An invaluable addition to the rock history cinema archives.

The film is always watchable, and the confrontations contain undeniable edgy excitement. But even if this weren't a remake, it would be a remake. Hollywood filmmakers have fished these waters so thoroughly that it's virtually impossible to land a big catch.

Although the pace is slow, "Twilight" is a moving account of a family in crisis and the love that provides a short window of happiness for the father.

Does a good job of reviving stale material. Thanks to a snappy script by Josh Goldsmith and Cathy Yuspa and an effervescent performance by Jennifer Garner, this romantic comedy has a buoyant personality.

Oddly bereft of scares or tension, the film is mainly notable for its sustained atmosphere of weirdness.

In this well-intentioned celebration of nature and traditional ways of life, giant-screen images feel generic when they should inspire wonder.

Despite the often insightful comments by the various cast members and Shepard himself -- the film doesn't dig very deeply into the artistic process of putting on a new play. But it does offer a fascinating fly-on-the-wall perspective.

At roughly the halfway point, the movie turns into a low-budget gangster picture, which sacrifices character and themes to the kind of action mayhem all too commonplace in studio thrillers.

Kill Bill-Vol. 2 puts to shame doubts entertained about aesthetic strategies or structural imbalance provoked by "Kill Bill-Vol. 1." Now that the entirety of Quentin Tarantino's epic revenge melodrama is on view, "Kill Bill" emerges as a brilliant, invigorating work, one to muse over for years to come.

A tone-deaf muddle that shifts moods more often than its lone wolf vigilante rubs out bad guys, clocking in at a punishingly paced two hours and change.

Rue plays her with just the right combination of sweetness, sexuality and sass.

Veteran TV director Michael Lembeck slides the movie into a sitcom mode that only further deadens the thin material. While Vardalos and Collette shine in the musical numbers, why didn't he bother to give the musical sequences a bit of pizzazz?

Hernandez's desire to utilize all the armaments of the filmmaker hits the viewer with a visceral force. What could have been a mess turns out to be a success.

In the depiction of this unlikely journey -- it is supposedly based on a real-life story -- the film awkwardly veers between naturalism and a striving for poetic myth.

A dramatic thriller with a large cast playing the hell out of some very juicy roles. Nieman's script shuffles nimbly among an array of colorful characters and offers unexpected twists that keep you off-balance.

Unlike such similar efforts as "A Mighty Wind," this would-be satire isn't funny enough to be entertaining, nor is it clever enough to fool us.

Ultimately a hollow and pointless exercise.

Sharp, vivacious comedy.

Things spin swiftly out of control with uneven acting and misfired physical gags.

A respectable and at times an exciting film that should appeal to males of all ages, history buffs and -- yes, it's inevitable -- patriots.

Nothing un-beguiles a fairy tale more than forced whimsy and labored magic, which is precisely what plagues Ella Enchanted.

Mild in both humor and impact, this well-cast comedy should provide welcome diversion during the holidays for audiences looking for a somewhat lighter experience than the crucifixion of Christ or the massacre at the Alamo.

The cast acquits itself well, with the Rock evincing a quiet balance between humor and brawn.

Kim Ki-duk keeps dialogue to a minimum and actions simple in what is virtually a two-character piece. Humor arrives organically, often resulting in hearty laughs.

An unremarkable romantic comedy that gives short shrift to both romance and comedy.

Tries to be too many things, none very convincingly: plea for tolerance, docu-style character study, old-fashioned weepie.

Standard-issue superhero movie -- except that writer-director Guillermo del Toro, taking his cue from "Hellboy" comic book creator Mike Mignola, brings a wicked sense of humor to this particular monster mash.

This amiable, Western-themed animated effort from the Walt Disney Co. is a clear attempt to return to the more lighthearted cartoon style that was so prevalent before its onslaught of stately musical epics.

While its two credible leads are certainly up to the challenge, there's a relentless claustrophobia that prevents the film from taking on a fully dimensional life of its own.

A complex and often compelling melodrama, at times almost verging on soap opera.

The film is nearly unendurable.

A wobbly comedy-drama.

Alas, this is just film ugly.

By the time they're done with all the tinkering, "Scooby-Doo" ends up bearing as much a resemblance to Hanna-Barbera as the recent "Cat in the Hat" did to Dr. Seuss.

