Intriguing, provocative stuff.

Unfortunately, the plot runs out of dilithium crystals, and drifts to a sluggish and predictable conclusion

Empire, with its double-barreled shoot-outs, its predictable carnage and conflict, and a rush-job of a resolution, is ultimately just one more urban gangland genre flick.

This is a movie that both parodies "The Sopranos" and aspires to its mordant humor. I don't think anyone -- not Tony Soprano, not Paul Vitti -- can have it both ways.

It's a testament to Cage's canny performance and Jonze's seamless use of special effects that you believe Charlie and Donald are two entirely different people.

It's a cinematic feat, an art lover's dream, but as a moviegoing experience, Alexander Sokurov's Russian Ark is something of a letdown.

A tad more character development would have been nice.

Mazel tov, Adam, for having three movies released in five months. You should maybe spend more time on the next one?

For those who have seen Tarkovsky's moody original, let me say that Soderbergh skims the fat from the 1972 film. What's left is a rich stew of longing.

They has a low-budget, generic feel -- but also enough sense to know that unseen menace is a lot creepier than explicit gore.

Don't blame Kline. This most thoughtful of actors is trapped behind the lectern of a film that spouts contradictory lessons it can't reconcile.

Not even Halle Berry, emerging from the blue Caribbean in an orange two-piece -- can bring this thing to life.

Almodóvar has made a powerfully moving film about men who think they want to lose themselves in their women, then are startled to realize that they're the ones who have been comatose.

A film full of a sense of impending danger, betrayal, seduction and destruction. Quite simply, it's great stuff.

Has the confessional intimacy of a video diary and performances to match, particularly those of Kyra Sedgwick and Parker Posey.

The Chamber of Secrets -- darker, scarier and somewhat better than "Sorcerer's Stone."

Charming is such an overused, film critic-y designation, but The Way Home is that, and more.

Ain't no mountain high enough to keep the Funk Brothers from getting to you.

A feverish melodrama about an idealist who, in following his heart and his bishop's orders, leads himself into temptation and his parish into hypocrisy.

The real drama -- and poetry -- in 8 Mile are in those fiery face-offs, the hip-hop battles, as Jimmy rat-tat-tats his rap in deft flashes of spontaneous combustion.

The movie is, start to finish, candy-colored angst.

Femme Fatale is glossy, glamorous cinema as collage. Maybe all the pieces of a truly good film noir are here, but the filmmaker has opted simply to toss them into the air and let them fall where they may.

With its polished mix of traditional and computer-generated cartooning, Treasure Planet doesn't exude the same suspense as the Disney original. You could say it's lighter on its feet -- but then there's less gravity in outer space, anyway.

Has the disjointed feel of a bunch of strung-together TV episodes.

Shows glimmers of great drama, but jettisons too much essential cargo (character development, relationships, plot, common sense) in an effort to be lean and clean.

Tully is at turns heartbreaking and heart-stirring. And it's from the heartland, so I guess that makes perfect sense.

The execution is so dumbed-down, so dumbfounding, that sophisticated moviegoers might confuse it for outtakes from "Spy Kids 2" and "XXX."

Sly, sophisticated and surprising.

It's not a great film but it's pure pleasure.

A dynamic portrait of an artist by an artist, one as wry, audacious and erotically charged as its flamboyant subject.

Although there are several truly jolting scares, there's also an abundance of hackneyed dialogue and more silly satanic business than you can shake a severed limb at.

A mostly glum, gray and grim story lit by a fugitive sunbeam.

I would like to be able to report that Nelson's directorial vision is grim and uncompromising. Grim it most surely is. But his movie about morally compromised figures leaves viewers feeling compromised, unable to find their way out of the fog and the ashes.

What's most refreshing about Real Women Have Curves is its unforced comedy-drama and its relaxed, natural-seeming actors.

A messy fish-out-of-water gangland romp.

There are extraordinary collisions of image and music here that make for some breathtaking sequences, but when that portentous, Gregorian-chanting chorus kicks in with its repetitive mantra of the film's title, it sure sounds a whole lot like they're saying "narcolepsy," not "naqoyqatsi."

A creepy, oozy, dopey remake of the stylish 1998 Japanese thriller, "Ringu."

Is Auto Focus a cautionary tale or just a morbid, voyeuristic foray into kitsch and kink? Whatever it is, it's not pretty - it's the cinematic equivalent of soiled, stained sheets. You'll want to run out of the theater straight to a Laundromat.

Sweet. The pun is unavoidable. It's the only adjective that fully captures the flavor of the romantic comedy Brown Sugar.

Although it would be understatement to call their characters unsympathetic, Van Der Beek and Sossamon play their parts with such doomed passion that they have some affecting moments.

It has its moments of swaggering camaraderie, but more often just feels generic, derivative and done to death.

Irreverent, provocative and provoking.

A thoroughly satisfying mix of mayhem and mindless fun.

Smart, curious and brave.

Although respectful of its central subject, Comedian is not worshipful. Rather, it is curious about what in Seinfeld's hard-wiring allows him to maintain his equilibrium.

Stronger on character than on story, the film version of Janet Fitch's best-seller is shaped and propelled by the astonishing performance of Alison Lohman.

With its feverish, percussive soundtrack and bravura cinematography, is like a bolt from the blue, chock-full of unexpected delight.

Funny and not-funny, slapstick and slapdash, Welcome to Collinwood is a seriously uneven caper comedy in which a bunch of really fine character actors get to act really, really silly.

Odd, and awkward in places, but its lyricism and power stay with you.

A bracing, unblinking work that serves as a painful elegy and sobering cautionary tale.

For all its brilliant touches, Dragon loses its fire midway, nearly flickering out by its perfunctory conclusion.

What a mess.

