believable. He might yet become Bruce Willis.

Rea hits just the right balance of sympathy and self-interest.

Flecked with delicious malice, and the kids, especially newcomer Coughlin, performs with verve and high energy.

Fight Club is to intelligent men what Catherine Breillat's "Romance" is to intelligent women -- an insult.

This might be the most predictable movie of the year, but at least it delivers everything you expect it to.

Weaver is able to take a schlock conception and turn it into a tour de force. Sky-high and straight-backed, she's imperiously graceful in this film; at times she resembles Martha Graham in the swooping, lyrical severity of her movements.

Grand entertainment in the old-fashioned sense.

Part of the problem may be the use of non-actors in most of the roles. They look like real people, and they are entirely believable, but none has any kind of star charisma.

These guys are laugh-out-loud funny, not because they're being belittled, but because they're finally getting a chance to show a sense of humor onscreen.

A small but grand expression of the beauty of the feminine, which brings everyone together with revised and deepened appreciation.

We do glimpse the dynamic interplay between rising comedian Eddie Griffin's hilarious obsessions and the loving, screwed-up people who made him what he is.

This first generation of Native American movie directors has already managed to make great strides: While prodding the collective conscience of the U.S. mainstream with their disturbing views of the reservation, they have also opened the door to a vibrant spirit world unknown to all but a few.

A true killing comedy would require a great deal more sophistication than first-time writer-director Peter Duncan brings to the party. He hasn't made a black comedy, really; it's more like a black spoof.

A problem with Park's naturalistic worldview is that it's hard to find anyone to root for. The movie is beautiful to look at, but hideous in its narrative.

As satisfying as much of the film is, there are a few missteps, large and small, that may require indulgence on the part of viewers.

For all of the heroine's shockingly "modern" lifestyle choices, the thrust of the film is remarkably old-fashioned. It embraces the notion that you can have only a single great love in a lifetime...and that's if you're lucky.

It's a deeply divided film--hugely ambitious and uneven, with sequences that seem to point to a new, comically flagrant movie sexuality and others that drag one into the funky muddle of the dreariest dopehead downers from the '70s.

Allen produces a lovable, relaxed--although not uproarious--comedy.

Far superior to either "Life Is Beautiful" or "Jakob the Liar."

A political film in the form of a thriller, rather than a garden-variety potboiler gleefully helping itself to stock political tropes from the genre's grab bag.

Delivers genuine scares.

While it's sometimes tedious viewing, the film proves the perfect complement to this year's hyper-explained "The Day After Tomorrow;" it's utterly free of cheap melodrama and visual razzle-dazzle, concentrating instead on the souls of plausibly human sufferers.

"Meatballs" handled the sleep-away sex stuff better; here it feels like filler between the killer musical numbers that make even special guest Stephen Sondheim smile on his way out the door.

Here Branagh and his writer-director have managed something more haunting than town-square self-flagellation: they've created a man whose appetites will always be greater than his abilities. And for an artist like Woody Allen, who possesses plenty of both, there can be no scarier fate on the planet.

Here's a tip: When Vaughn and Wilson are outed as impostors and forced to leave Walken's estate, grab your stuff and walk out. You'll think you just saw a comedy masterpiece.

Sigourney Weaver and Julianne Moore share their pain in a depressing World.

A highly likable movie.

In the end, The Producers is an enjoyable romp, and at times--as when Hitler sings "Heil Myself"--it's hilarious. But it's not transcendent.

"Homespun" is the first word that leaps in while contemplating Young's charming and moving treatise on provincial America and its deceptively simple denizens.

If you like your substance short on style, or just want a change of pace from "X-Men," this is the film for you.

A bleak, beautiful film.

For many, eXistenZ will probably be more trick than treat. But the film epitomizes the phrase sui generis ("of its own kind") and still maintains a wry attitude toward itself.

For strict action and a heftier soundtrack, “Dogtown” is king, but for audiences craving a story with their stunts, it's time to get Stoked.

The young actors, all first-timers chosen in auditions in Puglia and Basilicata, are completely natural.

O'Connor as Fanny is irresistibly appealing.

Smart, patient and ruefully funny... Yet because the film never digs too far into any single person's world, it doesn't build toward much.

The computer-enhanced vehicle chases look fake, but the hand-to-hand combat scenes are the best of the year.

For all its kinetic energy, for all its camera tricks, for all its dark humor, there's still something a bit off about these Rules, and it's not really Avary's fault.

The movie combines drawings, photos, hazy filters, superimpositions and computer effects into a pastiche both beautiful and disturbing.

