Expertly serves shivers, buckets of gore — and pretty much every cliché of the genre.

Bittersweet and often funny but overlong.

Does briefly sizzle in the scenes between Newton and French actress Christine Boisson, as the bisexual French police commander assigned to the case.

Don Cheadle gives one of the best performances of his career as jazz legend Miles Davis in Miles Ahead, even if his debut as a director ends up being an unfocused disappointment.

Despite a fierce lead performance by Naomi Watts, The Painted Veil is a quaintly bloodless, picture-postcard adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's 1925 China-set novel - more Merchant Ivory than David Lean.

It’s endearing how this glorified haunted-house movie tries to reclaim all the old tools, and do so with a straight face and a PG-13 level of violence.

The Wave, competent as it is, lacks the heart-rending power of the similar 2012 tsunami movie “The Impossible.”

McCann weaves in a somewhat toothless condemnation of a bureaucracy that forsakes the mentally ill, but Revolution # 9 works better as an inside look at one person's slide into madness -- and, more particularly, the impact of that on his loved ones.

Action flick machismo suffers an identity crisis in Stuber.

The film's first half has a lovely feel for how bizarre California must seem to foreigners, and there's a piercing sense of the stop-and-start ways that people deal with grief.

There's enough wit, intelligence and theatrical intensity at work in Larry Kramer to overcome an occasional tendency toward politically correct smugness.

Where Zhao excels is in the range of emotions she gets from a mostly nonprofessional cast.

Their often touching stories of how their lives - and livelihoods - were disrupted are effectively intercut with excerpts from press conferences in which Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Quotable, controversial, anarchic, charismatic and handsome (in an ugly way), the zany avant-garde rocker Frank Zappa had everything one needs to be a star, except talent.

It has a certain commitment to its cause, and by that I mean it supplies the necessary flayings, slayings, beheadings and, um, a be-nose-ing, all of it dancing to the tune of those amusingly stilted He-Man declaratives - King James Bible cadences applied to comic-book visions. It knows it's a B movie, and gets on with it.

A wet, red chunk of pulp that knows what it is and doesn't care.

It includes more than a few clever lines, and boasts a stellar cast, including the underutilized Diane Keaton.

Daniel Radcliffe continues to propel himself further from his Harry Potter past, this time via straight-up flatulence: Swiss Army Man nearly makes up with juvenile glee what it lacks in plot and coherence.

Way too long, too convoluted and too peppered with title cards...Even so, it's hard to dislike Don Roos' "Magnolia"-inspired triptych of interconnected comic tales about lies, sex and video.

Though overlong, there are many stunning special effects, including a car chase up the side of a building, as well as the sort of wild animated subtitles that turned up in "Night Watch."

Features a riveting performance by Michael Shannon as oldest son Son. He's definitely an actor to watch.

A preposterous mix of sentiment and brutality that casts martial-arts star Jet Li as a music-loving killing machine, turns out to be his most entertaining movie in quite some time.

Initially amusing but finally sour sex comedy.

T's formulaic interview style gives the proceedings a bit of a student-project vibe - perhaps understandable for a guy who clearly thinks artists should always be open to learning more.

It isn't every day that one witnesses, via a camera mounted with the driver, some of the final images in a man's life before he crashes into a wall at enormous speed. Whether you'll feel good about yourself after watching is up to you.

Thankfully, director Miguel Arteta (“Beatriz at Dinner”) gets a solid half-hour of funny out of this thing before clunkiness sets in.

The film is extremely well-acted, and Berri is very good at demonstrating why the relationship is doomed.

The film begins by telegraphing impending doom (and wraps up, underwhelmingly, with thriller clichés).

She’s (Fey) so good that — up to a point — you can ignore Paul Weitz’ erratic direction and a patchy script, both of which clumsily handle shifts between comedy and drama.

On the M. Night Shyamalan scale of stupid endings, The Prestige isn't as bad as "The Village" but it's comparable to "Unbreakable."

Depicts the bleak suburban milieu in a manner that avoids exploitation.

A lark for anyone who's willing to check their brains at the concession stand for 100 minutes.

