It's the magic of movies, not a movie that comes close to achieving real magic.

There isn't a real, flesh-and-blood figure in the bunch. Everything about Red Tails - the breaking down of racial barriers, the military achievements, the courage and sacrifice - is diminished in the process.

Lightweight, likable buppie romantic comedy.

Satire should be knife-sharp and whip-smart, and The Nanny Diaries never is.

George, director of "Hotel Rwanda," is better at directing actors than visual storytelling. Every time the camera tilted to suggest a character's shaken world or distorted worldview I didn't feel heartache, I felt headache.

Perhaps it's for the best that We Are Your Friends doesn't try to appeal to anyone outside its stars' own kind. Fewer people will have to see it.

In supporting roles, Bullock and Hanks deliver performances that are low-key and perfectly scaled. Viola Davis and Jeffrey Wright are, likewise, excellent as a couple Oskar meets on his reconnaissance expedition.

As a bratty, punked-up sci-fi romp crammed with pop- cult references (everything from Baywatch to Batman, Stiff Records to The Wizard of Oz), Tank Girl has energy to burn. [31 March 1995, p.3]

It isn't a good movie, but it is diverting, a showcase for Anouk Aimee, Greta Scacchi and Ron Silver, and a peephole on behind-the-scenes moves.

The cast, headed by the divine Jamie Foxx, is better than the material. Director Daniel Taplitz is better than the material.

The film never gives you a real sense of what drove Darin on, fighting a heart ailment (from childhood rheumatic fever) and fighting an industry and press that wanted to pigeonhole him.

On the whole, the movie is more Cheez Whiz than wizardly.

Occasionally clicks into full-speed farce mode, but never for long - or for long enough.

Tommy Boy is little more than another invitation from Hollywood for moviegoers to suffer fools. There's no reason to do so gladly. [31 Mar 1995, p.05]

Cross Dog Day Afternoon with This is Spinal Tap and you have the concept behind Airheads: heavy metal trio seeking record contract holds radio station employees hostage, much mayhem and moshing ensues.... Airheads isn't nearly as good as its antecedents, but it does manage to produce a stream of lowbrow laughs. Or smiles, anyway. [5 Aug 1994, p.3]

Fortunately, the actors are so likable that these wincingly unfunny moments don't spoil the party.

It is a keenly observed movie about loss of identity and finding love, in which Brooks serves up funny-ouch humor with slapstick heartbreak.

This glum and grandiose new King Arthur has little to do with the Camelot monarch we've come to know through books and film.

Any movie that considers the possibility of an afterlife, or the possibility that there isn't one, without first getting all postapocalyptic about it, merits some respect. Stay, Mia, stay!

A curious screwball "noir," doesn't so much bend established genres as blend them into an unappetizing cocktail, where they curdle before pouring.

Bloody, bone-chilling fun.

Succeeds because the action is supercharged in a style that recalls Mel Gibson's apocalyptic classic, "The Road Warrior." The characters are more than cartoonish, and the plot grips the road. But it's Diesel who provides the nitro injection

Based on the charming young-adult novel by Florida bard Carl Hiaasen, Hoot is a pleasant diversion on the order of a gloriously photographed after-school special.

There's real hypocrisy here. If a movie like Fifty Shades of Grey is supposed to offer a voyeuristic experience - and not a ridiculous experience - have some integrity about your nudity. Despite what the filmmakers may want to believe, there isn't a lot else going on here. Fifty Shades of Grey Matter, not so much.

The Ghost and the Darkness is beautifuly photographed and produced with an immaculate sense of period. Stephen Hopkins directs the action with a sure hand, but he is understandably at a loss in the film's subtext, which is as dense and often as impenetrable as jungle undergrowth. [11 Oct 1996, p.14]

McKellen, Hanks and Tautou - and Alfred Molina, as a bishop with an agenda - are no slouches when it comes to emoting, but screenwriter Goldsman's rigorously faithful interpretation of Brown's flatfooted prose stylings is the filmic equivalent of putting big chewy baguettes in the actors' maws.

As Roscoe's parents, Margaret Avery and James Earl Jones emerge with drawers undropped and dignity intact.

It's a big stuffed turkey of a movie, just in time for the holidays.

The picture uses humor and a heartfelt conviction to tell a story about discovering your destination in life.

