Doesn't necessarily offer anything new to the male/female dynamic, but it refuses to let Coles off the hook with an easy epiphany and a painless happily ever after.

Lin energizes the grungy palette with stylistic zing, a hopped-up pace and understated humor. His cast carves out vivid characters and the open-ended aftermath takes stock of the moral scarring without moralizing.

A delectable must-see.

Many will find Griffin profane, sexist and decidedly offensive. Many more will find his raunchy insights inspired, his body language hilarious and his gift for mimicry and caricature worth the entire show.

Thornton has made so many bad movies and become so notorious as a talk-show eccentric that it's easy to forget what a good film actor he can be.

Isn't exactly adult animation but it's more complex and ambiguous than the usual Hollywood live-action blockbuster, and just as splashy.

Simply enjoy its witty and expertly crafted scenes, its controlled performances, its eccentric but mostly admirable characters, its succession of bleak but cozily Nordic panoramas and its surprisingly optimistic view of the world.

It's mostly forced and predictable, too much of the physical comedy falls very flat.

Gripping in parts, tedious in others, the film works best when the action is brisk.

There's a huge subplot that makes absolutely no sense at all and, in the end, the only thing the movie has going for it is Diesel's Neanderthal charm.

It's a sumptuous mood piece.

Unfortunately, the film assumes viewers have such a vast knowledge of Fellini's life and films that it's likely to play best to graduate film students.

The surprise is that it's one of the most exciting and enjoyable disaster epics to come out of Hollywood in some time.

Comes together with a wry sense of humor, a total lack of gratuitous movie nonsense and a graceful dignity that allows the humanity of his characters to shine through in a very special way.

Grueling but ultimately rewarding new documentary.

As a thriller it's dull and incomprehensible; as a romance it's empty and emotionally uninvolving; and as a character study it's strangely repulsive.

Insipid, overcooked and dull.

When Rock hits he's dangerously funny. If he didn't try so hard to be liked, he'd be even more dangerous.

There are more laughs to be wrought out of Myers' militant flight-attendant training school, and they're just not there.

An uneasy mix that's too long, too confusing and too undramatically paced to be consistently gripping, and so blatantly panders to teenagers.

Underworld opera of the bravura kind, this is driven, like most Hong Kong action, more by emotion than logic.

Doesn't even fall in the lowbrow-but-entertaining comedy category. It's unabashedly dumb and pathetically offensive.

Certainly kept the toddlers (including mine) at an advance screening engrossed, but for parents and reviewers, it was more of a struggle.

Has the modesty of a savvy, smart drive-in movie with Hollywood studio polish and a movie buff's loving care.

All about the thrill of the chase, and Friedkin challenges the antiseptic spectacle and fantasy flamboyance of computer-enhanced blockbusters with a lean, mean manhunt thriller and gritty, hard-edged style.

Everything in Agent Cody Banks, from tacky special effects, inscrutable action scenes and drab visuals (including substituting Vancouver for Seattle), panders to its audience.

Terrifically fun entertainment; wonderfully shot and acted, instilled with spirit and life and able to woo us with its exhuberant freshness.

Outside of its star power, it reeks of indie film and doesn't hold much mainstream steam.

For a film so intent on the rules of engagement, this is hardly engaging drama.

Never quite escapes the Euro-centric blinders of its characters, but its engagement with their evolving sense of identity and story of empowerment and acceptance is nonetheless rousing.

The cast is as likable as it is improbable (especially Nivola, who all but steals the movie as the charmingly decadent rocker).

The supporting cast, peppered with seasoned pros like Levy, Smart, Betty White and a hilarious Joan Plowright, milk underwritten roles with gusto.

"Time destroys all," claims the film, but the monstrous capabilities of human evil is the real culprit here, and Noe is determined to prove that the real evil that men do is not fodder for cinematic spectacle and cinematic entertainment.

There's no doubt that Kiarostami is giving us a lesson in social politics, but the education lies in the mosaic pieced together from conversations and situations.

Even throwing in a spunky fight between female sidekicks (Gabrielle Union and Kelly Hu) isn't enough to float this film over clumsy dialogue and the feeling we've seen it before.