Genre fans will definitely get off on I Sell the Dead, but outsiders might be less enthusiastic.

It is a better option than the third "Santa Clause."

Willis is at his relaxed best this time.

Second films in trilogies are often the toughest to pull off. Maybe Green’s final chapter, Halloween Ends, will redeem what he’s done here, which ultimately feels like very little progress at all.

Dickens was a sentimentalist, but even his happy endings are more nuanced than Polanski's brutal anti-sentimentalism.

An uneasy mix of Richard Linklater and Abbott and Costello, Prince Avalanche is an oddment, but one that brings some small, peculiar pleasures.

The Backyard will affect you. If you were depressed about the future of America before, you'll be doubly depressed after seeing this film. Pass the Prozac.

A boldly original undertaking: It's the first movie ever to come up with the idea of remaking "The Truman Show."

When the world gets too big and scary, the Hundred Acre Wood remains a clearly delineated comfort zone.

A Most Violent Year is a small picture, but each brushstroke is laden with detail and craftsmanship.

But while the belly laughs are few, there are numerous chuckles and it's quite watchable, thanks to solid performances by Damon (who plays it mostly straight in a rare comic role) and Kinnear.

A messy -- but uproarious, timely and provocative -- farce.

On one hand, third installment is series of hilarious meditations on trials of being middle-aged woman, co-written by feminist goddess Emma Thompson, who gives self all best lines as deadpan OB-GYN.

The final scenes, when Mancini meets Kim’s son, have the awkward feel of an “Oprah” episode, with the editing and music suggesting a catharsis that isn’t always backed up by what’s on-screen.

Melding a morality play with a glossy soap, Italy’s Human Capital is a fairly successful balance of entertainment and ideas.

Wildly uneven, but contains moments that are right up there with "The Player."

The satire’s so meta that its whiny protagonists threaten to eclipse the joke.

It’s sprightly, funny and at times piercingly sad.

While Campillo does graceful work — the way he draws focus in a scene is a pleasure — the script drags and the pseudo-romance is hard to believe, especially when one plot point concerns Daniel asking for a bulk-purchase sex rate. Eastern Boys never quite fulfills the promise of those first few minutes.

The film is soft and sticky, but it deserves a (small) audience. If you're in that peculiar kind of blue mood where you'd like to be just a bit bluer, Dear Frankie might be the right choice.

The dialogue, at best serviceable, becomes completely superfluous.

Safe in Hell doesn’t offer anything extraordinary in the way of skin or innuendo, but it’s chockablock with the kind of situations and characters that would be verboten on screen for nearly three decades commencing in mid-1934.

Two stars for adults -- 3 stars for kids. The under-5 set should take to The Country Bears like bears to honey - even if anyone much older will find this broad-as-a-barn-door Disney musical bear-ly tolerable.

You might be tempted to walk out. Don't.

One of the more entertaining documentaries to come along in some time.

At times Halloween II dances on the line between alarming and disgusting, and it doesn’t all hold together — I couldn’t figure out what the goblin banquet was doing in this movie. But if it was meant to freak me out, it worked.

The script plays fast and loose with the facts and adds soap-operaish touches, but Thalbach is a feisty delight.

Mena Suvari has her best role since "American Beauty" as Brandi, a self-centered nursing home employee distinctly lacking in sympathy for anyone.

As evident from The Brown Bunny and his directing debut, "Buffalo 66," Gallo is talented, although in an unconventional way. Call him an angry young man with a future.

Ghobadi (himself an Iranian Kurd) takes some gorgeous shots against the snow, but his storytelling is uneven and often slow.

Tasteless but sporadically uproarious black comedy.

Mesrine's gentler side is explored, too, as he gets caught up with women portrayed by two of France's leading actresses, Ludivine Sagnier and Cecile de France.

Ultimately, for the show’s fans, it may not matter if “Sponge Out of Water” shows a hint of mildew. After all, my co-critic’s most enthusiastic note — “Hilarious!” — was written before the lights even dimmed.

The Conjuring 2 belongs to Wilson and Farmiga as the sincere, loving, slightly square Warrens, with Wan tightening the screws for a rousing series of cliffhangers that should have audiences screaming. Expect another sequel for sure.

