Smith puts the soul in the machine of Series 7, producing an emotional power too real for reality-TV to handle.

A quiet film, certainly, but it's filled with small touches that manage to get deeply under your skin by the time the final credits roll.

The filmmakers went for cheap laughs as well as for some a little harder-earned. The only thing pure about this film is the dog, and he's magnificent.

Doesn't have the courage or inclination to go inside of Dick's ideas, or offer any kind of structured or detailed approach to his thinking or writing.

What makes Hit and Runway uniquely fun, however, is the unapologetic extent to which Livingston and Cohen turn it into an index of beloved Woody-isms.

Has even less directorial initiative than it has romantic spark.

The film isn't merely bungled. It's starved and battered by Lichtenstein.

Looks like a very cheerful and imaginative accident.

It's a sweet and wise film - neither groundbreaking nor revolutionary save for the fact that it places narrative and character arc at the center of its concerns.

Works so beautifully because Davis doesn't try to turn Eads and his friends into walking soapboxes for transgendered people.

Definitely worth a chance: although everyone in this fog-shrouded setting makes grand sacrifices, all you'll lose are a few tears.

In the tradition of "Sunrise" and "Eyes Wide Shut," crises set the characters on a kind of dreamy, nocturnal journey through chaos and fear.

Pandering and tired, Down to Earth lurches from one dead gag to the other, in search of both comedic rhythm and a dramatic pulse. It finds neither.

A frenetic spoof of 1961's disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion, Company Man is likely to be forgotten quickly by audiences.

For 8- to 12-year-olds and the grownups who love them, Recess is a pleasant Saturday-matinee diversion. The fact that it doesn't aim to be anything more is, in its own way, a blessed relief.

Charlize Theron has charm and skill, but no actress could survive this role, which has the gravity and verisimilitude of a sketch from a late-sixties Nancy Sinatra TV special.

The Taste of Others takes regular (but not ordinary) people and knocks them out of their usual zones of activity. The resulting collisions leave behind a very pleasing flavor.

Less would have been more, and this film is sabotaged by its maker's unchecked pretension.

Chaotic, peurile, loaded with sniggering commentary and obsessed with breasts, Saving Silverman is like a 90-minute walk through a 13-year-old boy's head.

The nuanced performances by Maud Forget and Lou Doillon help give Bad Company its extraordinary credibility.

Unlike the original, Hannibal may make us hide our eyes, but it doesn't get inside our heads.

It's a masterpiece, a sublime tone poem that shows what cinema is capable of when it tries to do more than just tell a story.

It's not bad; it's just completely inconsequential.

Everyone will be indifferent, as indifferent and uncaring as the characters the film portrays.

Watching Left Behind's plodding screen adaptation may make you feel the Deity has already abandoned us to a shockingly dull post-apocalypse.

The film isn't very good. The Million Dollar Hotel is an uneasy melding of Hollywood shtick and art-house sensibilities.

Valentine simply mines the same tired, predictable slasher-movie vein as everything else he's (Blanks) done thus far. Send this one back unopened.

This lightweight concoction can't justify a trip out to the multiplex, unless you're a girl between the ages of 12 and 17, but it does provide a launching pad for a group of attractive people.

Mandy Nelson's sugar-high bright-'n'-cheerful script takes a series of easy ways out, avoiding completely the prospective pitfalls of having to see any of these characters as complicated, contradictory, not entirely nice or identifiable-with -- actual human beings, in other words.

It makes us realize, suddenly, and with immense regret, what the rest of contemporary cinema so sorely lacks.

She (Lopez) wipes away the unpleasant memories of "The Cell," and serves notice to Julia and Sandra that there's another girl out there who can do romantic comedy-even of the half-baked variety.

Sometimes feels like an acting class gone berserk, with Penn indulging his high-powered cast

It's possible that Ritchie's most important asset is the comic constant within his characters' existential dilemmas. To a man (and, indeed, they're all men), Ritchie's anti-heroes are at odds, in either large or small ways, with their own natures.

It's not just bad, it's ugly. Not just stupid but really aesthetically displeasing. The sooner this movie disappears from sight, the better.

By no means any kind of masterpiece, but viewed as one might any number of American or European independents of similar theme and nature, it not only stands its ground, but is at times one or two notches better than many of them.

Breaks virtually no new narrative ground, yet treads the familiar territory it does cover with grace, style, wit and fun.

