Levin's on-camera presence is warm, wry and even-tempered, and he never feels the need to rub anything in.

Do not read too much into Burger's mockumentary, then; it's just having a lark, poking fun at conspiracy theorists, taking the piss out of the dozens of docs out there that present themselves as The Real Story About the Killing of John Kennedy.

The problem with Spartan isn't so much that it's mediocre, but that it could be a whole lot better.

If you can cast all semblance of logic aside, it's sort of fun.

Thankfully, Emily Watson comes to his rescue with her spot-on portrayal of the killer's blind girlfriend; her rich performance works wonders in the absence of Jodie Foster. Now, if only they could remake Hannibal before they assemble that boxed set.

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.

There are many winning moments here, but director Nigel Cole (Saving Grace) sometimes imparts to the thing a terrible case of the cutes and an overeagerness to please.

Zucker!'s a bona fide hit in Germany, where, apparently, there's been a shortage of Jewish comedies since, oh, 1939, give or take. But it deserves its imported rep; rare's the movie that has an Orthodox Jew tripping on Ecstasy while getting a massage from a Palestinian prostitute hours before his mamala's funeral.

Co-directors and writers John Musker and Ron Clements doll it up so marvelously you're sucked into the screen and forced to confront the fact that at their best, these filmmakers can make the two-dimensional astonishingly warm and full-bodied.

It may have been the perfect storm, but this is the imperfect movie.

Johnson, who was computer-generated in "Mummy" and only looked it in "Scorpion King," keeps it engaging, displaying a comedic knack first revealed during his Saturday Night Live appearance in 2000; he has the timing of a Rolex, even when playing straight man to American Pie's Stifler.

For Jordan, this is a return to top form.

Overstuffed (three villains), overlong (at more than two hours and 20 minutes) and undercooked (plot points include amnesia and alien goo).

Abandon all hopes of common sense, and enter the theater with high expectations for visceral entertainment. You won't be disappointed.

A pensive, reflective movie, more or less equal in tone to Ang Lee's "The Ice Storm," yet, because of its temporal breadth and tight emotional focus, it packs a more intimate punch.

There are times when one suspects that this film potentially could be the raunchiest sitcom pilot ever.

Slick, glossy, and artificial.

Oddly, the film's strengths -- its quiet, understated manner; its non-plot; the awkward speech patterns and uncomfortable pauses that suggest emotional isolation -- are also its weaknesses.

A fascinating, highly literate film.

This Jay-Z documentary is too much of a good thing, really.

The Lost World is a smoother, scarier ride than its predecessor, with twice as many dinosaurs twice as well designed eating twice as many people...But he's not particularly playful with his terrors here, and that's a disappointment coming from a filmmaker who can mix scares and laughs the way no one else ever has.

The most offensive movie of the year.

Terrence McNally's Tony Award-winning work has been called "one of the major plays of our time." Moviegoers who aren't stage-struck may wonder, "What's the fuss?"

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

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

Kills whatever charm the first movie had by recycling its few serviceable parts.

Lee, who played the retro groove thang broadly in "Undercover Brother," dives so wholeheartedly and unironically into this movie about, yes, roller disco, that any faults seem minor.

Hoffman, though, is the real gas--the vet getting dopey and loopy and handsy because, hey, what the hell...The midnight cowboy rides again.

So inventive, confident, and accomplished is the production that it's a shock to learn Sliding Doors is the work of a first-time director-screenwriter.

Sensational yet sadly unsatisfying.

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.

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.

Neil LaBute is back to his old self, and the cinematic world is a better place for it.

Director Kevin Rodney Sullivan (How Stella Got Her Groove Back) and editor Paul Seydor serve it up beautifully.

Once this movie gets going, it works, and it works well. It has a slow buildup, but its final third manages to generate some eye-popping thrills.

The result is a kind of quirky, high-toned soap opera.

If you're a little girl in the Lisa Simpson mold, for whom the greatest wish-fulfillment in the world would be to have your own pony, then Dreamer just might be for you. Otherwise, no.

Kirk Jones (Waking Ned Devine) directs with skill, Thompson's screenplay (this is a labor of love) is witty, and the classy cast includes Colin Firth (as the kids' baffled widower-father), Angela Lansbury, Imelda Staunton, and Celia Imrie. Good fun.

The movie is smart, funny, romantic, and rousing.

And remember, this is just part one of a trilogy. While all may not be clear yet, there's certainly enough here to make you curious about the other two parts.

Buried somewhere in here, about 6 feet deep, is an intriguing premise.

The film congeals from dripping sentimentality into emulsified schmaltz when it brings in the actual Ryan family, all 10 children (now in their fifties and sixties), for a final scene. The intentions are clearly honorable, and we certainly wish these people well, but this isn't a memorial service, it's a movie.

If this really is the last stand, it's a stylish farewell indeed.

It may feel familiar, but it's a bleak and profound piece of work.

Provides Hoffman with what he's long deserved: a movie of his own.

If, like Benigni, you were born after World War II, it reassures us that he hasn't forgotten the innate seriousness of his subject matter, and that despite its grimness, he still thinks life is beautiful.

By all accounts, Marsh has absorbed classic crazy-killer thrillers like "Psycho," "The Night of the Hunter" and "Badlands," but The King isn't likely to join such esteemed company.

Beloved tries to be an anthem of the spirit, and that's just about the most difficult--and unfilmable--thing you can attempt in the movies. Demme stretches things out to epic length, but what was really needed here was an epic imagination.

