The Conspirator hits a new nadir for Redford: Sitting through this stage-bound, talky, stiffly-acted movie reminded me of having to endure the Hall of Presidents attraction at Walt Disney World (one of the few existing bits of proof that Disney had a dark and evil side).

Director Kim Jee-woon's astonishing story of a serial killer who picks the wrong man's fiancée to murder, is so extreme and intense that it had to be trimmed down in its native country before it was released to theaters. We lucky westerners get to see it in all its hair-raising, stomach-churning glory, and that's a wonderful thing.

Corben has done an impressive amount of journalistic research that will be of particular interest to South Florida audiences. Every time you think Miami couldn't possibly get any weirder, it does.

The film isn't as concerned with terrifying you as it is with showing you a good time, culminating with an over-the-top climax that is simultaneously utterly ridiculous and enjoyable.

It's a good, solid family film.

There are moments of heartbreaking beauty in it – although Dolan is still a work in progress. He'll get better – he's immensely talented – but he's not quite there yet.

In the end the film stacks up just this side of twee, as the sort of quirky fare that's passably entertaining without ever offering anything real or remarkable.

The film is never more than an amalgamation of other movies.

The film will probably play a lot better in dorm rooms with plenty of beer kegs and bongs on hand, but in the confines of a movie theater, it's deadly - the sort of bad comedy Mel Brooks made late in his career, until he finally smartened up and quit.

Potiche is filled with rat-a-tat dialogue and broadly humorous situations, but Ozon also employs subtle touches.

By the time it's over, Insidious is less scary than a mortgage payment.

The script by Ben Ripley doesn't come up with enough obstacles to throw in the hero's path, and his budding romance with the doomed Christina feels more like a studio mandate than an organic development.

With Kaboom, Araki takes a huge step backward from the maturity and restraint he demonstrated in 2004's "Mysterious Skin," his best and most-assured film to date.

A stiff, unconvincing epic.

No, Sucker Punch doesn't make any sense. But none of that matters, because the ride Snyder takes you on is so vividly conceived, so deliriously bizarre and wonderful.

The graphic sex scenes radiate an uncommon heat, and Im can pull off a hugely effective shock when he wants to.

For all its peripatetic energy, Limitless still winds up with the same-old blazing guns and wanton destruction of property. No matter how smart you may be, Hollywood will figure out a way to dumb you down.

A breath of fresh air in this musty spring movie season.

British satire loses something when it's handled by Americans: You miss the perspective that a foreign culture brings, so instead of wit and humor, you end up trafficking in self-congratulatory clichés and sentiment.

According to legend, a silver bullet can kill a werewolf. Too bad it can't slay bad writing, without which the ill-conceived Red Riding Hood would not exist.

It's the sort of film that's entertaining while you're in the theater.

There's a startling moment 10 or 15 minutes into The Adjustment Bureau - the only time, really, when the film achieves any level of surprise. The dispiriting dullness of this dreary misfire hasn't had time to settle in and thicken: The movie hasn't yet revealed its utter and thorough ineptitude.

Beastly, for all its potential pitfalls, works better than it has any right to. Credit Barnz, who keeps his young characters contemporary in a world of text messaging and status updates and yet also gives them depth.

Canner is able to keep Orgasm Inc. trained on its eponymous theme with a brisk pace and precise detail that will be equally illuminating to men and women.

This excruciatingly dumb, formulaic picture, which somehow required the work of four screenwriters but contains not even one single, fleeting moment of wit or humor.

Unknown is never boring, and Collet-Serra mostly keeps up a lively pace, but he doesn't do the movie any favors with the flat, dull way he films the scene in which we finally learn what's going on.

Although the picture is nominally the story of a man with a murderous temper, it is less a thriller than a metaphor for the plight of illegal immigrants.

The movie's second half, which grows progressively sadder, also starts to feel a bit repetitive.

Aside from the thin characterizations, The Eagle never manages to convey the importance of the heroes' quest.

A beautifully illustrated love letter to dogs and the people who own them.

The bigger problem with the film, which is genuinely unnerving at times, is what happens when the cavers are not in immediate peril, because they talk.

