The film grows on you, but more substance and less calculated quirks would have been a royal treat.

What works in a quirky foreign film can look silly with expansive Hollywood treatment. Crowe is smart enough to know this, so it's baffling he chose Vanilla over richer cinematic tastes.

This tale is both redemptive and tragic, if occasionally melodramatic.

Majidi tells his simple story with dazzling vision.

Land has a lot of funny moments, which are no less serious for being so, especially when the script turns politically prickly.

Despite dashes of droll dialogue from screenwriter Ted Griffin, the remake aims for cool but instead gets chilly.

Incorporates a range of genres -- black comedy, thriller, psychological drama -- and emerges more powerful for it.

The affair may have raised eyebrows all over 18th century Paris, but it's not likely to elicit more than a shrug from 21st century moviegoers.

There's nothing very rockin' about seeing Gene Hackman give a rare indifferent performance as a Navy admiral trying to effect a rescue for which his hands are tied.

Bedroom succeeds with performances that get some of their power from imaginative casting.

Those who teach public speaking sometimes advocate telling your audience what you're going to tell them, then actually telling them, then telling them what you've told them. Sidewalks reproves this isn't a wise path for movies.

More than a quarter-century ago, Redford played a young CIA employee in "Three Days of the Condor." Someday, it will make a great living-room double bill with Spy Game -- the actor then and now.

We had hoped for just a funny movie, but instead we get some laughs and plenty of yawns.

Can't decide what direction it's going in. Some of the time it seems to be a standard teen sex comedy. Occasionally, it appears to be spoofing the genre. It concludes on a romantic, almost honorable note.

With Bonham Carter's been-there, done-that performance and a plot that spins out of control, we end up with a movie that you can't quite sink your teeth into.

Though the film will undoubtedly please the young viewers who flock to it, ultimately many of the book's readers may wish for a more magical incarnation.

Good spirits are worth something, and the movie has them, as well as scattershot chuckles.

The movie is shrewd by giving the bulk of its piggish dialogue to Alexander, an actor incapable of projecting genuine cruelty on screen.

Passable but never exciting, Heist is on a level with those minor Burt Lancaster action pics the actor's name helped bankroll in the '70s.

Though the comedy is sometimes more frenetic than inspired and viewer emotions are rarely touched to any notable degree, the movie is as visually inventive as its Pixar predecessors.

Irresistibly endearing, with a visual verve all its own.

Anyone who sees this movie is going to be 20 minutes ahead of it, though there won't be that many after Weekend 1. With domestic disturbances, someone calls the cops. With this DOA, someone had better call the coroner.

As impressive as Kevin Spacey ordinarily is, this isn't the best vehicle for his considerable talents.

When so many PG-13 movies are encroaching on R-rated turf, it's heartening to see a film that responsibly approaches its audience.

Kline is one of the rare major actors not afraid to look like hell. And given his character's plight, his willingness to get physically unpleasant matches the emotion he brings to the part.

Too distinctive-looking to dismiss out of hand, but it would help to be able to look through a magic viewfinder (or maybe magic eraser) and make its script disappear.

If grossness gives you the giggles, at least a couple of the movie's effects indeed put a little "wow" in this cinematic bowwow.

Two constants: good acting and an old-fashioned preachiness that backfires.