While the characters lack the quirks and affectations that have enlivened the impulsive figures from past Dogme films, the passion of the players and Bier's sensitive direction give these utterly normal figures a vivid aliveness, along with dignity and everyday beauty.

Another harrowingly cynical dirty-cop movie in the recent tradition of "Training Day" and "Narc." Yet it's so much more complex, engrossing and satisfying than those films that the comparison is not entirely fair.

To call the haphazard string of gags a story is to give it far too much credit, but it is funny in a blunt, profane frat boy way, thanks to the bulldozing energy of Ferrell, the smarmy manipulations of Vaughn and the anything-for-a-laugh excess of Phillips.

The movie depends on one of those big surprise endings for its effectiveness, but the script gives itself away in the first act.

Lacks the driving unity that gave "Gettysburg" its focus, dramatic arc, climax and catharsis.

Most successful as a tribute to the martyrs of the anti-apartheid struggle. It fails, however, as a well-reasoned documentary on the subject of the relationship of music to social change.

Lurches toward an offbeat honesty but it also very nearly crashes in its quirkiness.

The result is like a "Waiting for Godot" for the video-game generation.

The artist's life and times were turbulent and tragic, but the effect of the movie is the opposite: it's somehow a very calming, almost Zenlike experience, and it left me with a peaceful glow that I managed to carry around for the rest of the day.

Unremarkable sequel to the 1967 hit.

Its overall effect is distinctly underwhelming.

For what it's worth, the film also goes out of its way to be a lavish visual re-creation of the 1880s.

Presents itself as a sassy twist on "Taming of a Shrew," but what looks like just another contrived sex comedy becomes, surprisingly, an insightful and sensitive look at knots that family ties create in adult romance.

It wants to be a "Carrie" with a modern-day "Frankenstein" twist, but it lacks the smarts behind the weirdness.

Playful, predictable and more than a little precious, this entertaining if slight romantic farce makes it's hard not to mourn the loss of the adult romantic comedy.

Offers precious little inspiration, and the only irony it manages is surely unintended.

In the end, it's not much fun to watch a brave artist getting his dream kicked out of him.

For all the testosterone-driven soap opera, this entertainingly confused coming-of-age story is a seductive fantasy, a rare portrait of urban underworld machismo without the violence and the viciousness.

It's just never as gripping as it needs to be.

A series of Grand Guignol skits played for mean-spirited laughs.

The film is many things: dark fable, gritty thriller, satirical social commentary, horror film and a love story that's blessed with a marvelous, near slapstick physicality.

This bracing portrait of a woman who painfully accepts her responsibility as a citizen is a revelation.

A joyless amalgam of horror movie cliches, none used more exhaustively than the false alarm.

While it displays precious little originality or ingenuity, A Guy Thing is less graceless than most of its ilk and benefits from a likable cast.

It's only a notch above the routine, and it obeys all the conventions of its tired formula, but it also tones the anarchy with a serious edge and it works a surprisingly effective vein of race-relations satire.

The kangaroo is devoid of charm, as are the actors, who have the chemistry of fingernails on a blackboard.

The Divine Intervention of the title lies somewhere between hope and fantasy. In a world in which Santa Claus is assaulted in Nazareth, what do you have left?

It takes a strong stomach to sit through its two-plus hours of non-stop brutality (much of it involving very small children).

When it was released in the United States more than 30 years ago, its distributor hacked away 40 minutes of its precise structure. This rerelease restores every meticulous second of Melville's cinematic fantasy.

The Dardennes's masterful casting and austere style amplify this simple but powerful parable.

Even though he's strikingly played by Rockwell, Barris comes off as such a distasteful character and the silliness is so unrelenting that the movie wears you out. Long before it's over, you feel yourself reaching for that gong clapper.

Less a story than a film of emotional textures, this is a study in stasis.

A funny, rousing crowd-pleaser.

Offers nothing new. It's actually one of Polanski's more conventional films and, ultimately, it's hard to recommend it with a clear conscience.