A crap film that's steeped in liberal paranoia, but it's also so ludicrous that it falls under the guilty-pleasure category.

This director's (Winterbottom) reach is impressive, but this time it doesn't quite grasp.

A multi-layered, experimental film, a film about storytelling, but the beauty of it is that it transcends the story at its center while still celebrating the virtues of a tale well-told.

If only this movie were rich enough, strong enough to be worthy of this (Dafoe's) performance.

One of the things that makes Traffic so very good is the wry humor that's laced throughout the film. It's a funny movie.

In the end, Malena is an unlikable and foul farce, unworthy of Tornatore's previously gentle touch.

This overdone project dissipates its energy in strange ways (sudden shifts to black-and-white, as though hailing the spirit of Oliver Stone and that other Costner JFK movie), and makes you wish its makers had shown the same restraint the government did during the crisis.

All the Pretty Horses may end up being a good movie to watch on DVD, when all the footage is restored and we can see the subtle shadings Thornton jettisoned.

Vatel is really about production design, so if you're not absolutely passionate about 18th century table-settings, wigs and bodices, you might as well just stay at home and watch the Food Channel.

This mild but amusing comedy wasn't written by Levinson, and the accents may be different, but the feel is similar.

With Before Night Falls, Schnabel has moved to an entirely new plane of cinematic achievement.

Stick with the film, accept the rules of the time and the meditative rhythm of the language that Davies has woven into his story, and you won't be disappointed. Then read the novel. It's even better.

Hanks gives possibly the most compelling performance of his career.

The risk pays off for Clooney and the Coens, as O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a nicely off-kilter exploration of American gumption.

One way or the other, there really is something to be said for a movie which seems to revel in its own inherent comic-book silliness.

What were they thinking?

It all coalesces in a TV-level pleasantness, which isn't quite enough to fill a big screen.

Writer/director David Mamet, who's built a career in both theater and film by being a hyper-manly sort of writer, has crafted a film that is laugh out loud funny and dinner-conversation smart.

One of those hybrid projects: a major studio film, big star, homely storyline, but tempered by an indie director working in his own idiosyncratic style.

Blanchett projects a wounded dignity that anchors her character even when the film slips into silly hokum; she's never less than fantastic, and as such manages to keep the film on course.

This is not a great comedy, but it has some honest laughs, a few touching moments.

Irrespective of whether Pollock, as a movie, is any good -- and it is very, very good -- it's clear that Ed Harris was born to play the lead role.

Just another lame slacker comedy.

The design of the film is wonderful, the animation everything one comes to expect from a Disney picture, and the jokes fly by so fast.

Abittersweet fable about the raw joys of human revival.

A fascinating study. What might surprise audiences, though, is how droll the picture is, how much of the violence is just slapstick, and how much deadpan humor is running throughout the film.

Vertical Limit has its share of intrigue, but there ain't no mountain high enough to make O'Donnell look deep.

A modest picture with quiet ambitions that is likely to disappear into that lush tropical rainforest where so many films of this sort, some much worse and others much better, have all gone in time. Catch it while you can.

Flat and thoroughly predictable piece of filmmaking.

Horribly slapdash affair.

This is a waking dream of truly operatic dimensions.

The latest installment in the "Boys Life" series has just as many hits as misses -- more misses, actually -- but the high points easily stand alongside past triumphs.

A sequel from hell.

Quills -- like the Marquis himself--is a posey, pungent, ultra-theatrical yet weirdly seductive mess which wants to have its cake, eat it too and discuss the whole concept and context of its meal (constantly, contradictorily) while it does so.

A big disappointment.

Boyd would be smart to add a little sound and fury next time around. War is hell, after all.

The heart of this movie isn't two sizes too small; it's just slightly misplaced.

While Bounce may mark a sophomore slump for Roos, it's hardly the worst date movie out there.

The sex we see in Lies does not feel in any way enticing; the protagonists are left seeming pathetic by the end of the film, and few viewers are likely to go scavenging for sticks after leaving the theater.

Another droning formulaic thriller.

Has a soundtrack crammed with infectious music gleaned from fairly surprising sources.

One Day in September does "being there" very well -- I just wish director Macdonald had spent a little more time explaining why we should want to be there in the first place.

Sandler repeats his sweet-souled doofus routine, with nerdy Patricia Arquette as the object of his affections.