Amy Taubin

Acting is the strongest element in Stephen Frears's Liam.

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

More commendable as social protest than as filmmaking.

Sweet, ribald, and even inspired in an off-the-cuff way.

Takes its shape from (Viard's) performance, which is as big as life.

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.

Crouching Tiger's dramatic line is so blurry that the central character is only a bystander to the climactic fight between forces of good and evil.

Seems like a TV movie. A well-written, sympathetically acted TV movie, to be sure, but so timid and clumsy in its deployment of picture, sound, and editing that you have to wonder if executive producer Martin Scorsese bothered to give notes.

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

A dark and unsparing study of female masochism and a brittle sex comedy of manners, Romance is unsettled in tone, to say the least.

It remains one of the most wrenching films about adolescent angst, thanks largely to the performance of Phil Daniels.

The most audacious debut feature of the year.

The General is a refined, traditional movie about a character who is never more traditional than when he imagines himself outside the law. It’s a great paradox, but it barely comes alive on the screen.

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

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

Unabashedly personal and uncool...but between you and me, dear reader, I love it to death.

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

The relationship between the hysterical Gerard and the careful, compulsive George is classic screwball material and more compelling than the relationship between George and Alicia.

As ethereal, moving, and uncompromising as its subject.

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.

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.

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

Justman's A Trial in Prague acts as something of a corrective to the exuberant but oversimplified "Fighter."

It seems like a more witty, wise, and succinct "Magnolia."

Takes us inside the consciousness and the coded masculine world of a single character.

Isn't convincing on every front, but as a political conversation piece, it's potentially effective.

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

A magisterial film, but not quite a great one.

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]

An inert and inept romantic comedy.

The film belongs to Fleiss, and he makes Joe's inner life so transparent that it's heartbreaking to watch the boy dig himself into a hole.

What gives the film extra weight is the sense that these are not just actors trying to enhance their careers but real people seizing a chance for immortality.

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

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

Prince-Bythewood gives the film a style that's easy on the eye but also has muscle -- on and off the court.

It could be described as the most gripping political thriller to hit the big screen in many years, although given the events it depicts through interviews, photographs, and news footage, the words "gripping" and "thriller" have inappropriately frivolous and commercial associations.

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?"

Punishing, visceral violence is the key element.

A highly talented filmmaker, Radtke draws intense, focused performances from these two inexperienced young actors.

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

There are big crowd scenes, intimate close-ups, and lots of bug’s-eye point-of-view shots. Call me gullible: I believed every second of it.

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.

As fragmented and unresolved as the experiences of mother and daughter, Alma bears witness to a situation for which there are no easy answers.

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.

Goodman and Anker adroitly shape a cohesive drama out of a complicated history.

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.

A tender and hilarious vision of female adolescence.

Eccentric and thoroughly winning.

Thanks to some brilliant casting, Venus Beauty Institute provokes ideas about women, movies, sexuality, and age that extend beyond its frothy fiction.

Its exploration of faith and love is skin deep.

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.

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

A spare, formally ingenious, journalistically acute piece of filmmaking.

Far too tepid.

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

Compelling viewing, even if there's nothing pretty (pictorially or emotionally) about it.

Not as skillful, subtle, or hilarious as "Some Like It Hot," but its anti-essentialism vis-à-vis gender roles is just as sharp and exhilarating.

Josh Aronson's thoroughly engrossing documentary Sound and Fury is as much about children's rights as it is about the impact of cochlear-implant technology on a family in which deafness runs through three generations.

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

Derails toward the end, becoming platitudinous, not to mention kitschy, but, given the Cheerios wholesomeness of most gay indies, its grief-stricken delirium is a welcome relief.

A veritable Chekhov tragicomedy of provincial life.

Arik Kaplun's smart, scrappy romantic comedy Yana's Friends displays an insouciance rarely found in Israeli film.

Dorothy and Petula leave a bloodier trail than Thelma and Louise did.

What’s remarkable—and Kafkaesque—about La Sentinelle is how Desplechin grounds the phantasmagoric aspects of his tale in the details, routines, and conflicts of daily life.

Along with Raoul Coutard's radiant cinematography, what makes the film extraordinary is Karina, the pure curves of her face a contradiction to the marionette angularity of her body.

A gorefest of epic proportions.

Even more than the subtlety of the writing and acting, it's this sophisticated and emotionally potent visual strategy that suggests Barbieri's promise as a filmmaker and lifts One above the low-budget indie heap.

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

This is one scary movie, not because we see ghosts or monsters, but because Kidman makes us feel her fear as our own.

There are long stretches in Sexy Beast that are so exhilarating it feels churlish to dwell on its flaws.

Downey, who radiates more energy doing nothing discernible than most other actors do when they let it all hang out, takes the film to another level.

By turns hilarious and wounding.

If Lloyd's performance is the film's near-fatal flaw, Unger's is its saving grace.

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

Psychologically resonant despite the intermittently clunky performances...one of the only Amerindies in recent years to match intellectual with formal ambitions.

Lacks development and dramatic coherence.

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.

Forster not only makes this unlikely story emotionally believable, he moves you to tears. Lakeboat isn't much of a film, but for Forster fans, it's indispensable.

The relationship is touching, painful, revealing, and often funny, which is true of the film as a whole as well.

The style of the filmmaking, the freewheeling handheld camera movement, the associative editing, and the buoyant Brazilian score convey Anderson's sense that chance plays a major role in our lives and that what's happening on the periphery is often more important than what's staring us in the face.

