Watching a movie like Water for Elephants, knowing that it's not only based on a novel but on a best-selling novel that was all the rage for book clubs, makes me wonder about the book -- specifically, how bad is it?

I get the joke about Pom Wonderful Presents The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. I wish it was a little funnier -- or more pointed. It's provocative; it could be more so.

I understand why Susanne Bier's In a Better World won the foreign-language Oscar -- but I believe this was the better film.

What's that you say? A documentary about ventriloquists? Could anyone resist? Resist at your own risk, however, with Mark Goffman's Dumbstruck, openi...

As he did with Lions for Lambs, Robert Redford uses The Conspirator to construct a conscience-pricking drama that tells one story while commenting (no...

Henry Winkler's film Ceremony is as good an example of faux Wes Anderson as you'll find. Not that it's a good film; or an original one.

Rio is a fish-out-of-water animated comedy about birds -- and, as those things go, it's cute and entertaining -- but not in an aggressive or annoying way.

There have been any number of comics who have aspired to the mantle held by comic Lenny Bruce and his obvious heir, Richard Pryor. Their successors ra...

Director Sean McNamara's roots in TV -- shows such as That's So Raven -- are apparent. Even with Dennis Quaid, Helen Hunt and young AnnaSophia Robb as Bethany, Soul Surfer feels like a TV movie.

An oddball blend of crime tale and backstage comedy, Henry's Crime is a deadpan delight, an unexpected treat that offers the fire-and-ice teaming of Keanu Reeves and Vera Farmiga.

Hanna and her father live in a cabin near the Arctic Circle -- but their time there is about to come to an end. He's training her for a mission: to find her way to a certain address in Munich.

By the logic of the script for Your Highness, if I want to write an amusing review of the film, all I need to do is type the word "f**k" 500 times. O...

Let's start with a fact. The 1981 film Arthur is a middling piece of studio comedy, buoyed (in the first half) by an unexpectedly effervescent perform...

Winner of this year's Oscar as best foreign-language film, In a Better World is an intriguing examination of the ideas of revenge and forgiveness, but it wraps things up too neatly to be truly compelling.

Queen to Play seems so obvious in its metaphors and plotting that you come away stunned at the end to realize just how engaging and involving it is. ...

I can already see it at some virtual movie-revival house of the future: a "what-if?" double feature that teams Limitless and Source Code and points ou...

Hop's two-dimensional presentation during a year when 3D is completely overdone certainly earns the movie extra points in my book. Unfortunately, that is about the best I can say about it.

You've got to hand it to Adrien Brody, perhaps the gamest actor working in films today. An Oscar-winner, he's willing to go wherever he thinks the in...

If the description of Super sounds a lot like last year's Kick-Ass, well, it's essentially the same movie, with a slightly different sensibility. Kic...

There's no reason to go on at much length about Rubber, a new film by Quentin Dupieux. This is the kind of oddball entry that's popular at film festi...

David Schwimmer's Trust is a thought-provoking film that manages to incorporate horrifying information without feeling like an after-school special.

Todd Haynes has spent his filmmaking career working far outside the mainstream -- yet he seems surprised when a reporter refers to his new miniseries, HBO's Mildred Pierce, as surprisingly conventional for him.

As Peter Himmelstein's script jumps from a family birthday dinner back to the day before, we get a thumbnail of each Meyerwitz child's disappointing life.

It took the Dead to bring Jim Kohlberg's film to life. The Grateful Dead, that is - and Bob Dylan. When they agreed to allow their songs to be used a...

If you're looking for Sucker Punch to make sense - or do anything else that seems conventional or that you've seen before - see another film. Zack Sn...