This is a movie with a lot of intelligence and ideas, about someone with a lot of both, for people who, even if they lack one or both of those qualities, appreciate them.

Whether or not The Magician rises to the level of its cinematic predecessors may be up for debate, but thanks to a smart, cleverly constructed screenplay and a compelling lead performance, Ryan’s film displays a flair for storytelling that’s notably lacking in many first-time features. It’s a great addition to the Blue Tongue catalogue, and it’ll be interesting to see where Ryan turns up next.

This film exists only for its glamorous visuals, gorgeous Gershwin music, and the dancing choreographed by Astaire and Eugene Loring.

Perhaps Kenji Mizoguchi's greatest achievement, SANSHO THE BAILIFF is a visually mesmerizing picture that pays great and careful attention to the smallest details of nature and environment, highlighted by Mizoguchi's use of the long take and deep-focus shots.

The first hour of The Tomorrow War is really quite dumb fun. The second half pumps the brakes on the wacky sci-fi and just goes in for gross-out action.

Excellent, but nasty stuff.

The film’s only flaw is a minor one: Some of the stylistic devices, such as the rapid-fire montages of vile and depraved images, have aged poorly. But that in no way detracts from the visceral power of the backslide into the abyss that we experience along with the central character.

Deliberately theatrical but nevertheless greatly indebted to French poetic realism, Children of Paradise is lovingly handled by director Carne. The entire film is crammed with incident and an intoxicating eye for detail.

Director Morita does an exemplary job of bringing a Japanese graphic novel to the screen.

The filmmaking is a bit crude at times but it packs an emotional wallop.

It's a defining true crime story for the Internet age.

On the positive side, Coscarelli makes ingenious use of the clips from the original film, and comes up with the occasional creepy moment. But more often, PHANTASM: OBLIVION is extremely slow-paced and works only on a scene-by-scene basis rather than as a coherent whole.

All the performers either overact laughably or underact to the point of just standing in place and speaking lines in a monotone. Whether the film ever stopped anyone from smoking marijuana is doubtful, but it certainly turned out to be a greater success than its producers ever dreamed.

Somehow the filmmakers managed to take the subject of the mistreatment of migrant workers and turn it into a vehicle for displaying Bronson's violent heroics.

CHAPLIN is the cinematic equivalent of a whistle-stop tour of Europe--the kind that takes you to ten cities in five days at such speed that everything melts into a vaguely entertaining blur.

Our favorite parts, though, were the moments of unintentional humor, mostly courtesy of Ms. Archer. Her insufferably goody-goody performance makes you wish Glenn Close would show up brandishing a kitchen knife.

William Rose, with a stilted screenplay, and Stanley Kramer, make this dinner hour stand still--a really safe, lame melodrama.

While the slapstick comedy antics are frequently amusing and, on rare occasions, even hilarious, HOT SHOTS!, like so many other cinematic parodies before it, tends to lose sight--or control--of the plot, such as it is, in favor of more jokes, more visual gags and more dialogue puns--all hurled at the audience at a rapid-fire pace.

Prodded by Landis' slam-bang direction, the effect isn't so much a comedy as it is an exercise in excess. Somewhere in the planning stage one all-important factor was left out: humor. The concept is a funny one, yet no one seems to have the faintest idea of what to do with it. Between Landis' direction and the initially lame screenplay, Three Amigos never really stands a chance.

The 'Burbs offers a delightfully complicated portrait of suburban voyeurism, a portrait taken to its absurd extreme by Dante's introduction of foreign elements among his xenophobic characters, in a devastating satire of suburban values.

Blame It On Rio turns into a most uncomfortable film, leeringly depicting an affair with decidely icky undertones of incest and pedophilia. Between gratuitous (if titillating) nude scenes and a succession of lame soundtrack songs, there are plenty of travelogue shots to pad out the thin narrative line. Caine looks embarrassed through the entire film, as well he might.

Intermittently amusing, forgettable action spoof showcasing Whoopi Goldberg and helmed by Penny Marshall.

Clearly designed as a cult film, this messy trifle is not without its charms. These include the affably weird Goldblum, Lithgow's deliriously overstated mad scientist, and a band of alien invaders who are not emissaries of a vastly superior race, but beer-swilling mediocrities in Hawaiian shirts.

The Innocents manipulates the viewer's imagination as few films can, with Kerr and Redgrave doing a masterful job of creating a sense of repressed hysteria.

This sequel may be a bit thin on plot, but who cares when Jackie Chan is at his daredevil best?

The result is a raucously funny and poignant love letter to standup comics.

At the end of the day, people who want to see this movie aren't looking for something original. There's a certain familiarity that makes the romantic comedy a perennial favorite among audiences.

