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.