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A bittersweet drama about the limbo of grief and how truth-telling can open the door to liberation.

more precious than perspicacious

Rarely does such high-profile talent serve such literate material.

A moving picture that does not move.

This ludicrous film is predictable at every turn.

Just another combination of bad animation and mindless violence...lacking the slightest bit of wit or charm.

(Fiji diver Rusi Vulakoro and the married couple Howard and Michelle Hall) show us the world they love and make us love it, too.

A fanciful drama about Napoleon's last years and his surprising discovery of love and humility.

The superior plotline isn't quite enough to drag along the dead (water) weight of the other.

...enthusiastically invokes the percussion rhythm, the brass soul and the sense of fierce competition that helps make great marching bands half the fun of college football games.

Spy Kids 2 also happens to be that rarity among sequels: It actually improves upon the original hit movie.

Speaks eloquently about the symbiotic relationship between art and life.

Audiard successfully maintains suspense on different levels throughout a film that is both gripping and compelling.

An unsettling, memorable cinematic experience that does its predecessors proud.

Its almost too-spectacular coastal setting distracts slightly from an eccentric and good-naturedly aimless story.

A compassionate, moving portrait of an American (and an America) always reaching for something just outside his grasp.

(Stephen) Earnhart's film is more about the optimism of a group of people who are struggling to give themselves a better lot in life than the ones they currently have.

Adaptation is intricately constructed and in a strange way nails all of Orlean's themes without being a true adaptation of her book.

If you want a movie time trip, the 1960 version is a far smoother ride.

An older cad instructs a younger lad in Zen and the art of getting laid in this prickly indie comedy of manners and misanthropy.

With amazing finesse, the film shadows Heidi's trip back to Vietnam and the city where her mother, Mai Thi Kim, still lives.

An occasionally interesting but mostly repetitive look at a slice of counterculture that might be best forgotten.

It's an 88-minute highlight reel that's 86 minutes too long.

(Jeff's) gorgeous, fluid compositions, underlined by Neil Finn and Edmund McWilliams's melancholy music, are charged with metaphor, but rarely easy, obvious or self-indulgent.

It's a smart, solid, kinetically-charged spy flick worthy of a couple hours of summertime and a bucket of popcorn.

The film is predictable in the reassuring manner of a beautifully sung holiday carol.

The heat of the moment prevails.

A beautifully tooled action thriller about love and terrorism in Korea.

Return to Never Land is much more P.C. than the original version (no more racist portraits of Indians, for instance), but the excitement is missing.

The only thing "swept away" is the one hour and thirty-three minutes spent watching this waste of time.

The banter between Calvin and his fellow barbers feels like a streetwise McLaughlin Group ... and never fails to entertain.

While The Importance of Being Earnest offers opportunities for occasional smiles and chuckles, it doesn't give us a reason to be in the theater beyond Wilde's wit and the actors' performances.

Contrived, awkward and filled with unintended laughs, the film shows signs that someone other than the director got into the editing room and tried to improve things by making the movie go faster.

Broomfield reminds us that beneath the hype, the celebrity, the high life, the conspiracies and the mystery there were once a couple of bright young men -- promising, talented, charismatic and tragically doomed.

Offers a persuasive look at a defeated but defiant nation in flux.

Muccino seems to be exploring the idea of why human beings long for what they don't have, and how this gets us in trouble.

This picture is mostly a lump of run-of-the-mill profanity sprinkled with a few remarks so geared toward engendering audience sympathy that you might think he was running for office -- or trying to win over a probation officer.

My Wife is an Actress has its moments in looking at the comic effects of jealousy.

A riveting documentary.

While I can't say it's on par with the first one, Stuart Little 2 is a light, fun cheese puff of a movie.

So boring that even its target audience talked all the way through it.

Sad to say -- it accurately reflects the rage and alienation that fuels the self-destructiveness of many young people.

It's neither as sappy as Big Daddy nor as anarchic as Happy Gilmore or The Waterboy, but it has its moments.

Great character interaction.

Louiso lets the movie dawdle in classic disaffected-indie-film mode, and brother Hoffman's script stumbles over a late-inning twist that just doesn't make sense.

Even bigger and more ambitious than the first installment, Spy Kids 2 looks as if it were made by a highly gifted 12-year-old instead of a grown man.

A meatier deeper beginning and/or ending would have easily tipped this film into the "A" range, as is, it's a very very strong "B+."

Funny in a sick, twisted sort of way.

Trapped won't score points for political correctness, but it may cause parents a few sleepless hours -- a sign of its effectiveness.

