Yet another ill-conceived big screen videogame adaptation.

Woody's a master wordsmith, and here he's crafted a bit of audience-friendly fare that's smart without feeling exclusionary. It's a portrait of elite society--and the hangers-on who wish to penetrate it--made in an surprisingly accessible way.

Scene for radiant scene, shot for nary a wasted shot, The New World is the most artfully sculpted film in American cinema this year.

It's a role that essentially demystifies Brosnan's star persona, and in it he is simply sensational, funnier and more persuasively neurotic than even a devoted fan might expect.

This lengthy, nuance-filled story about how eye-for-an-eye stuff differs from theory to practice is one of the most considered, thoughtful, and involving movies of its kind.

The Family Stone may not be super-serious or even, well, sly, but none of that matters: this is a warm and engaging film that is sure to become a perennial Christmas favorite.

Three Burials is beautiful, authentic and brutally observant of human nature. With real Tex-Mex backdrops instead of the usual Monument Valley vistas and characters too complex to withstand simple white-hat/black-hat reductionism, Three Burials is a visionary portrait of the New West. This is the terrain of Eastwood and Peckinpah, saddled with the concerns of 21st-century life.

Once you drink The Producers' Kool-Aid, it's a thoroughly enjoyable descent into madness.

I say this as someone for whom the very idea of a Kong remake is sacrilege, Jackson's straitened conception yields up a pretty damn good popcorn movie.

Marshall's Memoirs achieves something few other high-profile literary adaptations do: Rather than simply inspiring us to hunt down the source material, it actually stands alone as a film, rich in drama and star-crossed romance.

Lee and company handle the particulars of the tale with the requisite meticulousness and exquisite taste that marks all the director's films.

It's a slight story to be sure, but the pleasures of Mrs. Henderson Presents lie less with the narrative and more with the film's tone and the dynamic duo of Dench and Hoskins.

The movie is a leaden, slow-moving beast.

A sweet, watchable little film.

What made Aeon Flux compelling and special as an animated series had everything to do with the medium and the freedom Chung was given to shape the story as he pleased. Take away those elements, and Aeon Flux becomes nothing more than middling science fiction, which is unfortunately what the film is.

Considering how much new additions Rosario Dawson (as Mimi) and Tracie Thoms (as Joanne) bring to the film, it's a shame Columbus didn't introduce more changes.

Syriana depicts a system so thoroughly and intractably rotten that the standard liberal how-you-can-make-a-difference solutions--being more conscientious about using electricity, getting a hybrid car, and so on--only look like so much spit in the face of an atomic fireball.

Newell puts his own stamp on the franchise and delivers the best Potter movie yet filmed.

Thanks to the movie's very clear respect for Cash and his music, and thanks mostly to the two superb, heartfelt performances by Reese Witherspoon as Carter and Joaquin Phoenix as Cash, Walk the Line eventually earned my sympathy.

Playful, poetic, shocking, saddening, and ultimately gratifyingly and honestly big-hearted.

Swedish director Mikael Håfström's Derailed makes "Fatal Attraction" look positively subtle, while mustering none of the nuance or moral complexity (not to mention the sexual chemistry) of "Unfaithful."

There's nary a smidgen of adult humor, so parents might find things a bit on the dull side at times, but in the end they will likely thank Favreau in droves for making a film that is at least certain not to give them a headache.

The moviemakers are accomplished enough to make something coherent out of this tonal mishmash, but I was left with a "was this trip really necessary" feeling for all that.

Unstylized, inconsistent, unconvincing, and familiar to a fault.

In the film, the cleverness just isn't there. There's still a lot to like about Chicken Little - the animation is top notch, and the characters, if somewhat recycled, still generate the requisite sympathy and chuckles.

That Jarhead is an impressive technical achievement is a given, but ultimately this picture is the last thing any war movie should be: innocuous.

The family dynamic, paired with a few delicious action scenes, is engaging enough that we hardly notice the fillm's major flaw, a rather flimsy and sometimes jingoistic subplot having to do with California's independence.

The sheer absurdity of the presented relationship is redeemed by a sort of surprise ending, but by the time it arrives, you wish it had come sooner, as the pain of viewing has already been interminably long.

Finally, a horror movie for the reality TV generation. Saw II feels like an episode of "Fear Factor" or "Big Brother" with Rob Zombie at the helm, and if that doesn’t scare you away from this ridiculous movie, well, feel free to indulge your questionable tastes.

Their movie is cold, and I mean that not as a weather pun, but in the sense that it's impossible to warm up to a character who sees the awful things happening around him strictly in terms of how they affect him.

Where "Elizabethtown" pretends to have the meaning of life, Shopgirl hones in on a few telling details, then allows audiences to fill in the rest.

A quarter of the way through the film, it’s all just too much.

