Amy Taubin

Martin's performance is as impeccable as the set decoration, though one wishes he'd stop wasting his skill. Keaton flaunts her matronly hips, daring us to remember Annie Hall, but despite a jawline that's tighter than it was a decade ago in Baby Boom, she looks past the age of conception (no cosmetic surgery for wombs). [19 Dec 1995]

Loathsome though Stepmom is, the eternally coltish Roberts is always a pleasure to watch and Sarandon's mordant wit occasionally comes to the fore.

It does offer Annaud the opportunity to show his directorial muscle in elaborate battle scenes, where many bodies are torn apart and blood flows freely.

Its awkward mix of polemic and melodramatics probably won't travel very well.

Owen and Mirren are fun to watch, but the film, despite the many shots of gardens in full bloom, lacks visual distinction.

The most revelatory moment is provided not by the spectacle of the Roes clinging to each other on a bungee cord, but by Julian Lennon, who pops up on the beach in Monaco to give a terse evaluation of his father.

Refreshingly direct and even courageous in its confrontation of female pleasure -- specifically orgasms and masturbation, the staple of teen-boy comedies, but hitherto off-limits for girls.

Properly picturesque but lacks subtlety and substance in blending Chinese and Western history, ideas, and cinematic conventions.

The best Elmore Leonard adaptations ("Jackie Brown," "Out of Sight") play behind the beat, and although The Big Bounce isn't top-shelf Dutch, the film finds its own pace.

Except for Polley and Rea, the performances are heavy-handed.

The film is too eager to please and falls short of the novel's tragic dimension.

Runaway Bride isn't as offensive as most studio romantic comedies—just pointless and dull.

More commendable as social protest than as filmmaking.

The script for Session 9 is so underwritten that even such lively character actors as David Caruso, Peter Mullan, and Brendan Sexton III are left stranded.

The film's greatest failure, however, is the absence of any convincing emotional or sexual relationship between Sally (Leigh) and Joe (Cumming).

It soon becomes evident just how inane a film this is.

Had Nelson and Kaaya been less concerned with following Othello to the letter and rather had pursued this love affair into uncharted cinematic waters, O might have been more than an unresolved mixture of gimmickry and good intentions.

Schneebaum is a great subject; the film doesn't quite make the most of him.

Punishing, visceral violence is the key element.

It's the prettiest movie of the year, maybe of Allen's career.

Its exploration of faith and love is skin deep.

A logo-laden celebration of the joys of sponsorship wrapped inside an innocuous teen-pic package.

A gorefest of epic proportions.

The three-act structure is too predictable, and at 90 minutes, feels both draggy and hacked to the bone.

It's a lot of plot but none of it is particularly funny or compelling. What keeps the film chugging along and also gives it a depressive aftertaste is a middle-aged male sexual anxiety subtext that intermittently sputters to the surface.

Garvy has worked hard to weave the interviews into an exciting narrative, but the focus is perhaps too narrow for the film to be as politically effective as it could have been.

Gibson has never lacked chemistry with his leading ladies, from Sigourney Weaver in "The Year of Living Dangerously" to Julia Roberts in "Conspiracy Theory," but faced with the awkward Hunt -- Hollywood's bland antidote to the Lolita syndrome -- he doesn't even try.

Pretty much a mess, but it also has a couple of long stretches that are extremely daring in that they reveal black family dynamics we've never seen on screen before.

It may seem perverse to fault a movie for being too accurate, but when surface accuracy is coupled with tunnel vision about self and society the result is a wee bit irritating.

It's this strategy (however unconscious), and not simply a lack of directing talent, that makes Hedwig so relentlessly assaultive, heavy-handed, and emotionally monochromatic.

Little more than a cartoon, and not a funny one at that.

Part cautionary tale, part moral-uplift saga, Brokedown Palace is as dull as it's absurd.

Although there's no evidence of sexual chemistry on the screen, the stars share a certain physical defensiveness that occasionally makes them seem simpatico; most of the time, however, they just look bored to death.

Begins on a note of total migraine-inducing hysteria, which continues unabated throughout.

An inert and inept romantic comedy.

Hal Hartley fans, Flirt may be too slight and schematic. [13 Aug 1996]

Neither as lively nor as tough as the original, and compared to the hardcore punk of "Border Radio," the score for Sugar Town sounds like Muzak.

Michael and Mark Polish's debut feature, "Twin Falls, Idaho," was a cloying oddball love story involving adult male Siamese twins; their follow-up, Jackpot, is another piece of whimsical Americana.

The Cruise is being hailed as a harbinger of a future in which indie film will be liberated by low-cost technology. If this is where we're going, I want off the bus.

Trades in sitcom stereotypes and crosscuts predictably from family to family as if under the misapprehension that equal time is a dramatic principle.

Lacks development and dramatic coherence.

Isaac Eaton wrote and directed; he evidences little talent in either department.

The movie lacks any sense of subcultural specificity, though it has a superabundant country music score. [22 Apr 1997]

East/West fusion aside, The Musketeer is a stale Euro-pudding.

So formulaic and predictable that you're bored even when you're scared.

Barely a movie.

It's a sign of how watered-down the movie is that only the supporting actors have any bite.

A caper film hardly worthy of his (Newman's) presence.

A progressive but not very funny comedy of manners.

Overproduced as a Super Bowl soft-drink commercial, so much so that even its potentially insightful moments seem like movie fakery.

A sub-sitcom stretched to an interminable 85 minutes.

Martin's grin-and-don't-bare-it performance lifts the picture above sitcom level. [31 Dec 1991]

Bette Midler and Danny De Vito mug more shamelessly than usual.

What's on the screen is so dreadful that it inspires the ontological question "What are films and why is this not one of them?"

Mark Hanlon's ridiculous and repellent hash of "Repulsion" and "Psycho," with scenic elements of "Seven" thrown in for good measure.

For those who care, Madonna has found her match in Guy Ritchie, whose absence of talent when it comes to the film medium is equal to her own.

That in such a miserable film I could still care whether his character lived or died is, perhaps, the greatest proof that Chow Yun Fat's a movie star.

So hackneyed and so condescending to its potential audience (adult women) that even Lifetime might hesitate before running it.

Figgis's frenetic and grossly self-aggrandizing adaption of Strindberg's worse-for-wear two-hander about the battle between the sexes and the classes.

The queasiness it makes you feel is more like acid reflux than existential nausea.

So extremely stupid and incompetent, I doubt that even the most impartial critic could find much to praise.

Despite its incoherence and inaudible dialogue, this slice-of-life film manages to be simultaneously thuggish and platitudinous.

Clichéd and condescending.

Valentine isn't exploitative or trendy in the manner of so many indie films. Rather, it seems like the kind of art film that might have been dreamed up by a feverish high schooler.