Only Kerry Condon, as Freeman's geeky adopted daughter, plays anything approaching a realistic character.

There's something almost refreshingly venal about a movie with no purpose other than to meet intentions this cheesy.

Although Morrison's drama feels increasingly forced and manipulative as the movie rolls along, the movie is competent if painfully predictable.

Nelson has directed his actors--including David Arquette, Steve Buscemi and Daniel Benzali (no, this isn't a joke)--to speak in David Mamet-like cadence, all short, choppy sentences and staccato rhythms. It's a terrible mistake.

If this movie is a pedestal, it is far too tall and wide for a performer of Kaufman's stature.

This is not the easiest film in the world to untangle, but our attentions are soon rewarded.

Why would the writers bother with narrative when the story is just something that kills time, and brain cells, between feats and fists of fury?

For the first time, Burton seems comfortable walking around the real world.

Younger, for whatever reason, simply can't abide their happiness, and so he destructs the relationship from time to time for no reason, using plot devices that wouldn't have been out of place in episodes of "Three's Company."

On one level it is highly intimate, yet it is also universal, a modern metaphor for the human condition and the precariousness of life itself.

This lavish and captivating production by veteran Thai director Chatri Chalerm Yukol (Salween) transports us to another world where even the film stock seems imbued with a timeless, classic quality.

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.

It's painful, it's real, and it's probably the funniest thing you'll see this year...a teen sexploitation classic.

With a level of dark humor akin to the screenplays of Todd Solondz, and a visual style reminiscent of Dario Argento, May is one of the funniest, most disturbing, yet strangely touching movies of the year

Soderbergh seems to have found his vision again. It'll be a great day when he returns to writing his own material, but until then, this is none too shabby.

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.

Schreiber's edits gut the story of its power and punch. His film is strong on comedy and farce, enjoyable as a quirky-friendship gag, but it fails in its attempt at tragedy.

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.

A former yeshiva student himself, Gorlin turns this tale of political intrigue and the search for divinity into an act of liberation -- if not outright defiance.

If Campion has a message in all this -- something about the eternal battle of the sexes -- it is far from clear.

At last Dreamworks has given us the stuff of nightmare.

Whatever its flaws -- and it has some lulus -- it's a textbook model for how to structure action of this kind.

Mifune's radical stylings belie its clichéd core.

A movie designed to wow winds up feeling cold, not, ya know, cool; the charm of the 2001 original has been decimated, its heart replaced with a microprocessor.

As Frank, a widower who falls for his son's conniving would-be girlfriend (Maggie Gyllenhaal), Arnold is a revelation.

Watching Cowboy del Amor is like sitting in a room with someone who's making funny racist cracks; you can't help but laugh, but you feel sullied by the implicit collusion. For that reason, the film tips over into the camp of tragedy. Or if it is a comedy, it's the Shakespearean kind, where the marriages at the end are utterly unsettling.

Sits before us like an exquisite platter of wax fruit, colorful, flavorless, and, if you eat it, very likely to come back up.

It's unlikely that anyone will be bored. But it's just as unlikely that anyone will be swept off his feet either.

What could have been an engaging, maybe even enlightening story about the unfairly high price a woman pays for conducting herself like a man winds up as nothing more than a worthless, harmless and ultimately charmless piffle.

Just another baseball movie hitting for average -- very average.

Once you notice Ejiofor, you won't stop noticing--and Kinky Boots ensures that you will notice, thanks not only to the nature of his role, but also because there isn't much else here to get excited about.

Some directors can profit from the strictures of a strong narrative, but, for Linklater, the conventionality of The Newton Boys works against the glide of his free-floating style.

What makes this movie special is the meticulous attention placed on each of its characters, employing them not in the traditional "melting pot" manner that is so common, but as part of a grand mosaic that actually seems to be worth sharing.

Hopkins' beautifully detailed, deeply felt acting remains a joy to watch...But an even greater pleasure, at least for my money, is Kidman's dark turn as Faunia Farley.

It's bright and spry, giggly and bouncy, but also cuddly with occasional touches of cruelty--a movie in which best friends, when let loose in the wild, suddenly realize one's a little higher on the food chain.

Taymor moves Titus completely out of time and into all time.

Overall, Dillon has scored at the helm. Wholly engrossing his film is not, but a valiant first feature it is.

More than just a disappointment. It is also a spoiler, possibly weakening the impact of "Silence" for its fans.

The most life-affirming film about death to come along in ages.

Astonishing, haunting and lyrical on its own terms.

Mostly dumb, no matter how desperately and even valiantly it aims for "thinky."

The material turns out to be far soggier in the execution.

Here, jokes are just as likely to end not in punch lines, but in uncomfortable silence, impenetrable irony or stomach flips.

This horror-comedy about an aging Elvis in a haunted rest home proves not only is "Evil Dead's" Bruce Campbell a good actor, but possibly a great one.

Director Thomas Carter (no relation to Ken) relies on processed emotion and stock characters, and not even the inevitable Big Game excites us very much.

Assisted Living's overall mix doesn't quite jell, though there are worthwhile moments.

[The movie's subject] sounds like great movie material, but the film, except in flashes, doesn't do it justice.

Despite his natty wardrobe and calculated sangfroid, Penn doesn't summon up quite the right image.

We have heard this song before, know it by heart (sadly, as film still can't keep pace with real-life headlines about fake drug busts and a shady LAPD), and still filmmakers can't resist its rhythms.

It's a sweet, silly and not unintelligent romantic comedy: For a period farce, you could do worse.