I can’t imagine why anyone would plunge ahead with this project -- an adaptation of a classic no one reads, about characters no one could care about, directed by a filmmaker of little talent and less success.

In the end, the performances and the basic strength of the premise make Shadow of the Vampire a relatively diverting ninety minutes. But there is the inescapable feeling that it is a shadow of the great film it might have been.

It’s Del Toro who really gets to strut his stuff with a subtle, ambiguous, and riveting performance. In a field of top-notch actors, he’s the one whom you remember days later.

Greenwood gives a nuanced performance that may be the film's best work, but at times his surface dissimilarities to JFK are jarring.

Zemeckis is more interested here in getting us thinking (and feeling) than in telling us what to think.

In terms of cleverly hidden exposition, this ain't "The Sixth Sense."

Shallow characters the audience cares little about, an unbelievable situation rather than a potent plot, and, for those who don’t find men-in-pantyhose or poodle-poop jokes hilarious, not many funny lines.

In the real audience with which I watched it, the only laughs were from kids under eight or nine, mostly at hilarious "hooter" jokes.

Pretty hysterical.

Middlebrow art has its built-in pitfalls, not the least of them sentimentality and intellectual flabbiness -- both of which are in abundant supply in Bagger Vance.

Every so often, a movie comes along that is so bad, so unfunny, so incredibly awful that it redefines how you think about film. Stardom is just such a movie.

There are lots of elements that make no sense whatever.

Better to wait for movies like Bedazzled on video and watch Fraser in the theatre when he goes back to playing with Gods and Monsters instead of the Devil.

May well stand as his (Chan) final word on true martial arts cinema.

Belongs somewhere in the low middle of Altman's output -- not up to "Cookie's Fortune," but way better than, say, "Beyond Therapy," which remains his worst film by some margin.

It's the triumph of the human spirit in its never-ending quest to be an original no matter what the establishment says.

Kay doesn't seem to know the meaning of moderation.

If you give it half a chance, it will entertain you.

By the end, we simply have no idea what he (Lee) feels or what the film is really about. And we are too worn out to care.

Never before have two such skilled actors been so monstrously squandered in a movie so replete with failed gags and pathetic gaffs.

Chilling and technically proficient and, also, fairly hollow.

Confirms its place as one of the best first films in recent memory, and one of this year's very best films.

Perfectly effective when judged on its own merits, but is that really enough anymore?

Generally engaging.

I found myself roaring at the grotesque way some of the characters talk to their pets, pausing only briefly when I realized that I do precisely the same thing.

Scrappy, sappy, and appealing.

This is as close to a total wipeout as can be imagined.

Lacks just about everything on every level.