The 7Up series is thus one of the rare documentaries to have had a positive practical effect on the life of at least one of its subjects.

An intelligent, perceptive film. It's good enough to make you wish Chen hadn't sacrificed emotional complexity for a last-minute surprise.

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

A smart, realist drama -- I wouldn't be surprised if this one winds up on my 10-best list for '99.

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

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

This adaptation of John Irving's novel--- is as paternalistic, puffed-up, and dull as a congressional debate about abortion rights.

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

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.

As smooth and powerfully packed as its protagonist.

Everything about the film is familiar except that the twentysomethings are all African American.

A small, direct, tantalizing documentary.

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

Rampling has never been as beautiful, not to mention as emotionally naked, nuanced, and affecting as she is here.

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

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.

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.

Probably more terse than it needs to be, but the dramatic line has an elegance and drive that reinforces the unexpected turns of the story.

Eads's wit, generosity, insight, and courage are irresistible.

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

A very beautiful film, but its bleached desert colors and flatter perspectives are less inviting, and the back-and-forth between present and past can occasionally be confusing.

Primary story line is clumsy and badly acted. But he (Lee) reminds you that movies have power, that they matter, and for a few brilliant moments, Bamboozled matters more than any other American movie this year.

Not nearly the mindfuck it wants to be.

That Simon Birch is not as maudlin as it might have been is largely due to the intensely thoughtful, prickly performance of 11-year-old Ian Michael Smith, who plays Simon.

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.

More mushy than mystical.

Director Eric Bross has a smooth nonstyle that serves him well until the screenplay turns melodramatic at the end.

This is the Julia Roberts performance her fans have been waiting for.

Clichéd and condescending.

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

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

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.

A smart, sweet, and altogether smashing evocation of teenage girlhood.

The many eight-to-11-year-olds in the audience seemed completely enthralled.

An understated gem.

Although I don't begrudge Borchardt his year of fame, what he doesn't seem to understand about his exploitation creeps me out.

Singer achieves remarkable intimacy with his subjects.

Despite Sunshine's historical scope and multiplicity of characters, it doesn't shed half as much light on its subject -- identity and anti-Semitism -- as does, for example, Agnieszka Holland's claustrophobic chamber piece "Angry Harvest."

While the acting ensemble is crucial, it's not the only asset here.

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

Tender, poignant, and homoerotically charged, this complicated father-son relationship is brought to life by two brilliant actors and a director who's canny enough to give them all the room they need.

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

Barely a movie.

A pop culture document for a mass audience.

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

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.

Filled with vivid and likable characters, The Opportunists could be the basis for a TV series as captivating as "The Sopranos."

What's most stunning about Raging Bull is the tension between 19th-century melodrama and 20th-century psychodrama, the narrative form brought into being by the conjunction of Freudian theory and the mechanics of the movie camera.

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

Series 7 could have turned out as ugly as the second season of "Survivor," were it not for the pleasure Minahan takes in melodrama.

(You) might be charmed by the film's blend of kineticism, car-culture rituals, and hilariously flat-footed dialogue.

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

I suspect that Time Code was a lot more fun to make than it is to watch.

Mindless, shoddy (lurching zooms, no color correction, an entire reel out of sync) depiction of some very big guys who work as bouncers.

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.

A sympathetic but conventional disease-of-the-week movie.

A progressive but not very funny comedy of manners.

The show that Horrocks puts on when she finally takes to the stage is more than worth the wait.

It's entertainment that never lets us off the hook.

Restrained, tough, and subtle enough to be as engrossing on the second viewing as it was on the first.

Has all the hallmarks of a Pennebaker production. The editing is seamless, the drama builds throughout, and the arc of the central character is as shapely as in a Hollywood fiction.

Cross "Rushmore" with "Cheech and Chong" and you might get Outside Providence.

We may not want another film about incest, but there's a necessity about this one that won't be denied.

Time has tamed some of the terror and eroticism of Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now, but it’s still a haunting thriller about guilt and the supernatural. What’s notable (more notable even than the much celebrated bedroom scene between Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland, in which sex is displaced into memory even as it’s taking place) is that Roeg’s use of the death of a child as the focus of a horror film never feels exploitative.

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

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.

An Indiewood spoof that's more winning than anyone who wasn't a close friend of the director could possibly expect, R2PC satirizes not only wannabe auteurs but also that overworked genre, the faux documentary, while functioning as a credible study guide for Filmmaking 101.

Antoine Fuqua's propulsive, elegantly written police thriller, offers the unsettling spectacle of Denzel Washington.

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.

Inept as a thriller, Place Vendôme nevertheless intrigues.

Made with intelligence and formal sophistication.

The most progressive, good-hearted studio film of the summer.

A sub-sitcom stretched to an interminable 85 minutes.

His film is hardly memorable, but it's amusing enough for two hours, and it never panders or cloys.

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.

A film of rare tenderness and mystery.

So low-key it could be mistaken for a throwaway. But Meadows's understanding of childhood fears and fantasies and the yearning, heartfelt performances he draws from his two young actors should not be underestimated.

A witty, trenchant script, lots of complicated characters, and a few actors who turn human frailty into something nearly sublime.

Largely a showcase for Puri, and he rises to the occasion with a performance that bursts from the screen and tears into your heart.

Egoyan, whose sophisticated eye is connected to a brain that seems, for the moment, to have gone dead.