The Kingdom is essentially "C.S.I.: Riyadh," starring Jamie Foxx in yet another movie his Oscar statue will watch with shame.

Like "Fight Club," it's a brilliantly made film that will be despised for the right and wrong reasons; if you don't see the humor in it any time during the first half-hour, leave. If you stay, you've passed the test--sit back and enjoy one of the year's finest films.

It doesn't add up to much more than a trifle that might have been more impressive as a short.

The movie lacks the adult humor of such kid flicks as "Shrek" and "Lilo & Stitch," but the target audience at an advance screening was shrieking with joy throughout.

Tamahori pumps a tremendous amount of energy into his Bond movie, and it's an electrifying ride.

It's time to run, screaming.

Keaton's so good you almost forget how wonderful Downey is as Steven Schwimmer.

Sails by on cute dialogue, some funny visual gags, and two enormously likable leads.

Ferrell and Warner, however, are distractions--the obligatory dose of "eccentricity" thrown in as seasoning to make the real story more digestible. But they serve instead as irritants; too much spice, if you will.

This is escapism, pure and simple. And few know the power of such purity better than Terry McMillan.

The very best thing about A Dirty Shame, a giddy sex farce from John Waters, is the credits.

Instead of a gripping, conscience-bending thriller, Paradise plods along, determined to be some sort of master chess game ruminating on personal and cultural value systems and the complex and often contradicting facets of loyalty, honesty, friendship, love, responsibility, self-preservation, and exploitation.

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

Mimic is static, highhanded, and confused, wasting most of its 105-minute running time simply spelling out the premise.

As ridiculous, as mawkish and schizophrenic as The Family Stone is, it's also surprisingly endearing.

Hypochondriacs and germ freaks may dig it.

It's dank, moody and sorrowful (all pros for this critic), but also tediously vague, thematically plodding and often eye-rollingly absurd in its grimness. Some may swoon; I yawned a lot.

Did nobody involved in this project notice that it was retreading a very deep groove?

After trying to prove himself a serious actor in deadly dull movies, Ledger lightens up and brightens up a movie that attempts the trick of bringing a new spin to an old story but can't pull off the stunt.

It doesn't have enough power in the first place to make a strong claim on our attentions.

Don't expect to be wowed by a vast spectrum of delicacies, as the buffet here is composed of entirely obvious ingredients.

God bless Johnny Depp. For the second time this year, the man has almost single-handedly redeemed an action movie that would otherwise be indistinguishable from the pack.

This is phony, absolutely, but the good feeling it leaves behind is plenty real.

In Eastwood's hands, Berendt's characters--ranging from a narcissistic merry widow to a bon vivant who entertains in vacant mansions--register with all the subtlety of the orangutan in "Any Which Way You Can."

Grand entertainment in the old-fashioned sense.

As a film it's mostly top-notch work. Kiwi director Christine Jeffs has taken the poignant, thoughtful screenplay of erstwhile documentarian John Brownlow and rendered it a moving mood-piece of subtlety and ever-encroaching sorrow.

A breezy romantic comedy, boasting a shameless silly streak.

Writer-director Greg McLean, who has many shorts and commercials under his belt, makes a significant feature debut here, with unapologetic horror that doesn't compromise.

This is the kind of documentary that, though not particularly accomplished by way of direction, writing, or editing, has such a compelling subject that there's no question about its worth.

The title pretty much says it all: syrupy romantic comedy dripping with unearned sentiment.

Lee's new racial satire starts out strong but loses its way.

Doesn't show us much of anything we haven't seen better already.

This movie's just so-so, but at its heart lies a true leading lady.

The movie's so hung up (pardon) on its gimmick it never transcends it; might have been better had Kiefer called Moviefone.

The Ladykillers fits snugly among the Coens' lighter and breezier movies--the ones you forget after you see them once and begin to appreciate and finally adore the more often you revisit them.