Until its conventional third act, Elysian Fields takes surprising turns. Garcia, Coburn and particularly Jagger surprise throughout.

Where so many Holocaust documentaries remember the past and preach not to repeat it, Shanghai Ghetto remembers the past and teaches the relativity of experience.

It's a fun gimmick -- the sartorial equivalent of those red shoes in the fairy tale that made an ordinary girl dance like Terpsichore -- if not an altogether fun movie.

If you can tolerate the redneck-versus-blueblood cliches that the film trades in, Sweet Home Alabama is diverting in the manner of Jeff Foxworthy's stand-up act.

Gyllenhaal, in the pivotal role, brings a scruffy, boyish charm to the proceedings, but his big scenes with Hoffman and Sarandon are one-sided - he's not in the same league, and comes off as a bit of a cipher.

Startlingly original comedy-drama.

Some numbers: Hawn and Sarandon (both 56) are arguably the first women in American popular culture to be pushing 60 and sexy. Hard to believe, but when Joan Crawford and Bette Davis were comparable ages (59 and 54), they were the frightening gargoyles of "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?"

The good news is that it sees what a jihad looks like from both sides. The bad news is that it's not a very good movie, with three fine performances and two great sequences.

Pulls off a neat trick: It's a poignant, sweet-natured love story in which what most of us would call kinky sex - domination, submission, some enthusiastic spanking - is featured prominently, but not pruriently.

Invincible works, simply but provocatively, as a parable about the oppressed and the oppressors, victimhood and fanaticism.

May not plumb the depths of the female psyche, but it's stylish and frivolous in the most profound ways.

Wondrously strange and just plain wonderful.

Because the confrontations between power and powerlessness are so dramatic and because Hirschbiegel's editing is so emphatic, Das Experiment is practically over before you realize that you don't know what its point is, exactly.

Smart and novelistic and spiked with more than a bit of The Catcher in the Rye, Steers' movie is a prickly coming-of-age tale in which everybody -- but especially Culkin -- shines.

A stage-y but likable ensemble piece.

While Stealing Harvard may be a chucklehead comedy, Lee is oddly touching and funny. Mostly because, unlike Green, he's not aggressively trying to make us laugh.

As a character study, City by the Sea is engaging. As a police thriller, it's not all there.

An elusive and profoundly moving essay about the stages of amour and of age. Like the best of Godard's movies -- and I haven't been sucked into one since "Passion" (1982) -- it is visually ravishing, penetrating, impenetrable.

A muscular, no-nonsense genre pic (well, two genres: prisons and boxing), Undisputed isn't going to score points for originality, and the climactic bout is a bit of a letdown. But Rhames, as the cocksure millionaire pugilist, seethes brute force.

A wholesome little drama aimed at the pre- and early-teen crowd.

For all its flaws, offers an enjoyable look at the machinations of moviedom and fame, and a look into a future where what is real and what isn't becomes scarily blurred.

The movie isn't as deep as it pretends to be, but it does have several nicely unexpected twists going for it. And it has Williams - memorably creepy, chillingly sad.

That's what Blue Crush is getting at: girls going for the gold in a sport that's traditionally been the domain of men.

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.

Add Mostly Martha to the list of great mouth-watering food flicks - "Eat Drink Man Woman," "Big Night," "Babette's Feast" -- but don't stop there. Add it to another list: movies that get at the heart of what family, and love, is all about.

Director Manoel de Oliveira's minimalist, incomparably moving I'm Going Home ranks with John Huston's "The Dead" as one of the great works by a director at his twilight.

Hopped-up and electrifying. The soundtrack is wall-to-wall and propulsive.

A goofy combination of screwball farce and Dogma-style verite grit and gloom.

Less a movie than a collection of pretty cool action set-pieces, linked together with some seriously awful acting and dialogue that even Dr. Evil couldn't deliver with a straight face.

Moves along the way its leading man walks along - steady and sure.

There's humor in it, and sadness, and an acid-tinged humor that is miles away from the branded levity of "Friends." More power to Aniston for feeling the need to try something different, and then doing it -- well.

To the delight of gadgetheads and the dismay of the rest of us, Spy Kids' paraphernalia is better developed and considerably more fun than its story.

Keener makes this sometimes inert but always intimate tale of love and ambition burst with dynamic energy. Keener doesn't just have attitude, she has maditude.

While the impulse for his concert may have been confession and atonement, the cumulative effect is one of a guy struggling mightily to reconcile his divided self.

In the end, The Last Kiss holds less a cynical view of the matrimonial state than one of considered irony.

Signs is about God and family, too, but it's also about scaring the bejesus out of you -- and on that level it works like a miracle.

Totally lame.

Robert Evans has been variously described as the Hugh Hefner of Hollywood, a Tinseltown Gatsby, the Lancelot of the backlot.

Tells Wilco's story so well that you'll leave the theater thinking the album is a work of genius.

To paraphrase one of the few memorable lines in the movie, "Even stink would say this stinks."

It's not often that Chinese cinema tackles same-sex relationships, and rarer still to see a film of such stark, muted emotion coming from mainland China.

The moral of this softhearted tale is that family values can rehabilitate and tenderize even the toughest of birds. But you'll forgive me if I liked it less when Stuart smoothed Margalo's feathers than when Snowbell's fundamental cattiness made the fur fly.

I don't think that a woman behind the camera necessarily affects the tenor of what is on screen, but never before have I seen a men-of-war film more notable for its psychology than its spectacle.

Stanford and Neuwirth are performers of such nuance that a mere glimpse of his body language and her bawdy language speak volumes about the difference between love and sex, the ideal and the real.

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.

Whatever you say about Sex and Lucía, you have to admit that it takes place at a hormonal high tide that never ebbs.