X-Men Origins: Wolverine is about as unwieldy as its title: it’s a big, sprawling mess of summer blockbuster, but lovable just the same
Marcus Nispel’s Friday the 13th is yet another pointless remake of a ‘classic’ slasher film
The Reader, based on the novel by Bernhard Schlink, raises a lot of interesting moral questions
Synecdoche, New York, is the best translation of a Charlie Kaufman screenplay to the screen yet
P.J. Hogan’s Confessions of a Shopaholic is about as good as one could reasonably expect
Hotel for Dogs smartly gives its wonderful canine actors as much (or more) screen time as its often-flat human cast
Defiance is a compelling portrait of a community of Jews struggling to survive as a guerrilla partisan group in Belorussian forests in 1941
Gran Torino is a somewhat simplistic film content to tell its own isolated story rather than reaching for something greater
Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky isn’t as lightweight as the title would indicate
There are a lot of good things about The Visitor, but one of the best may be the emergence of Jenkins
Toys in the Attic is a wonderful little children’s picture that’s plenty of fun for adults (especially animation buffs) to boot
A romantic comedy that provides neither romance nor comedy, Gary Winick’s Bride Wars is what many will call a “chick flick”
“New Model. Original Parts.” A nice way of saying Justin Lin’s Fast and Furious is more of the same
The Unborn is yet another unwatchable Exorcist variation, this time with a Jewish twist: the evil spirit is a dybbuk
Sex Drive is the best a film like this can get, with a real affection for its characters
Stuart Townsend’s Battle in Seattle is a surprisingly effective little piece of propaganda
He’s Just Not That Into you is surprisingly watchable and refreshingly inoffensive
Marley & Me features too little Marley and too much Me, in this case Owen Wilson, standing in for the author
John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt is thought-provoking and refreshingly ambiguous
Watchmen painstakingly lays it all out on the screen, daring viewers to accept or reject it on sight
The Pink Panther 2 is an improvement over the much-despised 2006 movie, with some talented players and clever dialogue
The Duchess evokes a nice 17th Century feel but fails to evoke much on the dramatic scale
Slumdog Millionaire is a stylized, energetic, crowd-pleasing picture that almost everyone can enjoy
Bolt is Disney’s best non-Pixar animated film in quite some time