Allison Benedikt

Endearing but predictable.

Overall the film is alluringly over-the-top without being overcooked.

Match Point is fantastic to look at, sharply dramatic and Allen is--who knew?--a master of suspense.

Ingenious with his use of music and hypnotic pacing, Winterbottom keeps us in his world as usual. But this time that world feels ever more gratuitous, meandering and puzzling, with sex that's less and less authentic even though it's real.

Yes, Steve Carell can carry a movie. Yes, Judd Apatow can direct a movie. Yes, we'll all relate to a middle-aged virgin. And yes, when an aesthetician yells to her assistant "we're gonna need more wax," you best run.

It's a joy to see so many cheerful and contented characters on screen, especially on a screen that looks this good.

The world of his films may be violent, but Hill's vision is a delicate, subtle one-of individuals packing away the tiny bit of meaning and emotion life has granted them, and fighting to protect it at all costs. It's not a sentiment that can survive in cartoons; that it emerges at all in Red Heat is a tribute to Hill's still great talent. [17 Jun 1988, p.A]

I'll describe the central characters in Disney's new ice-skating flick, Ice Princess, and you guess the plot.

Roos does an admirable job balancing the tragedy and comedy, but he bogs down every character with so much baggage that it's impossible to render them honestly without the captions.

But though you'll laugh your head off, the whole film kind of morphs into a blur, with one poop/sex/abuse joke after another. It's exhausting, really. And save for the very best tellings, you do start to wonder: What's so funny?

It's not exactly a good time at the movies, and even as pure education, it's a rather dull film with very little dialogue, but Glawogger does succeed in capturing the images, sounds and even imagined scents (oh, those burning goats) of contemporary hard labor, work that has become nearly invisible to us cubicle jockeys.

Unleashed is like an old dog: No new tricks.

It's all neat and sweet and one-dimensional, more the moral to a story than a story.

Jacobson, whose earlier film is a docudrama about Jeffrey Dahmer, is clearly fascinated with men who would be monsters. It's a ripe and infinite topic to explore, but without Norton, theme alone could not have sustained Down in the Valley.

The film never gets going. It's too slow and plodding for kids--even too obvious.

Though the film has a plot a simpleton could follow, its hallmark is confusion. Its sense of time and place and its point of view are muddled. [13 Oct 1989, p.L]

But alas, even with young talent, director Roger Kumble and writer Adam Davis rely way too heavily (no pun intended) on the fat-suit joke and titular impasse.

All three men turn in superb and understated performances.

The scenery is pretty and the locals endearing, but Schorr never gets past charming.

Easygoing but surprisingly likable comedy.

The movie here is Treadwell's footage--some of it beautiful, much of it difficult to watch.

Mindless, predictable and mildly entertaining.

It's not so important to follow plot twists--I couldn't--but the emotional thrust Kelly and Scott want to drive home is plain: Once Domino is asked to use guns and knives and nunchucks for a purpose outside the law, she's alarmed, appalled, aghast.

If "Roll Bounce" and "Boyz n the Hood" fell in love and had a PG-13 baby, it would be ATL.

It's a cheap thrill, with twists that later seem evident and foreshadowing that often seems obvious, with a B-movie look and vibe reminiscent of the much tighter "Jagged Edge."

Willis never develops a rapport with Def, and in the end it's not the predictable action but this lack of chemistry and camaraderie that sinks 16 Blocks.

More often then not, the relationships and performances are strong and moving, with an effect both breezy-fun and profound.

The trouble with Bridget redux is also simple: Thai jail.

A poor man's "When Harry Met Sally."

The look and feel here is classic Hardwicke: gritty and dark, so as to fool you into thinking this film is serious business.

Brewer achieves near perfection in this tense, intimate meeting between two lifelong hustlers.

I've had the unique pleasure of reviewing almost all of Duff's movies, and if there's one thing to say about the girl, she's consistent: nice, sweet, blond, inoffensive and uninspiring.

So what started as a female "Agent Cody Banks" happily and seamlessly becomes so much more, with style and substance existing in unusual harmony for a spy spoof.

Tucker has done a bang-up job, distancing and hypnotizing us with his frenzied, fragmented, sexy images. But war isn't a video game.