A diverting comedy that in its last act becomes unusually sober. While the film both explicitly and implicitly pays tribute to Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life," the upshift from irreverent slapstick to reverent sermonette is extremely abrupt.

It might not be good enough to make you laugh consistently, but Hollywood Ending looks good enough to eat.

The film is a squeamish exercise, like watching a cruel child pull the wings off flies - especially the climactic scene, which is so gory it would turn a coyote's stomach.

With its first-person-shooter perspective and gun-andrun narrative, this one’s for the PlayStation crowd. It’s not a movie. It’s an adrenaline pump and purveyor of raw carnage.

The script is a stupid mix of Teutonic tongue twisters (say hello to Herr Schniedelwichsen), hoary German cliches (from phallic sausages to U-boat spoofs), and bad slapstick.

This one has some originality, even though it unfolds like Ingmar Bergman's divorce melodrama "Scenes From a Marriage" - without the marriage.

Diaz works that trademark mix of ditziness, sexiness, and brassiness.

Individually, the actors are endearing. But together in this charmless Gary David Goldberg sitcomedy, inspired by the Claire Cook novel, they are as oddly paired as chalk and cheese.

A Good Man in Africa, which has been adapted to the screen by Boyd from his first novel, isn't an out-and-out dud, but it too seems to have been sucked dry. [09 Sep 1994, p.03]

Serves up a dramatic comedy piquant as its title.

Davis, with a nicely turned and witty screenplay from Bucatinsky, freshens up the familiar predicament by having her two lovers recount the affair to a stranger.

This In-Laws feels, in the end, formulaic and unnecessary, especially when the original is yours for the renting at the video store.

It's a soaring, crashing, blazing affair with pyrotechnic performances by real-life spouses Marc Anthony and Jennifer Lopez as Lavoe and his wife, Puchi. Like a plane disaster, it holds you in thrall of ¡ay, Dios mio! drama.

Like many previous Carrey vehicles, the point of this one directed by Peyton Reed is that one should not live at the extremes, but should achieve a balance between low and high, no and yes.

Much as I adore Martin and Hunt, whose matching tongue-in-cheek delivery and finite patience make them seem more like siblings than spouses, their movie is indistinguishable from an Afterschool Special.

The Farrellys manage to have their cake and scarf it down, disgustingly, too.

Boasts exceedingly high levels of improbability and an embarrassment of continuity and character shortfalls, but still has a certain bubbleheaded charm.

Between Owen's quiet intensity and Mirren's showy color, they make a complementary pair for screen or garden.

In this it succeeds. Like the Bard said, better witty foolishness than foolish wit.

Callan McAuliffe, a handsome Australian youth, looks right as the perma-press Bryce.

Yep, it's all fun and games until someone gets brutalized repeatedly. Before you can avert your eyes, it's Katie, bar the door and break out the chain saws.

A throwback to the days when gangs met in clubhouses instead of crack houses, raced go-carts instead of stolen cars and brandished slingshots instead of semiautomatics, The Little Rascals is the best 1936 movie made in 1994. [05 Aug 1994, p.03]

It fails as a gripping home-invasion thriller.

A boldly sappy melodrama that plays on - and off - racial stereotypes.

I had the sense that Gordon's ambitious, if awkwardly assembled, film had so many terrific ingredients that he felt compelled to use them all. In this case, alas, more is less.

Weaknesses are confirmed in the movie's laughable climax.

Clark denies his audience the catharsis, resolution and renewal of classical tragedy. The film reduces its viewers to helplessness, and I'm not sure that's its intent.

As artistic achievements go, Mona Lisa Smile is strictly a paint-by-numbers affair. No shading. Little in the way of perspective. To call it one-dimensional would be an act of charity.

A slasher spoof of sorts, except that unlike the "Scream" pics, scant effort seems to have gone into the spoofing aspect of the story.

Evening might be the most shocking waste of natural resources since the despoiling of the Amazon rain forest.

For Hickenlooper and Mauzner, Sedgwick is more interesting for whom she slept with than who she was. Their movie may indict Warhol for exploiting Sedgwick, but they're just as guilty.

Another high school vixen movie, this one with a potty mouth (the vixen) and pretensions of social commentary (the movie), Pretty Persuasion brings to mind a number of other titles, all better.

A case of when bad scripts happen to good actors. Given its similarities to a bygone sitcom, one might call it "Friends" without benefits.