Where the best Coen brothers comedy is a matter of finely tuned tone, diction, attitude and visual rhythms, everything in The Ladykillers feels out of kilter. With Tom Hanks delivering -- arguably -- one of the most perplexing performances of his career.

Smith stumbles setting up dramatic confrontations and strains credibility a time or two with implausible moments.

Expertly combining the personal and the epic, Jordan has crafted an excellent historical saga that doesn't collapse under the weight of too much history.

Doillon never lets his characters slide into cliche. They act and react from a wealth of contradictory impulses and long-standing prejudices in this masterful tale of frustrated desire.

It is a beautifully crafted film with a star-studded cast, directed with a lightness of touch.

Clearly, much care and intelligence have been lavished on discouraging, routine material.

When there's a whole mess of zombie killing to be done, who cares about reflective writing or that time-wasting element of suspense?

Not only (Kaufman's) most accessible and romantic screenplay, it's his most complete. The third act works like a charm and pulls all his themes, characters and conflicts together beautifully.

A playfully quirky and, ultimately, unexpectedly affecting portrait of a 17-year-old slacker.

Unfortunately akin to going to a dance club stone cold sober and wearing ear plugs. You get the gist of the general experience, but euphoria is far, far away.

Ultimately unsatisfying.

A sensitive and well-observed drama that, while not breaking new ground, marks its director-screenwriter as someone to watch.

The movie telegraphs its intentions too early and relies too much on a single actor, Johnny Depp, to achieve its emotional force.

In terms of inspiration or even the slightest shred of ingenuity, Banks ranks more like an 000 than an 007.

The movie makes an excellent primer about the world of stock car racing for fans and nonfans alike. In 48 fast minutes, the Simon Wincer-directed film gives you a genuine sense of this particular sport, its rigorous demands and the fan base that supports it with such wildly enthusiastic devotion.

The central trio of actors deliver engaging, pitch-perfect work.

The film doesn't know what it wants to be -- reality programming pushed to the max or a satire of reality TV? -- but it winds up as an exercise in the rankest sort of cynicism.

Unfortunately lacks much in the way of compelling narrative or credible characterizations, but it once again reaffirms Huppert's place in the pantheon of French film actors.

There is enough compelling adventure, awesome cinematography and dynamic stunt work involving horses to keep one entertained by Hidalgo.

Cruises along agreeably on the easy chemistry between Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson, who step in where Paul Michael Glaser and David Soul left off.

A beguiling, multilayered drama.

It's all Kovacs for 94 minutes. Which means the viewer experiences a perilous tug-of-war between annoyance at the extreme artificiality of the conceit and admiration of the gutsy performance by an actress who must, literally, carry the movie. Annoyance wins out, unfortunately.

An often intriguing documentary, albeit one with wires attached.

While the film occasionally stretches credibility and is also rather schematic in its characterizations, it tells its tale with skill and economy, and its observations about consumerist Israeli society are critically insightful without being overdone.

The film lacks narration or music, but the devastating images speak for themselves.

While much of what is said here has been recounted in previous forums -- the special Sept. 11 episode of TV's "Third Watch" being a prime example -- the redundancy doesn't deprive the commentary of its power.

A limp sex comedy about men behaving badly.

Works better than one might think, thanks to the group's modus operandi, which combines a fundamental reverence for the target material and a sly irreverence that's key to their skewering technique.

Like "Dogville," Neil Young's Greendale uses the deceptively simple "Our Town" foundation on which to build a platform for some highly personal sociopolitical criticisms, but unlike the contentious von Trier picture, the Young variation gets the job done in roughly half the time with a notable absence of histrionics, plus you can tap your toes to it.

Combining the ludicrous with the lurid, Twisted is twisted all right.

It's disappointing the film is so sketchy and underdeveloped. The filmmakers may have sold their story short.

Will richly award locals with sly in-jokes and a wonderful comic performance by Bruhl. Non-Germans will certainly get the essence of the humor but may find the movie long and repetitive.

Ultimately lacks the textural depth and emotional precision that marks the work of obvious influences here like Robert Altman, but it does offer a pungent slice of contemporary Israeli life that should prove resonant for audiences interested in the social complexities of the region.

