Andy Klein

This is after all a romantic comedy, not a romantic tragedy, though you might not realize it since it’s almost devoid of humor.

For fans of the franchise, Evil Dead Rises marks a welcome return to the seamless blend of humor and genuine scares and creepiness that Raimi created 42 years ago.

Harrelson is enjoyable as always, and the rest of the cast delivers, but the film is too warm, fuzzy, predictable, and by the numbers to be anything more than a pleasant diversion that will vanish from your mind by the time you leave the multiplex.

The film operates like a clockwork mechanism. If there were foul-ups or major implausibilities—as such trick plots often have—they eluded me.

Instead of gags, we’re treated to endless observations about love, commitment, romance, parental responsibilities, and other well-trod subjects. None of this is particularly insightful or interesting.

Spinal Tap is still on the right side of the fine line between stupid and clever.

In the end, it's all just too damned much. It's more exhausting than edifying.

But by the end the audience, along with Clayton, has been jerked around so many times that it's almost too exhausting...By then, it's almost impossible to care.

May display an energetic and promising talent, but it is also uncomfortably close to being a 105-minute music video, with all the problems that suggests.

So uplifting, it's almost...gross.

It's not really a kids' film, nor it is particularly funny, by either design or execution. It is, rather, Columbus' latest attempt at a comically tinged tearjerker.

The film is overwrought, slow, and portentous, with confusing surreal elements and a narrative time scheme that's impossible to keep track of.

Despite the generally likable characters and the abundance of clever ideas, Lustig mucks it all up with her "trick" editing.

Except for a few slow patches, the movie is compulsively watchable: You keep waiting to see just how sick things are going to get.

Sad to say, the story is simply too slight to sustain the film.

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.”

A warning is virtually mandated: No one who's even the least bit squeamish should even think about seeing Audition. But, if you have a taste for the disturbing, it's a trip that will stay with you for some time.

An uninspired, standard-issue mimeo whose only distinguishing feature is a reversal in its casting.

Maniacally funny. It remains neck and neck with "Young Frankenstein" as Brooks' best film.

The film is a masterpiece of nuance and characterization, marred only by an inexplicable, utterly distracting blunder at the very end.

Its tone has elements of Jim Jarmusch and the Coen brothers but without Jarmusch's self-conscious artiness or the Coens' hip snottiness.

At first glance, Schizopolis may seem like no more than a grab-bag of tricks and gimmicks, but repeat viewings reveal a more coherent pattern.

More involving and intriguing than any by-the-numbers studio thriller. In large part, it holds our interest because of its stylistic boldness, not despite it.

There have been other films dealing with the Jewish ghettos during the Nazi occupation of Poland -- some very good -- but The Pianist, the latest feature from Roman Polanski, may be the best.

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

On the up side, there are some genuinely funny jokes, and Oedekerk has been wise enough to keep the running time down to 82 minutes, including the eight-minute closing credit sequence (which is worth staying through its entirety). But Kung Pow! is no "What's Up, Tiger Lily?"

The story is just as funny and touching. The only problem is the inevitable one: The freshness -- the novel delight -- is a little faded now.

The muddiness of the basic concept and the thinness of its execution eventually defeat even Witherspoon's talents.

Craven's other accomplishment here, besides resuscitating the genre, is the way he keeps things scary even when they're at their funniest. The grand finale, while thoroughly bloody and tense, has some genuinely hilarious shtick.

This is quintessential "family entertainment."

Fact is, there is nothing feloniously awful about the whole thing, but the laughs are tepid and too infrequent.

It’s Del Toro who really gets to strut his stuff with a subtle, ambiguous, and riveting performance. In a field of top-notch actors, he’s the one whom you remember days later.

It manages to be sentimental without seeming trashy.

What Nolan does accomplish here that we haven't seen from him before is staging a few horrifyingly effective suspense set pieces -- one of which, in particular, is likely to stay with you for a long time.

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

A six-year-old masterpiece, never-before widely seen in the U.S., is still a masterpiece.

In the end, the performances and the basic strength of the premise make Shadow of the Vampire a relatively diverting ninety minutes. But there is the inescapable feeling that it is a shadow of the great film it might have been.

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

It's refreshing and unusual to see clever strategy trumping ritual honor in a film of this genre, even if one of the tricks seems gratuitously brutal.

Zhang deftly and quickly draws a half-dozen supporting characters, and his pacing never flags.

