An irresistible movie about a guy who goes on a journey, the kind an audience can't wait to take with him.

Grossman does a workmanlike job with the film, but his direction and script don't really offer any great insight into Darby's tortured soul.

With excellent animation, gobs of action, mystical mayhem and more twists and turns than you can count, Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos - the latest installment of the anime sensation from Japan - is not likely to disappoint its fans. Or the uninitiated.

This is a film that works both for followers and for those interested in knowing what yoga is truly about. Hint: It’s not about six-pack abs.

Don’t expect profundities on the ethics of cloning. And don’t expect Oscar-worthy acting. Senese’s accomplishment — and it’s done with a certain restraint — is to replicate the look and feel of ’70s horror films, which had become more assaultive on audience sensibilities than their predecessors, breaking taboos and borrowing techniques from exploitation films.

Matches a dingy urban setting with a compelling situation and throws in an ensemble of interesting characters who become even more interesting under stress. This emphasis on character -- in a sense, the movie's underlying humanity -- is what especially links it to the 1970s.

The Signal starts off as an alien version of "Blair Witch Project" and then drifts off into cold plotlessness. But for a while, a little while, it seems like it just might be interesting.

Matthews holds his own with his experienced co-stars, and his half- talking/half-singing explanation of his criminal past is the movie's best scene.

Penguin is the film’s most fleshed-out character. We know the bird’s origin story, but nobody else’s.

In the end, the great fault of Terminator: Dark Fate is that the filmmakers didn’t trust what they had. They didn’t trust how much audiences enjoy Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger. They didn’t trust their audience’s interest enough to let the movie breathe. They thought Hamilton and Schwarzenegger could be seasonings for a dish of the usual slop.

Sure, Black and Blue is a minor film, but it’s irresistible.

Intelligent and crackling with crisp, provocative visual energy, Copycat, the new thriller starring Sigourney Weaver and Holly Hunter, is so creepy and dangerous-feeling that it's like a knife edge pressed against the jugular.

By the time we get to the last 20 minutes, Empire of Light is so scattered, so without impact or focus, that every scene could be the last. Ending it anywhere would make equal sense, because making sense is no longer a possibility. The movie is a glossy wreck.

It is crystal clear who screwed up this tortuously slow-moving romantic drama.

For all its hidden-camera footage and teary confessions, the movie rings as true as an episode of MTV’s “Real World.”

A film that defies lowered expectations — if not the tired adolescent mind-set and poor joke-writing — and emerges as the best in the series.

An old-fashioned and occasionally schmaltzy movie that delivers an emotional wallop

A time-waster that might be diversionary on a dull cross-Atlantic flight -- but only in the absence of alternatives.

Becomes tiresome.

Makes a persuasive case.

This British film also mocks the rave culture it celebrates, and it's charming in a way that is hip but surprisingly down to earth.

A warm comic story that's fairly engaging even when no one is singing.

Joel Schumacher, the director of "Falling Down," "The Client" and "Batman Forever," has a strong feel for this kind of glossy pop entertainment and a way of integrating social issues without sacrificing narrative drive.

There’s nothing here to match the ingenious audacity of, say, the hospital-shootout-with-infant sequence in 1982’s “Hard Boiled,” but once Silent Night finally unwraps its gratuitous gifts, the faithful Woo fans should find them worth the wait.

Indeed, it's hard to figure out why this film was even made, beyond the fact that it could be made, that there was a loose idea and talented people willing to join in the fun. It's neither serious nor funny enough, and it adds nothing to Jarmusch's reputation. If anything, it might hurt it retroactively.

It's more of a burst pinata than a story, a wild, kinetic jumble of images, ideas and flying-candy-bar product placement that would offend if it weren't so forthright.

Rarely rises above the level of a TV movie.

May not be a classic, but it still has a lot of class.