This intelligent, postmodern biography from director Irwin Winkler and screenwriter Jay Cocks uses Porter's songs, by turns haunting and hilarious, to decode and reconstruct a life hinted at in the familiar words and music.

A triumph for its director and its star.

On the evidence of Palindromes, the most misanthropic, depressing, hopeless film in memory, I'd hazard that for Solondz, childhood is a problem without a solution.

Salvadori's choppy film never establishes a comic rhythm.

Hysteria is a romantic comedy, not an erotic one.

McConaughey tucks into the role like a hungry man gobbling a ham sandwich.

Wincer shoots the whole thing - which is dressed up with cherry-red vintage fighter planes and boxy Pan Am Clippers and offers a few sequences in Thai lagoons of gloriously shocking turquoise - in a manner that renders even surefire stuff (collapsing rope bridges, horseback rides through crowded Manhattan streets) ho-hum. Kids of a certain age may be distracted by the bright colors and broad acting - the film is, at least, devoid of any gratuitously nasty violence - but most audience members who find their way into the theater will wonder when the Ghost Who Walks is going to walk off into the sunset. It ain't soon enough. [7 June 1996, p.03]

Maybe it's the postproduction 3-D enhancements, but in this effects-laden Odyssey for tweens, sometimes humans and beasts seem more wax-and-paint than flesh-and-blood.

Parental units who manage to remain conscious through the kiddie-centric proceedings can either savor, or groan at, Malkovich's bespectacled Octavius barking punny, celebrity name-dropping orders to his minions.

Burns' writing style is full of tepid Woodyisms about sex and romance, with Allen's Jewish guilt supplanted by the Christian variety. [23 Aug 1996, p.03]

Directed by Terrence Malick's editor and protégé, A.J. Edwards, The Better Angels abounds with Malick-ian moments: upward-pointing cameras capturing bodies wheeling through fields, plaintive voice-overs punctuated by Jew's harp and birdsong, a tendency to drift toward the sky and its moody tableau of clouds.

Lacks the origin-story freshness of its predecessor (even if the inaugural Garfield Spider-Man came only five years after the final installment of the Sam Raimi-directed Tobey Maguire Spider-Man trilogy). It lacks a charismatic central character, too.

War is hell, war is cruelty, war is toil and trouble, war is just a shot away. But is war a snooze? Well, by the time Enemy at the Gates has run its course — it sure seems that way.

Feels somehow incomplete. It may be that its visual metaphor is more effective in literature than in film.

Involving study of sibling and interpersonal relationships.

While the situations don't add up to a satisfying film, the characters are pleasing to watch.

While its message is a little simplistic, Knock Knock is shot through with a brilliant, gleefully anarchic dark humor that's equally fun and disturbing.

Chris Columbus' relatively faithful and intermittently affecting adaptation boasts the boisterous vitality of its performers, particularly Jesse L. Martin and Wilson Jermaine Heredia as lovers Tom and Angel.

Mixing elements from documentaries, biopics, war flicks, and Hallmark romances, Ross' film is a living history tour, but with gory special effects and a smoldering smattering of sex appeal.

Hunt, whose flutelike voice makes music of Wilde's dialogue, has the most difficult role. While she acquits herself honorably, she nudges her lines a little too broadly, as if she's worried that the audience will miss the double meanings and wordplay.

The Killer Inside Me is tough, disturbing stuff: We're tagging along with a sociopath as he explains himself, reveals himself, works things out inside his head.

The Rocker can be amusingly dopey, with its "Spinal Tap"-ish lampooning of rock idioms - and idiots.

If the shrill Italian melodrama Remember Me, My Love were a television soap opera, it would be called The Not-So-Young and the Restless.

Who would have imagined that the galactic Gonzo would turn out to be a more entertaining space trip this summer than you-know-what? [14 July 1999, p.D01]

It's a sorry spectacle, watching garden gnomes being robbed of their dignity.

David Wain's riotous, raunchy, and more than a little raggedy showcase for Rudd's improv genius and Aniston's airy groundedness. He is gut-busting funny, she gently ticklish - ideal comic rapport.

This is more than the story of soldiers grappling with stress and doubt as they reenter the "normal" flow of domestic life. It's about strangers bonding, about friendship and discovery, about the comedy and tragedy of the human experience.