The picture’s great, fast-moving fun for the most part, and Kilmer gives his most appealing, relaxed, and amusing performance since "Real Genius."

I suspect Scott sees Domino as the ultimate provocation, his way of grabbing Hollywood by the throat and shouting, "You want reality??! I'll give you REALITY!!!" Sort of.

Beyond the tunes, however, Elizabethtown falls short of actual emotional resonance, and is really nothing more than a passable "Garden State" doppelgänger.

There is something almost reverential about the way director Niki Caro shoots the winding roads leading into Minnesota's North Country mining community, just before dismantling all of it piece by piece.

David Strathairn, playing Murrow, follows his writers' lead beautifully, delivering a performance that's all understatement on the surface and searing fire underneath.

Simply clicks on every level. From the surprising depth of the story, to the smooth and sometimes brilliant performances, to Hanson’s clear mastery of form.

Over the years, Pacino's Method has become his madness, and now, whether he's playing Shylock or Satan, he doesn't become the part so much as the part becomes him.

Waiting is, at its root, a heaping handful of almost-funny ideas cobbled together without much skill for shaping a story. The result is that one in five provokes a smile, while the other four make the viewers slightly sick that they now have to remember what they just saw.

It's a rare film that can be convincingly tender, bitterly funny, and ruthlessly cutting over the course of fewer than 90 minutes. The Squid and the Whale not only manages this, it also contains moments that sock you with all three qualities at the same time.

This is more than just the best animated comedy of the year--it's the best comedy of the year, period.

To be fair, Ouimet's story is pretty magical, one of the great sports underdog tales.

Let's be honest: Whether it's Jessica Alba or Paul Walker you're dying to see stripped down to her/his sexiest swimwear, there's only one reason anyone is interested in diving Into the Blue.

Serenity may not be the next "Star Wars," but it's the best we've seen since the original trilogy, and if Wheedon is planning Serenity trilogy (the door is left open), it would certainly be welcome.

Catherine Keener is remarkably subtle and soulful as Capote's friend and helpmeet Harper Lee, who delivers a shocking verdict against him at the end, but the movie, as you probably will not be surprised to learn, is owned by Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Overall, a modest but lovely achievement for Anderson, Moore, and Harrelson, and a family entertainment in the best senses of the words.

I'd like to say that Flightplan is one of those white-knuckle, edge-of-your-seat thrill rides that critics are always raving about, but instead, it's more like a transatlantic flight with no clear destination, where the cabin noise makes it impossible to sleep and the in-flight movie is a rerun.

A sweet, sunny, cinematic song of praise to simple '70s pleasures, Roll Bounce isn't any kind of life-changing picture, but it's breezy, good-hearted fun.

It's worth noting that Oliver Twist will likely be no Harry Potter at the box office, due in no small part to a lack of bombastic special effects and supernatural subplots, yet it's nearly as entertaining, even without the wizardry.

The image of Gwyneth Paltrow looking anguish-stricken has become such a cinematic meme that it hardly bodes well for Proof that it opens with this sight.

Belongs to the same class of cotton-candy romances as "Chances Are" and "Somewhere in Time," although it steers its light-hearted subject into darker territory with the life support subplot.

The film falters in the moments where it can't decide if it's an entertainment about a likable criminal, or a serious commentary on the exploitation of the Third World.

I have misgivings about Schreiber's use of the well-worn "I'll make you empathize with these Others, but first let's have laughs at their expense" approach, but eventually I was won over by his humane, moving road trip.

The Poe-esque story, the wonderfully twisted physical geometry of the characters, and the director’s signature sense of humor, combine to make Corpse Bride a fun movie, and one that breathes life not only into stop motion, but into animation as a whole.

The movie has a lot of good bits and terrific performances, including a too-perfect Keanu Reeves as a mystic orthodontist.

A clichéd and flat out boring film that doesn’t even approach the mediocrity of director Jim Gillespie’s 1997 pic in the same genre, "I Know What You Did Last Summer."

It touches deftly on class and race and sexual dissatisfaction and never lets up once it has put its characters under a microscope. Beautifully acted throughout, it showcases Watson's most complex performance in years.

You can't help but see this movie being crafted out of shards of movies past, seemingly in a cut and paste method. In the hands of a less skillful director, the film could very easily flop, but it doesn't.

Plays like a modern-day inversion of "Inherit the Wind," highlighting an astonishing shift in the American legal system over the last 80 years.

Jason Statham is back as the fast-driving, fast-kicking Frank Martin, but this sequel fails to deliver the charm of its predecessor.

Summing up, yes, the effects are shockingly bad here, but the real tragedy is that this is a good story that was made into a movie by the wrong people.

With almost palpable anger, Meirelles hammers home the point that crushing poverty is only one problem for Africa that the West needs to do something about.