Homer would be hard-pressed to find any remaining shred of "The Iliad" in this over-the-top entertainment. It has a lot of loud passion but not much poetry, and that's appropriate for a movie that could well be subtitled My Big Fat Greek Bloodletting.

If you don't view it too analytically, Men of Honor provides almost more uplift than a body can handle.

May find it hard to sit without embarrassment through this bizarre mixture of paleontology, preposterous anthropomorphism, and fuzzy-headed New Age myth-making in which the only thing missing is the show tunes. Thank God for small favors.

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.

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.

Pits good taste against rousing intellectual provocation, and, happily, allows both to win.

Thanks to Spielberg's vivid storytelling and Hanks' matchless gift for bringing the common man to life, this is a relentlessly charming movie.

To call it a conservative or Republican film would be inaccurate: For one thing, it celebrates (gasp!) multiculturalism and diversity. For another, the closest it ever comes to expressing a political viewpoint is when a metal sculptor advocates more art education in schools.

Shades of "House of Sand and Fog," without the compelling drama.

The world of football riots seems rife with potential for the big screen, but Green Street Hooligans only periodically rises to it.

Twohy's a good yarn-spinner, and ultimately the story compels.

"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.

Seven Years in Tibet feels more like Seven Days in the Movie Theater. It refuses to come alive--not even when Brad Pitt, hirsute as a yak, wanders the frozen Himalayas with an Austrian accent that probably gave his dialogue coach hives.

It's chatty when it wants to pretend it's deep and spiritual, messy when it's striving for chaotic and thrilling, and boring when it has no other options left.

This highly sanitized, heavily costumed, dramatically inert nonsense makes last year's dreadful golf biopic "Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius" look like a masterpiece.

Charlie doesn't have a point, doesn't give a damn about giving a damn. It is what it is: a beautiful goof, a drunken supermodel in search of one more party before the sun comes up.

There is still plenty to like about p.s. , including its smart humor and its surprising ability to absorb.

While the movie is indeed touching and very politically significant, there's something peculiar about never learning exactly what made ace reporter Guerin so intensely obsessive about this topic.

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

Feels less like a brand-new movie than a greatest-hits compendium. It offers nothing new and instead makes do with presenting the warmed-over like something pulled fresh from the oven.

Sayles is rarely a bore, but occasionally he frustrates more than he delights, enlightens or challenges. Such is the case with Casa de los Babys.

Starsky & Hutch is less homage to an old cop show than a tribute to the people who made the movie--a circle pat on the back. And no obvious joke goes untouched.

Cuaron is a special talent, and, as botched as Great Expectations often is, it's the kind of failure that deserves an audience--if only to experience Cuaron's way of seeing, which is at its best in the early parts of this film.

Russell, a former student of Buddhist monk-philosopher Robert Thurman's, is reaching too far, straining too hard, saying too much that adds up to so little after all the mumbos and jumbos tallied up by film's end.

Silly, yes, but sweet and fun too.

Unfortunately, it's also pretty banal -- translating the songs into English reveals just how dull their lyrics and sentiments really are. The colors are pretty though.

Those needing their Irish fix will be satisfied and no doubt will leave the theater in far greater spirits.

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

It all feels disorienting and truncated, as if the script, by Ted Tally, who also adapted "Silence of the Lambs," was a harried summary of the book.

James Bond wants us to believe he's an Everyman. The lovely thing is, it works.

Emits the embarrassing aura of a filmmaker desperate to be considered cool, yet utterly inept at finding original ways to reach that status.

There's way too much schmaltz in the mix. Even the musical score bombs: Throbbing, eerie techno simply does not suit a character trapped in the 1940s.

The strength of Woman is its unflinching look at people trying to grab onto a little dignity in their lives.

The only thing The Missing isn't missing is a handful of climaxes, all of them of the anti- variety that leave you believing, then praying the movie's over a good 30 minutes before its actual and inevitable finale.