Maybe the Midwest isn't actually like this, but if it were, would that be so bad?

There are a few ingenious zig zags in its otherwise by-the-numbers plot...but what keeps you interested... is the sheer movie-star presence of the actors in the lead roles.

The girl you see stabbing and shooting prisoners and fellow trainees makes the killer from "La Femme Nikita" look like a wuss.

This is grim, bleak material that at times is monotonous, but its woe feels authentic.

Stands in stark contrast to the quickie political documentaries that have flooded into specialty venues since last year.

More wobbly moments of Woman Walks Ahead seem to teeter on the edge of both white-saviorism and becoming a Harlequin romance.

This one is often more interesting than involving.

Ultimately, the immensely personable and talented lead actors manage to push aside the disquieting notion that this group of men are so emotionally stunted that they're happy to abandon their wives and children for the sake of a party.

Comes perilously close to being a vanity production for the obscure singer Isabel Rose, who stars and wrote the autobiographical screenplay with neophyte director Robert Cary, based on her own struggles as a cabaret singer.

The piéce de résistance is a "Rocky"-ish battle between bare-fisted Ip (Donnie Yen) and a racist Brit who uses boxing gloves and goes by the name Twister.

Inside Beautiful People, . . . there's a terrific film trying to get out.

In To Rome With Love, Allen approaches the leitmotif in a strange, oblique and interesting way. I fear, though, that the Italian entry in his "Let's Go: Grab Some Euro-Film Subsidies" period will be remembered as being forgettable.

Buzzes around in random menace for an hour until its third act, when - zzzzzt! - it flies straight into the zapper.

Demonstrates that not only is sisterhood powerful, it can be awfully entertaining.

This genre-busting hybrid is a scattershot affair - bad jokes land with a thud that seems to echo, but the winning ones prompt hearty laughs.

It's a simple tale of father-and-son bonding that director Huo Jianqi injects with a quiet power, and it benefits greatly from the gorgeous lushness of its backdrop.

That's My Boy is pretty raunchy, and by "pretty," I mean "amazingly," as in Howard Stern- or Seth MacFarlane-style gags.

Sputnik Mania has a happy ending, thanks to German scientist Werner von Braun, who had been recruited for America after designing Nazi rockets that rained terror on England during World War II.

Oddly, though, for a film so dedicated to celebrating what he can still accomplish, his early performing career gets a lot more emphasis than the music still being composed. And that's a pity, because what little we hear is entrancing.

There are times when the urban dialect is so thick, you wish the film came with subtitles.

It's only when you're leaving the theater that her spell wears off and you realize just how bad the movie, directed by Andy Tennant, really is.

Adrift is paced like its title, and the story’s momentum is slowed somewhat by constant toggling between past and present.

Prisoners of the Ghostland is equal parts visual delight and narrative head-scratcher. Most of all, it’s a hefty dose of Nicolas Cage set to full-tilt gonzo.

The clever screenplay, co-written by director Kelly Asbury (who co-helmed "Shrek 2"), follows the DreamWorks template of combining pop culture references, sight gags and action for the kids, and more sophisticated humor for adults.

A heartfelt, beautifully acted film that suffers from its similarity to countless other movies.

Funny and frothy sex comedy from Spain with a very appealing cast -- and mediocre musical numbers.

The film has enough funny lines and weird situations - some comedy business with a sex chair lovingly constructed by the Clooney character is the highlight - that it could age into a cult film like "The Big Lebowski."

Even though you definitely don’t leave contemplating the narrative, the detailed and authentic ‘80s aesthetic conjures a spell.

The trouble here is the fizzling story. The viewer can’t help but feel the loss of Ross.

This erotic noir is about as substantial as one of its female lead’s string bikinis, but it’s an enjoyable trifle nonetheless.

Binder has allowed Allen, a brilliant actress, to go overboard with Terry's obnoxiousness, just as Brooks (his apparent role model) did with Téa Leoni in "Spanglish."

Clever, racially and sexually provocative variation on "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"