It's funny, heroic, exaggerated and, most of all, energetic; the film speeds along as though afraid to lose the audience's attention for even a moment.

Full of provocative concepts, but, like most films that attack such metaphysical concerns head-on, things have become a tad too jumbled by the end to be altogether satisfying. It's a problem built into the subject matter...This all said, Dark City is immensely entertaining, as well as visually dazzling.

This really should have gone straight to video--or, better yet, to the nearest landfill.

It's hard to know just how much to trust Titanic Town.

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.

What about Ronny Yu's 1992 masterpiece "The Bride With White Hair," of which Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a decent facsimile?

The redeeming features of All Over the Guy are the consistently engaging performances and some genuinely funny dialogue.

Filled with sharp observations and interesting, often subtle, bits of visual trickery, much of it evoking the technique of Douglas Sirk's American domestic melodramas. Still, the very simple story seems too simple and the working out of the plot almost arbitrary.

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.

The ludicrous casting of Hoffman is just the fatal bit of kindling on this Joan's fire.

His most thoroughly surreal work since Eraserhead, this two-hour-plus fever dream is more of one piece than Fire Walk with Me and less desperate and jokey than Wild at Heart.

The entire cast is right on the money, a special word must be said about Seth.

What's particularly scary about Hollywood Ending, however, is that its flaws are exactly the sort of problems that often afflict aging directors, flaws that we've never seen in Allen before -- bad comic timing, slack pacing, an unsteady control of tone, a reliance on jokes that have long since become clichés.

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.

This film made Dietrich a star, and it's easy to see why: Slightly more voluptuous than in her later films, Dietrich is the embodiment of the pleasures of the flesh.

It was Melville's second-to-last feature, and it shows him in top form, with a more generous dose of humor than usual.

An exciting, sharply realized melodramatic film noir, based on Elizabeth Sanxay Holding's novel "The Blank Wall."

In the real audience with which I watched it, the only laughs were from kids under eight or nine, mostly at hilarious "hooter" jokes.

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 nothing more than a very long movie about someone, literally and metaphorically, having to get back up on a horse.

The only genuine surprises on hand are the few moments when the film defies the expectations that have been programmed into our collective neurons by the past 25 years of horror movies.

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.

Thankfully, the final, long action set piece, which owes a debt to "The Manchurian Candidate" among others, is free of such problems. Shiri manages to go out on its most exciting sequence. There are worse ways to go.

While tyro director Simon West fills Con Air with all the slam-bang action and well-honed wisecracks that were the more positive qualities of its predecessors, the film brims even more with all their worst qualities.

In the end, Code Unknown is a puzzle with no obvious solution.

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.

It is engaging, touching, and frequently funny. Maybe because his hero is inarticulate and his heroine is mute, Allen relies far more than usual on physical comedy than on the verbal jokes that are his strongest comic suit.

The texture is reminiscent of last year's "Suzhou River," but the basic material isn't as rich.

The cold distance that LaBute brings to the material keeps the viewer at arms' length.

The Wachowskis still hold the current franchise on intellectually engaging action films. It's not like I won't be heading back for a second (or even third) look.

With virtually no interesting elements for an audience to focus on, Chelsea Walls is a triple-espresso endurance challenge.

Generally engaging.

Eastwood provides more than an hour of easygoing fun, followed by 45 minutes of action and suspense.

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.

Has an awkwardness that defeats whatever emotional involvement it tries to achieve.

Condensing, paring and shorthanding the story elements can be daunting, and, despite the efforts of Kasdan and Goldman, two masters at wrangling unwieldy source material into shape, there is some awkwardness and confusion in the result.

Hope Floats comes lumbering along, scourging all in its path with saccharine sentimentality and bogus emotions.

For those with a taste for epics that integrate the historical and the intimate.

Handily in a league with its predecessor...as good a follow-up as one can imagine, given the built-in difficulties of sequels.

Stylish, but definitely not for the squeamish

Fans of convoluted narrative in the manner of Christopher Nolan and David Lynch are likely to be intrigued, although Medem has a far stronger streak of sentiment.

What's most disappointing is the almost utter lack of humor -- In the mindless action sweepstakes, however, there's still enough here to place The Transporter above big-bang gibberish like XXX.

When emotion is called for, Cassavetes drags out every tear-jerking moment beyond the point of tolerability.

What Ichaso does do is take us on a dizzying, constantly moving ride through an exciting decade in the blossoming of "Nuyorican" culture with its most flamboyant figure as our focus.

