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You'll hear people describe American Gangster as a Black Scarface or a Black Godfather. Well, it's much better than Scarface, less compelling than The Godfather and certainly not a "black" film. It's a two-and-a-half-hour crime drama about the inherently capitalist nature of American crime that manages to feel epic despite it's small-scale story. In fact, it probably could have retained that same feel with an efficient 15-minute cut or, conversely, a serial adaptation to HBO. The character of Frank Lucas could easily sustain his own television series. After about two hours into American Gangster, I couldn't help but wish I could change the channel and pick up his adventures next week. The movie is that good... and it's that long.

Denzel is intense. Crowe is in top form. Scott has crafted an entertaining and meaningful film. But the greatest achievement is Zallian's screenplay which packs in so much story and believable character development with a pitch-perfect ending. Or maybe the greatest achievement is the editing, which builds such a compelling tale out of so many, tiny, efficient scenes that you have to wonder how many more hours of this film are sitting on the cutting room floor.

Maybe they should throw those extra hours back in and sell American Gangster as a miniseries. It really is that good, but it kinda is that long.

"The Kingdom" is more "Rambo" than "Syriana." It's an American fantasy that flaunts realism in favor of thrills and hero worship. And I don't really mean that as a bad thing. As a hero fantasy, it works. But, surprisingly, what works best in this movie are the little, observational moments. If you remember Peter Berg's "Friday Night Lights," you may remember that the quieter, documentary-like moments packed more of a punch than the flashy, action sequences. Why? Because, like Paul Greengrass, Berg may love quick-cutting action sequences, but he also has a way with evoking curiosity and emotion in the casual scenes (a Saudi man praying with his father, Americans observing a foreign land for the first time). Unfortunately, those moments are few and fleeting.

In the end, it's the thrills that count here. And even if "The Kingdom" misplaces its politics (the film waits until its last line of spoken dialogue to hint that the Saudis are more like Americans than we give them credit for -- both in their humanity and their violence), it still delivers on the thrills.

Steven Spielberg was right. "Transformers" is a great fit for Michael Bay. The king of action, flashy effects, macho posturing, cornball humor and over-stylized photography should have been doing cartoon adaptations from the beginning. What seemed cheesy in "The Island" and over the top in "Pearl Harbor" mostly works in "Transformers." Much of it has to do with Shia Labouf's likability, a quick-paced and often-funny script and amazing special effects.

Of course, the script doesn't offer much in the way of story (good robots plus bad robots equal big explosions). But it does give us some great action set pieces and one truly great Spielbergian sequence right in the middle of the film. Take a few friendly aliens, throw them in a boy's backyard, hide them from the parents and fend off the men in black, and you've got "Close Encounters" meets "E.T." meets "The Lost World: Jurassic Park." And Bay pulls it off with truly funny results.

From that point on, however, it's all action. And that may be the film's biggest weakness... or greatest asset, depending on your perspective. Characters fall by the wayside, big story set-ups get cursory finales, and one particular death scene is rushed and quickly forgotten (especially strange for a director who loves dramatic music and slow motion photography).

Most importantly, though, the robots are AWESOME. And THIS is why Spielberg hired Bay. The effects are real. The Autobots and Decepticons lumber, fly, battle, roar and smash. When they fight, you can feel the metal crunching, and when they fall, the ground shudders. But the frenetic fight choreography is both frustrating and exciting. Sometimes the film is way too cluttered with tangled robot arms and weapons, even if the chaos does add a real-world dimension to the effects' believability.

Anyway, "Transformers" is two hours of good looking people shooting at cars and robots, running away from cars and robots, and watching cars and robots explode. And it's pure entertainment.

Best part: check out the producers' "f**k you" to Volkswagen near the beginning of the film. Bernie Mac makes the scene.

It seems like screenwriters are always trying to put a new spin on the courtroom thriller. And this one seems pretty solid. A menacing genius is caught red-handed after shooting his wife. He admits to the crime and signs a confession. Enter the young, hotshot attorney who tosses off the whole affair as "an open-and-shut case." Of course, he couldn't be more wrong. Enter the slinky, high-powered blonde and the distraught, nothing-left-to-lose detective. It's the makings of a fine film noir.

