It's all terribly trite, but Durst does make an effort to keep his film grounded in the reality of a lot of once thriving towns like the fictional Minden.

Sweeney's seduction by the good life and the friendship that develops between these two young men from opposite sides of the tracks and on opposite sides of the law has the makings of an intriguing story. However, director Peter Werner and scripter Dick Wolf treat their story conventionally, and there are few surprises. NO MAN'S LAND's saving grace are the performances by Sheen and Sweeney.

This is a movie nasty enough to kill off the major characters twice and still manage to serve up a happy ending.

Negret brings personal experience to the material; his own family endured two ordeals by kidnapping, and he works up a painfull convincing sense of sweaty desperation.

In keeping with the tentativeness of the entire enterprise, the ending is one of the great cop-outs in modern moviedom.

A triumph of style over substance.

The story is beholden to the trendy steroid-and-TV world view: pump it up and cut it fast. Still, the dialogue, while fitfully glib, is wry and engaging, like a profane Raymond Chandler on speed. No one acts (in the Stanislavsky sense, anyway) but all perform well.

Old family secrets and fresh entanglements snake through the intricate plot like the tendrils of a particularly poisonous strain of ivy that flourishes only in the hot-house atmosphere of tiny towns, whatever the outside temperature.

The character designs, however, are much less impressive. Except for the oddly naturalistic Sinclair, the rest look like cartoony characters from one of Disney's '60s films.

Granted, it's unfair to compare an actor's precocious child persona with his awkward 14-year-old self, but Osment relies so often on his furrowed brow to convey emotion that you have to keep reminding yourself that the technique actually worked in "The Sixth Sense."

An uncommonly smart and bittersweet romantic comedy.

This tepid ghost story fails to focus on either its story or its target audience.

The whole film has a rag-tag, purposefully shambolic feel -- but this communal commitment to a DIY aesthetic is also his undoing, particularly when he allows an irritatingly manic Jack Black to run wild and virtually hijack the movie.

For all its classy cast and glum polish, this metaphysical horror picture with big things on its mind lacks the malevolent buzz that vitalized SEVEN and THE HIDDEN, two of the more obvious sources from which it draws considerable inspiration.

JAMAICA INN had many interesting incidents associated with it. Unfortunately, very little of that interest reached the screen.

A wacky, occasionally inventive road movie that fails to display the vision or the dark intensity of director Lynch's earlier work.

It may not be by-the-book history -- a relative term in any event, when discussing the ancients whose worldview embraced men, gods and monsters -- but what a spectacle!

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.

Stone handles his huge ensemble cast extremely well.

The fact that this is somebody's real-life story up on there the screen doesn't necessarily guarantee it's an especially fresh story.

With nothing in the way of performance to cling to, the audience is left to marvel at the mounting inanity of each scene.

Shyer's direction was on the money most of the time but was just a little flabby occasionally--perhaps because he cowrote the script with Meyers and hated to lose a precious word.

A crude, artless bogey tale.

The film's seriousness of intent is unimpeachable – Forman and Carriere see disturbing echoes of the modern world in 18th-century Spain -- but the execution borders on farce.

Mark Rydell shows some fine touches in his third feature, but the result is an overlong and often-dull movie that had the rare distinction of being one of the few John Wayne westerns that gasped at the box office.

While there's little to be gained from over-critiquing a child's performance, it must be said that director Alejandro Agresti badly miscalculates the appeal of his young star; the fact he not only dominates each scene but provides the film's narration means there's not getting away from young Noya.

A privileged peek into the glitzy world of Texas's ultra-rich, minus the melodrama.

The film is dull going, even for the pre-adolescents at whom it's aimed, and feels far longer than it actually is.