Never as visually or viscerally thrilling as some might expect, but it still manages to be a fascinating study of a national phenomenon that has had very little impact in our part of the country.

In many ways this is an extraordinary movie: there's probably never been such a portrait of a major star in the grip of old age.

With its machine-gun editing, extremely loud (mostly rap) soundtrack, occasional music-video interlude and overall in-your-face sensibility, it's a movie that's determined to chase anyone past age 30 or so right out of theater.

Although this is director Mark Obenhaus' first ski movie, it is every bit as exciting as the popular Warren Miller pictures, and boasts an unobstrusive soundtrack in place of the heavy metal racket that fuels most sports documentaries.

A date film with a hook for men.

The movie constantly verges on being a parody, but Moore's performance stays miraculously away from caricature.

The scenes that really work are the ones that take place outside the supermarket, in the beginning and at the end of the film. In fact, the "Twilight Zone"-inspired ending nearly makes up for all that comes before.

Love it or hate it, X-III packs more action and razzle-dazzle visuals into its 104-minute running time than "Mission: Impossible III," "Poseidon" and "The Da Vinci Code" combined.

The sum of the movie is devastating. One takes out of it a sense that the human cost of our endless adventure in Iraq is going to be incalculable, perhaps catastrophic -- a psychological time bomb that will be exploding for decades to come.

When it's good, there is no more riveting movie genre than a courtroom drama, and Class Action is one of the best in ages - perhaps since "The Verdict" in 1982. [15 Mar 1991]

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

Has its own peculiar charm.

The Reader is significant because -- like another film opening today, "Valkyrie" -- it asks us to see not just the Jews but the whole German people as victims of the Holocaust, and to view Nazism as more a product of explicable ignorance than inexplicable evil.

Behind the sad and vulnerable eyes of Bernal's damaged Elvis is both a fierce rage and a desperate need for his father's recognition, but he's more enigma than person. Hurt is more nuanced as the sincerely spiritual man faced with a past that threatens his family and his future.

Hard Candy is not perfect, but it is a provocative piece of filmmaking with a dark and daring heart that makes it worth seeing.

Whether Mann's film will make a difference, however, is another question. He devotes little time to really exploring the issues, leaving the film a patchwork of assertions that, while they may be true, have to be taken on faith.

It's an exciting action spectacle and a thoughtful, cumulatively moving family drama.

Hip-hop is not the beat I dance to, but you don't need to be immersed in the culture to understand the heartbeat it sets in the lives of Brown Sugar's main characters.

The simple, unpretentious storytelling of Unleashed is a rarity in the glut of underwritten and overproduced action films that dominate American screens today.

The movie is a relentlessly enjoyable star vehicle and a hard-charging action-o-rama full of the usual Bondian elements, for the most part well done. It's one of the year's better action films.

Nothing at all special. It's one more cheesy, broadly played, poorly paced, instantly forgettable August action movie.

Well-meaning portrait of intolerance concludes as grand tragic melodrama, executed with a stately beauty in somber colors.

Explores cloudy, discomforting realities of the Holocaust not usually addressed in such films.

As a grueling "trip" movie and cautionary tale of the nuclear age, K-19 fits the bill. The harsh depiction of everyday life in the Soviet navy and numerous scenes of seamen exposing themselves to lethal doses of radiation are profoundly disturbing.

The most dishonest thing about this ranting montage of a movie is its technique of panning between opposing viewpoints to simulate debate, when in fact each of the more than 35 celebrities was separately interviewed.

It's a fine moral and an admirable statement, but it's the portrait of an icon rather than the story of the person thrust into that position.

It offers no special insights into its subject, it doesn't connect on any higher level, and it left me feeling vaguely dissatisfied and let down.

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