Your ability to enjoy G-Force will correlate directly with how funny you find the idea of guinea pigs as action heroes.

The good news is that it comes closer than any of its predecessors, hitting the mark or coming close to it on almost all fronts. With "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" being split into two films, the final installment stands an excellent chance of getting it right.

For a teen film to resonate, it has to feel honest, and I Love You, Beth Cooper simply comes off as too paint-by-numbers to achieve any level of emotional authenticity.

With Bruno, Baron Cohen essentially turns a carnival mirror on society, and some people simply aren't going to like what they see. This is satire at its most confrontational and incisive.

The movie does open up a lot of heretofore vacuum-sealed cans of worms. Does sex represent a sort of grand completeness that men secretly yearn for in their friendships?

For people who loved "Heat," this is a tour de force.

Should be shown in theaters that offer seats with tissue dispensers built right into the arm rests.

If you enjoyed the robo-spastic ride the first time, then you should be happy with this movie, too. And if you complained that the first movie was trite and lacking in character development, then you probably shouldn’t even be reading this.

Bullock playing against type is the only original thing going on in the whole film.

While director Tony Scott's brash and boisterous take on the material may lack that certain '70s quirkiness, it gets just about everything else exactly right.

By no means a landmark, but it is a remarkably pleasant surprise -- so few movies aimed for the whole family show an understanding of why it's actually healthy to pretend.

Moon is a small-scale film, but, thanks in no small part to Rockwell, its mix of thematic grandeur and human drama makes it a worthy successor to those 1970s science fiction films that inspired it.

So if you're looking for the next stop on the Shockingly Experimental Comedy train, don't get off here -- this ride is strictly for laughs.

A benign, mushy gruel that tries desperately to maintain the sticky sweet consistency of "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" but ultimately ends up coasting on the "kefi" of that previous success.

Like "Juno" or "Little Miss Sunshine," Away We Go is a small film, the kind of gem that's easy to crush with hype or overpraise. But, the fact is that few movies deal with feelings this profound with as much restraint as Mendes and his crew display here.

If director Brad Silberling had taken this cast to their natural extremes, he might have delivered a raucously funny sci-fi comedy -- think "Anchorman" meets "Jurassic Park." Instead, Land of the Lost is an utter misfire -- not bad enough to hate, not good enough to remember.

You get the feeling that, had Pixar been in business 25 years ago, Steven Spielberg might have made this movie for them as a follow-up to "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

A popcorn film that aims to entertain -- nothing more, nothing less -- and it achieves that goal admirably.

Without Azaria's comedic gifts, the movie would be close to unendurable.

Stands among the best of Soderbergh's many "little" films, where he recharges his artistic batteries and tries out new techniques before jumping back into the world of big budgets and superstars.

With the exception of one breathtaking sequence in a helicopter, the action in Terminator Salvation is astonishingly dull.

Whatever Howard's reasons for keeping things so stale, it was a bad choice, but lucky for viewers, some stories are just too crazy for even the dullest storytelling to completely ruin the fun.

Sadly, Management is formulaic indie romantic comedy at its core.

The right combination of goofy character behavior, action set pieces, and narrative drive to keep the movie from ever being boring.

It fulfills its promise of rebooting the series while leaving us wanting more, and it does so with style and energy to spare. Now that's an origins tale that truly delivers.

The good news is that Battle for Terra's moments of unbalance ultimately right themselves into a surprisingly earnest, engaging film.

It's the movie equivalent of fast food -- nobody needs this to be good, just adequate. And Ghosts of Girlfriends Past is nothing if not thoroughly adequate.

It's not as if Fighting is terrible. The acting is well done, as is the unique look at the underbelly of the Big Apple.

Larter just doesn't have the same bite as the bunny-killing stalkers of years gone by.

So, in essence, The Informers fails precisely because we never believe these lost souls were ever human enough to have had a soul to lose in the first place.

This kind of movie quickly falls apart if the actors overplay the inherent sadness of the situation, and thankfully the stellar cast never makes that mistake.

The overall tone of the film is absolutely appropriate for all ages, and it's never too early to learn the importance of preserving our planet.

The movie is thoroughly engrossing from the opening frame to the end credits, and it’s a beautiful viewing experience.

Lundgren, an inexpressive actor, is perfect as a graphic cipher: his face was made to be drawn in ink and filled in with broad washes of color. Carefully tended facial stubble trimmed to give him a skull-like appearance, Lundgren is truly impressive as a character defined by emotional emptiness.

A rare treat for cinema lovers starved for the days when scruffy newspaper reporters fearlessly sniffed out corruption, State of Play delivers the kind of conspiratorial thrills that would have made Pakula proud.

