It's the chemistry between Vardalos and Collette that gives the film its magical dazzle. Despite Vardalos' ingratiating, big and breathy presence, Collette, as the pulse and conscience of these two dreamers, very nearly steals the film.

It's hard to imagine how anyone could sit through this thing except squirming critics and violence addicts in need of a particularly gruesome fix.

Presents itself as tragedy with the insensitive Joe as its tragic hero, but Joe's fantasies of artistic rebellion and individualism have rotted into simple, solipsistic selfishness.

It's a well-crafted, intelligent, no-nonsense western epic that zips us through the famous siege and the birth of Texas with style, verve and impressive historical accuracy.

Tries to both spoof the fairy tale and retell it from a fresh angle. Curiously enough, its strength lies in the clever approach, and not the goofy comedy around the edges.

Favors giggly juvenile humor over inspired satire and ends up not with a moral, but a moral vacuum.

An excruciating rehash that has virtually none of the wit and charm of the original.

Above all, I'm Not Scared pays off our emotional investment. In the end, its elements come together with the kind of genuinely thrilling, deeply satisfying climax that even the better Hollywood movies just can't seem to pull off anymore.

Tired and glib, it tries to milk humor from the sniping, sass and simple disrespect of its unpleasant traveling companions.

For all its f/x pageantry, it is rather tired, as if it's the third sequel of a franchise, not the initial episode.

Belongs to its trio of "bovine" voice talent -- Roseanne Barr, Dame Judi Dench and Jennifer Tilly -- who play with such tongue-in-cheek delight upon their public personas that it's hard to separate cow character from the celebrities.

Director Martha Coolidge attempts to keep the film grounded in reality, but the movie flutters away from her control.

It still celebrates the vigilante spirit and justice delivered with a biblical swiftness, but it has been cleansed of much of its gratuitous violence and more offensive red-neck sensibilities. Mercifully, it's also a full 40 minutes shorter than the original.

The finished film, while competently acted and staged, has missed the high mark Spacey set for it. It's self-important, tedious and ultimately pointless, with absolutely none of the sardonic wit that remains the most memorable feature of "American Beauty."

For all of its good-natured guff, Jersey Girl chooses uncomplicated sentiment over the messy complications of real life.

Not only have they (Coen Brothers) stripped it of all its wit and charm, they've loaded it down with the kind of race-baiting and bathroom humor they've always avoided in the past.

But as an artist, von Trier's contempt for humanity is becoming harder to hide with stylistic flourish. He doesn't even try here, and his arrogance is topped only by his misanthropy.

The script is tight and well-constructed, director Ernest Dickerson has a feel for film-noir aesthetics, DMX exudes a certain brutish charisma and the movie is as morbidly compelling as a good train wreck.

With very few natural gifts, Bingenheimer managed to spend his life doing something he loved among people he worshipped. At the end of the game, very few people can make such a claim.

I'd be tempted to call the whole thing cartoonish, but that would be insulting to the real thing.

While it's flawed and often tedious, Kaufman's script is, on the whole, boldly imaginative and enjoyably challenging.

By the time we get to the unsurprising surprise ending, what seemed innovative and challenging in Taking Lives has lost its juice and reverted to formula form, and we leave the theater with that same old let-down feeling of having endured a ritual one more time.

Romero's satire is largely replaced by a sardonic gallows humor (the zombie-shooting contest is as funny as it is grotesque), but otherwise it's a bloody entertaining zombie apocalypse.

Unfortunately, this latest effort is so mean-spirited and nasty that you wish Farrell hadn't bothered.

Works best of all as an epic. It wonderfully creates a world of fractured deco elegance and endless human duplicity in which everyone is on the run -- exactly the kind of incisive, seemingly effortless historical spectacle that the French have learned to do so much better than Hollywood.

Try as it might, this glossy action adventure isn't nearly as clever as the "Spy Kids" franchise.

The film never kicks in as a character study or a star vehicle.

This a film where men on both sides of the line are seasoned and efficient. Men after Mamet's own heart.