Leave something on the shelf long enough and it'll either ripen like cheese or rot like garbage. Guess what: This ain't Camembert.

Once the action degenerates, the film relies on Chan's charming smile and Evans's mediocre slapstick for relief, making one wish the medallion's special powers could transport them into whole other story.

Outrageous and often disgusting film.

Perhaps the only person more enthralled by the romance of train hopping than the latter-day hobos profiled in this great looking documentary from first-time director Sarah George is George herself.

The film is not without its share of awkward moments, but as an insightful critique of "Girl Culture" and the mounting war over the hearts and minds of adolescent girls that's currently being waged in the media, it's mandatory viewing.

Formulaic hodge-podge that trades on a certain demographic's affection for the bogeymen of their formative years.

Unfortunately, the emotionally resonant moments between Murphy and Fanning are few and far between; the rest of the film relies on goofy physical comedy -- Murphy takes more pratfalls that any young woman should have to.

Pekar's autobiographical chronicle of day-to-day banality is a rich, if dingy, tapestry of ordinary life in all its infinite, homely peculiarity, which filmmakers Sheri Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini bring to uniquely eccentric life.

Slight and pleasantly predictable film coasts along on the considerable charms of its cast and exotic setting.

While Costner the actor clearly imagines himself the Gary Cooper of the 21st century, he's got a crude sentimental streak that Costner the director fails to curtail.

Called everything from a feminist statement to a gay camp-classic to an anti-McCarthyism allegory. While it certainly is all of these--and more--it's about time it was acclaimed for it what it really is: a genuine western film classic.

While doing nothing to dispel the stereotype that skateboarding is the sport of brainless jackasses, Casey La Scala's directing debut does feature some nifty boarding action.

"We're not that different, but we're different from what you think we are," says 16-year-old Ebony, and no playwright could have said it better.

The film's much-vaunted stunts are deliberately unrealistic, from over-the-top wire-work to CGI-soccer balls that streak through the air like flaming cannon balls.

Surfing isn't inherently service to humanity; it's a sport whose grace and athleticism Brown captures thrillingly, and that should be enough.

Team M-I knows its way around James and ignores the lazy stereotype of Americans as gauche rubes bumbling around Paris like barbarians at the ballet in favor of sly digs at French and American mores alike.

Adventurous viewers will find this unusual genre hybrid an intriguing experience, and Donnie Yen's fight choreography is breathtaking.

Actor-turned-director Clark Johnson uses the flashy, up-to-the-minute editing and camera stunts action fans expect, but keeps the mayhem on a recognizably human scale — it's big, but not insanely overblown.

This seemingly placid community is slowly revealed to be tangle of interpersonal relationships defined by that essential rift that divides those who summer at the beach and those who remain behind at season's end.

Harmon and Murray are cardboard cutouts of ideal boyfriends; the only male performer allowed to shine is newcomer Ryan Malgarini, who nearly steals every scene he's in.

Both Robertson and Keuck are frighteningly good, and director Coccio imagines their home movies so effectively that his film comes dangerously close to being a how-to manual for aspiring classroom spree killers.

Generations of healthy spirits were twisted and deformed by the good Sisters of Mercy, all in the name of salvation.

When characters aren't quoting Alfred de Musset, they're speaking in aphorisms of their own, and the dialogue is stylized and stilted. Happily, Kaas, one of France's most popular jazz singers, has a sensuous, sonorous voice, and Lelouch uses it as often as possible; in many ways, the film is a musical.

Director Alan Rudolph, whose reputation rests on ensemble pieces, lets Scott's performance -- as skilled as his pyrotechnical turn in "Roger Dodger" (2002), but composed entirely of subtle notes -- anchor the film.

Hooking up can be as random, and as rewarding, as hitting the jackpot -- and helps makes "This Car Up" the best of a pretty good bunch.

Is this sophisticated humor? No. But it is pretty entertaining.

The spectacle of the near-naked Ricki (Lopez) striking sexually provocative yoga poses while floridly extolling the virtues of female genitalia is particularly mortifying, but it's only one of many horribly miscalculated scenes.

The brouhaha aside, this chronicle of SNAFUs foretold doesn't have much new to say but says it with biting precision, and Phoenix's sharp, sneakily sympathetic performance is a pleasure to watch.

This otherwise sober film's high ick factor is clearly designed to convince restless students that entomology is extremely cool.

A train wreck of a film whose chaotic, partly improvised story and too-tricky mix of film stocks, image sizes, split-screen effects and color/B&W footage overwhelm some phenomenally beautiful sequences and a memorable performance by Saffron Burroughs.

Imagine "The Full Monty" without any of the feel-good uplift, and you'd be pretty close to capturing what this bitter -- and often bitterly funny -- film from Spain is all about.