And, for a while, Fracture is bursting with mystery and promise. Who is in on the game? Is the sexy blonde a femme fatal? What role will the detective really play? Unfortunately, after two acts of build-up and meticulous plotting, Fracture turns out to be a slight, although entertaining, courtroom thriller. Hopkins is menacing and hammy. In fact, the best reason to watch Fracture is for Hopkins' cheeky acting. But when the final 20 minutes is spent unraveling a mystery the audience already figured out half way through the film, you have to ask yourself, "Is that it?"

I left Fracture thinking about all of its lost potential. But it was still fun most of the way through.

The best way to appreciate "Pan's Labyrinth" is to compare it to Terry Gilliam's "Tideland." Not only were both released in 2006 and sport surprisingly similar poster art, but both are fantasy-reality stories about little girls disappearing into a world of imagination in order to deal with the terrible realities of life. The difference, however, is that "Tideland" treats its characters as mere vehicles for unbridled fantasy and, in fact, sacrifices them mercilessly to some disturbing ideas and images, while "Pan's Labyrinth" does not. It loves its characters and weaves an amazingly emotional story that does not horrify and fantasize simply for the sake of shock and awe.

"Pan's Labyrinth" is a cross-genre movie that gets it all right. It's a war movie. It's a fantasy. It's a character-driven drama. And, in an unconventional way, it's horror.

Del Torro calls it a film about obedience. Certainly it's a film about fascism and revolution. But it's also about a girl learning when to break the chains of blind obedience and plant the seeds of independent thought. Abused by a hostile step-father (a fascist army captain) and neglected by a pregnant mother (whom the father keeps constantly drugged), little Ofelia is confronted with horrors she cannot possibly understand. So she translates them into a fantasy world which teaches her lessons no one else seems able to. And the lessons are harsh.

But the way Del Torro brings all of these elements together is nothing short of brilliant. This could have easily been as awkward as the pseudo-fantastical "Neverwas," as precious as the sometimes-sappy "Finding Neverland" or even as reckless as the disturbing "Tideland." But in this movie, fantasy and reality melt into one another. And the result is engrossing, emotional and inspiring!

Making a "baddass" movie in the shadow of Quentin Tarrantino is hard. Really hard. But you have to try harder than THIS. "Smokin' Aces" is an unruly mess of a movie that induces more eye rolls and fits of laughter than the final 20 minutes of "The Black Dahlia." And that's saying a lot.

The script is top and bottom-heavy on plot. And, by plot, I mean the characters throw a lot of mob names at us and expect us to remember how they're related. And by "top and bottom-heavy," I mean the movie's endless midsection is endlessly plot less. We get blood, cop clichés, melodrama, cursing, many pointless characters (what's with the annoying karate kid?) and Jeremy Piven being Jeremy Piven. Even worse are the jarring shifts in tone. One moment, we're laughing at three chainsaw-wielding rednecks hacking up a squad of FBI agents. The next moment, Ryan Reynolds is wandering dramatically down a busy street, covered in blood and bemoaning the death of his partner... with an orchestra swelling behind him. Is that a violin?

What a reprehensible stinkfest. At least Ben Affleck does us the honor of disappearing within the first half hour. Although his post-mortem pantomime has to be the best acting of his career.

I give this movie two stars for Jason Bateman who, sadly, gets only five minutes of screen time.

Picture the Robin Williams movie "One Hour Photo." It's the creepy movie in which he plays a lonely, photo department employee who becomes obsessed with a young boy and his perfect, little family. Now try to imagine Williams playing the role for comedy (unsuccessfully, of course, because the movie is creepy). Remember when you finally felt sorry for him at the end because he was such a tragic character? Pretend you don't because he's not even remotely likable.

THAT is "Say Uncle." It's a movie that asks you to like and laugh along with a character who is too creepy to like and laugh along with. I kept wishing John Waters would have stormed the set and taken over the production. How amazing would THAT be?

Alpha Dog has its moments. And those are the moments when the actors get to sit around and act like themselves -- Young Hollywood chums, smoking, talking s**t, and partying. But beyond those moments, no one seems to know what Alpha Dog is about. And that includes writer/director Nick Cassavetes (son of actor/director John Cassavetes).

