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.

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.

Gives a sturdy treatment to an inherently fascinating story.

Download the trailer. It's cheaper, quicker, and efficiently shows you everything you think you want to see from the movie.

Marshall sort of gets away with murder by walking the line of pitiless Antarctic cold and family-film warmth.

The uncommon flavor and unconventional rhythms of Price's writing make Freedomland compelling.

Morgan and Wong's snarky iterations on their initial premise don't show much development...a fair diversion but, make no mistake, a waste of time.

The skillful 2D-CGI animation hybrid starts out charmingly enough, with cute sight gags and general monkeying around, but...even kids may lose interest in the labored story.

Play[s] it safe...to sit through this home-invasion scenario yet again, I think we're owed a dead kid. Or at least a contusion. Maybe lightly stun the dog? Toss us a bone here!

Strained of much of its Englishness...A Good Woman earns most of its good will from those Wildean epigrams.

Sincere performances--under the director's sympathetic eye--allow humanity to overshadow the machinery of plot.

Is it too much to hope that the sequel will be "Nanny McPhee vs. Big Momma"? Just asking...

A corny, eighties throwback, with thematic mushiness, regressive sexual politics, and cheesy montages to match.

Thompson can't or won't diverge much from standard fairy-tale plotting, but enlivens the familiar situation comedy with some pleasingly tart lines.

Reveries and fever dreams of early America--Malick casts not for dry history but a psychic projection of spirit from beyond the centuries.

The essentially sanctified Melquiades...is the least developed character...Jones and Arriaga instead focus on the redemption of Estrada's white neighbors.

Too much of this self-congratulatory one-man-show in the guise of a documentary remains real...muddy.

Albert Brooks has always spun gold from self-absorption and gulfs of misunderstanding.

Though the acts don't have the heft required for concert-film greatness, they do comprise a sort of screen capture of the decade's musical movement.

In the callused hands of director David Mackenzie...the rigorously tough-minded Asylum lives up to its potential as a modern masterpiece of psychological terror.

Without belaboring his narrative shaping, Arlyck asks big questions about life paths and philosophical drift.

Too seldom clever, too often tiresomely busy, and wasteful of its voice cast, it's Hoodwinked that is the crime.

When coach Don Haskins sent out five African-American starters to face off against an all-white Wildcat team, barriers were broken, but Glory Road just hits the wall.

Bypasses the mythic tone of Richard Wagner's opera...without forsaking storybook romance. The inoffensive results get the job done, but sadly fail to excite.

Howard's work as Djay is sort of dazzling, but his character's unrelentingly selfish behavior makes audience identification an uphill battle.

Writer-director Richard Shepard speeds through the hairpin turns of a pure-comedy 'what if?' premise....as quirkily suspenseful as it is ticklish.

Grabs for the gut by stoking primal understandings about our loving but tragically distant relationship with the wild.

Amounts to little more than an austere and extremely prolonged episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

A potent legend of modern international relations.

A bit of a sprightly-tragic mess, but if one doesn't try to sum up its parts, it's plenty entertaining in a nostalgic, old-movie way.

Has the plaintive, lyrical feel of a classic Southern short-story.

Rock crumbles, wood splinters, and cartoon sound effects yelp in Chow's full-bore looney tune.

So good-natured and well-intentioned (showcasing as it does up-and-coming Latino bands) that it's tempting to overlook its significant narrative flaws.

Rhyming narration and highly-stylized disproportionate designs distinguished the theatrical cartoon[s]....colorful divertissements for kids.

A startlingly relevant 'social problem film' (shakai-mono)--of its time and our own--and an existential melodrama by way of Hamlet.

Pierre Salvadori's consistently engaging Après vous... begins with an interesting situation and complicates it into delightfully excruciating farce.

A modern romantic comedy movie transplanted to 18th Century Venice...Hallstrom's fleet-footed romp is impossible to take seriously, but that's largely the point.

For a movie purportedly about the truth behind a movie, the mushy Rumor Has It... feels astoundingly false.

The diminished return of the English striptease comedies...neither swanky nor funny enough to entertain, and Sherman's shallow script never earns its melodramatic turns.

The man's increasingly crazifying attempts to make serious films are still nothing more than good movies. Perhaps only Spielberg could fail so spectacularly well.