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.