With a cast and crew populated by Young Hollywood pretty boys and girls, Alpha Dog often seems more like a vanity project than a focused story. Of course, there's nothing Hollywood loves more than bemoaning the tragedy of a privileged elite who rebel, often with tragic results, against their own privilege. And Alpha Dog tries to capture that tragedy. But portraying a smoke-filled party with a group of flawed bad asses does not a tragedy make. Like another self-absorbed popularity project, the comedy "Orange County" -- directed by Jake Kasdan (son of writer/director Lawrence Kasden) -- you can almost see the film's young stars sitting around their coffee table in a haze of pot smoke, congratulating each other for the cleverness of their newest party project.

But with an aimless plot, fight scenes choreographed like a martial arts extravaganza and a pointless third act featuring Sharon Stone in a fat suit (surely the film's most flawed attempt at drama), "Alpha Dog" reads like a wanna-be "Bully." If you haven't seen Larry Clark's "Bully," then you SHOULD RENT IT TODAY. It's a tense, all-too-real depiction of bored suburban kids who have nothing better to do than punish the most privileged boy in town. Interestingly, both "Alpha Dog" and "Bully" star Brad Renfro as the gay-baited pushover who ends up snapping. That casting decision should have been a clue to the filmmakers: They're trying to capture the essence of a much better film.

That said, if you must see "Alpha Dog," I would recommend leaving the theater after the climactic scene in the Palm Springs Desert when Justin Timberlake showcases his acting chops in a fine dramatic moment. The following twenty minutes are strangely unnecessary.

And, out of curiosity, what happened to Ben Foster's character? After being subjected to two hours of his brutal over-acting, we should at least get the courtesy of seeing him bow out of the picture. What's the story there?

I've seen a few movies about "magical reality" -- that fantasy zone where fairy tales and the real world cross, forcing jaded adults and child-like idealists to war over the relevance of imagination in a world full of disappointment. Most recently, "Big Fish," "Finding Neverland" and "Gods and Monsters" spring to mind. Then there's "Neverwas," a film so full of unnecessary flash and "magical reality" clichés that it shames the stories from which it pilfered its name... namely J.M. Barie's tales of Neverland and Neil Gaiman's "Neverwhere." And while "Neverwas" never will be remembered as fondly as those tales, it does manage to skim off the top of their inspiration and come up with a flimsy, smug movie that mimics much better movies.

"Neverwas" gives us the jaded adult, the insightful madman, the understanding girlfriend, flashes of light, rain storms of glitter and... nothing else. It's a hollow movie that has seen other, better movies and is trying, in vain, to ape them. And it's written by a writer who's read lots of fairy tales but can't seem to create a convincing one himself. It's a wonder that so many good actors were coaxed into this production. I can think of at least six good fantasy films starring Ian McKellen. And "Neverwas" is definitely not one of them.

"Neverwas" is a flashy shell of a movie... like a karaoke singer who knows the words but not the music.

I can't vouch for how much truth can be found in "The Good Shepherd." After all, how much can you really know about an organization that deals in lies? But I do know that Edward Wilson (Matt Damon) is the perfect, duty-bound man of privilege -- born in the north east, bred in the Ivy League, lured into a secret society of cocky heirs to American industry, and made into a man feared by others only because he, himself, feared his superiors.

And even though Edward never truly existed, he managed to turn a cloak-and-dagger fraternity into a megalomaniacal arm of the government. And while the CIA was never intended to become the "heart and soul" of America, Edward helps to make it just that... while losing his own soul in the process. But the greatest irony of them all, is that Edward never wanted any of it. Like the heir to a dynasty, Edward was chosen from among the young elite, molded and coerced his entire life, as if the great machinary of America's powerful few knew he would be the perfect cog. And he was.

This is what "The Good Shepherd" does best. It creates an intriguing, tragic story worth telling, with no small help from the legacy of "The Godfather" series. Director Rober DeNiro channels Francs Ford Coppolla right down to the operatic, dual-story ending. The grave tone and slow escalation of this thriller may seem like a slow burn, but it's ultimately worth the fire, even if it does leave you craving a bit of Hitchcockian suspense (a couple of punch-ups from the oft-maligned Brian DePalma couldn't have hurt). But the subtle, dead-on acting from Damon will ground you. In the end, Edward is confronted by the responsibilities of duty and loyalty to family. And it's wonderful to see Damon take two "Godfather"'s worth of psychological burden and prove that he has the talent and strength to shoulder it.

