As usual, the final fight-scene extravaganza is outstanding, but it’s hardly worth the dreary hour and a half that precedes it.

The nonstop jumping around undercuts Meily's momentum, especially in the film's overly languorous final third. Still, there's a refreshing optimism fueling his take on working-class life, as if Meily views friendship and neighborly generosity as currencies equal to cold, hard cash.

Hidalgo can still be a wonder to behold, especially in its dynamic racing sequences, but the movie bogs down in its midsection with a needless kidnapping subplot that ultimately becomes quite tedious.

It's not a great movie, or even a particularly good one, but it's spectacular. No expense has been spared. The technical crew reads like a roll call of Oscar-night regulars.

Art School Confidential reaches its dementedly brilliant peak in the company of Jim Broadbent.

This film is lean, tight and irredeemably vile. People are gonna love it.

From its austere opening credits to its screechy women, this 35th film by Woody Allen looks and sounds like a dozen other Allen movies.

Predictably, the jokes are raunchy, yet they're few in number, as if the writer's sleaze well is running dry. First-time director Mark Rucker has a nice feel for period detailing but fails to build on his star's rare flashes of high energy.

A feather-light comedy about losing emotional baggage and finding love in upper Manhattan.

This debut feature from writer-director Shonali Bose has a powerful finale, in which the filmmaker uses imaginative camera angles and a vibrant sound design to re-create the turmoil and terror of the riots.

Where else could this flabby excuse for a women's movie go? Straight to the Oxygen Channel, if it's lucky.

Their discretion makes From Hell less a horror movie than a classical film noir.

Looks like no other recent release...certainly rich enough to warrant more than one viewing.

With the supremely gifted Rudd as his point man, Peretz is often ruthless in depicting Americans abroad as deluded cretins; by film’s end, however, he finds their optimism useful for re-firing the defeated hearts of his characters, even the hope-leery French ones.

Fulfills all the conventions of raw Cantonese gun opera.

Deftly mixing the visual exuberance of “Trainspotting” with the familial pathos of “Angela’s Ashes,” the gifted van Groeningen offers gleeful depictions of drinking contests and naked bicycle races that gradually give way to a sense of moral peril for young Gunther.

The only character who emerges as more than an ideological mouthpiece, and nearly saves the movie, is the Ambassador's resident hairstylist, who masks her faded beauty with a thick coat of eye shadow and an overteased hairdo. I kept wondering who this deeply sad, earthy actress was, making so much out of so little, until I realized it was Sharon Stone in the most naked performance she's ever given without taking her clothes off.

The predicaments of this whiny, unprepossessing crew inspire about as much sympathy as a celebrity divorce.

The buildup is so compelling in this "Chinese Western" by He Ping (Swordsman in Double Flag Town) that its thunderous anticlimax of an ending can almost be forgiven. Almost.

Okuda creates that slightly surreal atmosphere of ghost-town emptiness that will be familiar to fans of Takeshi Miike, but he infuses it with a romantic's sense of deep yearning.

What follows doesn't much surprise, since every emotional detail, accompanied by a noisy storm and then a black-out, arrives well in advance of its execution.

For all its infectious, go-for-broke wackiness ATHFCMFFT never quite surpasses its opening sequence.

Poignant, funny, and proof of Basquiat's magic.

The writer-director-producer-star would rather save your soul and your marriage than engage your aesthetics. That’s probably why every other line was greeted at my screening with a chorus of stern “Mm-hmms” and “Exactlys!”

Oh, Mr. Craven, give us a "Scream."

Van Sant ultimately reveals so little about this odd couple that we frankly don't give a damn what happens to them. Nor, apparently, does he.

Filled with great archival footage from throughout Hancock's five-decade career, and with elder-statesman words of wisdom from the man himself, Possibilities celebrates an impulse that's too rare in modern music: the love behind the labor of creation.

The film is too broad and tacky to engage on a universal level, or at least Stateside: The choreography is sloppy and lifeless; the outmoded blend of vintage rock, country and Broadway styles doesn't click; and the characters are such caricatures that it's no wonder the entire cast is overacting.

Wahlberg has turned into one of the most sympathetic and persuasive young actors around, and while his new movie remains safely, even shrewdly, in the middle of the road, he rocks.

For all the muscle and money behind Bee Movie, it still feels unfocused and unfinished.

Excitably puppyish homage.