Actually quite amusing, thanks mainly to a script that keeps the gags flying so fast that even though so many of them are bad, they're quickly followed by something new, and occasionally something good.

It's a noble work, an elegant work, a compassionate work -- and a somewhat tedious and glaringly self-important work.

It puts us in the shoes of men and women for whom the war is not something distant and intangible but a bloodbath in their own back yard, which makes them the very definition of embedded journalists.

Ong-Bak's script, if you can call it that, is nothing but a series of setups for star Tony Jaa to show his stuff.

This project is not the last word on Fellini, nor does it replace the director's bizarre self-portraits in Intervista or the TV special A Director's Notebook. It even irritates a bit, as none of the speakers is identified until the end.

Pocahontas is a fascinating departure from the studio's formula--a delicate work of art that casts a very fragile spell.

Klein's the perfect actor to play Howard--a man so actory he probably signs his checks in that thin movie-poster type.

At its best it plays like modern-day Marx Brothers in which every single thing that happens makes no sense and serves no purpose and nothing happens for any reason at all. It exists solely to get a laugh, not to make a point.

Here is "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" inflated to lethal proportion, or "The War of the Roses" reimagined as World War III.

As American history, Glory Road is by turns inspirational and thrilling. But, in keeping with Hollywood's gift for exaggeration, a couple of things about it are completely bogus.

Exceptionally smart and charming.

Saw II, despite the swift turnaround time, improves on all of the first film's problem areas, while leaving intact everything that was good about the concept.

As far from crowd-pleasing as you're going to get these days.

In short, it's a rich, artful film, slightly overlong but worth the time, money and energy required to get through it. Art? Definitely. Entertainment? Not so much.

It's left to Barbra Streisand and Dustin Hoffman as Greg's parents to warm up the picture, and they light it on fire. Indeed, they're having such a swell time as Roz and Bernie Focker that they seem to be in an entirely different movie--a funnier one, a sexier one and a smarter one.

But by the end the audience, along with Clayton, has been jerked around so many times that it's almost too exhausting...By then, it's almost impossible to care.

Try to forget about Michael Gambon in Potter's original BBC miniseries; Keith Gordon's film is its own thing, full of Brechtian artifice and oddball humor -- Mel Gibson's old man act in particular.

This movie is, essentially, porn, and whether it's a turn-on is likely to be subjective to each viewer. Those who find traditional porn too artificial should be pleased.

The entire remake has been dumb-dumbed by John Hughes, who wrote the script and produced.

For Caan's shtick alone, The Yards is worthwhile, but we may also be witnessing the emergence, in Gray, of a young filmmaker who's just starting to find the range.

It's facile, predictable, and contrived, but there's still something winning about this multicultural drama from South Africa.

One of the most schizoid films in recent memory. It opens with crystalline originality, a shimmering comedy with meticulous timing and sharply drawn characters. Then it careens carelessly into syrup. How could he (Martin) not have noticed?

What's weird about subUrbia is that Linklater's zoned-out technique is wedded to Bogosian's in-your-face power-rant oratory. The result is like local anesthesia--you can see the incisions, but you can't feel them.

Murphy inhabited Jif like a sweet, innocent child, almost as though he were delighted to shed the cynicism and get down to the sweet, chewy center. Or day-care center, in this case.

That sweet streak has grown, like a cancer, and gradually killed off any of the edge their (Farrellys) humor may have once had.

As a thriller, The Butterfly Effect is iffy and uneven, but as a portrait of a people, it's effective and intriguing.

When the movie works, it gleefully skewers the clichés of the buddy cop genre... When it doesn't work, it's exactly what it purports to be lampooning--a lame, boring cop buddy movie.

A thoroughly unremarkable police action movie starring the magnetic Samuel L. Jackson.

It's moderately compelling drama, but also fairly static stuff, image-wise.

Don Cheadle is wonderful, as always, as the former drug-addict-turned-psychiatrist who worries it's all hopeless but refuses to stop trying. Sounds clichéd, perhaps, but for the most part it works, thanks to piercingly authentic performances.

This is quintessential "family entertainment."

If your expectations aren't too high, there's lots of cool shit on-screen.

Farrell's performance possesses a touch too many mannerisms on loan from Tyrone Power and Clark Gable; you can almost hear the gears turning in his brain each time he cocks his head or raises an eyebrow in homage.

The film is bound together around the oral tradition and the act of storytelling, and this is where the filmmakers shine.

It's hard to know just how much to trust Titanic Town.