For those with the patience to latch onto Van Sant's slow, methodical groove. It's worth trying.

The film is art in all its visual splendor, and no matter how confusing the historic story line may be to Westerners -- and it is -- the images on screen more than compensate for the faults.

What makes this sequel work is the charm of its story.

For all its ambition, Daredevil can't overcome the fact that at its colorful center lies a perfect blank in a bad suit.

While the story starts tying up its loose ends nicely, as the end approaches, the film turns flat. It's a disappointment.

A hoot.

May be dumb, but it must be noted that the screenwriters of this slight, silly comedy have borrowed from the best.

Eventually loses its cheerful goofiness and its momentum, climaxing with a lengthy and embarrassing showdown scene at a big party. But it gets worse.

Swami says, “Steer clear of The Guru, a dismally dumb sex comedy, lest you waste $9 and 90 minutes of your life you will never get back.''

A fascinating record of how the movie fell apart, piece by piece, with everything short of a natural disaster conspiring against the filmmaker.

The sort of movie you enjoy much more while you're watching it in the theater than when you're deconstructing it on the way home.

Never stops having its dark fun.

Junge had come to terms with her past. And even if you don't come to terms with her life, it's worthwhile knowing about it.

Although the unrelenting pursuit of making the Vatican listen becomes a bit tiresome, the portrayals of the two men by Tukur and Kassovitz are engaging.

A cheesy horror film can offer a vicarious cheap thrill or two. Darkness Falls offers only a test of the patience, not even providing much chance to laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of its villain.

There is humor in the familiar just waiting to be rehashed for new generations, and A Guy Thing surely isn't the last stupid leave-'em-at-the-altar film we're likely to see.

Highbrow entertainment this isn't.

As film noirs go, this one is a classic.

The sloppy charms of Just Married don't exactly break new ground, but they don't make you want to swear off romantic comedy forever, and in these "Maid in Manhattan" days that's saying something.

For the story of a man who made his mark on pop culture by being a likable buffoon, the irritatingly arch Confessions of a Dangerous Mind takes itself way too seriously.

The misery is there, all right, in every woozy, spaced-out shot of Hoffman clutching his gas-soaked rag. But in the end, do we really care?

An exuberant, appropriately cynical reinvention of the stalwart Broadway hit that deftly straddles the line between old-fashioned Hollywood musicals and experimental concoctions like last year's "Moulin Rouge."

If The Pianist isn't quite as devastating as "Schindler's List" -- the movie with which all other Holocaust movies must be compared -- it's because Polanski isn't interested in an expansive view of the war.

McGrath has managed to turn Dickens into a cozy date movie. When was the last time anybody could make that claim?

The film actually improves on Cunningham's novel, thanks to gorgeous cinematography, a deft script by playwright David Hare, a mournful, melodious but never intrusive score by Philip Glass and a superb cast that brings the delicately formed characters to full, raging, sorrowful life.

Even in its somewhat unwieldy form, Catch Me If You Can is charming, sparkling entertainment.

A romantic comedy need not be original to work. It just needs, you know, romance. Something to swoon over. What Two Weeks Notice provides, however, is a lot more messy.

An unusually vicious and unforgiving study of police corruption, Narc is a stylistic throwback to such classic 1970s cop dramas as "The French Connection" and "Serpico," with a 21st century helping of the old ultra-violence.