Jodorowsky's is perhaps a prodigious, certainly a prodigal talent. What is most bothersome is not his chaotic cosmology but his coldness. He is so obsessed with allegorical meaning that El Topo misses any kind of full human resonance. It is instead a vivid if ultimately passionless passion play.

Though it works hard to make us believe it’s really a social statement about hospitals’ lack of scruples...its garden-variety true-crime roots are painfully visible.

Alas, in Tetro he (Coppola) has made a movie in which plenty happens but nothing rings true.

It is very tiresome peering through the gloom trying to catch a glimpse of something interesting, then having to avert one's eyes when it turns out to be just another brutally tormented body.

If this wigged-out modern Western doesn’t quite work, it’s at the very least a cry of vexation over what our country, messy at the best of times, has become, thanks to a virus that found its way not just into our lungs, but into our very lifeblood. Dr. Aster has listened in on America’s heartbeat; the diagnosis is that we’re basically a mess.

These people are fools for heedless love and, perhaps, needless complication, and you can't help responding to the heat of their passion.

Sleepy Hollow may be late for Halloween, but this trick is a real treat.

It's a feast for the eyes, but we're still hungry.

You get 45 minutes of awesome encased in 90 minutes of yawnsome.

These characters don’t always behave as we want them to; they feel lived-in, not written, with flaws and attributes that chime with things we see in our family, our friends, ourselves.

Stuff still leaps out of the screen -- the snake striking a victim, cars sent flying by Death Eaters -- but few things in the movie lodge in the audience's mind or heart.

How well do Bond's established conventions survive after a third of a century's hard use, the post-cold war deglamourization of espionage and the arrival of yet another actor in the central role? The short answer is, on wobbly knees.

Farrell's work as Syracuse is understated to the point that some may find it unremarkable -- but it's a beautifully confident performance, an irony given that he constructs his portrayal of Syracuse around the concept of humility.

The plot becomes landlocked in true-life implausibilities; the characters rarely get a hold on the moviegoer's heart or lapels. What saves this meditation on the vestiges of colonialism is, ironically, its celebration of American star power.

There is none of the affectionate respect for working-class life and values that marked the similar, and far superior, "Norma Rae," nor any of that film's sense of felt reality either.

Wu is a fine, supple tabula rasa; McGregor (Trainspotting) shows again that he is one of the boldest, most charming young actors.

It is also extremely well acted at every level (one especially wants to single out Bob Balaban as the Government's chief aggressor and Wilford Brimley as its belated voice of conscience), and directed by Sidney Pollack with a sort of crisp but unassuming professionalism that is rarer than it ought to be. Perhaps best of all, the script, by sometime Journalist Kurt Luedtke, who was once part of a Pulitzer-winning investigative team on the Detroit Free Press, has a marvelously entertaining intricacy, briskly and believably building, half-inch by half-inch, Michael's outrage over and Megan's entrapment in the plot to get him.

The film's blithe misogyny soon becomes wearying; it refuses to see women as more than the sum of their private parts.

Conran hasn't attached his technical virtuosity to a ripping yarn or infused it with behavioral brio. The first of its kind often doesn't work; Sky Captain may be the Moses that leads other directors to a blue-sky, blue-screen promised land.

Earnest but costumey drama.

Its heartwarming and clear-eyed approach to first love and the challenges of coming-of-age distinguishes it from its contemporaries.

The movie unfolds with novelistic pacing for a leisurely but engaging two hours.

Seduction is more important than deduction in this chic display of star quality to the eighth power.

The summer's zazziest action movie.

Though From Russia with Love remains the liveliest Bond opera to date, Thunderball is by all odds the most spectacular. Its script hasn't a morsel of genuine wit, but Bond fans, who are preconditioned to roll in the aisles when their hero merely asks a waiter to bring some beluga caviar and Dom Pérignon '55, will probably never notice.

Van Damme has been known as a martial-arts legend, movie star and pain in the ass. But never an actor -- until now.

By the time I got to the end of Captain Marvel...I heard the voice of my own inner superhero, Peggy Lee, whispering in my ear: Is that all there is? The most heinous supervillain of all is Boredom.

It doesn't look particularly special - despite the visual potential of underwater scenes - but kids are going to eat this up.