On the other hand, the film suffers from a few bouts of contrived and melodramatic dialogue (mostly heaped upon the film's two, underwritten, female leads and on DeNiro's mugging cameo). And it's easy to get lost in the second act, during several mysteries about Russian spies and the Bay of Pigs invasion. With some sharper editing, the story could have been tighter and more focused early on. The more we drift away from Damon's central character, the more the story wanders. As it is, much of the story's intensity falls on the film's final act. But what an act it is.

The final twenty minutes comprise "The Good Shepherd"'s emotional and thematic backbone. For some audience members, it might come a little too late... after two hours of serpentine plotting, deliberate pacing and extensive backstory. But, for patient viewers, the slow burn will be worth it.

"Broken Flowers" is a somber, tragi-comic movie about ghosts.

Don receives a letter that informs him he has a son. Now, Don doesn't really seem to care. In fact, he doesn't seem to care about much at all. But his mystery-loving neighbor forces him to visit five women from his past, any of whom may have been the mother of his mystery son. Every visit, every episode, is a rough sketch with a simple concept: each woman is a ghost, a haunting reminder of what Don has lost, given up or destroyed in his romantic past. And each subsequent woman becomes less real to Don, either unable or refusing to let him get as close today as he did so many years ago. And the final woman, his last hope for truth, is, quite literally, a ghost.

Of course, the irony is that Don is looking for answers about himself by interviewing people who barely knew him and, as time goes on, wish that they never knew him. And since Don is mindlessly coasting through his own life, he might be the saddest ghost of them all. But there's something lacking in each episode. The characters are sharp. The details are there. We understand what each woman represents. But the episodes feel more like outlines than dramatic sequences. Consider Don's meeting with the pet communicator. Aside from learning that this character is physically and emotionally unavailable, what do we get out of it? Is this just comic relief? If so, it could have been much funnier. It could have been the absurd, cathartic "naked man" scene from "Sideways." Instead, it remains a rough sketch. Other episodes are more poignant, mainly because of the acting. But you're still left with the impression that much more could have been done.

The ending, however, is perfect. Don is forced to confront a part of his life which may not even be real. He meets the most elusive ghost in the film. And when the film ends, it's just as sudden as the shock to Don's system. Whether or not his son exists, Don realizes he actually cares. And, in that moment, he, himself, becomes real.

P.T. Anderson wanted to make an Adam Sandler film that deconstructed Sandler's popular, bipolar comedic persona. And he does it beautifully. Sandler's Barry is, as Laura Dern once said, "wild at heart and weird on top." He's a meek oddball who lives his boring life, submits to the whims of his overbearing sisters and does what he's told. All the while, he's burning up inside. And when he explodes, it's not pretty.

He's not the hilarious, club-wielding Happy Gilmore or the bum-rushing Waterboy. But his random acts of insanity are comedy of a curious kind. When he smashes the screen door, it's funny, shocking, frightening, and, ultimately, sad. If Barry tames his manic outbursts, can he save himself from implosion?

Enter Lena. She's pretty, unassuming and apparently loves caring for odd things. Lena ushers in a sweet, strange, poetic love story that forces Barry to become a man and put his pent-up passion to good use. And, so, "Punch Drunk Love" becomes a surprisingly wonderful romance. It's a movie about anger, love, loneliness, desperation and caring for odd things. And you should definitely watch it.

The narrative and concept reminded me of Charlie Kaufmann's "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and "Adaptation." But "Stranger than Fiction" is strangely underwritten, even if it starts off with tons of ingenuity and wonder (the way Harold counts and calculates every aspect of his world while his odd wristwatch ticks away his life).

Will Farrel plays the Truman Show part with wit and confidence, and we meet more strong, quirky characters along the way. Emma Thompson is an author obsessed with death. Queen Latifah is the hard-nosed assistant. Maggie Gylenhaal is the socialist baker/love interest. Dustin Hoffman is the off-kilter existentialist detective (oops, wrong movie). I mean, he's the literary psychologist (or something like that). POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD.