Jones seems to have trouble keeping up with the large amount of action he's required to participate in. And Del Toro seems ill-cast and ill-used.

If a movie is going to be so totally derivative, it should at least do a better job of it.

Varda, still pixieish in her early 70s, is having fun here.

While the humor is recognizably Plympton, he has actually bothered to construct a real story this time, and the joke sequences are shorter and better integrated. The visual style is also richer and "better drawn" than before.

Indeed heartwarming, though not simplemindedly so.

The acting tends toward the cartoonish (not in a good way), and the story is built on a series of illogical motivations.

The film still delivers the goods, in part because of Eastwood's iconic presence and in part because of Daniels' scene-stealing work in what could have been a hokey role.

From the start, a comprehensible, if necessarily simplified, sense of an extremely complicated moment in history.

The performance itself (which aired on PBS and is available on DVD) apparently went perfectly; given the potential pitfalls that Miller documents, it's some kind of miracle.

Gilroy has brilliantly played to his strengths in Spring Forward. With a story that has no room for big, obviously "cinematic" effects, he concentrates on simple staging, unobtrusive (though often beautifully evocative) visuals, and sheer performance. It's a decision that pays off.

Altman's technique also allows his huge cast to act up a storm, in the best sense. Gosford Park has roughly half the best actors in England in it.

This use of narrative irony is in fact not just the central joke; it's the only joke. And as a result, the movie slightly overstays its welcome.

Were it not for the gravity of the setting, the movie could just as easily be a comedy -- with everybody play-acting and doors opening and shutting and the repercussions of lies multiplying geometrically -- as a drama.

While the movie tries to make the connection between the rough but sensitive lad we see on screen and the notorious carouser of later years, there's little here to suggest whatever torment led Behan to drunkenness and an absurdly early death at 41.

Helgeland makes a solid debut as director here, finding a new angle through which to view the Parker character, and doing so without exhausting the possibilities.

Worth watching.

In terms of cleverly hidden exposition, this ain't "The Sixth Sense."

Enjoyable, if utterly stupid, upscale entry in the old Amityville Horror genre -- that is, a horror film allegedly based on spooky and inexplicable real-life events.

It's unlikely that anyone will be bored. But it's just as unlikely that anyone will be swept off his feet either.

The various talents on display aren't enough to overcome the sheer blandness of the material.

Indeed, the best that can be said about The Majestic is that it may boost Capra's reputation by virtue of comparison. Apparently, it's not so easy to weave that kind of magic.

Pretty hysterical.

I can’t imagine why anyone would plunge ahead with this project -- an adaptation of a classic no one reads, about characters no one could care about, directed by a filmmaker of little talent and less success.

It's an interesting, often worthwhile, film, but humor isn't its strongest attribute.

While Imamura films generally have their droll moments, this is the most blatantly comic work he's done since the '80s -- richly entertaining and suggestive of any number of metaphorical readings.

The plot may be nothing, but the film is something indeed.

Not everything in the film happens according to the traditional, overly familiar blueprint.

Williams is so unique that his presence automatically changes any project he stars in. Surprisingly, in this case, the change isn't particularly welcome.

This is not exactly original, but Schaeffer and his cast manage to make it tolerable.

Nearly every attempt at humor in this witless, completely reprehensible "movie" is mean-spirited and stupidly conceived at the expense of some group that deserves better.

Given how uninvolving Summer Catch is, the truly remarkable pitching here was not so much on the mound as in the executive office where someone convinced Warner Bros. to green-light this turkey, which should have been called Good Will Hitting.

Despite the few good performances, this Hamlet is not a keeper.

Silva is a polished and sophisticated director who brings a surprisingly light touch to much of this apparently fact-based story.

Its greatest flaw is the casting of Miller ("Trainspotting," "Hackers"), who continues to have virtually no screen presence...For all that, Plunkett & Macleane is fun.

There are lots of elements that make no sense whatever.

Scrappy, sappy, and appealing.

Both Fellini and Woody Allen have remarked that casting is 90 percent of directing--and Citizen Ruth bears witness to that notion. While this is primarily Dern's show, the casting is perfect all around.

While there's nothing original in Rush Hour, it runs through its well-worn paces with both wit and excitement.

It's pretty good fun, once it gets going, but still makes some of the same mistakes that have plagued other Hollywood films that interpolate the concepts of Hong Kong action.