This time, the adrenalized formula is even more unpredictable, with twists, turns, curves, and splurges taking the viewer on a rollercoaster ride unlike any other.

Never figures out what it wants to be, and ends up a jumbled mess that nobody wants.

Just know there's a whole lot more great stuff out there than just what Evolution has in store for you -- namely, the anime that it was based on.

Fans will clap along with the many songs, but the tunes aren't interesting enough to win over the unconverted -- a fact made clear when genuine teen star Taylor Swift shows up to perform -- she demonstrates all the spontaneity and authenticity that Miley Cyrus lacks.

Some movies strive to give you that warm, fuzzy feeling, and some strive to make you bawl your eyes out, but Observe and Report strives to make you feel ambivalent, confused, and a little bit dirty, and whether or not you find that enjoyable, it's not something you likely feel very often.

No matter what, it's safe to say that this entirely acceptable retooling of the franchise makes for a satisfying experience for those who enjoy four-wheeled chases, hot bodies, hot cars, and a tall dose of tough-guy machismo.

Delightful because it's intensely sincere.

Alien Trespass needs to be buried for another 50 years and then unearthed to be studied for how tributes can go oh so wrong.

This is a lean 90 minutes, packed with laughs and age-appropriate thrills -- not to mention a solid lesson for girls about self-respect.

It's not fun and it gets tiring real fast.

A film that pays lip service to some interesting ideas, but is far too concerned with pleasing a large crowd to be anything more than another instantly forgettable fright flick.

The result is a film that's comfortable and familiar, but at the same time feels fresh, fun, and original.

Tony Gilroy deserves the lion's share of credit for making such a delightful movie. His writing and direction find the perfect balance of comedy, sexiness, and tension.

Knowing is the path to eternal pain.

Buck is a very audience-friendly film, provided that the audience is willing to let itself be taken along for a fairly manipulative ride.

The result is a glossy, engaging suspense film that jettisons much of its predecessor's sadism and subtext in favor of crowd-pleasing revenge violence.

Race to Witch Mountain isn't some kind of action watershed, or science-fiction milestone, but it most certainly is a finely crafted reboot of a franchise that was ripe for an updating.

It's a solid depiction of a relatable story, and it's absolutely modest about all of it, especially stylistically, where things stay remarkably reeled in.

Certainly, it's gross, and maybe even a bit shocking, but these filmmakers are smart enough to realize that raising the bar on crassness in teen sex comedies is a zero sum game.

It may not include every nuance of the graphic novel, but it captures as much as any adaptation could -- which may not satisfy the fanboys, but it's probably more than enough for everyone else.

On a narrative level, Troell seems to occasionally take on more than he can handle; from time to time he leans toward an ensemble approach, with multiple, intersecting stories, but the film lacks the length to sustain this, so we are left with fragments of substories that never fully blossom.

There's something special about this underwhelming mess of a Street Fighter reboot that many cinematic cheese-lovers will find very appetizing. The fact is that The Legend of Chun-Li is not at all a good flick, but it's filled with so much cornball ineptitude that one would think some rather broken mad movie genius was behind it.

Raunchy.

An unrelentingly powerful and seamless indictment of two brutal political systems.

It's not an openly meta take on the genre like "Scream," but it's a slasher movie for people who love slasher movies, and if your heart will flutter when a woodchipper casually appears in the first act, it's probably worth watching.

Thankfully, Coraline is appropriately dark, and like its inspiration, is only a children's movie by the thinnest of margins.

There's tons of professionalism in He's Just Not That Into You, but it lacks passion -- they should have called it "Like, Actually."

The results are, quite surprisingly, fairly charming.

If your tolerance for repetition in genre films is already low, this one will probably push you right over the edge.

Lets down both its actress and the audience.

Despite all the points it gains for furrowed brows and kick-ass gunfights, the film loses quite a few for being dry as burnt toast.

It's best to line The Uninvited right up on the soon-to-be-forgotten shelves next to the now third-generation Asian remakes and wait for the next effective foreign genre fare for Hollywood to butcher and rehash.

Not one to overstay its welcome, this suspenseful tale is an economic exercise in delivering the goods for those who are interested in a two-fisted Liam Neeson vehicle to soak up, bask in, and then leave behind as soon as it's over.

It has a certain Midwestern charm that settles calmly in the stomach, making the viewer feel warm, comfortable, and quick to smile.

While it may not be "Citizen Canine," Rise of the Lycans tells its tale competently and without the derivative nature of its predecessors.

A film that's brimming with fascinating ideas and elevated by some memorable performances.