It shares all the original's shortcomings —--it’s too long and too loud and filled with historical disinformation -- but none of the snap that made "National Treasure" fun for kids and a guilty pleasure for some adults.

It's tough going relieved only by some lovely Irish scenery. -

Tim Burton's grand guignol fantasy transforms Stephen Sondheim's 1979 musical-theater piece into a cheerfully gothic morality tale.

When Cox is performing, the movie is firing on all cylinders.

Freakies fans will swoon.

They’re baaaaack.

Matheson's bitterly ironic ending -- which pivots on the nature of Neville's legend -- is gutted and turned into formulaic pap.

In real life the opportunity to make amends is rare, though the attempt may produce great art. In The Kite Runner, we get neither.

Surprisingly compelling, if not up to dealing with the larger political issues it raises.

Coppola's awkward screenplay never finds its tone -- or perhaps it deliberately evokes the pulp conventions of WWII adventures, horror films, weepy melodrama, psychological mysteries and superhero origin stories as a way of evoking the fundamental artificiality of the cinema. Either way, it never comes together into a cohesive whole, and is seriously undermined by Roth's morose performance.

For a family-friendly holiday comedy, it's still coarse, formulaic and occasionally just plain weird.

What Guttentag and Sturman gain in dramatic immediacy, however, they lose when it comes to historical context, and the chance to offer insight into why such things occur in the first place -- and continue to happen today -- is lost.

Jamal's comedy of family dysfunction is essentially a sitcom episode writ large; it's not subtle, but it's good-natured and hits its marks with ruthless efficiency.

De Felitta's portrait of Paris -- who died in June 2004 -- isn't always flattering, but it is genuinely moving on many levels, none of which require knowledge of or even interest in jazz.

For the most part, the result is a smashing success, filled with great performances and exquisite production design. But those final moments, in which the true nature of the story is revealed, are an unmitigated disaster.

For all the complicated backstory, weighty themes, action set pieces and fanciful production design, the film is oddly unengaging.

With its flashy, music-video style edits, rock-scored montages and septuagenarian cast, it’s hard to say who, exactly, is the right audience for this unusual comedic drama.

Though ultimately flawed, the film's depiction of velvet-gloved cruelty and matter-of-fact betrayal is surprisingly potent, and it's pure pleasure to watch Bacall prowling the corridors of power, tossing her golden mane and tossing off world-weary observations in a voice pitched somewhere between a purr and a growl.

Ritchie wraps this folderol in cinematic razzle-dazzle, including animated sequences, reverse motion, trompe l'oeil production design and tricky lighting. But it's still claptrap.

Diablo and director Jason Reitman never undercut Juno, whom Page brings to a fully rounded life (no pun intended) that verges on the frightening: Her vulnerable center doesn't belie her formidable exterior -- it just makes her more than a sitcom-patter machine.

In the end, Bill emerges as someone truly unique and someone who we feel privileged to know.

What a waste. Check out "Breakdown" or Aldo Lado's 1971 Italian giallo "Long Night Of The Short Dolls" for a far better treatments of the same subject.

Amalric is extraordinary, creating a character literally without moving a muscle.

Veteran conspiracy buffs probably won’t find much of Stone's material particularly new, but Stone’s film does serve as a neat summary for the rest of us while offering a number of intriguing insights into how conspiracy theories work and what they say about specific cultural and political climates.

Wu is able to demonstrate both the timelessness and the universality of stories which, on the surface, sound extreme and unique.

Beautifully encapsulates the film's sensibility, a bizarre mix of reverse cool and childishness.

It's all mean-spirited, foulmouthed sniping.

Says many things at once without much perspective or clarity.