Not funny because it's not true.

With husband and wife starring, you can't help but wonder which details here are autobiographical. No matter: This is obviously a deeply personal work for Attal, whose comic timing and passion can only serve him well both on screen and off.

For awhile, the stately symphonic score, urbane setting and understated dress make Birth feel powerful--until it feels empty, lacking what Glazer so furiously exhibited in his equally stylized freshman endeavor: heart.

It's just OK. Not great. Not awful. Not particularly memorable. Not entirely forgettable. Just OK.

This is familiar clowning territory for our actors -- hypothetically well-matched here, with Carrey a far more sophisticated and energetic comic partner for Leoni than Adam Sandler was in "Spanglish."

It's hard to breathe in Andrew Lau and Alan Mak's Infernal Affairs, a relentlessly taut Hong Kong cop thriller that, unlike many of its cinematic peers, doesn't burn off tension in choreographed action sequences.

There's really just not a lot here. I'm sure Racer's story will entertain the very wee ones -- but so do keys.

I guess there's something progressive going on when a lesbian love story gets to be just as dreadful and tacky as most straight ones.

It's a cute romantic comedy, just as Shakespeare intended.

Politics hovers over every moment of Another Road Home, Elon's layered, loving and deeply personal documentary about her quest to find the Palestinian caregiver who raised her.

It's when Spielberg stops trying to think so hard that Munich works best. Though some of the assassination scenes feel a little too choreographed, more "West Side Story" than "Bourne Identity."

Commenting on performances here is like critiquing the production design of a porno--it's beside the point. Briefly: Knoxville, bad choice, man. Reynolds, you make a good villain. Simpson, lovely posing. Scott, you're from Minnesota and it shows--but I bet stunt driving school was fun.

Mad props to Peter Zuccarini, who headed the team of ocean-bound photographers and captured some remarkably vivid footage, and also to the actors, who spend plenty of time looking cool, calm and collected swimming with the predatory fishes.

Michael Showalter is a funny man, but … how to put this gently … not a funny movie star.

Don't let the fast-and-loose vibe fool you: Right up to its operatic finale, this is one tight one last job.

An uplifting, funny and engaging star-studded affair.

The gall of Peter and Bobby Farrelly. To think that a romantic comedy might work absent a sleazy wager or maddening miscommunication takes a lot of chutzpah.

A pretty entertaining case against our current war and question the integrity of our president, but more than that, these docs manipulate imagery, music and sound bites to work their audiences into a frenzy.

These are not people me and you and everyone we know know--these are "short version" people, characters who comfort each other by quoting Shakespeare.

Classic Bay, except it's missing the crass director's fine-tuned rhythm, his feel for adrenaline, his breakneck edits and sense of humor.

Steering clear of phony melodrama and indie pretense, Baumbach captures a crisis in one family's life that, though it shakes the foundation, leaves all four Berkmans drifting toward highs and lows unknown, each of them only dimly aware that, no matter what the movies tell us, we never really come of age.

Its gorgeous black-and-white photography, dirty and matte, will almost convince you that anything this slow, small and bereft of dialogue must be important.

A childish and visually repetitive movie, ham-fisted, proselytizing and overtly simplified.

Munchausen is indeed a beautiful, burgeoning, madly voluptuous movie from minute to minute and image to image; it's in the aggregate that the film fails to find the weight and the rhythm it needs to truly enthrall. [10 Mar 1989, p.A]

There's something both moving and crass in how directors Elliot Berlin and Joe Fab film these tiny paper fasteners.

Hilarious, inspired, frenzied.

Parker is pretty much a disaster here, shrill and phony and, worst of all, spineless. She reminded me of Tea Leoni in "Spanglish," her performance working against the movie, serving only as a cumbersome, opaque obstacle.

This is the kind of movie that nice people call ambitious. Let's just leave it at that.

Cherot shot G on a tight schedule, but instead of this age-old indie predicament generating a certain scrappy passion, the film just looks cheap.

Challenging to follow, at best.

It's a familiar dance, but something only July could invent, a vignette much like her characters: beautiful, flawed, organic--fine alone but better with the others.