Overall it's a harmless disappointment, hampered by the thin story and a surprisingly dreary looking video-game setting, heavy on the floating platforms, cartoony future-cityscapes and goofy gadgetry.

Simply a series of set pieces designed to insure Angelina Jolie's status as action-babe pin-up.

The movie's secret weapons are its stellar cast, whose performances go a long way to ameliorating Ross's ham-fisted use of foreshadowing and symbols, and its brilliantly shot racing sequences -- they're heart-stoppingly suspenseful even when the outcome is a matter of record.

A sentimental look at love and middle-aged discontent thinly disguised as a comic adventure story.

The pressure often shows: For all its charm, the dramatic moments are awkward and the final act feels rushed and under rehearsed.

Though Dylan shuffles through the dramatic sequences like a dessicated mummy, the music sequences are strikingly vibrant -- he's never looked worse or sounded better.

Brilliantly edited from well over 100 hours of tape, the final two-hour film recalls Michael Apted's 7 UP series.

Ejiofor's subtle, infinitely humane performance is the invisible glue that holds everything together and Chris Menges's darkly shimmering cinematography lends the story a gritty, coolly seductive glamour.

A startling about-face for Australian director Alex Proyas, and an unwelcome one as well.

It's a real shame that the first half hour is a disorganized ramble that risks driving away the film's audience; a little artful editing would have gone a long way to fixing the problem.

An effectively macabre and fiendishly entertaining tale of lust, unrequited love and the fine art of taxidermy.

To call this scattered and cliché-ridden film less-than-cohesive would be generous, and Moore lacks the ability to imbue hackneyed dialogue with resonance.

There's at least one ending too many, Union regularly vanishes for long stretches of the movie, and director Michael Bay's unmitigated pandering to viewers who whoop with glee whenever someone gets it between the eyes is genuinely distasteful.

Features generally crisp dialogue, solid performances by a mix of newcomers and familiar character actors, and Provenzano's direction is strikingly accomplished.

Not just an engaging melodrama that explores the class conflict and sexual mores of feudal Japan, but a work of extraordinary beauty; you could literally hang any random frame on the wall and call it art. No doubt the master would have been pleased.

The filmmakers' attempts come to terms with a recent catastrophe of indeterminate meaning but global consequences are often fascinating.

If you were to strip the "Austin Powers" films of their juvenile lewdness, psychedelic decor and swinging soundtrack while leaving intact the potty humor and pratfalls, the result would be something very like this pointless spy spoof.

Like any good soap opera, the script deftly flits among story lines, offering just enough tantalizing plot development to keep you sticking around for another bite.

What begins as a gripping adventure, thrillingly told with virtually no dialogue, eventually becomes a rather routine parable despite the unique setting and circumstances.

The film is really a timely critique of the ongoing insanity that has engulfed Israeli life.

Smith's beautifully observed story of two young women learning how cruel and calculating the world -- and they -- can be is beautifully realized, and Garai stands out among a fine ensemble cast.

Bloated and incoherent.

It may be an old story, but Berri draws fresh poignancy from this December-May romance by identifying so empathetically with Jacques.

The film is meticulously crafted but frustratingly meaningless.

Director Gore Verbiniski delivers the best one can hope for: a cleverly nostalgic, high-tech copy of the real deal.

However intriguing from a theoretical perspective, this gorgeously shot film is first and foremost and purely sensual experience. Filled with the sights and sounds of Rio of a bygone era, the whole thing virtually pulses with excitement.

Overall this is an assured piece of genre filmmaking that delivers the goods so stylishly it hardly matters that they aren't fresh.

Pascal's low-key presence is particularly important, since in another actor's hands Alain's whining and waffling could easily be insufferable.

Impressively stylish but curiously empty.

The characters are mostly flat and unoriginal -- - but Pfeiffer delivers a wonderfully villainous voice performance.

Tricky thriller relies on its smoothly unrippled surface, leisurely pacing and slightly awkward performances to create a false sense of security that sets up viewers for a shock when it takes an abrupt turn into Patricia Highsmith territory.

An even sweeter and lighter whipped confection than "Legally Blonde," this hugely enjoyable sequel serves up a generous second helping of the ingredient that made the original such an irresistible hit.

Picking up some 10 years after the previous film left off, this stripped-down, intelligently conceived follow-up is a respectable conclusion to the Terminator trilogy.

Dialogue is kept to a bare minimum, but the film's complex underlying sound mix -- a subtle symphony of faintly heard voices and the muted sounds of cars -- adds a haunting texture to what could have been the slightest of stories about a woman's ephemeral victory over emotional numbness.

The film is hardly profound, but the form perfectly fits the content..

