Far more manic than funny, Chicken Little tries to spin the kiddie standard about a little chick convinced the sky is falling into a depressingly "hip," Shreky-green comedy act.

Triumphant coming-of-age drama (complete with horses!) [aimed] at little girls and their captive-audience fathers.

Feature films about sexual harassment are hardly a dime a dozen, so Niki Caro's North Country—gawky though it may be at times—comes as welcome.

Mysterious daddy issues, a color scheme that washes everything in fluorescent urine and lime-green Jello, and....editing so jittery it'll send you into rapid eye movement.

[Jerks] every tear in the "chick-lit" book...but the fertile combination of Hanson, Grant, and the stars allows blossoms of truth and humor to spring up out of the mulch.

Charming...inspired....ridiculously entertaining.

A theatrical movie infused with the energy of live TV....Good Night, and Good Luck. reminds us that, when played right, journalism is a dangerous game.

A movie for young people, and they're welcome to it. Anyone older than teenage already will have seen every joke in Waiting... in more finely crafted, funnier movies.

Primarily, Into the Blue displays plenty of priceless booty (and the treasure is impressive, too...).

Kirn's sharp-tongued novel would suggest an Alexander Payne film rife with arch satire, but Mills ultimately goes for a more deeply affecting emotional study.

Affectionate retro fun that coasts on soul sounds of the '70s and Cosby Kids-styled camaraderie.

Glennie and Reidelsheimer prove equally adept at tapping into found sound and transforming it into art.

[Burton paints] death as a (literally) more colorful plane of existence than life, the ultimate subversive joke in a movie full of them.

Painfully predictable romanticized crap, but dealing as it does with mortal tragedy—death, brain-death, and loss—it's also unscrupulous and exploitative.

A veil of censorship frustrates Milani, but also inspires her to clever means of skull-penetrating overstatement and subliminal understatement.

Can be voyeuristically interesting...[but] James fails to justify this for-hire, backfired vanity project in an age glutted with reality TV.

Provides a useful contrast to good dramas....Redford and Freeman should have invested their chops elsewhere.

If the memory of the film flits away soon after viewing, the comic beats are amusing.

Soft in the middle, and none of Cho's stories here take on an epic scope....[Yet] the comedienne remains endearingly naughty.

Transporter 2 has the narrative skills and libido of a newly pubescent boy.

Sing, muse! Sing of a century-hence future when we shall all/Drive impractically bulky cars and pay through the teeth/To hunt dinosaurs on a TimeSafari to the past!

Iglesia's comic cautionary tale observes the monsters created by "every man for himself" attitudes.

A terrible script, pedestrian direction, and acting that's mediocre at best signify that Eternal...[is] ready-made, moderately sexy fodder for late-night Skin-emax.

Nothing is less shocking than a movie that's constantly trying to shock....more bite than bark, but it's all dog.

Wes Craven banishes the memory of Cursed to bring us a lean thriller that's just right for armrest-gripping.

Valiant is sadly boring, and while its rote mechanics may function nominally on children, it's going to be a long 76 minutes for the adults.

Dude, I am bummed.

May I humbly suggest you go to a concert or have sex instead? Heck, do both.

We're spared the sounds [of Treadwell's death], but haunted by our own mental image, one more example of the individual's capacity to create his own reality.

Call Four Brothers a guilty pleasure....Singleton may go for easy laughs, but he gets them; the gut-level jolts may be ridiculous, but he delivers them (with style).

Has little more ambition than to make Murray the funny valentine of one of Jarmusch's mood pieces....indeed, some of the best moments are wordless.

The balancing act of character contradictions ultimately becomes more about itself than true human behavior.

Glazed-over looks, naked flesh, inane philosophizing, and sand dunes announce that we're in Antonioni-land, circa Zabriskie Point.

Passing eccentricities of character, but serious trouble staging honest and coherent emotional scenes....a surplus of preciousness and a deficit of truth-ringing reality.

Weerasethakul's confident composition of sight and sound induces a trance-like state with an elegant suggestion: that all-consuming love is for old souls.

Dissatisfying to an adult audience accustomed to more sophisticated parody....will resonate with young viewers on their way to high school.

Lucas insists, "I just don't think war should become some kind of video game." Too late.

Cutesy stuff, breezily amusing but...a basically weightless and disposable date movie.

Partly an internalized memory play and partly a strident drama in the vein of Strindberg or Ibsen, Ingmar Bergman's latest swan song to cinema bears the mark of a master.

A sincere effort to sound an echo into Kurt Cobain's cave....Van Sant turns photographic art into screen poetry.

Telegraphs its unsatisfying payoff for miles, has no fun getting there, but at least boasts a running time of 73 minutes, padded by a hilariously slow credit crawl.

Seen with forgiving eyes, Wedding Crashers is trashy, raunchy fun.

Secrets and lies laid bare by a strong cast make Roos' happy endings cathartic and reassuring.

The medium is also the message: the film itself has mana, offering "a gateway into a whole realm of knowledge," material and spiritual.