Here's a tip for you social types out there: if you're at a party and writer/director Diane English shows up, take that as your cue to exit. Because if her new remake of the 1939 George Cukor classic The Women is anything to go by, English can suck the fun out of anything.

The attention a film is paid for being a remake of a popular movie can cut in many directions. In one way, it's a lot to live up to, and in another, when you fail to meet the bar set by your ancestor, its existence is about all that is likely getting you any notice. Screwing up The Women would probably take more effort than getting it right, as it means throwing out the original play by Clare Booth and the Cukor-helmed screenplay adapted by Jane Murfin and the great Anita Loos. (If you haven'...Read the entire review

With this impressive collection of actresses and production duties handled by the renowned Diane English, it's a crushing disappointment to find the latest update of the famed play "The Women" a defanged, broad ode to one-dimensional empowerment. The performances shine, but the rest of this mediocre travelogue of feminine foibles is given the blunt-force treatment, draining the material of deserved big-screen acidity.

When gossip concerning her husband's infidelity leads to Mary's (Meg Ryan) doorstep, she panics, unable to process this violation of trust during a period of time where she also loses her job and the admiration of her teen daughter. Coming to the rescue are her friends, fashion magazine editor Sylvia (Annette Bening), full-time mom Edith (Debra Messing), and full-time lesbian Miriam (Jada Pinkett Smith), not to mention further support from housekeeper Maggie (Cloris Leachman) and mother...Read the entire review

It's easy to see that "Kit Kittredge" is after family audiences. It's a harmless tale told without a lick of objectionable content, sure to offer relief to many parents unwilling to subject their children to the heated warfare of lowbrow summer entertainment. However, as generous in spirit as "Kittredge" is, it's an absolute chore to sit through for anyone not plugged into the "American Girl" franchise hoedown.

Watching her family hope to make ends meet during the Great Depression, Kit Kittredge (Abigail Breslin) remains courageous, even trying to score work with the local paper writing about matters of the unemployed. When her father (Chris O'Donnell) heads out of state to find work, it forces Kit's mother (Julia Ormond) to take in eccentric boarders (including Stanley Tucci, Joan Cusack, and Jane Krakowski), most of which have great distaste for the hobos that fill the manual labor jobs of the neig...Read the entire review

"Mongol" is looking to call its own shot with big, wet cinematic brush strokes of epic storytelling, blood-spattered violence, heroic romanticism, volatile brotherhoods, tragic childhood trauma, historical leanings, and animalistic mysticism. After two excruciating hours watching the film, I will say it's all very epic. It's like watching paint dry, but still epic.

As a young Mongolian boy, Temudjin watched as his father ruled the land, only to be betrayed and poisoned, leaving the child helpless to violent opportunists. Throughout the years, Temudjin would find enemy capture over and over, only to break free and attempt to establish a life for himself with his beloved bride Borte. Now older, Temudjin (Tadanobu Asano) grows tired of running and observing his fellow countrymen display a lack of battlefield etiquette, and he attempts to unite his own army of honor and concentrated wrath, introducing th...Read the entire review

It was expected that after nearly a decade on the blockbuster sitcom "Friends," star David Schwimmer would have at least some sense of comedic rhythm. However, I never expected the guy to direct a British slapstick comedy. Turns out, he does a pretty swell job.

Five years ago Dennis (Simon Pegg) made a horrible decision: he left his pregnant fiancée Libby (Thandie Newton) at the altar. Now a sad sack mall security officer with a smoking habit and 30 extra pounds, Dennis finds his life lacking, but refuses to do anything about it. Into Libby's life comes Whit (Hank Azaria), a handsome financial wizard who is better than Dennis at everything, including long-distance running. Dennis, feeling jealous, agrees to partake in an upcoming marathon to prove his worth to Libby, relying on his gambling friend Gordon (Dylan Moran, "Shaun of the Dead") for support. Trouble is, Dennis knows nothing ab...Read the entire review

During the opening titles of "Wild West Comedy Show," Vince Vaughn is interviewed on a morning zoo radio show, trying to explain the bus tour he and four comedians are about to undertake in September/October of 2005. He describes the rolling circus as a journey through the heartland of America, where regular folk don't often have the chance to catch a big-city comedy show.