Though not as lyrical as "The Road," which benefits from both its visual artistry and its humanist perspective, The Book of Eli employs the genre conventions of the western to make mythic its principal character.

Epic piffle.

Stripped of its poetry, some of the devices of the tragedy of the Moor come off here as woefully contrived.

It's rare that a movie is so graceful and so gross.

A fairly dreadful melodrama drenched in self-pity.

lLght and likable - a low-budget "Steel Magnolias" without pretense.

An exceptionally fine children's film.

If you were to judge Let Me Explain purely on its performance portion, filmed at Madison Square Garden during Hart's 2012 tour, the film would merit a full extra star. But at 75 minutes, it feels too skimpy to rave over.

There are tiny glints of humor and intelligence at work, and the action and animation rockets along slickly and stylishly. But unlike the protagonists of almost any and all of the Pixar titles, Astro Boy's namesake lacks even an iota of soul.

A long, tedious and convoluted follow-up to 2003's rollicking high-seas hit, The Curse of the Black Pearl, this second installment in the promised trilogy lacks the swash and buckle of the original. And then some.

Like Clint Eastwood’s masterful 2006 WWII drama "Flags of Our Fathers," Lee’s film is as much about how we spin war stories as it is about war itself. Both involve a group of heroic soldiers sent home by the Pentagon to help drum up popular support. Both are made by filmmakers keenly aware that stories have the power to justify a war or turn the public against it.

The movie is beautiful but, for one unfamiliar with the source material, confusing. I needed an owl scorecard.

Subversively funny, Stick It sees gymnastics as a microcosm of teen life.

The movie's combination of unabashedly fun carnage, cool special effects, and tongue-in-cheek dialogue keeps the ball rolling (albeit at reduced speed), until the last of the titular terrors has bit the dust.

The humans, particularly the wistful Wilson, deadpan Alan Arkin (as Grogan's editor) and Nathan Gamble, a 10-year-old who plays the eldest Grogan child, are very affecting. Aniston, who has great offbeat comic timing, doesn't quite find her rhythm here.

An uneven, perpetually redundant comedy-drama.

If you're going to take another stab at this tale of a taunted, traumatized teen who exacts fiery revenge on, well, everyone, then Kimberly Peirce is the director to do it.

It's not easy being macho while you're shivering like a frozen puppy, but Kutcher pulls it off.

In Time is that kind of movie: Philip K. Dick for knuckleheads.

Roos introduces the possibility that perhaps two partials add up to the whole truth, and in so doing creates a provocative love story that sticks with you long after the credits roll.

Provide more than you ever wanted to know about the reigning kings of geekpop, but he (Priestly) does so without giving you much reason to care.

What's on screen is a hash, though it may very well be the most comprehensive catalog of male erotic fantasies in one single film.

DePalma's movie offers its own doctoring and processing, without delivering an ounce of real humanity - good or bad - in the bargain.

A small, dreamy romance.

Tomorrow Never Dies sticks to the Bond formula without bringing anything new, or particularly inspired, to the proceedings. (Besides a lot of shameless product placement, that is.)

The main flaw of White House Down is that it overstays its welcome, thanks in large part to a silly climax that seems to unfold in three laborious acts. At least, Tatum keeps his shirt off.

Isaac's emotional performance as the man who learns to share the woman he loves with the God he worships is profoundly moving and gives the movie its heart.

Each actor is unusually watchful and wily, and their actorly competition underscores the one-upmanship of their characters.

A postfeminist valentine to the Paleolithic days of Woman Power when dinosaurs walked Manhattan in heels with matching handbags.

It's not fresh and irreverent, qualities we admire in Allen. It is recycled and irrelevant.

Law shines like a sunbeam, warming the film with rakish charm and unexpected emotionalism.

A roiling, boiling mix of blaxploitation, sexploitation, Tennessee Williams and the Tennessee outback.

At best diverting, at worst an almost self-parodic compendium of French film cliches.

A moody cyber-noir with not much on its mind but looking good, Blackhat is a must-see if you like your dialogue (romantic, dramatic, subtitled Cantonese) peppered with techspeak.

A movie that feels as if it should have been a masterpiece. As it is, it's flawed, uneven work but deserves careful viewing.

It's not that Fay Grim isn't amusing. It is, in that deadpan, skewed way that indie auteur Hartley's pics always are. But there's not much else going on here.

