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.

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.

This film is a philosophical musing -- a humanitarian speculation, not a drama about real people, historical figures or not, who seem fully formed.

There are chases that feel way too long, and dialogue that feels flat. Affleck and Thurman make a handsome duo, but there's no spark between the actors.

A kind of Tracy/Hepburn rom-com with a "Dead Poets Society" backdrop and dollops of human failing for added drama, Words and Pictures stars Clive Owen and Juliette Binoche - a matchup that makes you want to like Fred Schepisi's film, even when it becomes impossible to do so.

A thriller fusing the primal elements of "Bambi" with those of "The Blair Witch Project."

The formula in Chain Reaction is familiar, but at least it has been entrusted to a proven technician. [2 Aug 1996, p.03]

Ready-made for Valentine's Day, The Vow is, like the offerings at Cafe Mnemonic, a total sugar overload.

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]

Echoing the lessons learned from "HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey," the message of Transcendence is that computers should not be allowed to become sentient.

Lopez is so remarkably unaffected and guileless that she manages to carry the film through its mood swing, if not successfully to its conclusion.

Cheesy, cheesy, cheesy but fun, fun, fun.

Diverting, if undistinguished.

As Hopkins himself goes wild-eyed and FX-ed with popping veins, The Rite gives up on asking us to take it seriously.

An improbably funny and transcendent account of soccer-mad Tibetan monks in exile at a Bhutan monastery.

Like Liam Neeson's "Taken" series, Costner's 3 Days to Kill finds its absentee-dad action hero facing off against hordes of goons and gorillas - not to rescue his loved ones, but to prove himself to them, and maybe get a little extra quality time, too.

A pumped-up, plotless montage of extraordinary landscapes, colorful wildlife, and interesting people performing feats of derring-do.

Unpretentious fun.

If Mark Wahlberg's new pic, The Gambler, feels like a stale rehash of existential tropes, that's because it is.

Part biography, part idol worship, Bhutto is a bullet train through South Asia, chronicling its subject's 54 years, a period of unrest in her nation and family.

The intention is clear: Garneau wants to make his points as persuasive and accessible as possible. Yet, the truths That Sugar Film contains were already obvious decades ago. It's sad that we need reminding.

Weaknesses are confirmed in the movie's laughable climax.

In a way, The TV Set suffers from the same syndrome as the industry it's parodying: bland and compromised, it feels as if it's been fine-tuned and focus-grouped within an inch of its life.

That very curious thing, a Shakespearean happy meal.

As stories go, The Astronaut Farmer is engaging, even if it serves up a kind of Plains State brand of Rocky-esque hooey.

The new King is competent, reasonably entertaining, faithful to the original, wholesome, sometimes even enjoyable.

For all the film's gritty verisimilitude, The Messenger is not the great Iraq War movie that Kathryn Bigelow's "The Hurt Locker" is.

Imagine "King Lear" art-directed by Martha Stewart and you have Hanging Up.