Jeff Daniels is a compelling-enough actor to lift almost any film out of mediocrity, but even he has his work cut out for him.

It feels provocative but inconclusive -- brimming with intriguing ideas about love's dark underbelly but not quite confident enough to pull them off.

Turns into a driving soundtrack accompanied by a film.

There is too much rambling contemporary footage here and not enough juicy historical material.

As a thriller, People I Know -- which has languished unreleased since 2001 -- is barely plausible. As a critique of the meshing of power politics between East and West coasts, the movie is more smart-alecky than wise.

Danièle Thompson's romantic comedy is excellent fluff français, leavened with charm, wit and smart observation about the way we love now.

Formulaic but infectiously happy comedy.

From the first soft piano that accompanies white geese flying toward a humongous orange sunset, The Notebook racks up the sugary clichés till you’re screaming for mercy.

They have succeeded in establishing conservative ideologue Ken Starr as one of American prosecutorial history's biggest heels and Clinton loyalist Susan McDougal as a bona fide hero and martyr. The problem, of course, is that the president himself was neither, and no amount of hand wringing -- however justified -- can make him one.

Where "The Last Exorcism" was sustained by artfully balanced skepticism and a feel for character, Paranormal 2, putatively directed by Tod Williams, can only hold an audience with the understood promise of big jolts around the corner.

Filmed in Iceland, Beowulf & Grendel is beautiful, grungy and a little too tasteful for its own good. You can practically feel the filmmakers yearning to have Beowulf and Grendel go all Rambo on each other.

In his best film to date, Nick Cassavetes directs with ferocious energy, taking scenes past their logical stopping points and pushing his actors (particularly Foster, who can be as terrifying as Edward Norton in "American History X") to, but never over, the precipice of absurdity.

Equal parts big-house B-feature, hammer-down road movie, post-feminist consciousness-raiser and rock & roll pipe dream.

Struggles to achieve a giddy eccentricity that never fully emerges.

A capable, soulful thriller with a love story as steamy as is possible when its lead characters are Orthodox Jews.

Chop Suey really captivates with surfaces; look away for an instant, and the spell is broken.

It's pretty good, really.

While the lovers here are sweetly believable, the film's murky giants-alongside-man effects shots are strictly Darby O’Gill and the Little People.

This bit of fluff overflows with so much honest charm it barely matters that it's one in a seemingly endless succession of Tarzan retreads.

The movie's real charms lie in its surprisingly dark atmosphere and its almost subversive sense of humor.

The pre-posterous plot is a far-fetched way to dis-cuss the power and meaning of the Consti-tution in the context of international terror-ism.

Well-acted, briskly paced and prettily photographed, the film is a mild-mannered family story with a caring heart, and that's ultimately enough to make its 104 minutes worthwhile.

Some critics are badly selling the film short, when the story it tells, measured strictly in terms of emotional power and overall fun, is as moving and pleasurable as any matinee item by Ford, Hawks or Raoul Walsh.

The question for skittish distributors is not whether Looking for Comedy will play in Peshawar, but how long the movie will take to put Peoria to sleep.

It's a shame that this English-language cover of an excellent Spanish shocker will eclipse the original, at least in U.S. theaters -- but even those who despise remakes will have to admit that director John Erick Dowdle's furious retread is scary as hell.

Another drearily sadistic and pointless crime thriller.

Though the movie looks gorgeous, glittering with the monochromatic beauty of noir transposed into the key of yellow, it chugs along like an overly responsible documentary, more the working out of an idea about the gambler's true nature than a story.

A gas, full of just enough whiz-bang animation, but not too much to ruin what has always made Pooh and friends -- adventures work in the past.

Some psychobabble ("We're all trying to be who we are") is inevitable, but somehow or other the thing works, largely because the acting, though primarily reactive, invests the movie with enough immediacy and specificity to turn the most excruciating banality into an original thought.

Saturated with deep, rich color and low-key visual wit, and graced with sympathetic performances.

Schwentke handles the claustrophobic environment efficiently enough, though he dallies too long before letting anxiety give way to action.

For all the director's visual flair, his trademark flashes of gallows humor and his few good moments, there's never a sense that he's made Crash his own.

Enough gunfights, vicious beatings, and pissing matches for five films.

This schizophrenic mess zigzags all over the place, trying to figure out whether it's a dysfunctional-family drama, a slapstick comedy or an angst-ridden coming-of-age movie.

