Aberdeen (2001)

"The characters, irritating as they can be at first, grow on you as they grow up."

About Schmidt (2002)

"Impeccable acting makes every character a pleasure to watch."

Adventureland (2009)

"Mottola also wrote the screenplay, which is most fresh and honest when dealing with supporting characters."

The Affair of the Necklace (2001)

"The kind of movie made bearable only by uttering snide comments to a friend."

The Alamo (2004)

"Everything about the movie seems smaller than life, from Carter Burwell's hollowly pompous music to Dean Semler's muddy cinematography."

Alexander (2004)

"An act of hubris so huge that, in Alexander's time, it would draw lightning bolts from contemptuous gods. Today it will get sniggers from stunned critics and a collective yawn from a public unlikely to share Stone's egomania."

Ali (2001)

"The new film shouldn't serve as a history lesson, but it will show young folks (and remind us old-timers) what made him the most famous athlete on the planet."

All About You (2001)

"The movie usually steers clear of cliches and offers characters with more complexity than we've come to expect from romantic comedy."

All The King's Men (2006)

"It's possible for a movie to go wrong from the opening frame, and All the King's Men shows how."

All the Real Girls (2003)

"Deschanel gives a heart-wrenching performance that often makes Schneider's seem inert."

Along Came a Spider (2001)

"It comes at us in clumsy chunks of plot that fit together as badly as blocks of broken concrete."

Alpha Dog (2007)

"Has the most unappetizing film of 2007 really arrived just 12 days into the New Year? Alpha Dog will face contenders for that title, but it sets the bar high."

Amazing Grace (2007)

"The movie is the usual kind of film biography of a respected figure from the distant past -- honorable, oversimplified, handsome."

American Beauty (1999)

"Despite the acting, which ranges mostly from good to terrific, Mendes is the real discovery here."

American Gangster (2007)

"The meal's perfectly edible but falls short of delicious."

American Pie (1999)

"The story was primitive, the characters unmemorable, the direction unsophisticated, the writing cliched, the photography and music drab, the pacing uneven, the acting varying from adroitly funny to exaggerated."

American Splendor (2003)

"The fictionalized [Pekar] is played to schlumpy, bitter perfection by Paul Giamatti."

American Wedding (2003)

"Among movies I've seen where someone eats a dog turd, this ranks fairly high."

Amores Perros (2001)

"The filmmakers offer little hope for these characters."

Analyze This (1998)

"Crystal stays focused, while DeNiro yowls and bawls without shame."

Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera (2004)

"If you know nothing about the Phantom, currently the longest-running show on Broadway, this unusually faithful recreation will show what the fuss is about."

Anger Management (2003)

"The results are sporadically hilarious but don't always hang together."

Antitrust (2001)

"This simplistic knockoff of The Firm isn't remotely credible."

Apocalypto (2006)

"It represents as brazen an act of career suicide as I can recall from a star director. If he were a first-timer, he'd never work again."

Arctic Tale (2007)

"So the film's visual elements suggest a documentary, but it's a carefully fictionalized narrative. Some folks will thus dismiss it as a fabrication, but it still packs a profound emotional wallop."