Andy Klein

Hilarious--a terrific updating of ancient farce conventions for the '90s.

Hilary Birmingham -- makes an impressive feature directorial debut with this rural drama. She gets first-rate performances.

Surprisingly manages never to grow boring -- which proves that Rohmer still has a sense of his audience.

Whatever its flaws -- and it has some lulus -- it's a textbook model for how to structure action of this kind.

Compellingly watchable.

On one level, Together is a countercultural soap opera, though played more as bittersweet comedy than as drama.

I still think the first is the best in the series, but I'm in the minority: Number two has a stronger following among the legions of Hong Kong movie buffs.

We become so absorbed in the ramifications of the techniques involved that a more challenging plot might have resulted in sensory overload.

The fractured structure, which moves from one species to another while following a generally chronological overall arc, can occasionally leave your mind to wandering, but for a film with no plot or characters to focus on it is remarkably gripping.

Office Space's pleasures don't really depend on plot. It's pretty much what a Dilbert feature should look like.

Whatever its faults -- and it has more than a few -- it is unquestionably different. It at least takes a stab at interpolating cerebral ideas into the format of a thriller.

Washington creates an indelibly charming and terrifying character whose volatile blend of dedication and horrible expediency keeps us off balance.

Dench is wholly extraordinary in a characterization that is frequently muted, literally and necessarily.

As in Extraction, the action sequences are the whole game here, and they do not disappoint.

Manages the seemingly impossible task of being very funny indeed and being as dark as anything Wong has ever made. This is an almost painfully bleak comedy that makes you squirm in the manner of “The Out-of-Towners.”

This is not Tsui's best film by a substantial margin, but it's immense fun.

It manages to be sentimental without seeming trashy.

Fuqua has done an admirable job staging the action scenes, but the script is little more than a thin framework to justify those scenes.

For all its mystery and its stylistic finesse, there is something vaguely plodding about The Sweet Hereafter.

Despite some savvy camera movement, the production values obviously can't match American action films made for a hundred times the budget. Still, Hatamikia has put together a gripping drama that balances visceral suspense and interesting ideas.

As the story plows toward its finale, the cultural dislocation problems become worse, until by the end they almost defeat the whole film.

A lovely little comedy that--like its predecessor--will, one hopes, buck the odds and find its audience.

The movie is not always satisfying as a standard thriller, nor is it always clear; but it's never dull, either, and it displays a sensibility so weird as to be its own recommendation.

While Mononoke is often gorgeous to look at and has a far more sophisticated story than most Japanese animated features, it still feels overlong and dramatically unengaging.

Headey, Skarsgård and Rampling flesh these people out marvelously, bringing them fully to life. It's almost a pity: The more real they become, the less pleasant is the time we spend with them.

It's during the shift to seriousness that The Ice Storm makes its missteps. The intrusion of tragedy, while altogether believable, still seems like a device, a calculated tug at the heart strings. It is, in short, a once-effective ploy that now feels like a cliche. A near-miss might have been more effective.

At 75, Aranda can still make his actors sizzle on the screen as well as he did 10 years ago in "Lovers." The explicitly hot bits here may be few and far between, but what there is of them is choice.

Shot in stylish black and white, with a memorably low-key performance from Duchesne, Bob le Flambeur is definitely worth checking out on the big screen in a fresh print.