The tour proceeds to open in Hollywood and spends the next week in Southern California. So much for mingling with the rubes.

"Wild West" is a documentary on Vince Vaughn's dream project: to spend a month in a bus with comedian friends who he could help with some needed exposure, while allowing him, the non-stand-up, a chance to shake hands across the country and make people laugh. It's an admirable goal, and the film resulting from that grueling schedule is a jocular, engaging, sporadically hilarious conce...Read the entire review

It makes a certain kind of sense that a horror movie like The Orphanage would invoke the spirit of Peter Pan in its twisty narrative. There is nothing like a good ghost story to inspire our imaginations, and imagination is the thing that so many of us lose when we grow up. Of course, there are also more dangerous lessons to be gleaned from Pan, particularly the danger of being stuck in one place, be it the eternal boy who can't move on or the avenging Hook who won't quit until he gets his revenge. Such things are also grist for the spooky mill in this Spanish tale of a haunted children's home.

Directed by Juan Antonio Bayona from a screenplay by Sergio G. Sanchez, The Orphanage has a similar feel to other fright fests that have come from Spain and Latin America in recent years, most notably Alejandro Amenabar's The Others and Guillermo del Toro's Devil's Backbone. del ...Read the entire review

Even without his credit as producer, it doesn't take a genius to sense Guillermo del Toro's fingerprints smeared all over the new Spanish suspense film, "The Orphanage." It's a ghoulish page ripped from del Toro's recognizable cinema handbook, and while highly effective at times, the film suffers from red light/green light pacing, which eventually robs this eerie picture of ultimate disturbance.

Laura (Belen Rueda) and her husband (Fernando Cayo) have reopened the orphanage of her youth with grand plans of child care. Simon (Roger Princep) is their adopted son: a seven-year-old with HIV and an arsenal of imaginary friends. When spooky events start occurring around the property, Laura becomes consumed with discovering what forces are behind them. Once Simon disappears, Laura is forced to consider otherworldly possibilities, leading her to a final showdown with the orphanage. Read the entire review

"King of Kong" is an uproarious, unsettlingly observant, and romantically biased documentary on the golden years of classic gaming. The film presents the viewer with a depiction of aging men trying to defend their glory days through combat waged on arcade games, sweetened naturally by the subculture's glorious predilection for social awkwardness. A hoot from start to finish, "King of Kong" is one of the best pictures of the year.

Over the years, Billy Mitchell has spent his time nurturing his restaurant business, overseeing the sale of a popular hot sauce, and reveling in the fact that he's the high score world champion on "Donkey Kong." Steve Weibe is a down-on-his-luck nice guy, saddled with a life of missed opportunities and failures. Sensing his gift for "Kong," Steve decides to chase the high score, eventually taping himself in his garage toppling Billy's triumph, which leads to an outbreak of c...Read the entire review

Stop me if you've heard this one before: an inexperienced singer, fueled by hopes of stardom, rises from poverty to become a sensation, marries the girl of his dreams, and then loses it all to...wait for it...drugs! Now how many times have we shuffled down this road? Perhaps there will come a time when a musical bio-pic doesn't hang its hat on misery, but at the end of the day, "El Cantante" is pretty darn good despite the odious familiarity of the ingredients.

Hector Lavoe (Marc Anthony) is a Puerto Rican kid hunting for fame in New York City during the 1960s. Finding the call of the burgeoning salsa movement spoke to his talents, Lavoe took to the stage and refused to back down for over 30 years. His success afforded Lavoe luxuries beyond imagination, including a wife, Puchi (Jennifer Lopez), who adored him and a buffet of drugs, which he took to as easily as the music, sliding him into a d...Read the entire review

Snuggled between a female empowerment movie and a coming-of-age drama is "Gracie." A film of big heart and small charms, "Gracie" dares to enter the summer movie sweepstakes being the lone picture about, gulp, feelings and personal determination. How dare they!