No doubt about it, the movie is morbidly fascinating. Moreover, Cusack gives a delicate and agreeably world-weary performance.

Anyone who goes in this movie expecting a rollicking comedy is in for a shock. Its scant humor is dry as the Sahara and, like all Dickens stories, its upbeat ending is never quite convincing enough to offset the horrors of the journey toward it.

Kidman's Virginia Woolf is already controversial -- Yet there's something fierce, noble and deeply affecting in her work that mirrors Woolf's prose style, and her turbulent presence is the soul of the movie.

DiCaprio could hardly be better. He brings this outrageous character and his demons to life with skill, sympathy and a symphony of small, telling touches.

Never more than an extended TV episode, the originality of its heroine and messages merit a recommendation for families seeking slightly more thoughtful animated fare.

There are two reasons Ramsay succeeds with a story that might at best be called morbid: She visually transforms the dreary expanse of dead-end distaste the characters inhabit into a poem of art, music and metaphor -- and she has the perfect actress to embody Morvern.

Grant's timing is flawless, his delivery is perfection, and he once again demonstrates himself to be the movies' unrivaled master of sophisticated verbal comedy.

As the most diabolically focused and politically incorrect cop this side of Popeye Doyle, Liotta is a hot prospect for this year's supporting-actor Oscar.

All of Scorsese's movies deliver a mixed message, but this one is downright schizophrenic.

Cronenberg's most disciplined exploration yet of that shadowy realm: the world refracted through the prism of a schizophrenic mind.

Washington brings it off with an unforced and well-earned emotional wallop, and whose strong hand, keen eye, sweet spirit and good taste are reflected in almost every scene.

Lee doesn't seem to have the slightest sympathy for his hero, no particular point is made, and the whole exercise seems cold and empty.

A brilliantly conceived, boldly executed, cumulatively thrilling fantasy epic that expands the art of film and is sure to be the middle link of one of the movies' greatest trilogies.

A bit smarter than it seems at first glance, and ends up being a rather colorful and fascinating -- and often imaginatively Capraesque.

A comedy that surpasses stupidity, and not in entertaining ways.

It's crowd-pleasing stuff, to be sure.

There's still nothing quite as thrilling on the screen as the spectacle of an icon movie star in a perfectly tailored role.

Along the way the film loses sight of the joy of music that supposedly pushes them all.

Director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo creates the same world of devils and innocents that grounds so much of Spain's modern, seeped-in-Satanic-evil horror, recast in a secular cinematic vocabulary.

Has a delightfully nasty villain and pumped-up action, albeit along familiar lines.

The stripped-down dramatic constructs, austere imagery and abstract characters are equal parts poetry and politics, obvious at times but evocative and heartfelt.

Universal Pictures has a lot of gall to pick up a movie as thoroughly awful as Empire and -- with a straight face and a $20 million or so ad campaign -- thrust it on the holiday movie market as if it were a significant piece of filmmaking.

Feels forced every step of the way. Ultimately it's the kind of under-inspired, overblown enterprise that gives Hollywood sequels a bad name.

For three-fourths of its journey, Adaptation is, for my money, the movie of the year: an incredibly audacious and original exercise that challenges the conventions of moviemaking and stretches the boundaries of fiction -- almost, but not quite, to the breaking point.

A preachy parable stylized with a touch of John Woo bullet ballet.

That rare thing at the movies these days: a new experience. It awes us with its technological feat, it sweeps us up in its mystical spell and, with its final scene -- it takes us to an emotional climax of almost unbearable poignancy.

Noyce's movie is a testament to endurance -- the camera caresses the landscape -- instilling us with a respect and reverence for it, its harsh ways and the attachment to it that Australia's indigenous people hold.

The film has good design, effective animation and generic if endurable songs, but Sandler wants to slam his sentiment and wallow in it too, and he compromises with the worst of both worlds.

Philip Messina's claustrophobic sets and Cliff Martinez's elegantly creepy score add to the film's distinction and work off Clooney's performance and Soderbergh's staging to create an hypnotic spell and suggest a cosmos full of spiritual possibility.