Gibson's intense concentration on the scourging and whipping of the physical body virtually denies any metaphysical significance to the most famous half-day in history.

The results might make for some swell production stills, but as a motion picture, Teknolust never really makes it alive out of Hershman's head.

Ryan and the rest of the cast are forced to slug it out with the kind of trite dialogue that seems to have been lifted straight off of those corporate inspirational posters.

The latest example of a distressing wave of undistinguished theatrical versions of Saturday-morning kid shows.

Although a number of the gags fall flatter than a crepe, the accent is on the charmingly juvenile as opposed to the purely puerile, with a fresh-faced cast of amiable young performers on hand to make the trek relatively painless.

Girls ages 6-14 will get a charge from the fashion show, animation effects and, to a lesser degree, the cartoonish antics. But like most adolescent histrionics, the pic's impact on adults will be limited to mild amusement alternating with annoyance.

In the wonderfully droll Kitchen Stories, Norwegian filmmaker Bent Hamer takes an already inspired premise and weaves it into a spry absurdist comedy that also manages to find some considerable warmth.

Compounding the sense of predictability and deja vu is the presence of well-known TV actors portraying the sorts of characters they've perfected on the small screen.

Best appreciated for the winning performances of its trio of stars, who convey their characters' desperation with humor and poignancy.

The strongest film.

Schickel's documentary, narrated by Sydney Pollack, breaks no new ground stylistically, but it is a well-organized, informative and inevitably entertaining portrait of the man who revolutionized screen comedy and who arguably became the first mass-market, commercialized media figure.

Although it offers no new angles on the story engines of loyalty and revenge, the French film boasts an intriguing milieu and the off-center, hair-trigger intensity of Samy Naceri as a crime boss.

Flirting intriguingly with film noir conventions, the film never really achieves a coherent tone in its depiction of the complicated and sometimes fatal series of events that arise.

Unfortunately, Love Object, which uncomfortably totters from psychological suspense to black comedy to pull-out-the-stops horror, never quite lives up to its bizarre premise, and despite its audacious subject matter, it will even have difficulty attaining future cult status.

Although its goofy high-concept premise won't bear much scrutiny, it offers a less predictable ride than their first pairing, and lush Hawaiian locations to boot.

Each of the stories, impeccably staged and acted, has just the right length, well befitting the slight aspects of their story lines. Never allowing preciousness or ponderousness to infuse the material, filmmaker Pak demonstrates a real talent for concise storytelling marked by poignancy and humor.

The romantic comedy, is the weakest of the trio. It stands as something of an interlude, detailing the paranoid obsessions of Cecile and her husband.

Ends up being of greater historical significance than of any lasting artistic merit.

Writer-director Larry Blamire has clearly done his homework, and his playful cast nails the requisite acting-so-bad-it's-good pitch.

What will make the film compelling even for audiences who never heard of the miracle on ice is Kurt Russell's taut, nuanced portrait of Herb Brooks.

Has a rollicking time reaching its foreseeable conclusion.

An action romp with heart. If that heart is somewhat misguided, it's hard to deny the family-friendly thrills and spills along the way.

At once a powerful psychological thriller and a haunting allegory, The Return marks an auspicious feature debut for helmer Andrey Zvyagintsev.

The film's real failure is that neither the story nor the characters capture the zeitgeist that Bertolucci theoretically set out to celebrate.

In effect an elaborate home movie. But its examination of the long-lasting effects of evil on the psyche of its victims and their descendants is both thoughtful and much needed in these increasingly polarized times.

Blind Shaft, a well-acted and well-produced film, is a quiet though searing indictment of contemporary China.

Has some moments of excitement and is certainly uncompromising.

The story is flimsy, and when the dialogue touches on controversial issues regarding the SAT and its fairness, the slacker tone turns abruptly melodramatic.

This directorial debut from C. Jay Cox is a sometimes comic melodrama.

It's too loose and casual, all too willing to trade the writer's trademark wit and literary mischief for slapstick comedy.

Assembling this vehicle for his young clients, music producer/manager/video director Christopher B. Stokes has attached an anemic plot to a series of dynamic hip-hop dance sequences.