A script that deftly fleshes out characters and mimics reality shockingly well.

Driver's over-the-top Jewish Canadian Princess performance is so stereotypical it's downright embarrassing in a film that otherwise treats its imperfect characters with respect even when they're at their worst.

The movie is unwieldy and overstuffed with subplots - and, at 2 1/2 hours, probably too much misery and sorrow for most viewers.

The Mechanic remains singularly uninvolving - a rote exercise in a genre with characters so familiar they barely register.

You watch it in stunned disbelief, wondering how a movie that started so strongly devolved into something so absurd.

Its stop-and-start feel keeps you from ever getting fully absorbed in the story.

This is an intentionally fanciful, gossamer movie, extremely personal and heartfelt, influenced in equal parts by Michelangelo Antonioni (although never so elusive) and Gus Van Sant (just not quite so self-conscious).

It makes the predictable journey surprisingly fun and enjoyable.

The film remains relatively entertaining, simply because the scenario hits so close to home, no matter where you work.

Gamely depicts an interesting bit of history, but its real message is a matter of principle.

In Country Strong, the Oscar-winning Paltrow gets upstaged and outacted by the kid from "Tron" and the snotty brat from "Gossip Girl." Who'd have thought?

Absorbing and hugely compelling, a thoughtful portrayal of the myriad ways in which we learn to deal with the unthinkable.

There isn't a moment in the entire film that doesn't feel genuine.

A big, boisterous action-comedy - a funny, exciting and intentionally goofy summer movie that just happens to arrive in the middle of January.

This is more of a poignant, haunting study of well-intentioned but doomed folly, embodied by a heroine whose bravery renders her blind to the world that is crumbling around her.

Casino Jack fails at its most critical mission: Laying out in clear detail exactly how and when Abramoff broke the law.

This is a comedy about imbeciles who fall blindly in love with a concept, without giving any thought to what they are doing. And although some of them eventually have a moment of self-realization, it arrives, sadly, much too late.

Part of the accomplishment of Carlos is the sheer accumulation of detail the movie amasses, and the longer running time gives you a deeper sense of the terrorist lifestyle, and when and why Ilich gradually succumbed to ego and self-glorification without realizing it.

Likable but uneven comedy by writer-directors Glenn Ficara and John Requa (Bad Santa).

Tom Hooper's terrific, Oscar-worthy film is not merely a spot-on period piece; it's also a heartfelt study in the shadings of courage, a film about duty and friendship that's often warmly funny and sometimes painful to watch.

Sitting through Little Fockers is a soul-sucking, dispiriting experience.

The best way to approach Joel and Ethan Coen's eagerly awaited True Grit is to lower your expectations, then lower them a bit more. The problem is not the movie, which is a terrific, no-nonsense, straightforward western. The surprise – or vague disappointment – is the prevailing lack of Coen-ness in the movie.

Curiously, TRON: Legacy makes the same mistake the original did: All the best stuff comes in the first act. The rest of the movie is as exciting as an overnight round of computer coding.

The movie is all surface and trades on fortune-cookie wisdom.

The actors are fine: It's their long, arduous trek that lets the movie down.

Unstoppable is the slowest, talkiest movie you'll ever see about a runaway freight train loaded with toxic chemicals.

Doesn't quite avoid the pitfalls of its genre, but at least the movie has the decency to make you laugh on its way to a foregone conclusion. Also, did I mention the sex?

Sets out to be a study of grief and how to overcome it, but it rings too false to offer much hope - or entertainment.

Tangled packs old-fashioned Disney magic as endless as Rapunzel's locks.

Reminiscent of Showgirls minus the sex, nudity, sleaze, bad acting and horrible dancing, Burlesque is a typical A Star is Born story.

Bold and intrepid film buffs: The gauntlet has been thrown. Here's something you don't see every day - thank goodness.

Some of the creations these chefs produce defy belief (and make you wish you could jump into the screen to have a taste).

Only two characters are worth much notice; neither is a prince, and one is a really big mouse, which tells you something sad about Narnia's royal family.

