The result is an exercise in emoting that features one of the worst Southern accents in recent memory and does about as much to establish the actor's range as "Battlefield Earth."

See it for the star. Penn makes a film that in many respects feels low scale and ordinary into something painfully human and real.

Why did they think anyone would want to watch a Fat Albert adaptation that can't answer a simple question: "Who is this movie for?"

Bacon's mature performance serves a story that's considerably less sophisticated than he is, making The Woodsman less "brave" and more a slightly better-made movie of the week.

How the mighty (De Niro and Hoffman) have fallen? More like how the mighty have pile-driven themselves into the solid mass of rock at the core of the Earth. . . .

It adds up to a truly taxing couple of hours: ham acting, visual noise, aural torture, elementary plotting and unconvincing emotions.

Cheadle's performance elevates Hotel Rwanda, making it a film that does justice to the tragedy it commemorates.

The Aviator, though, if not prime Scorsese, is the closest thing in a long time to the old Scorsese. What a splendid year-end gift!

Ends up being one of those heartbreaking movies that gets off to a promising start but never quite creaks to life, despite everyone's obvious best efforts.

Could have had charm if the characters had been more recognizable as human beings.

Ends up feeling like the sort of leisurely man's-man adventure movie you used to be able to catch on Sunday afternoon TV.

It's simply an awful, awful film.

If the movie is largely familiar, its passion and craft are noteworthy.

Imaginary Heroes feels like an endless series of wakes, awkward cocktail conversations and teen house parties, which would be fine if Harris wrote less cartoony dialogue.

A truly powerful, masterful work.

Is it style over substance? Absolutely. But as with "Ocean's Eleven," style wins -- only just barely this time around.

A fascinating, masterly, frustrating film, it only passingly touches on the heart and sharpness of Anderson's previous work and rather brings to mind the famous complaint of the emperor in "Amadeus": "too many notes."

Has a surprising number of problems: dire scripting, sloppy plotting and coffee-jittery editing, for starters. But its biggest problem is that Blade himself takes a back seat to a host of new and mostly uninteresting characters.

The results are inspiring, demonstrating that an artistic eye is an innate thing.

It's in its aspiration to depict deceit and obsession, selfishness and recklessness, bitterness, revenge and fury that the film's power lies. There and in Clive Owen's sure and powerful hands.

The second action melodrama released in the United States this year by director Zhang Yimou, and if I prefer the previous one, "Hero," it's partly a matter of degrees.

A unique and masterful film, filled with surprises and felicities and moments of transporting visual power.

A dreary, overlong and occasionally laughable classical epic about the great Macedonian world conqueror, it's guilty of a sin that no Stone film has ever committed: It's boring.

If film is an art, it's because it's possible for somebody to make films like this.

Such a powerful sincerity and goodness flows through Paper Clips.

Nicolas Cageologists will be sad to hear that he's entirely too normal in National Treasure -- he's mildly funny but doesn't make any of the kooky dramatic choices (needless accents, ranting about the orifices of Greek gods) that made his other Bruckheimer performances so much fun to watch.

Spins a complete, thoroughly satisfying yarn from a short-form series.

Bad Education, in this light, is Almodovar's "8-1/2" or "Day for Night," a lens through which all of his movies appear as a seamless whole. It's not the story of his actual life but, more excitingly, the deft, witty, bittersweet story of the life of his art.

Simultaneously boring and cringe-inducing; you can't decide whether to flee the theater or lightly nap.

Handsome, professional and dutiful, but it never feels inspired.

The bright spot, again, is Grant.

Controversy aside, there's no denying that Kinsey was a pivotal figure in 20th-century America, and one whose fascinating story makes for a fascinating film.

A genuinely handsome film, and it tells a story that is well worth knowing. It's a kind, gentle and sweet holiday confection. But my Christmas wish is that the DVD comes packaged with the book.

A unique look behind the curtain, yes, but what's behind the curtain is almost unendurable. Just know that a bad guy got his comeuppance and you don't have to join the legion of his victims by watching it.

