Naive as its young heroine, but also as good-natured.

Martin's innate verbal panache is the only asset that shows any reliability here.

[Cronenberg] investigates his own cinematic propensity for violence and skill at purveying it...sex and violence can be random, can be animal, and certainly can be satisfying.

Knows its priorities: to make the legions of High School Musical fans dewy-eyed, toe-tapping, soul-soaring happy, and to pave the way for High School Musical 4.

Believing in love is swell and all, but maybe we're better off not buying the brand Pretty Woman is selling.

I think you can smell what the Rock is cooking: a dish that'll fatten your head but pleasantly plump your gut.

Harris has made himself a reputation as a mark of quality...Like Pollack, Appaloosa has the best of both worlds, with Harris both in front of and behind the camera.

One way to break down cultural walls is assimilation, and that's where Ping Pong Playa has its dubious triumph: it's just about as generic as the next 'loser makes good by coaching kids' comedy...

Energetic, fast-paced, and pumped full of zany humor...sure to entertain the younguns and be fairly painless for their guardians.

There's no denying the tween audience was hungering for this movie, without even knowing it.

Radiating serpentine self-absorption, Philip Seymour Hoffman embodies a youthful Truman Capote.

Pretty bad, but in a way, we'd be disappointed if it wasn't...it's all about Campbell, a limber linguist whose verbal sense seems straight out of the '40s, and a game physical comic.

As far as I can tell, no one is at the controls of Doom.

If you’re going to have a mall-ready entertainment about the war on terror, you might as well have this one.

Whether you want to credit or blame Friday the 13th for its role in influencing modern cineplex cinema is a matter of taste.

You'd think that Pakula would be just the man to tease the intellectual and emotional depth out of a Grisham potboiler, but you'd be wrong.

Stone isn't interested in merely bashing modern football: Any Given Sunday looks at the best and worst of the sport.

It’s hard not to think of the film as a timely reflection of today’s deep economic recession...writer-director Courtney Hunt has something of the eye for detail expected from a good short story writer.

Napoleon Dynamite may not even be friggin' sweet, but it does have skills.

In vino veritas...Payne has supplanted the Coen Brothers as a reliable purveyor of smart comedy

A fascinating true-crime story, elegant period detail, and Clint Eastwood's consummate filmmaking technique mask [that]...Changeling lacks enough grit and intellect to convert moody melodrama into thoughtful drama.

Pulls off the trick of the feel-good movie in a way movies haven't managed in a long time.

Makes a surprisingly convincing case for Dante and Randal as characters worthy of a revisit once a decade.

If you want to hear characters talk to each other in Star Wars dialogue, I've got a couple of trilogies for you.

Soul Men may get by on novelty, but what novelty!

Problematic as a narrative...[but] Lee's simply too smart and talented to make a dismissible film. 

The film's examination of our beauty-obsessed culture—however familiar—remains unfortunately necessary.

Specially filmed in the final days, this version of RENT may not be definitive, but it certainly has sentimental value and...presents the unexpurgated play.

A most unusual musical...Learning something from his subject, Stone gives the picture a snappy rhythm.

Works precisely because it is so upsetting, unusually so for a studio film, and so empathetic for Connie at the hands of her attractive manipulator.

Americans shouldn't have to feel comfortable with the thought of kicking back and having a beer with their President, but it's not a bad criterion for a comedy filmmaker, and Smith is that guy.

Breaks no new ground for movies or for Ritchie, but it is an amusing diversion and therefore a return to form.

Rings false, belittling instead of honoring its sensitive subject with its twinkly score, kid-glove nobility and cloying payoffs.

Relentlessly dour, filled with unsympathetic characters, and made out of cardboard melodrama. It's the last of those sins that is unforgivable.

Whether Being There is an indictment of our narrow view of the world, a celebration of empty-headedness or all of the above, "Life is a state of mind," and Ashby's film is a gift to treasure.

More infamous for its widespread ineptitude than for its artistic innovation...

America is about to see a sharp upturn in hard-luck stories, which makes Kelly Reichardt’s small-scale drama Wendy and Lucy sadly timely.

The recipe of New in Town isn't secret, and it tastes like pablum to me.

Perhaps the greatest compliment to be paid to Vicky Cristina Barcelona is that it serves as a spot-on emblem of Allen's own life philosophy: cling to the transient pleasures, as you're bound to be let down in the end.

Utterly predictable, formulaic, but not entirely unamusing.

Works up decent comic energy, if few actual funny jokes, but we know we've been suckered when we arrive at...yet another animated sing-along to a bygone pop hit.

A shaggy dog of a movie that will appeal big-time to its young target audience...Juno meets After Hours.

A funny and horrifying allegory of American politics and adult society, as seen through the prism—or shall we say "prison"?—that is secondary education.

The Showtime series Dexter challenges comfortable assumptions about human nature...a winningly novelistic narrative.

The race-baiting thriller Lakeview Terrace is exactly what you would expect from a screenplay by a Hollywood hack and an established playwright: some sharp dialogue grafted onto a credibility-stretching and familiar plot.

Jovovich brings an intensity to the role well-matched to Besson's stylistic energy, though this comic-bookish take on Jeanne D'Arc won't be winning any historical-society awards.

Reverent docudrama...to those completely unfamiliar with the case, Zodiac should be every bit as satisfying as a true-crime paperback.

Peter Jackson's King Kong is all things cinema, in the hands of a clever but overindulged filmmaker.

On the surface El Norte is the essence of simplicity. But in 1983, the simple story was both news to many and history to many others finally seeing their story depicted on screen on their terms.

The hero is named for a disgusting bodily function that's hardly PG material, but the movie itself seems to be aimed at grade schoolers.