Freaknomics is breezy, but you can't help but think it belongs on TV, where the filmmakers would have gotten more time with their subjects and the tone mightn't seem so forced.

Storywise, Heartless is a bit of a jumble, especially in its last third. But it's got a distinct tone, contrasting romance and even outright sentimentality with urban dread and a few nasty visuals.

So lame and tasteless that it's hard to know what possessed Turturro to write it and anyone to finance it.

Heart and verve in surfeit makes the film rise above its flaws often enough to win you over.

It's very meta and only mildly interesting. The actors are attractive, the countryside moreso. The plot is silly and threadbare; when tragedy does strike, it has about as much impact as a summer shower.

A modestly charming family crowd-pleaser despite too-broad characterizations by many in the supporting cast.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about this story is that it would have been lost to history had not American spelunker Chris Nicola happened across mundane relics -- buttons, shoes and the like -- while exploring the cave complex in the 1990s.

There's a daring to Everything Is Illuminated that commends it somewhat more than its achievement deserves.

There are hints lately that De Niro is trying to build a fourth, restorative act to his wayward film career, and he brings some real fire, without which Stone would be helpless.

It's a fantastic high concept to wrap the film around, and Gervais comes close to fulfilling its potential, especially when he tells a comforting deathbed lie to his dying mother and accidentally invents religion.

A work of incompleteness, might-have-beens and moral subtleties befitting a filmmaker named Gray.

This film might've worked better as a comedy.

It's a heavy, moody film, mimicking in its form something of the mental state of its central character, which is a nifty trick. But the quality of the craft doesn't draw you in, nor does Gosling's aloof and inward performance.

Toothless, limp and clumsy.

A modest little caper film that satisfies chiefly because of its relative familiarity and lack of ambition.

The relationship between Trishna and Jay never rings as true as it needs to for the downbeat third act to resonate the way it was presumably intended to do.

It doesn't take an awareness of the ethnic and cultural differences between the miniskirted siren and the shy Arab youth to see that she might be more than he can handle.

The crudeness with which Mottola made "Superbad" suited that film; here, a similarly rudimentary technique detracts and distracts.

Ultimately, it is nothing more than a souped-up, intermittently interesting take on some familiar material. [24 Oct 1997, p.22]

It's an often lovely, constantly assured film that now and again burps forth a really remarkable vision. But it's also half-nuts -- maybe three-quarters.

Never quite catches fire. They take a crackerjack premise and a comely, committed leading lady and turn in a merely OK film.

Isn't profound or dazzling or groundbreaking. But it's a pleasant, clever and sincere little romp, proof that you don't need to harbor heroic ambitions to create something satisfying.

Apted ("Gorillas in the Mist," "Coal Miner's Daughter") keeps things low-key and low-tech, which makes some of the cliched Bondisms a bit easier to swallow.

A twisty, darkly comic story of greed, betrayal and murderous misunderstandings.

It's hard to argue with the movie's big heart, solid craftsmanship, likable characters, decent acting, gorgeous scenery or the fact that it's going to leave its audience blubbering and smiling.

Simultaneously modern and yet gorgeously primitive with its budget sets and simple but influential score, this is not just a film re-release but a film event.

Life Partners may be a dispensable sitcom of a movie, but it's charming and cannily made.

Thor meets the elevated expectations for superhero movies today, but doesn't exceed them. There's some sloppy plotting, which always shows a certain disregard for the audience's intelligence.