Heir to a long tradition of apocalyptic scare stories, the film wears its influences proudly.

The action is ridiculously overwrought, a state-of-the-art combination of CGI wizardry and Hong Kong-style wirework so removed from the laws of physical reality that it might as well be animated.

Patwardhan offers no solutions, but poses disturbing questions.

"There is no antidote for the human bomb," one Sri Lankan official flatly states, but Ziv's film offers a number of important insights into a phenomenon that's only gaining momentum.

This modest film delivers a simple but powerful message:... the real work of creating a lasting peace must be done on an personal level, one individual at a time.

The music is lavishly overproduced pop pablum of the first order, and there's a deeply shallow irony in the fact the film's most memorable tune, KC and the Sunshine Band's 28-year-old "That's the Way I Like It," is easily twice the age of its target audience.

Hudson and Wilson share a natural and easy chemistry that helps compensate for the Cuban-mobster subplot.

The storytelling is jerky (perhaps in part because the running time was trimmed from 185 to 142 minutes for U.S. release) and character development takes a backseat to a breathless rush through battles, assassinations and dynastic plotting.

The entirely computer-generated Hulk is a surprisingly expressive creation — it certainly gives a better performance than Connelly — but the action is late in coming and feels like a long set-up for the inevitable sequel.

The audacious finale, which plays out in a wholly symbolic realm, will leave even the most adventurous moviegoers scratching their heads. See it with a friend; you'll appreciate the second opinion.

The film's only mildly appealing character is the "Big A" store clerk (Brian Posehn) who refuses to be amused by Lloyd and Harry's moronic antics; sadly, even he eventually succumbs to the film's relentless and overarching stupidity.

A blackly comic, neo-noir heist picture, Australian screenwriter Scott Roberts's directing debut fairly oozes strenuous eccentricity.

It's an enjoyable ride.

It's periodically enlivened by unlikely cameos, including Lou Diamond Phillips as an undercover cop posing as a transvestite hooker and Gladys Knight as a forgotten Motown singer.

At a brisk 97 minutes, the film skips over many episodes that make Hahn's book a pulse-pounding page-turner, but offers her rare perspective on both sides of civilian life during those nightmare years.

The flashback structure drains the story of momentum, but Mashkov and Uchaineshvili portray the reptilian glamour of cultured thugs with frightening intensity.

Their dilemmas are the stuff of dozens of Masterpiece Theater productions, but they're brought to life with a vividness that defies changing mores and cuts to the heart of the ways people justify hurting each other in the name of love.

Eason balances the clichés of a fairly standard story with convincing realism and a powerful momentum that never flags.

A breezy romantic comedy in which opposites attract against all the reasonable odds, this slight but thoroughly charming film benefits immeasurably from the assured performances of leads Juliette Binoche and Jean Reno.

Without an assured character at its center, the movie quickly collapses in a heap of moldy clichés and contrived (and not especially funny) situations.

This solid, if familiar, neo-noir premise is nevertheless given a fresh spin by the funky NYC locales, the dubwise hip-hop soundtrack, the terrific chemistry between Brody and the underrated Seda and the one and only Pam Grier.

The film is saved by the raw power of the performances, and especially, Richard Pryor's bitterly funny observations.

Spooky and character-driven, this stylish ghost story owes a great deal to contemporary Japanese ghost movies in general and M. Night Shyamalan's "The Sixth Sense" (1999) in particular but weaves a creepy spell all its own.

It's really all about the cars, kandy-kolored nitro-injected streamline babies with sweeter curves than a Playboy photo spread, more personality than Rome, Brian and Monica combined and enough juice to send a fleet of rockets to the farthest reaches of the known universe.

what makes Caro's film a future classic is What so many movies geared toward younger audiences lack: a cool and very courageous 'tween heroine whom boys and girls of all ages can admire

It's curious that the filmmakers choose to end the story without reporting on Weatherwoman Kathy Boudin's involvement in an ill-fated 1981 robbery of a Brinks truck in New York State.

The bad news is that, though professionally produced on a micro-budget, Azita Zendel's ambitious writing-directing debut is undermined by an awkward script and some very amateurish acting.

The film has all the pregnant pauses, exaggerated reaction shots and melodramatic scoring of an overripe telenovela, but, unlike a good soap opera, the sisters' separate story lines are clumsily balanced.

It's more silly than scary and relies excessively on surprisingly low-rent CGI effects and crude wirework to drum up interest in the slight story.

The result is sheer, unadulterated nastiness with no apologies.

Never less than gripping.

This version moves like a freight train, but suffers from a debilitating charm deficit. Wahlberg is no Michael Caine and Norton delivers what must be the sourest, most lifeless performance of his career to date.