The film's jarring shifts in tone ultimately serve well the complexity of the film's narrative entanglements; they feel more honest than similar Hollywood offerings.

Blessed with a lovely score and strong acting, but crippled by an awkward, mawkish script.

This gets my vote as director Franco Zeffirelli’s finest film. Certainly, it’s his most personal.

If you're a Cole Porter fan you might like the songs in De-Lovely, but as a portrait of an unusual marriage it's de-lumbering, de-liberate and de-cidedly flat.

Turgid, melodramatic travesty of Thackeray's gimlet-eyed satire.

He Was a Quiet Man casts its own perversely funny spell thanks in large part to Slater, whose wonderfully shifty, beaten-down performance is easily his best in the 17 years.

With the possible exception of Neil LaBute, I can't think of a filmmaker who can divide an audience as efficiently as Solondz.

It's a soulless and dull bit of showmanship, but it sure sounds profound.

The best that can be said for this excitable, harmless romantic comedy is that it is smoothly directed by Pierre Salvadori.

McG's Marshall lies at the nexus of Thornton Wilder and Norman Rockwell -- it's David Lynch without the irony -- and if he overdoes things a touch, there’s nothing disingenuous about it.

Despite the success of these action sequences, Annaud and his ultraserious cast are so determined (admirably) to keep war from seeming romantic that we are never quite pulled into the movie.

A hyperreal, visually layered period style that finds film noir shadows creeping in at the edges of a blue-sky, get-along-to-go-along America.

An observant comedy of cross-cultural befuddlement in a half-assimilated immigrant family, with occasional spasms of propagandistic pleading on behalf of the younger generation.

Nearly drowns in languor, only to be saved by Milos and Isaacs, who are sexy, movie-star talented and, together, really good kissers.

If none of it is particularly original or insightful, it's nonetheless executed with skill and economy.

If the great movie musicals are the ones that transport us to some heady superreality, the only place Rent takes us to is the Nederlander Theatre.

A rather standard out-on-the-road rock doc except for one unique and under-explored twist: The "24" star, after signing the band to his label, impulsively decided to accompany them on this barnstorming adventure as their tour manager.

Stephen Campbell Moore is miserably out of his depth as the playboy trying to tempt Scarlett, leaving poor Tom Wilkinson to sound a lone note of sophisticated intelligence.

While the film has the feel of an illustrated radio play, it teems nonetheless with pleasing ambiguities and subtle doubts, and its elusive qualities force the viewer into active and rewarding participation rather than simple passive spectatorship.

Though hardly a major work, The Burial Society has going for it something that many of the snickering noir comedies currently littering the field lack. Underneath its cheeky amorality, there beats a heart.

Won't be of much value to anyone besides die-hard Cubs fans or the Santo family itself.

If it were less prone to soap-opera histrionics, this screechy saga of an upscale family collapsing under the weight of its members' self-absorption might have something worth saying about domestic politics in post-fascist, post-communist, post-socialist Italy.

The makers of this malnourished teen drama haven't just dropped six letters from the title of Shakespeare's Othello, they have excised everything that gives the original its troubling power -- principally a point but also furious passion.

The film lapses too often into sugary sentiment and withholds delivery on the pell-mell pyrotechnics its punchy style promises.

Hartnett's pitch-perfect sexual panic can be hilariously funny.

Film is a ghostly and gorgeous tale of a court magician, the legendary Abe no Seimei.

The jewel in this well-rounded collection of gay-themed shorts is Alan Brown's "O Beautiful."

Despite his obvious passion, Long never fully ties together the human and animal footage, and so the film feels disjointed, as if two different documentaries are being fused into one.

Davis, who did some writing for a TV series and acted in a couple of B-thrillers, is notably solid inhabiting Riley's conflicted machismo, supported by Diane Tayler's fine turn as a bottom-rung manager.

By the end of this likely cult classic (only 80 minutes long), when Evie has an amphetamine-induced meltdown during her cable-access comeback show, these divas are as recognizably human as you and me, only sluttier, and with cattier one-liners.

The script is painfully underbaked, and director Bille Woodruff (Honey) continues to raise a question: How can someone from a music-video background have absolutely no sense of rhythm, timing or pacing?

Bettauer means for Arthur and Joe's adventures to be a fable about empathy and hope, but her tone shifts awkwardly between silly and ponderous.

Corny but goodhearted, the film tries hard not to annoy parents, with animation more fizzy than frantic and nerdy references.