Easily one of the loosest, most satisfying comedies to hail from the prolific writer/director in a while.

Shot in Panama, with a cast of local Indians and B-tier Latino and Anglo actors, End of the Spear has neither the marquee heft nor the artistic gravitas of "The New World."

Hoodwinked may be a poor cousin to the Shrek franchise, but this made-on-the-cheap computer-animated feature still has more style and snarky gags than Disney's recent CG hit, "Chicken Little."

For this dynamic to work, the actors need to be of complementary temperament and equal power. This is not the case.

It's "The Deep" reimagined as an Abercrombie catalog.

Whatever romantic tension the film has is communicated in the coiled-spring performance by Crowe, one of the most remarkable actors working.

Fortunately, even when star and story are ineffectual, Fears' supporting players are all thrilling, especially Morgan Freeman.

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.

Isn't that good. But Moore is.

Mostly about delivering thrills, and chills, and this it does with moderate success and a bunch of fast, no-nonsense edits.

Spurlock's intermittently entertaining travelogue ultimately reveals that people in disparate countries of different religions and wildly divergent ideologies are more alike than not.

A touchy daughter and her feely mom form the emotional axis of Peace, Love, & Misunderstanding, a touching, feeling, touchy-feely series of emotional encounters that generate much warmth in Bruce Beresford's balloon-light family comedy. If it were any lighter, it would float away.

Brosnan, who finds the truth in his character, is quite affecting. And Mulligan, gamely defining a surprisingly undefined young woman, is like a sunbeam piercing the gloom.

Colombiana isn't the last word in action movies, but it's a fun ride. And so wrong.

The closest FF:ROTSS gets to wit is when Johnny convinces a reluctant Reed to attend a bachelor party, after promising the uptight groom-to-be that there won't be any "exotic dancers."

Worthy of mention is Carolina Herrera's design for Bella's wedding dress, sophisticated and demure in the front and Pippa Middleton sexy, and proper, in the back.

If, like me, you were hoping for "Scarface" as a hip-hopera, I am sad to report that Get Rich or Die Tryin' has heat, but not sweep.

For a while, Firewall whips up the accordant dollops of suspense and dread, but it's not long before the timely issue of identity theft takes a backseat to old-fashioned Hollywood villainy, unnecessary (and nonsensical) red herrings, and STUFF THAT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE.

An extremely delicate, quiet, and stunningly understated chamber piece.

Entertainingly creepy.

Not only is there no magnetism between Fiennes and Lopez, he's a lead balloon and she's helium-filled. Happily, their odd chemistry doesn't sink this fairy tale.

Elevated beyond its cutesy contrivances and mawkishness by some extraordinarily good performances.

The obstacles are many, most notably Rookery, a local vampire hunter who looks like a rejected extra from "Mad Max."

A modest and obviously heartfelt endeavor.

An unfortunate collision of earnest coming-of-age cliches and off-key acting, Evergreen almost, and certainly unintentionally, presents itself as parody.

The only likable characters are ebullient Omer (Sam Golzari), a show-tune-loving reluctant Iraqi suicide bomber who comes to the O.C., and earnest William (Chris Klein), an American GI wounded in Iraq, who are mirror images.

The Possession has none of the suspense that made Bornedal's morgue thriller "Deathwatch" such shuddering good fun. And despite the absurdly overwrought Bernard Herrmann-esque score, it has very few genuine shocks.

Frankly, the wow factor isn't that great.

The Paperboy is over-the-top every which way you look.

If the moral of Click is a stop-and-smell-the-roses bromide about how family comes first, the real message of this sappy, potty-mouthed seriocomedy is that a steady diet of Drakes and Hostesses will do you no good.

Murky and grainy, and showing human beings at their grimmest - thievery, rape, betrayal, murder - Blindness is no barrel of laughs. But it IS a barrel of pretentious metaphorical musings.

Blanchett commands the screen as she commands the royal navy. Her unforced majesty makes a so-so film worth watching.

Gritty, jumpy and rife with cliches.

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.

The moral of Taken 2? If you're going on a family vacation, be sure that the human-trafficking ring you put out of business in that far more satisfying and suspenseful thriller from a few years ago doesn't know how to find you.

Aimed at teens and tweens, the almost-squeaky-clean Step Up 3-D shamelessly piles on the corn, stacking it so high that it's bound to tilt over and collapse.