We Own the Night can't sustain itself; as the stakes of the story get higher, Gray paints it in broader and broader strokes until there's almost nothing you can believe in it anymore.

It's also that he's really, honest-to-God, got one of those movie faces that doesn't even come along once every generation. It's astonishing.

It's the sourest and most borderline misogynist picture the Farrellys have yet made.

Michal Clayton shares a number of affinities with Paddy Chayefsky and Sidney Lumet's "Network." Wilkinson's got the so-mad-he's-sane Peter Finch position; while Swinton embodies a sexless, neurotic, overstressed variant of Faye Dunaway's character. Which leaves Clooney as the (considerably younger) William Holden of the piece. And, yes, he makes the most of it.

This film should have soared, but doesn't quite get off the ground.

A picture that certain Brits and connoisseurs of British colloquial English might call "a grower" … more moving and funny the more I think about it.

Its climactic highway shootout, and much else in the picture, is rendered in the best Paul Greengrass manner that Hollywood money can buy. But where Greengrass pictures aim to keep one on the edge of one's seat throughout, the tension here, such as it is, is designed to stoke audience bloodlust. If that's your kind of thing, The Kingdom certainly satisfies.

It might have been better to have played it straight — small instead of epic, chronological instead of deconstructed — and to give his characters some explicitness in history instead of the bedroom.

A richly drawn, ambitious character piece both socially relevant and genuinely suspenseful.

If raunch-comedy maestro Judd Apatow had not just an evil, but an evil-and-untalented twin, this grotesque excrescence would be his signature work.

Penn has often said that he dislikes acting and would prefer to direct full time. Into the Wild is impressive enough to give him license to do just that.

Proceeds at a very stately pace, hoping the otherworldly mood of its detailed recreation of the old West might seep into the viewer's bones. This viewer did, as it happens, fall under the film's spell.

Ultimately, The Jane Austen Book Club amounts to little more than a lukewarm collection of half-realized rom-com scenarios not fleshy enough to warrant their own movie.

Director Julie Taymor's gargantuan all-Beatles-songs musical is that rarest of animals, the perfect disaster that fulfills expectations by defying them.

One of Cronenberg's subtlest, most insinuating pictures, and one of the highlights of the year so far.

In my cut of the film, it ends after Jones opens the parcel from his son that's been sitting on his kitchen table since shortly after he left. I recommend viewers leave the theater at that point. You won't be sorry that you did.

The result is enjoyable and frequently affecting. The one weak note is Douglas' performance — he does more than phone it in, but his essential Douglas-ness makes the character less believable than he might have been.

This one's been sitting on shelves for two years -- never good news -- and you can almost see the dollar signs in the cast's eyes.

An intense New York-set thriller that manages to be both commercial and contemplative, kick-ass and quietly, disturbingly insinuating.

In the battle of the leading men, Crowe's character has a slight edge, and the actor really makes the most of it, showing us how boyishly mischievous charm and utter venality can exist without seeming contradiction in the same being. But Bale builds to a pretty impressive boil himself after laying back for about three quarters of the film.

As a bonus, it contains, at least, the best death-by-carrot scene in the history of film.

About the best thing that can be said about The Brothers Solomon is that it's harmless. It's mild, familiar, and as inconsequential as a sitcom episode.

Wan wants to have something both ways, and in the end, he gets almost nothing. As Clint Eastwood said in yet another genre picture: A man’s gotta know his limitations.

Exiled brings To back to lighter ground, and it’s one of his most assured, enjoyable pictures, refreshing fun that’s sure to satisfy anyone’s action jones.

Halloween is a real, classic-style horror movie, not an exercise in gross special effects. Oh, and for those who’ve missed Carpenter’s classic, this will scare the candy corn out of you, but the original is still champion.

It's an overall heady conceit about image and invention, clever and fun with compelling lead performances -- especially Reynolds, who finally gets to show some chops in a career littered with Van Wilder–grade junk.

Ultimately even the strongest characters deliver mixed results.

The problem is the material itself, with its trite observations and shockingly flat writing.