The result is a true conundrum: You can't say for sure if a scam is in play or if a genuine genius is being smeared. And the brilliance of the film is that it doesn't let you feel secure in choosing either side.

It's trying to fill some perceived market void created by the end of "Harry Potter."

The longer it goes on, the less your mind settles. You may not believe in a hell in which a lake of fire rages, but we live in a nation and at a time when many people have little lakes of fire in their heads and hearts. Kaye is determined that we never forget that truth or its price.

By now, you know exactly what to expect, which is both good and bad. To my mind, Anderson reached the acme of this formula in the first go, in "Tenenbaums," and has now replicated it twice, evoking smaller pleasures each time.

You end up with a movie that takes that real problem and makes it feel like an exploitation contrivance.

Feast is set and was shot in Portland, and if nothing else it makes the case that we live in one gorgeous city.

Kyra Sedgwick is turned into a caricature of a sports agent. "NYPD Blue" grad Gordon Clapp gets one line of dialogue. And Morris Chestnut is pushed out to make room for one more "ain't she cute" moment.

Wants to be both a hot-button, ripped-from-the-headlines statement movie and a crowd-pleasing, rip-roaring action thriller. It ends up meeting each goal about halfway.

The film is never less than beautiful, but it's never truly absorbing.

Feels like a lost film from the '60s in the very best way: unstructured and intrepid and free. As a result, it's sometimes a little indulgent and overlong. But, like its hero, it's never less than sincere in its search for truth and beauty, even as it stares death in the eye.

14-year-old girls will dig its amiable energy.

Mournful and moody, crepuscular and poetic, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford turns one of cinema's most rehearsed tales into a dreamy inquiry into the nature of sadism, hero-worship and betrayal.

The domestic and romantic turmoil all gets resolved a bit too neatly to seem realistic, but realism isn't the goal; this is comfort food, plain and simple, and achieves its modest goals in nearly effortless fashion.

It's a funny thing: On the one hand, you fault Taymor for going out of her way to create some of the more disposable sequences. On the other, you can forgive her: Who wouldn't get carried away given the opportunity she has been given here to play with one of the world's greatest song catalogs?

The film sort of loses its touch when it gets "dramatic" toward the end -- it's the type of flick where the sky gets overcast when everyone is sad -- but it's hard to argue with the movie's general good spirits.

Cronenberg has, as Guillermo del Toro did in "Pan's Labyrinth," crafted both a drama and a fairy tale -- and he's done it in an entertainment as cracking as you could wish for.

Transcends politics and forces us to consider just what it is we ask of young people who answer the call to duty.

There are two solid sight gags and funny supporting work by Amy Poehler as a boozy publicist.

As the film builds toward a ludicrous finale, it poses a question: Foster is a far better actor than Charles Bronson, and Jordan a much better director than Michael Winner, so why is The Brave One so much less satisfying than "Death Wish"?

The film is somewhat scattered in construction, but it's an eye-opener.

Like a picture postcard vision of his life and work: absolutely accurate as far as it goes but not too keen on looking too close for fear of uncovering anything untoward.

A fine and sturdy picture, capable of standing alongside the many such films made when Westerns were one of our chief entertainments.

It ends on a random note, making an awkward plea for better ecological stewardship of the Earth, which looked so small and frail to the astronauts regarding it from the moon. But otherwise it's a satisfying and heartening reminder of what a glorious thing a small group of men once contrived to do.

This is a movie that, off-putting as it can be at times, deserves to be seen and heard in a theater, if only to observe the reactions of others to the hilarious gutter talk coming out of Winslet's mouth.

The characters are flat, too: Richard Gere plays your typical desperate, embittered war reporter; Terrence Howard is your typical cameraman/sidekick/narrator; and Jesse Eisenberg rounds out the standard-issue trio as your typical nervous rookie, in over his head.

It's a cartoon that thinks it isn't one.

Funny and weird and surprising and action-packed and genuinely beautiful.

As it stands, the film is more often self-absorbed than self-aware.