Phony, disingenuous family entertainment, suffocated by its green bean casserole approach to Middle America, spineless cardboard characters and paper-thin plot "twists."

Gere and Binoche are both terribly miscast--one far too charismatic, the other far too dowdy, which is something for Juliette Binoche. And the spelling bees? Dull. Dreary.

Inner dialogue is a hard sell on screen.

A huge waste of talent (Witherspoon's) and time (ours), a supernatural romantic comedy that is neither romantic, comedic, super or natural.

It's formulaic and frequently over the top, 30 minutes too long and altogether too slow, but oh when those gorgeous, graceful pups tilt their heads just so … love.

A compelling piece of press criticism as it probes the media as terror's conduit of choice, spreading message and validating violence in the 1970s and today.

Even with a new leading man and a more family-friendly rating, some things never change: The Mask still stars Industrial Light & Magic.

Sam Dunn's unabashed wet kiss to his favorite genre of music, heavy metal, a.k.a. devil's music.

Mostly it's an incredible tale of ritual and perseverance.

I have a sneaking suspicion that Running Scared could become a cult classic.

As visually stunning as it is, "DR9" is also more than two hours and contains, at best, 10 lines of dialogue, an ear-piercing Bjork score and no discernible plot.

I won't pretend there aren't moments of sweetness here--there are, aplenty. But the promise of true emotion goes bust with bad acting, cheap writing and false sentiment.

McAvoy does his best with this subpar, heart-tugging material. At times his mix of easy charm and inner demon pulls Rory out from under the tired script, but those pesky dramatic forces keep pushing him back in for every predictable plot development.

Mark my words: Mindhunters will do for psycho-thrillers what "Showgirls" did for stripper movies.

In the end, Protocols of Zion is all context--a bit here about Father Coughlin, a minute there about the Holocaust, a stint with "The Passion" and a brief shot of Levin watching the beheading of Daniel Pearl--no soul.

An exhausting, predictable, even maddening moviegoing experience.

If this all sounds very heavy, well, it is, but it's also very, very funny. Cronenberg may want to say something important about violence, but he's also head over heels for it, ending each gunfight and neck-breaking with a close-up on the victim, blood either pooling behind his head or brains spilling from his face. Big laughs.

But, as with any other Merchant Ivory film, this one provides pleasures beyond the ordinary. [07 Apr 1995]

Maybe if Mindel had focused more on his characters, less on the silly "noir" trickery, his film would do Garity justice. As it is, go find better work, kid.

Grace and Quaid imbue what could have been caricatures--with heart, intelligence and great comic timing.

Could have been a funny movie. There are a few truths about food-service that McKittrick gets right but doesn't fully exploit.

A mostly bland, sporadically crude, by-the-numbers romantic comedy about two gay men in love.

Acutely perceptive and slyly quick-witted.

Works remarkably well as a stylish and unconventional buddy flick--cruising along with wit and wisdom.

Full of groovy music and comic characters--many with a priceless reaction to Lovelace's oral party trick--but it hardly manages to say anything new or thoughtful.

The "comedy" part of Sex is Comedy comes intentionally from cast-crew interaction.

Moments of this film reminded me of Alexander Payne's great library of male dysfunction -- "Election," "About Schmidt," "Sideways" -- not because King of the Corner actually reaches Payne's plane, but because I wish it had tried.

The fatal flaw in David Duchovny's big-screen directorial debut, House of D, is not Robin Williams as a retarded janitor. It's David Duchovny, the man who chose to cast Robin Williams as a retarded janitor.

Walken is an odd choice for a D.C. power player, wasting his creepiness on this straight, respectable role.

Pairing monumental insensitivity with a bright-eyed delivery, Silverman is the current valedictorian of the nothing-is-sacred school of comedy, a modern-day Lenny Bruce spared her forefather's legal woes by time, breasts and porcelain skin.

And although Schreiber's hip, intelligent eye is a nice match for Foer's hip, intelligent pen, his movie strays from its own history, creating instead a world, as Alex would say, that is "once-removed."

Only resonates when he (Brooks) strips it all away and focuses on parent and child.

Just doesn't have the same zing.