The actors play it with poker-faces, but the further we go into the noir territory of hard-boiled, fast-paced dialogue and dames wrapped in crimson and black, the more ticklish Brick gets.

Not everything works in this semi-audacious challenge to the American Dream, but Weitz consistently and amusingly hits the broad side of the barn.

Strictly boilerplate...fail[s] to pursue any interesting avenues, using the cardboard characters as mere shooting-range targets.

The appeal of Schultz's pop philosophy hasn't faded in forty years: this kind of sincerity can't be faked.

I just don't see much entertainment value--or, certainly, a shelf life--in a contrived string of mildly amusing parodies of bad movies. Here today, yawn tomorrow.

Rigged for your pleasure...everything is played up for schmaltz value or dopey laughs.

Skews just enough toward Death and the Maiden and away from Saw III.

Since Lu depicts the punishing, unforgiving determination on both sides of the conflict, the film is not entirely pitiless for the pathetic criminal class.

Offers nothing in the way of balancing the protest viewpoint...[but] still usefully revisits--during our current unpopular war--the internal conflict of America during the Vietnam War.

More clever than insightful, [but] Harron makes the most of that humorously earnest style ripped from the pin-up pages.

Gives the characters relatable failings and the story some ironic bite...[but] lacks the depth of empathy Holofcener showed in Lovely and Amazing.

The dance remains the same...Take the Lead has exactly two things going for it (each worth one star): the always entertaining Antonio Banderas and a lot of ballroom dancing.

It's heartening to be able to report that ATL is as much like Diner as it is like Boys in the Hood....Robinson may overdose on style, but he also respects the homegrown origins of this ATLanta-bred tale.

The seams show...a somewhat grudging social obligation for audiences over the age of ten to tow their younger charges.

The collaborationist anti-hero finds Malle instantly broaching a cultural taboo, compounded when the traitorous young man forces himself into a sexual relationship with a not-entirely unyielding girl named France.

In all their messiness, here are love, sex, society, and family, met with cleansing laughter.

As Parker and Stone see it, you can't laugh without first dropping your jaw.

The sympathy toward the obvious evil of a contract killer never flies...Still, the clever central gimmick and a streak of sly humor lift [the] film, just barely, a cut above.

Thorough skewerings of celebrity foibles and fearless campaigns on taboo subjects.

Deepa Mehta: 'I said to myself that I would definitely make Water, but that I would make it when I stopped being angry. And that anger took about four years to dissipate.'

Gets by because it knows it's dorky. It's happily dorky. It's proudly dorky.

A scathing satire....If there's a lesson, it's that spinning your fellow Americans is the real national pastime--the greater problem is when you spin yourself.

Just because American films frequently exploit repressed memories as a plot device in nasty genre pictures doesn't make the genteel Don't Tell a sophisticated or particularly insightful film.

A divided domestic electorate will take [it] either as a kick-***, future-punk primal scream of political frustration or as an irresponsible, literally and figuratively incendiary attack on our...approval-deficient leaders.

The most fun I've had at the movies this year.

The real blood war is between this movie and the slightly better Aeon Flux, which Wimmer plagiarizes as freely as Equilibrium plagiarized Fahrenheit 451 and The Matrix.

Paul Weitz: 'The fact that it's a comedy allows people kind of a pressure release, and they're actually glad to be laughing at the things that they're stressing out about most of the time.'

William H. Macy and Stuart Gordon: '[Macy:] I don't know if I find him a repulsive character. As a matter of fact, I don't....all the little pieces I find to be logical and true, true to the human experience.'

Its own bird...gets dryly funnier and more emotionally rich as it goes along, making it a fine way to while away an afternoon.

Wait for iiittt...yes, there's Allen lifting his leg to pee. I checked my watch when the sound of Baja Men's "Who Let the Dogs Out?" surrounded me: fifty minutes in.

As skillfully made and genuinely horrific as it is a pointless rehash....there's more than a whiff of smug cynicism in the dry air of this conflicted satire.

Despite its flaws, this story of love and self-discovery is still more smart, stylish, and sexy than the usual fare.

Paula's practiced fraud sounds criminal at worst and grounds for civil suits at best, but to Hollywood, it's a romantic comedy....downright repellent.

Carion old-fashions the true story of the 1914 Christmas truce into sentimental melodrama....it's easy to imagine the story being told more effectively with less labor.

Rothemund's film, like last year's Downfall, benefits from its scrupulous treatment of history and generally restrained performances.

The grabber premise of trying to evade a cordon of enemies to transport a man just 16 blocks runs low on ingenuity at the halfway point, bogging down in a too-familiar hostage standoff.

A character plans out a 42-hour-and-11 minute journey accompanied by a 16-CD soundtrack....Elizabethtown feels every bit as long and music-saturated...

Keaton's Columbia shorts inspire a certain amount of sympathy and ruefulness at a star's misuse, but also inspiration as Keaton occasionally spins gold out of chaff.

With intelligence and style (inspired by the art of Gustave Doré and Francisco Solé), Polanski makes a rewarding contribution to Dickens' legacy on screen.

[Renoir's] expertise behind the camera--and his driving curiosity for human constructs and human nature...elevate La bete humaine to an unforgettable filmic experience.

Kramer stokes kinetic energy and hard-R intensity...may amount to no more than a punch to the gut, but...it's all in bad fun.

When Trudell expounds on his political philosophies, the film is fascinating, but Rae lets style obscure substance.

Noel Neill on Bryan Singer: 'He's good on his feet. And I think he's--well, naturally, hope he's going to do well, because it's a tough thing for him. But he's an awfully nice person.'

The unabashed melodrama of the flashbacks and present-day climax can't compete with the theatrical oomph provided by Douglas and Marasco...at the picture's spine.

More movie-biz spoof than postmodern adaptation of the novel, but Winterbottom's film miraculously succeeds in doing both goals a degree of justice.