It's all pulled off with a firm sense of the fun in being scared.

It gives you everything you ever loved about the series, and blows it out into super-size cinematic proportions.

At heart, a light, watchable film.

Weinstein Co. honchos Bob and Harvey are chasing some of the old "Pulp Fiction" magic--and failing not only miserably, but kind of disgustingly.

It does move along at a nice clip, and delivers exactly what belligerent action fans on both sides of the political aisle want -- a wholly admirable figure blowing up a lot of bad s---.

The movie suffers from convoluted plots, turgid pacing, and strange disrespect for its source material.

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.

Though the plot has a few too many holes in it, the sheer fun of RockNRolla makes it easy to overlook such quibbles. Butler will make you forget all about "Sparta."

Though director Irwin Winkler takes pains to accurately present Cole's life (unlike "Night and Day," the 1946 biopic starring Cary Grant), the film has its shortcomings. First of which is pushing the love story, when it's clear Linda's feelings aren't reciprocated.

I don’t quite cherish Thackeray’s novel, but a can-do feminist, multicultural contemporization of it strikes me as, well, unnecessary.

What could have been Solondz's most complex and challenging film winds up being a bit on the flat side. Still, the life-forms skittering over its surface are fascinating to behold.

We can only speculate why McConaughey chose to play the role this way, but in all honesty, it's a good thing he did. His loony performance is the only surprising thing about this otherwise paint-by-numbers inspirational drama.

Its compelling cast and sincere matchmaking goals are reason enough to play along.

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.

While the journey is somewhat bumpy and awfully contrived at times, the characters making the trek are ones we don't mind being cooped with for long stretches of highway.

Starts out strong and boasts a convincing picture of the post-war world as an anarchic desert. But it comes to ditch its fun stylization for vague themes of religiosity and morality, leaving you with a disappointingly muddled movie.

A self-impressed epic with grandiose vistas, flat characters, and a subplot about Native Australians.

It is the overwhelmingly acrid sense of humor that leaves a bad taste in one's mouth at the end of the film.

For the most part, what it aims to do-amuse and uplift-it does wonderfully.

Dead Man's Chest is best summed up by the scene where Sparrow and Will battle each other atop a runaway water wheel. Like the characters, this movie is just running in circles.

Surely it’s a credit to this luminous cast that the characters can behave in such despicable ways yet still command one’s sympathy.

Owen Wilson manages to break his customary comic relief persona and is adept at playing a little "Father Knows Best"; the yellow lab does a good job too.

Ultimately a valentine to the unsung heroes of the US Coast Guard and it's probably long overdue.

The problem here, which vitiates the picture's ingenuity and causes it, finally, to sink like a stone, is in the physical execution of the material.

The period sets and costumes and the arch dialogue are exaggerated as if to underline the movie’s satirical intent—but in fact it has none.

The Holiday is the type of welcome diversion that only Meyers still seems to specialize -- a romantic comedy where Barbara Stanwyck and Rosalind Russell would have been just as natural as Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet and where the one liners fly like confetti.

Perpetually wide-eyed and mega-snarly bedraggled, Christina Ricci prowls through Black Snake Moan looking like something the cat dragged in. If you're anything like me, you'll be very grateful to the cat.

As a meditation of American life, Greendale is anything but coherent, but it is fluidly free-associative and shows bizarre wit, as when Young himself shows up to play Wayne Newton. [March 2004, p. 27]