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 characters may be based on real people, with much of the dialogue culled directly from court transcripts, but Find Me Guilty plays the whole thing as comedy, and as everyone knows, putting a self-serious egomaniacal movie star in a bad hairpiece is comedy gold.

This is low-rent summer fun, exuberantly mounted, so leave your IQ in the glove compartment.

Stacy Peralta may think otherwise, but this 101-minute homage to the heroes of surfing is nothing if not a monument to their self-absorption--and to his own. That's probably inevitable.

Last Days shouldn't be half as engrossing as it turns out to be.

Just as you feel the numbing, clammy clench of paranoia on your neck, you realize, nope, the grip is just the director's attempt at tickling you to death. Demme's movie had no right to work. It does, and then some.

Kalvert and Goluboff overcome predictability by developing the film's characters and atmosphere instead. The result is a turbocharged ode to the lithe bodies and swaggering souls of boys who believe they're invincible - a glorious love song of youthful self-destructiveness.

This latest adventure proves to be a suitably sweet addition to Pooh's cinematic canon.

This Film Is Not Yet Rated has a refreshingly snotty sense of humor.

Hero keeps its characters stiffly archetypal, like chess pieces sent whizzing through outrageous maneuvers. Unfortunately, this apparent choice of spectacle over intimacy put me at a slight remove.

Turns out to be one of the most original and imaginative children's films in a long time.

Face/Off wouldn't work without two great actors, and it doesn't always work with them. But their gifts justify the whole loony enterprise.

The first Kill Bill was nothing but violence--swordfight upon swordfight, till the clanking of steel blades drowned out anything anyone said. The second is its emotional counterpart, the heart without all the blood drained from it.

Whatever your orientation, these bosom buddies are bound to charm you, and perhaps by joining them, the very talented MacLachlan may continue to find work.

Grind does evince a true love for skating, and both the street action and the actual competitions are brilliantly performed and slickly lensed. That it's also funny and excels beyond Youth Culture 101 is a nice bonus.

Helgeland makes a solid debut as director here, finding a new angle through which to view the Parker character, and doing so without exhausting the possibilities.

You might feel constrained when it comes to a standing ovation, but there's certainly enough substance and yuk here to go along for the ride.

Why don't we see this kind of thing on the news every night? Undoubtedly military censorship comes into play, but probably more so it's the prevailing notion that talking-head shoutfests stacked with pundits bring in the ratings, while actual field reporting costs more money.

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

Akerlund and crew use their full arsenal of lenses and editing techniques in service of leaving you spun, but it's undeniable that this movie was produced by steady hands and thoughtful minds.

Without being too glib about it, World Trade Center is a most improbable thing: an upbeat film about September 11, one of the few stories to emerge from that day to come with a happy ending.

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.

Neither pandering nor dull, Zathura plays exactly like a no-limits replica of the kind of space adventure that imaginative kids left to their own devices might enact.

The story itself is absolutely amazing, and the sense of outrage it evokes is universal, but director Noyce faces a difficult task in that once the story is set in motion there is very little action, other than walking shots of the girls, and almost no dialogue.

Heavy-handed, saccharine message somehow goes down good.

The first half of Intolerable Cruelty is more than tolerable; it's a dopey kick full of goofy jokes tossed off so quickly you're reminded less of bickering-bantering Grant and Rosalind Russell than Groucho and Chico Marx.

Such a funny mess that it keeps you laughing even when you realize it's not much better directed than a cable-access talk show.

The fanboy in me loves it, being wrapped in the warm projected glow of nostalgia for a movie I've memorized since age 9.