This is a Tom Cruise vehicle, pure and simple, and that means it's destined to be the biggest chunk of guilty white-boy wish fulfillment since Kevin Costner got down with the Sioux in "Dances With Wolves." In fact, the parallels are all but plagiaristic.

Writer-director Rawson Marshall Thurber (the short "Terry Tate: Office Linebacker") keeps the jokes coming fast and furious, and while none of them are deep, many find their mark.

It ranks (indeed, it is rank) among the most soul-deadening movies ever made; it has no pulse and seeks to steal yours with a cynical vengeance.

Surviving Picasso falters in its careless structure.

Ferrell owns the screen.

Some Marvel fans and die-hard devotees of Lou Ferrigno, the bodybuilder who played The Hulk on television (and who does a brief walk-on here), may find Ang Lee's whole enterprise grandiose and, given its not-always-successful attempt to fuse brains and brawn, a little bit silly.

Watching this film is a little bit like getting mauled and tickled at the same time. The filmmakers have given the whole shebang a hefty levity, and that's not easy to accomplish in a full-scale disaster movie.

The ludicrous casting of Hoffman is just the fatal bit of kindling on this Joan's fire.

Not everything in the film happens according to the traditional, overly familiar blueprint.

This is inelegant storytelling, and it almost entirely cancels out what's good about the film: Max Minghella, for one thing. The son of director Anthony, he gives a very fresh performance, popping with energy that the other characters seem to drain.

Bleak, minimal, bone-dry and hilarious, it creates a rich and layered world from deft strokes of dialogue and action.

As a musical feast, Groove works well. As a celebration of tribal ritual, it's even better.

A sharp and pungent distillation of the book. However, as far as the theme of childhood under duress goes, I found "My Life as a Dog" or the stridently Irish "Into the West" to be significantly more fulfilling.

There is not even the slightest trace of freshness or originality in either the script -- which was written by Ron Bass and William Broyles from a story by Michael Hertzberg and Ron Bass -- or in Amiel's stodgy direction.

The whole thing has a dour resolve that undermines its attempts at humor.

Yet another version of the conscience-stricken white soldier Kevin Costner played in "Dances With Wolves" and the Indian killer-turned-noble warrior Tom Cruise gave us in "The Last Samurai."

Unlike Burton, Schumacher doesn't let his stylistic and thematic fascinations run away with him; he keeps one hand on the wheel at all times. The result isn't as emotionally daring and visually outrageous as Burton at his best, but it's better paced and more consistently entertaining from one sequence to the next.

Director Rob Marshall, as he did in "Chicago," plays the movie as though it's all an embellished memory inside the head of geisha Sayuri (Ziyi Zhang), but why would she remember everyone speaking in choppy English?

It works for a good while--probably half of the movie.

The cast is full of cool cult actors past and present, and the movie is great at what it does. It's also brutal as hell, and not everyone will have the stomach for it.

It's merely all right--very high-concept and on its way to interesting, but never there.

Busch, responsible for the similarly hit-and-miss-that's-a-mister "Psycho Beach Party," has a good idea; two in one movie would make him absolutely fabulous.

Trite and silly, but, blast it, the movie has a good heart.

Undeniably interesting, but not entirely successful.

More well-meant than well-made, the movie is ethnically accurate (sometimes, you smother in the marinara), but its forced sensitivity can get abrasive, and the drama is full of false notes.

In U-Turn Stone is reaching for the pulp without the politics. He's trying for noir as ritual dance. But Stone is too frenzied a filmmaker to keep the dance steps simple.

So uplifting, it's almost...gross.

There's elegance and grace here, fostering an opportunity to reflect upon why men get so dutiful about being down. It's worth the hike.

Yes, the "Taxi Driver" parallels are intentional: Hill spells them out in the press notes, all but branding Observe and Report a Scorsesefied remake that reeks of stale Cinnabon.