While his star, Jude Law, is infectiously watchable, Shyer's version of the material is tone deaf and splotchy.

It's hilarious, thrilling and filled with "life-truth" -- but it also conceals its effort under a layer of great writing and subtle craftsmanship.

A frequently transporting depiction of the early and middle life of Ray Charles, the film soars on remarkable performances, a convincing sense of time and place, and, of course, the glorious music for which Charles was rightly billed as The Genius.

What makes Saw so awful is that it starts with a clever premise and then completely blows it.

Handsomely photographed, artfully edited and acted with skill and conviction. It is also so stupid that you expect to see strings of drool dripping from the corner of the screen.

This is a grim, often lifeless tale played with such humorless intensity that watching it is far more like an endurance contest than a love affair.

Gets under your skin without you quite being able to say when or how. It has the tact to let you draw yourself in to it.

In the hands of a less-skilled director, this Hollywood-mandated need to impose order could have ended in disaster.

Although the primary plot line turns out to be a letdown, there are aspects of The Machinist that redeem it. Bale's performance is one; another is the dull, metallic look of the picture.

The Manson Family, with its attention to historical detail and chronology, is more effective and disturbing than those grade-Z shockers: It's a genuine look at unmitigated madness and evil. Needless to say, don't bring the kids.

Mostly, constant little reminders show that Breillat knows the business of movies in her bones. You can learn from it and enjoy it -- two things I never thought possible to say about a Breillat film until now.

You're guaranteed never to have seen anything like it; objectively speaking, it's a wonder.

It's an intelligent, funny, mature comedy that wears its heart on its sleeve and makes you care about the inner lives of ridiculously privileged human beings.

The performance of Bening (and, quietly, Irons) keeps Being Julia from being too tiresome.

Brilliantly colored and passionately acted, Moolaade teems with incidents, personalities and drama and is never less than vivid.

In absorbing drama and staggering emotions, it renders an issue too often seen as black or white in heartbreaking gray.

Acted with earnest commitment and scored and edited with jazzy, laconic grace, "Lights" tells us absolutely nothing we haven't heard before -- and often -- in sports films

Plays like a certain brand of indie film I hadn't seen in a while: the Self-Consciously Odd Journey of Self-Discovery Through the American Southwest, in which people learn Important Life Lessons while encountering "colorful" characters in small-town diners and motels amid the tumbleweeds.

Overall, the trip successfully embodies the spirit of the original Magic Bus man, Ken Kesey, whom these modern-day pranksters visit in a poignant scene filmed just months before his death.

For those to whom life is but a stage, this will be sweet, sweet candy; to those of us destined to be their audience, it's a satisfying, if flawed, look behind the curtain.

I reckon that for everyone who's enthralled by the film there will be others who wish they'd heard about it rather than seen it.

Moves you with a couple of its grittier dramatic choices, but overall the film feels cheap, tugging a little too hard on the almost instinctual pride you feel when seeing a hero in fireman's outfit.

Noisy, garish, cluttered, simplistic and often dark in content, it nevertheless sings and preens and jokes and tugs at you with such persistent verve that, exhausted, you give in.

With its lackluster surfaces and thin core, his (Russell) film displays neither heart nor brains enough to earn its whimsy.

It's a teeming, steaming, bubbling stew, a tremendous good time, a rich entertainment and a heck of a lesson in music, human etiquette and the politics of making it (or not) in show biz.

Someone should send him (Kerry) a copy, if only to remind the senator of the days when he was willing and able to speak with the courage of his convictions, and when he had a lot less to lose.

Could easily be seen as little more than a commercial for his (Jakes) life-changing influence. Call him the first of a new breed: the cinevangelist.

Director Jim deSeve has done an excellent job of providing both historical and personal perspective on a topic that provokes heated emotional reactions.

Enjoys the weird distinction of being one of the year's funniest comedies and one of the best zombie movies ever made.