The film suffers from a severe lack of urgency and emotional engagement. You can't get involved in a movie in which the characters all seem to be harboring double identities.

A lot of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part One feels like slushy set-up for the climactic all-out battle due in theaters next summer. The movie doesn't even give us the expected cliffhanger ending, although I'd be lying if I said I'm not eager to see how everything turns out.

This is a deeply inspirational movie about the human spirit's refusal to give up, but it is also a portrait of a man too much in love with life to let go without a fight.

The Next Three Days might have fared a lot better if the screenwriters had stuck to "The Next Two Days."

Someone apparently forgot to tell Harrison Ford he was starring in a comedy when he was cast in Morning Glory.

With such a large cast, none of the actors is able to turn her character into a fully realized person.

In some ways, better than its book.

Starts out feeling formidable in scope and theme but ends up awfully small and precious.

Stone isn't the straightforward thriller it appears to be, but the alternative turns out to be dull and lifeless. At least the title is apt: Like a rock, Stone has no pulse.

An exuberant, disarming entertainment.

It is a startling film in structure, style and story, but most of all in the simplicity of its plot -- which, once revealed (and that takes a while) is a horror story for cineastes. [03 Feb 1983, p.C8]

Excels at bringing on the high-power pyrotechnics.

This is a film about depression, though, and it comes awfully close to trivializing its subject by suggesting that all Craig needed, really, was a cute girl to like him back.

Sometimes I suspect there is secret high-stakes contest in Hollywood among filmmakers to try and come up with a movie without a single original idea. If so, Life As We Know It is a contender.

Nowhere Boy is great at depicting the birth of Lennon's love for his art.

Delivers the heady, rib-tickling rush of an action picture, and it gradually builds to an emotional wallop that blindsides you.

If I hadn't seen the original, I might have gone ga-ga over Reeves' version. But even with the shock of novelty gone, the film still draws you into its chilly, demonic heart.

A brisk and lively cinematic Cliff's Notes of the 2005 nonfiction bestseller that made the lofty promise to reveal "the hidden side of everything."

The movie, elegantly shot by Rodrigo Prieto, is sleek and brisk, using split-screens and graphics to help uninformed viewers grasp the basics of the corporate shenanigans the characters pull on each other.

You Again is at its funniest in the early scenes, when everyone is pretending all is well beneath forced smiles and plotting eyes.

This is a movie best seen cold.

The most suspenseful sequence of any movie I've seen this year comes near the end of Waiting for Superman.

The talented cast fails to gel into a dynamic ensemble.

Affleck's smooth, elegant directorial style is strong reminiscent of Clint Eastwood's: He takes his time establishing characters who are far more complex than they initially appear, then thrusts them into moral dilemmas with no easy outs.

Easy A is unnecessarily hard on the religious kids. Unlike "Saved," it uses broad caricatures of gospel-singing fanatics to get laughs, and the bug-eyed, over-the-top performance by Bynes (who apparently really should have retired after making this film) doesn't help matters.

There are no "Crying Game" switcharoos or "Sixth Sense" plot twists in store here. But knowing too much about Catfish beforehand ruins the experience.

The film is sad in a beautiful, peaceful manner, and its exploration of mortality is different from most others, since the three central protagonists are all barely in their 30s.

Regardless of its veracity, this portrait of a drug-addled star who just wants to express himself artistically contains implications that exceed the filmmakers' intentions.

A by-the-numbers sports drama with a death grip on clichés and acting every bit as flat as the mat, seems unlikely to draw much of a crowd.

The result is far funnier and much less annoying than you might expect.

The movie is bouncy and zesty, its energy unflagging, and some of the big numbers are heavily tinged with Bollywood. Conceptually, it should have been a trip.

You never really get the sense Zhang is taking the movie seriously, so you can't either. A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop proves that American filmmakers aren't the only ones who can bungle remakes of foreign movies.

Cassel, who won a Cesar (France's equivalent to the Oscar) for his performance, invests the character with a grounding of humanity and honor that imply there are certain lines even Mesrine would never cross.

Corbijn makes the familiar strange, focusing on details other filmmakers would gloss over.