In the end it's still Gilliam Lite, but Gilliam Lite is better than no Gilliam at all.

I suspect that there’s an audience for this film. I’ve heard that they like "mindless" entertainment.

As coincidence would have it, Steve Carell's "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" spun comedy gold from a similar idea just last week. Virgin shares not only The Baxter's basic premise, but also two of its key cast members (Paul Rudd and the beautiful Ms. Banks), allowing audiences to see just how much better The Baxter might have been if Showalter had given us some reason to identify with his socially awkward protagonist.

As exciting and involving as it is brainy.

Even in the service of silliness, no one plays tragic, desperate, and beautiful better than Keener, who together with Carell, makes this film both laugh out loud funny and humane.

Red Eye packs only about 15 minutes of solid scary, but really, that’s about all the time a human heart can spend lodged in one’s throat.

Adults expecting a little bit more, "Chicken Run," this ain't.

Perhaps with an open and willing mind, you'll also see the vast difference between this wily consciousness experiment and, say, Rob Zombie's new box of schlocks.

Not to chastise the movie for simply being rude or crude -- since "The Wedding Crashers" proved that hormone-raging '80s throwbacks can still be harmless fun -- but this contemptible sex-com redux should be taken to task for how its infantilized yucks give license to entertaining closed-minded acceptances of very real human ugliness.

Herzog not only tells an incredible story but implies a dark metaphysic of the natural world that makes this film unsettlingly larger than its human subject.

There's enough estrogen gone awry in this bitchy teen comedy to make "Mean Girls" look like a Disney after-school special.

A superb effort by a first-rank director, and manna from heaven for Cheung fans.

Skillfully manage to adapt some key details of the show -- namely, the high-flying car chases and hillbilly narration.

This is not a perfect picture, but it’s a soulful one that offers a lot of pleasure and even a kind of wisdom.

I'm glad that 2046 is different from "Mood" even while being strangely of a piece with it. Like "Mood," it’s a movie of utter wonder and ravishment. But the key here is different.

That rare kind of movie that contrasts "cultured" big-city characters with devout, "simple" folk without being condescending or judgmental of either camp.

It's somehow fitting that this purported romantic comedy about dating is, like most dates, clumsy, endless, and absolutely excruciating.

As a superhero movie, it's something of an underachiever, missing out on easy opportunities to push the idea to the next level.

Stick it out through the first ten incoherent minutes or so, and Stealth is an invigorating reward, especially the tense final half-hour.

The Aristocrats lies halfway between two potentially great films: it's neither a smartly austere succession of jokesmiths with all the critique left to the audience, nor a deconstructionist essay on "crossing the line" and the language of comedy itself.

A definite crowd-pleaser, Hustle & Flow has all the makings of a massive cultural phenomenon - if only audiences can get past the whole pimp thing.

Scarlett Johansson looks lovely and hasn't much to do besides that, McGregor only starts having fun when he's playing the "original" of his clone.

Sure, it's a pleasure to watch Thornton stretch his legs in Matthau's role, but I miss Tatum O'Neal as his firebrand daughter.

Van Sant has mastered this kind of driftingly contemplative imagery and his layered soundscapes would make Sonic Youth proud (of course, Kim Gordon makes an appearance), but the introduction of other characters fracture the film's greatest asset, its lonely first-person atmosphere.

Aesthetically wild and otherwise mild.

It’s an uneven outing from the Frat Pack, and an equally sad commentary on the state of American comedy: This run-on mess is the funniest film of the last six months.

Even as Dark Water's horror-movie component flounders, a different, arguably better kind of thriller emerges.

From less a purist's standpoint than a seeker of serviceable junk food, this comprehensive waste of time is too bouncy to be an "Elektra" bummer, but should make Marvel mascot Stan Lee think twice about burning another lucrative bridge with unintentional hilarity.

Murderball asks you to put all your assumptions about quadriplegics aside and start over.

Has masterfully polished mechanics, some of the most seamless CGI effects in recent memory, and the Wells veneration is admirable. However, the film takes far too many creative shortcuts, like bookended narration and aliens that make strategically humanlike mistakes, completely incongruous to their technological superiority.

As endearing as Ferrell and Kidman are on their own, there's just no chemistry between them onscreen.

Land of the Dead is Romero's long-awaited masterpiece, a slyly suspenseful and droll thrill-ride that expounds on both the highbrow and the chewed-off-brow concepts of his previous trilogy, then flippantly dismisses the cheap scare tactics of the control-pad generation's gimmicky genre knockoffs.

If anything, it's the degree to which the animals differ from us that makes March of the Penguins so fascinating.

Every so often, a movie blindsides you, leaving you feeling different, enlightened, possibly even improved. Me and You and Everyone We Know is such a movie.

This is as wonderfully realized an observation of female affinity as 1999’s great "The Dreamlife of Angels."