Living in the shadow of her athlete brothers, Gracie (Carly Schroeder) struggles to keep her father's (Dermot Mulroney) attention and feel valued in a male society that doesn't want her around. When Gracie's eldest brother, a soccer star and her biggest supporter, dies, the family is left in a dark pit of grief. Looking to celebrate her brother's life, Gracie decides to try out for the boys' soccer team at her school, only to find rejection and sexism greeting her at every turn.

"Gracie" is a thinly-veiled autobiographical tale of the Shue family (Elizabeth and Andrew co-star), and how the loss of an older brother shaped their emotional p...Read the entire review

What do you do when you're a first time director guiding a film that doesn't have an ounce of originality to it? You pack it full of hits from the 1980s! And get this, it works.

A hound for academic trivia, Brian (James McAvoy) finally receives the chance to prove himself when he leaves his lonely English seaside hometown to attend Bristol University. Once there, Brian receives a rude awakening in the ways of life and love when his romantic pining is swatted down by the campus beauty (Alice Eve), and his shot at glory with an appearance on the quiz show "University Challenge" is jeopardized.

Although set in 1985, "Starter for 10" doesn't give way to a "Wedding Singer" experience where the cast wears funny haircuts or a character holds up a Betamax tape and proclaims it the "surefire wave of the future." "10" uses its retro crush splendidly, giving the viewer a fuzzy portrait of English academics ...Read the entire review

It's effortless to point out the genius of Guillermo del Toro's new political statement/gothic horror picture, "Pan's Labyrinth," but tricky to identify exactly why the film seems to be split into two pieces that refuse the company of each other.

"Labyrinth" is an immense post Spanish Civil War political allegory; a semi-sequel to del Toro's vivid but stalled "Devil's Backbone." It broadens del Toro's obsession with the horrors of the mind, presented here in the form of a 12 year-old girl named Ofelia (Ivana Baquero), caught between the love for her pregnant mother and the chilling violence of her new step-father, Fascist Captain Vidal (Sergi Lopez), who is merciless in his hunt for rebels. To escape her pain, Ofelia runs to a nearby garden, protected by a Faun (Doug Jones), who offers the young girl three quests to help balance the forces inside the labyrinth he guards.

"Labyrinth" is a fairy ta...Read the entire review

Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus is the first film by director Steven Shainberg and screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson since 2002's Secretary. Their second collaboration has a few thematic elements in common with their first. Namely, both films follow illicit relationships between two unlikely people that have a love that is somewhere outside what a lot of people might call "normal." Through it, they awaken heretofore suppressed feelings in one another. Where Fur is different is that it sculpts its fiction out of some real life clay. It takes an actual person and imagines a scenario whereby maybe she came to the unique perspective that informed her life's work.

Fur could have just as easily been called Arbus in Wonderland. As Diane Arbus, the influential photographer who changed how the art world viewed photography's role in modern expression, Nicole Kidman...Read the entire review

A bored housewife and dutiful assistant to her photographer husband (Ty Burrell), Diane Arbus (Nicole Kidman) is starting to feel trapped in her life. When an enigmatic man (Robert Downey Jr.) moves upstairs in her apartment building, Arbus's curiosity cannot be contained. She seeks out this stranger, almost aroused by the mystery of it all, but finds something somewhat horrifying, somewhat fantastic behind his door: a gentleman, named Lionel Sweeney, covered head to toe in hair.

Take special notice of the "Imaginary Portrait" section of the title. "Fur" doesn't span the life of Diane Arbus; heavens, it barely pays attention to her legendary photographic career. Instead, "Fur" wants to slip into the crawlspace of Arbus's mind where her frustrations turned into obsession, nurtured by a very peculiar fellow who understood the sensitive eccentricities that Airbus was impulsively drawn to.

"Fur...Read the entire review