And they are all full of potential. But, strangely, none of them live up to their potential. Each character is given a magnificent and entertaining set of qualities that all seem to disappear in the self-serious and overblown final third of the film (and re-appear in an epilogue montage that tries too hard to impose a heart-felt "mediocrity is more important than masterpiece" theme on the story"). It's like a symphony of several fine-tuned instruments building to a crescendo, only to go out with a wheeze.

So much more could have been done with the relationship between the assistant and the author (Queen Latifah is sorely under-used). And why, when we've set up the tragedy of the author's life, does she not get to confront her own personal tragedy? Surely, she has suicide on the mind. And why does Harold blithely accept his fate when his life is finally looking up and, as he so freely admits, "I know nothing about literature"? He's a lamb to the slaughter when he should be an angry son of a bitch (see Adam Sandler in the much-better "Punch Drunk Love"). Why does the literary psychologist gloss over his own personal failures to insist that Harold accept his fate? Shouldn't such a moment resonate with the failed-writer-now-professor/lifeguard? And why does the baker/love interest have NOTHING to do except look cute and seduce Harold?

I loved the absurdity of it all -- the odd questions posed by Hoffman ("Are you king of anything? You know, a bowling alley? The trolls?"). I also loved the concept of Harold trying to figure out if his life is a tragedy or a comedy based on how often his girlfriend screams at him. "Stranger that Fiction" certainly succeeds in creating a much more humane story than the sometimes-obtuse "I Heart Huckabees." But, still, this is a work of fiction in which every character is sacrificed in the name of a high-minded concept -- a concept which may leave you smiling in the end, but not after you've scratched your head and wondered where all the characters went.

I once read that there are two surefire ways to kill a movie: drown the production in excess and saddle it with lifeless colors. One producer even went so far as to blame the failure of the Cohen brothers' film "The Hudsucker Proxy" on the fact that it was a "big, brown movie." Well, "The Da Vinci Code" is a big, brown movie.

It's a flat, by-the-numbers adaption that sucks the life out of the book (despite its pompous idealizing and overzealous soundtrack). Yes, it captures all the plot points. Yes, it scrupulously honors the book's themes. But in the process of capturing and honoring, it forgets to have fun. Of course the book had some big ideas, but it was all in service of a pulp fiction thriller. The movie forgets its pulp roots.

There are moments that Brian DePalma would have milked for B-movie thrills, that Steven Spielberg would have infused with wit and child-like wonder, that Bryan Singer (as fond as he is of brooding heroes) would have given humanity and a well-deserved shot of adrenaline. This should have been a Saturday matinée serial (the kind which Spielberg and Lucas love so much). And, in fact, the best scene in this movie involves a classic serial moment: The Library Scene.

You know The Library Scene. It happens early in the original "Lost World" 1925 film when Professor Challenger reveals that he has discovered dinosaurs in South America and convinces journalist Ed Malone to join him on an adventure to the jungle. It happens in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" when Indy explains to a pair of officials the mystical history of the Ark and the perilous nature of the quest they must undertake. It happens in "The Lost World: Jurassic Park" when John Hammond describes the dark island overrun by escaped dinosaurs and convinces Malcolm to infiltrate it. It happens in "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" when Gandalf tells Frodo the mystery of the ring and the terrible journey he must make to destroy it.

The Library Scene may be the most exciting scene in any adventure film because it is so full of promise. It lays out a map of things to come -- danger, thrills and discovery. In the case of "Da Vinci," the Library Scene comes late... half-way through the movie, showing us not just what MAY lay ahead but what we've already missed out on. With the brilliant monologues of Ian McKellen (Gandalf, once again), this movie's Library Scene is tense, involving and full of promise. Unfortunately, the rest of "Da Vinci" doesn't live up to it. It becomes too serious, and, in the final scene, ridiculously melodramatic. In fact, that final swooping camera shot displays, quite literally, the fanatical devotion the filmmakers must have had to their source material. Is Tom Hanks on his knees? Is he actually WORSHIPPING Dan Brown?

I didn't necessarily expect Indiana Jones. But I would have liked the filmmakers to spend more time on the drama and the thrills and less time on the "big" and the "brown."

"Miami Vice" is a dark, raw, shoot-em-up flick that serves as a love letter to and a scathing commentary on the world of crime dramas -- a world Michael Mann helped define in the original "Vice" TV series.

