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.