Deadpan, dead-on parody of a schlockmeister at work and play.

Watching the film is like getting hooked by a fearful angler who can't successfully reel you in.

By turns rowdy and rueful, The Switch is a comedy with serious ramifications, not least of which is the question, what makes a family?

Great message, so-so movie.

Williams does a terrific job portraying Nolan's ambivalence, the mix of fear, guilt, and excitement that grips him and the gradual change he undergoes in the ensuing weeks.

An enjoyably sudsy romance starring a moody Keanu Reeves, a broody Sandra Bullock, and the titular structure - a jewel box of glass and steel perched on stilts over Lake Michigan.

A cartoon that's truly cinematic in scope, and a story that's compelling and heartfelt - even if the heart belongs to a big, four-legged herbivore.

The Next Three Days is genre fare - no pretensions, no nonsense.

Aja's stomach-churning remake (produced by Craven) follows the original with frightening fidelity, amping up the barbarity from a nine (on the 1-10 scale) to a 12.

At its best, Nanny McPhee Returns has the playful surrealism of "Babe," if "Babe" had been directed by Terry Gilliam.

A likable, low-budget high school comedy.

Modestly entertaining when it is engaged in such a celebration onstage, but it trips up when the action moves backstage, where bad dialogue ... lurks in the shadows.

The real problem isn't with the actors, it's with 1) the source material, a highfalutin romance novel with a clever literary conceit, and 2) LaBute's clumsy, uncomfortable efforts to telescope Byatt's book into a workable movie.

The biggest surprise of his film is that what begins in sentimental cliche concludes with melancholy insight.

Contrived and schematic, Peter Chelsom's film is a mechanical bird that never takes wing.

Guggenheim doesn't bring much visual style to the game. But he brings heart (and some Bruce Springsteen on the soundtrack) to the story of a lost Jersey girl redeemed by sport. Yeah, I cried. And cheered. You will too.

While his movie lacks the psychological resonance of "Rosemary's Baby" or "The Sixth Sense," it easily equals their creep-out quotient.

Alas, something happened on the book-to-screen operating table: Yes, Running With Scissors is rich, twisted, insane, mordant and ridiculous, but it is not funny. Not at all.

Central Intelligence is actually funny.

If your idea of a fun night out is to be manipulated by freaky sound effects, jumpy edits, and point-of-view shots of ceiling fans whooshing menacingly, Insidious is the film for you.

Viewers get very little about Madoff himself. While the film is primarily about Markopolos, it makes little sense without much insight into his nemesis.

Yea or nay, love or hate, the portrait that Streep delivers in Phyllida Lloyd's impressionistic biopic is astonishing.

The extent to which The Princess Diaries succeeds is the result of how pretty Hathaway at first mimics, then internalizes, Andrews' essential majesty.

There is no discernible train of thought in Under Siege 2, but it serves up exactly what Seagal fans want - a movie where the body count is higher than the IQ needed to enjoy it. [17 July 1995, p.D01]

As for Bale, he seems to have lost his compass. His accent strays, his famous intensity wasted on clunky dialogue.

This is a straight-up gangsta film, yo. Spare us the phony redemption.

Easily the trippiest and goofiest of the five addled adolescent vampire romances based on the Stephenie Meyer books.

Filmmaker Kormákur orchestrates all this with broad strokes and winking intrigue, although the line between hambone melodrama and irony-tinged satire gets walked across a few too many times.

Unfortunately for Disney, the real obstacle confronting the submarine isn't the giant lobster. It's a foul-smelling ogre, and it's no contest.

Edgeless as a marshmallow and twice as syrupy.

Tai Chi Zero, the first film in a planned trilogy, will leave hard-core fight enthusiasts wanting. But it's a droll, pleasant diversion all the same.

On stage variously with Boyz II Men, Jaden Smith, Miley Cyrus, and Ludacris, Bieber carries himself like a squeaky-clean homeboy with an angelic voice. On him, swagger looks sweet.

A charmingly off-the-wall little tale. Black doesn't do anything he hasn't done before (in fact, he's already done his remake of King Kong!).

Washington's portrayal of a down-to-earth, dedicated detective is what we've come to expect from the star: intense, meticulous, likable. But there isn't much depth to his role. [16 Jan 1998, p.03]

Casa de Mi Padre is at its best (a relative term, mind you) when it's at its silliest and most surreal.