Nicks refuses to let Slackers be seen as just another teen movie, which means he can be forgiven for frequently pandering to fans of the gross-out comedy.

But though he only scratches the surface, at least he provides a strong itch to explore more.

There are few things more frustrating to a film buff than seeing an otherwise good movie marred beyond redemption by a disastrous ending.

The film lapses too often into sugary sentiment and withholds delivery on the pell-mell pyrotechnics its punchy style promises.

Birthday Girl walks a tricky tightrope between being wickedly funny and just plain wicked.

Potty-mouthed enough for PG-13, yet not as hilariously raunchy as South Park, this strangely schizo cartoon seems suited neither to kids or adults.

Doesn't add up to much.

While it is welcome to see a Chinese film depict a homosexual relationship in a mature and frank fashion, Lan Yu never catches dramatic fire.

The movie is silly beyond comprehension, and even if it weren't silly, it would still be beyond comprehension.

Despite its flaws, Crazy as Hell marks an encouraging new direction for La Salle.

This film is too busy hitting all of its assigned marks to take on any life of its own.

One of the most plain, unimaginative romantic comedies I've ever seen.

It's tough to watch, but it's a fantastic movie.

The movie is well crafted, and well executed.

It all comes down to whether you can tolerate Leon Barlow.

90 punitive minutes of eardrum-dicing gunplay, screeching-metal smashups, and flaccid odd-couple sniping.

Moore provides an invaluable service by sparking debate and encouraging thought.

A big fat pain.

This is a movie filled with unlikable, spiteful idiots; whether or not their friendship is salvaged makes no difference in the least.

As giddy and whimsical and relevant today as it was 270 years ago.

While some will object to the idea of a Vietnam picture with such a rah-rah, patriotic tone, Soldiers ultimately achieves its main strategic objective: dramatizing the human cost of the conflict that came to define a generation.

It's a pedestrian, flat drama that screams out 'amateur' in almost every frame.

Hip-hop rarely comes alive as its own fire-breathing entity in this picture.

Parts seem like they were lifted from Terry Gilliam's subconscious, pressed through Kafka's meat grinder and into Buñuel's casings

It uses some of the figures from the real-life story to portray themselves in the film.

For casual moviegoers who stumble into Rules expecting a slice of American Pie hijinks starring the kid from Dawson's Creek, they'll probably run out screaming.

It could have been something special, but two things drag it down to mediocrity -- director Clare Peploe's misunderstanding of Marivaux's rhythms, and Mira Sorvino's limitations as a classical actress.

Affable if not timeless, Like Mike raises some worthwhile themes while delivering a wholesome fantasy for kids.

Slap her - she's not funny!

Everything's serious, poetic, earnest and -- sadly -- dull.

See Clockstoppers if you have nothing better to do with 94 minutes.

If you're not fans of the adventues of Steve and Terri, you should avoid this like the dreaded King Brown snake.

A psychic journey deep into the very fabric of Iranian ... life.

An incredibly thoughtful, deeply meditative picture that neatly and effectively captures the debilitating grief felt in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks.

Love Liza is a festival film that would have been better off staying on the festival circuit.

This is an extraordinary film, not least because it is Japanese and yet feels universal.

Gaghan ... has thrown every suspenseful cliché in the book at this nonsensical story.

Deuces Wild is an encyclopedia of cliches that shoplifts shamelessly from farewell-to-innocence movies like The Wanderers and A Bronx Tale without cribbing any of their intelligence.

It's still terrible!

It's in the action scenes that things fall apart.

If Ayurveda can help us return to a sane regimen of eating, sleeping and stress-reducing contemplation, it is clearly a good thing.

Will certainly appeal to Asian cult cinema fans and Asiaphiles interested to see what all the fuss is about.

They're just a couple of cops in Copmovieland, these two, but in Narc, they find new routes through a familiar neighborhood.

While dutifully pulling on heartstrings, directors Dean Deblois and Chris Sanders valiantly keep punching up the mix.

Davis is funny, charming and quirky in her feature film acting debut as Amy.

Heartwarming and gently comic even as the film breaks your heart.

Scherfig, the writer-director, has made a film so unabashedly hopeful that it actually makes the heart soar.

Barry convinces us he's a dangerous, secretly unhinged guy who could easily have killed a president because it made him feel powerful.

An unsuccessful attempt at a movie of ideas.

This strenuously unfunny Showtime deserves the hook.

Stands as one of the year's most intriguing movie experiences, letting its imagery speak for it while it forces you to ponder anew what a movie can be.