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.

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.

That there's moral ambiguity to his actions represents some sort of step up from the cinematic norm. Alas, Christopher Walken has very little to do as Creasy's best buddy.

If you happen to be seeking a fairly cute film concerning occultism, torture, and murder, here ya go.

A gorgeous, emotionally rewarding masterpiece that invites compassion, reflection and, at least from this reviewer, a great deal of admiration. It's no wonder that it won 12 Japanese Academy Awards.

Demme's film is as inspiring and moving as its subject, a man who brought critical news and information to the people of Haiti even as a series of dictatorships sought violently to shut him down.

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.

Connie and Carla doesn't just do violence to the memory of Wilder's brilliant sex farce (Some Like It Hot); it's so clumsy, it might give cross-dressing itself a bad name.

The Punisher would be almost offensive were it not so inconsequential. There's just something terribly off-putting about a movie in which every gruesome death is a punch line, where a villain's homosexuality is used to lure him to his death and dozens of innocents are gunned down just to launch a film franchise.

Alas, the film has good intentions, but it's a failure. Just try to stay awake.

Those seeking a spiritual counterpart to the yin of Lynne Ramsay's masterfully moody "Morvern Callar" will find their yang in David Mackenzie's exquisitely sorrowful Young Adam.

The result is something that feels very much like an overachieving made-for-TV movie--a history lesson dolled up like an action movie, with the action relegated to the final third, and even then, the battle is over before it really begins.

Offers considerable charm and an obvious desire to please.

Best of all, in this movie about high school boys, the high school boys sound and look quite authentic (Paul Dano and Chris Marquette are outstanding in this regard), not watered down as would be the norm.

Peet is still adorable, and a couple of twists enliven the plot, but the jokes are lame, the timing is off, the physical pratfalls are too broad, and there's still no chemistry between Perry and Henstridge.

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

The entire enterprise was directed by first-timer Christopher Erskin like a would-be Max Bialystock; one can only assume it's supposed to be this bad, because nobody sucks this hard on accident.

Hellboy is as much a wreck as "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" or "The Punisher," coming and going in two weeks, and as much a bore as "The Hulk."

Should make about $750, which is how much they need to save the farm, but a little less than Disney CEO Michael Eisner needs to save his job.

Trashes whatever spirited fun it initially established. Goodnight, Sweet Prince. Dream on.

Unlike the original, there's no R-rated grit and no familial executions -- gotta get the young-skewing WWE fan base in there.

This subtly entrancing paean to seasons earthly and emotional is to the developing male psyche what "Whale Rider" is to the female, and deserves equal acclaim.

It's flapping its wings so desperately in pursuit of artistic heights that it nosedives directly into the ground. The relentless exertion makes the film a chore to watch.

Smith used to make movies to make fun of movies like Jersey Girl; now he's just another guy working the assembly line, which won't make you a sell-out if no one buys it.

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.

Lars von Trier's latest thingamabob is a large, pretentious blob of coulda-been. As in, it coulda been deep and insightful. It coulda been sociologically challenging. It coulda been formalistically thrilling. But it isn't.

The film has a gritty, grainy look that matches the book's raw texture, and keeps the violence and drug abuse from ever looking slick or appealing.

This may sound an eensy bit hyperbolic, but dig: Mayor of the Sunset Strip is the greatest rock-and-roll movie of all time.