Charles Taylor

The irony of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is that it has the most literate pedigree of any action movie you're likely to see this year or next -- and it's been made by people who seem to have no sense of how to tell a story.

Such an inept bundle of work -- crying out for the filmmaking equivalent of Ritalin, but still sluggish as syrup -- that it doesn't even provide an opportunity to ogle properly.

The type of comedy the Farrellys love requires dizzy, pell-mell pacing. If There's Something About Mary were tightened up by about 20 minutes, it would be much funnier.

A cozy little ode to sensual and culinary pleasure.

For a big-budget action movie Spider-Man 2 is modest and not assaultive -- it has a boring decency.

The pacing is off, the emotional tone is wobbly, and none of the actors seem to be acting in the same style or the same movie.

Stettner must be one of the luckiest and unluckiest debut directors in years, blessed with actors who both take the focus away from his limitations and wind up shining a spotlight on them.

Much of the pleasure of the movie is the way its mood lingers with you afterward.

Kubrick's much-anticipated final film boils down to the most elaborate monogamy lecture ever.

The embodiment of every conservative paranoid's slathering fantasies about Paula Jones, Vince Foster and Whitewater.

To borrow a phrase from Pauline Kael, Intimate Strangers suggests bits of Alfred Hitchcock and bits of Woody Allen. But the wrong bits.

Seems best suited to all the couch-potato swinging dicks who get off watching the police on "Cops" keep the public safe from people in possession of marijuana.

An art noir that courts pretension but just manages to keep from succumbing to it.

It’s no news to anyone that “E.T.” is one of the loveliest and happiest of American movie entertainments. It’s also a greater picture than we could have known. [2002 re-release]

It's not just our emotions that are being played on here, it's not just our intelligence being insulted because of Ron Howard and Akiva Goldsman's presumption that we won't have any interest in a character whom it's not always possible to like. It's John Nash's life, being turned into an Oscar machine and an easy way to jerk tears.

Legally Blonde was content to tickle you. The new one is something akin to a band that has a surprisingly successful debut deciding to rerecord all their originals and release a "Greatest Hits" collection for their second CD. It's both familiar and off.

The movie feels choppy and rhythmless. And he's (Chelsom) rather hopeless at dance sequences.

Whenever Harris or Tobolowsky come on-screen they stop Memento dead in its clever tracks. You want to tell Nolan to stop all the po-mo deconstructive game playing and pay attention to the two human beings in front of him.

Branagh is appealing here in the way we remember from movie heroes of the '30s: cynical, wisecracking and wised-up.

Lean, fast and undeniably entertaining.

None of the characters in Magnolia feel as vividly imagined as the porn stars and filmmakers and hangers-on of "Boogie Nights."

I understand how hard it is for parents to find movies to take their kids to, but the thought of them or their children getting stuck at this stinker galls me. Summer vacation feels short enough as it is.

The picture starts off slick and amusing, gets convoluted, draggy and strange round about the midway point, and ends up just plain ludicrous.

Deep Impact is the work of someone crass enough, and in some essential way mad enough, to try to turn the apocalypse into a tear-jerker.

Sandler deserves to be damned to the pits of hell for this witless masturbatory comedy.

The Time Machine is, for the most part, a handsome, pleasant entertainment.

Not without its own bleak integrity. But the movie wipes you out and leaves you with nothing, not even the feeling of exaltation that can be present in the most tragic works of art.

A large part of the movie's problem is that both the characters and the actors who portray them serve as vehicles for Ramsay's stylistic flourishes.