Yes, the film is so steeped in jargon and verite-style film-making that the plot is hard to follow, but that's sort of the point. These vice cops are treading territory that's so familiar to the average film-goer (how many crime dramas have you seen in your lifetime?) that director Michael Mann refuses to waste time with familiar setups. And that's the film's greatest asset and its biggest flaw.

There's no pandering. We're thrown right into the mix -- a confusing whirlwind of bullets, intrigue and neon lights. But that also means there's no background, no explanations and no stopping for breath. We hear whispered and hurried conversations about drug smuggling and sting operations. Someone's cover's been blown. Drop the ammo. Crockett's going deep. Run the load after dark. It's all so quick and mind-boggling, we're fascinated... even if we don't know exactly what's happening. But when you start to care for these characters (as I did during an amazingly touching sequence in which Crockett seduces the crime boss' moll, played by Gong Li), you also wish you knew more about them.

Once you start feeling for Crockett, you realize that you have no idea what his character has invested in the story. And, truth be told, the film's been so intriguing up until that point that you didn't care (or understand) what the story was about anyway. And just when the film seems to make sense, it picks up Crocket and whisks him away. The story gets darker and thicker, like quicksand, and eventually swallows Crockett and Tubbs whole. And then they're lost. But maybe that's the point.

Crockett, in the end, is a type, not a character. He is THE cop -- the one who lives for his job, goes undercover and loses his identity, then returns home to nothing... except his job. He's that American icon, the shoot-em-up cop. He has a duty but no identity. And when the film is over, Michael Mann has pulled off an intriguing magic trick. He's taken the cold, unknowable Crockett and convinced us that he's NOT the flat and undeveloped action hero we thought we were watching. He's empty and pitiable. He's the sad result of years and years of recycled and rerun action characters bleeding themselves dry on the big and small screen. He's no longer just a caricature. He's a tragic caricature. And unlike Gong Li's character, who seized the opportunity to save herself, Crockett turned it away. Why? Well, that's what he does. It was in the script. It's always been in the script.

Could Michael Mann have made the ultimate existentialist action film?

If such a genre exists, there's no wonder "Miami Vice" would be deemed too convoluted to win over casual viewers and too muddled to be truly successful. But, you have to admit, it's still an intriguing and exciting ride.

De Palma's staged, theatrical style has always felt like an in-joke: an expressive homage (or sometimes a slap in the face) to the conventions of cinema. And in the case of his high- energy thrillers, the joke is funny and damned entertaining. But in the case of his dramas, De Palma constantly walks a thin line between evocative melodrama and camp (The wonderful "Carlito's Way," in my opinion, is the exception). And "The Black Dahlia" often steps over that line.

With a steady build-up of noir conventions, the film hearkens to the expressionistic film and acting styles of the 40's -- a style which can induce giggles in audiences raised on irony. And I can count a few musical swells, flamboyant acting choices and dramatic fade-outs which caused unwanted comic relief. Or did it? If there's one thing De Palma loves more than entertaining his audience, it's confounding them. How else do you explain the two-hour joke that was "Raising Cain"? (Although I, for one, found that particular joke damned funny).

You watch "Dahlia" with the distinct impression that De Palma is enjoying every minute of it. He's copying Wilder, Welles and, you guessed it, Hitchcock -- and he's having a blast doing it. So when Josh Hartnett's character pulls a full dinner setting (including the turkey) off a table and throws Scarlett Johansson down lustfully upon it, should we also smile and remember "Double Indemnity"? I guess it would help if you've seen "Double Indemnity."

That said, the film's biggest flaw is that it smiles at itself for so long that it leaves little time to wrap up the plot. The onslaught of last-reel revelations seems to exist only to give the actors more opportunity to relish in the delicious mood De Palma has created. We never really cared about the plot in the first place because De Palma didn't care about it either. He's more interested in the shadows, the thrills, the drama, the lurking killers, swelling music, lusty confrontations and blood splatters. And the plot points get lost somewhere in the mix. So who can blame us for glazing over when Hartnett finally starts to care about the mysteries rather than just being mystified by them? De Palma has painted such an odd, exciting picture (even when it turns to camp) that the audience would rather keep watching the elaborate set-ups than sit through the convoluted solutions.

But then again, what good is a joke without a satisfying punch line?