Amy Taubin

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.