The movie works reasonably well at this for its first half, but by then we've pretty much figured everything out.

The result is a rare and precious work. The Motorcycle Diaries is an epic road movie with everything you'd want from such a film: laughs, kicks, adventures, pathos, poetry, natural beauty, strange encounters and friendship tested and strengthened.

Does have its charms. While the videography and most of the supporting performances are amateurish, Clark and Caland are winning actors.

You can only kick against it so long before you succumb to its sheer energy and verve. Waters and company simply have too much fun for some of it not to reach out and touch you through the movie screen. If you can stand the pace, you'll likely leave happy.

The only genuine laughs come from Peter's self-sabotaging inner monologue.

Despite its flaws, Sky Captain indulges that inner kid who always wanted a single movie crammed with robots, airships and dinosaurs, with World's Fair hopefulness and panache.

Armed with a cliche-ridden script and a gaggle of unconvincing performers, the result comes off more like an Ernest Hemingway letter to the Penthouse Forum than a revival of Hollywood magic.

Sayles has committed the cardinal sin of putting his politics ahead of his characters, and the result is predictably lame.

Innocence revisits imagery from the first film. But this time computer animation pumps everything up to epic proportions. The results are overwhelming.

In addition to being a funny movie about the movie business, it's a cheeky, ingenious motion picture puzzle.

What's truly disheartening about Cellular is that just as logic has become a luxury in a thriller, so has anything resembling tension.

The bad news? The movie is monumentally stupid. The good news? It's a fun kind of stupid.

The resulting film, while derivative, is worth the price of admission.

One too many scenes with Hartnett's genuinely unpleasant doofus drain away any investment in a film that's suddenly become an elaborate farce without jokes.

Nair, against all odds, has injected new life into this oft-filmed tale, handily re-creating the grimy look of early 19th-century London streets.

Yes, the film jumps up and down on a high wire over the chasm separating Pretension and Art. But that's also a form of courage.

Perhaps the most beautiful film to hit Portland movie screens this year.

The charming thing about Anacondas is that it neither takes itself too seriously nor is it steeped in postmodern irony.

Among the lamest serial-killer movies ever made.

Extremely dumb, sporadically funny.

If you feel, like me, kinship with this essential building block of music, you owe it to yourself -- and to the Ramones -- to see this film.

A shabby, joyless, 90-minute slab of "advertainment."

An absorbing relational Rorschach test masquerading as a domestic drama, a sardonic examination of marriage and friendship that invites the audience to think for itself.

Panders to the worst traits in the target audience of spoiled third-grade girls.

A charming small-town comedy, thanks to the playfully romantic lead actors.

Devolves into a contrived, coincidence-driven, by-the-numbers thriller in its final act. That's not to say the movie's a failure. It's impossible to dismiss a film that starts out as such a sensuous, existential crime story.

Still, given the fact that it's August, you could do worse than hide out from the heat with the cute-as-a-bug Murphy, who manages to be funny and entertaining despite the material.

What is deeply stirring is Code 46's sound, light and texture. It's probably bad critical form to recommend a movie based largely on abstractions like "vibe," but Winterbottom does such a glorious job building his world that a certain breed of filmgoer can get punch-drunk lost in the pure cinema of it all.

A fascinating experiment in both filmmaking technology and narrative style, but one that can be counted a success only in limited ways.

With his periodic porn-star mustache, shaggy hair and reckless demeanor, the movie Stander embodies a certain brand of brooding outlaw cool that feels increasingly rare.

Neither the social commentary nor the story ever overpower the other, a feat that allows this remake to stand proudly alongside the original, its equal in every way.

The trouble is, the kids seem to be in one earnest "After School Special"-type of movie, while the adults occupy a retro-futuristic world more like the original TV show.

Thriller is hardly the word for this tedious exercise in clue-hiding.

Slight on personality but long on music; Janis Joplin elevates it to near-great concert-film status.

Terrific lead performances make this epic stoner comedy watchable but can't save it from flat direction.