One of the compulsively watchable films this year, second only to "Memento." It's a must-see, except for those with a sensitivity to on-screen mayhem.

If you don't view it too analytically, Men of Honor provides almost more uplift than a body can handle.

The result is by no means the embarrassment that many such offerings from unjustifiably vain actor-auteurs have been, but nor does it present much of anything new or compelling to demand one's attention.

It's perfectly effective, though only rarely inspired.

Makes good use of its actors.

What Malick has fashioned here is less a conventional narrative than an impressionistic mosaic of our common, yet varied experience of life and death, as focused and clarified through the relentless lens of war.

Toback has taken a distinctly '60s-ish personal experience and done his best to transplant it into the current, vastly different, cultural milieu. Harvard Man is a semi-throwback, a reminiscence without nostalgia or sentimentality.

After a few very funny early sequences, tricked up with grotesque, surreal editing and camerawork, the movie gets bogged down a bit during the first third.

The repetitious structure begins to grow wearing about two-thirds through, but the conclusion has an emotional wallop that justifies the wait.

Kay doesn't seem to know the meaning of moderation.

The film is reasonably entertaining, though it begins to drag two-thirds through, when the melodramatic aspects start to overtake the comedy.

Schnitzler's film has a great hook, some clever bits and well-drawn, if standard issue, characters, but is still only partly satisfying. The problem may very well be one of cultural translation.

Dramatically effective, thanks in large part to Montand's impassioned performance.

No one can blend melodrama and heightened emotion with laugh-out-loud wackiness the way Almodóvar does.

Belongs somewhere in the low middle of Altman's output -- not up to "Cookie's Fortune," but way better than, say, "Beyond Therapy," which remains his worst film by some margin.

Unfocused. We feel cut adrift amid the various plot threads. This is exacerbated by some murky exposition. Characters, events, and the passage of time are not always clearly established.

Will probably please hard-core action fans who have become inured to plot idiocies, but it remains a terrible waste of talent.

Bigger, Longer & Uncut delivers: It's never less than funny, and at its best, it's truly hysterical.

It's a fast, entertaining ride.

It's always risky to characterize a new film as "unique," but Tuvalu, the debut feature from German director Veit Helmer, has as good a shot as any at claiming that label.

It is a moving and solidly entertaining comedy/drama that should bolster director and co-writer Juan José Campanella's reputation in the United States.

Wong weaves a spell that no other director could create.

It's hard not to warm to a film that features William Shatner (playing himself) looking at De Niro's character and complaining about what a lousy actor he is.

By the end, we simply have no idea what he (Lee) feels or what the film is really about. And we are too worn out to care.

Lee's pace is slow enough to try viewers' patience.

Solidly entertaining little film.

While Brother may be the perfect introduction for Kitano newcomers, longtime fans may find it superfluous and even a step down from the likes of Hana-Bi (1997) and Sonatine (1993).

The film looks great, but Wargnier is so heavy-handed in his portrayal of postwar Russia that it casts suspicions on the film's reliability as history.

Taymor moves Titus completely out of time and into all time.

While it's crucial to preserve and make available every bit of available footage of such an earth-shattering event, it must be said that Rosenbaum's film manages to become slack and uninvolving after a while.

Hu has crafted a charming and modest movie.

The film's demands may be too perplexing.

It would be heartening if the adolescent girls of America turned their backs on this pandering piece of kitsch, but that would be hoping too much.

It's unlikely that anyone will walk away unmoved.

If the performances are the prime reason the film is as engaging as it is, it must also be said that Majidi's visual style seems far more sophisticated than in "Children of Heaven."

Boll uses a lot of quick cutting and blurry step-printing to goose things up, but dopey dialogue and sometimes inadequate performances kill the effect.

Wisely, Run Lola Run lasts something under 80 minutes; any longer, and it would have been as exhausting and boring as a half-hour Donna Summer track.

Singleton may spend the rest of his career chasing the kind of critical and commercial success he won at an early age with "Boyz N the Hood". But even if Rosewood fails to meet that standard, it is a film that reaffirms that depth of his talents.

Ninety percent of this thriller is absolutely terrific; but the 10 percent that fails is so troubling that it threatens to undermine all that is wonderful in the rest.

Nobody involved will want to make this banal "comedy" a highlight of their résumé, not if they have any sense.

This nearly perfect confection never takes its action more seriously than its comedy.

The plot can be really tough to follow, in part because Banderas' accent, rarely a problem in recent years, is surprisingly hard to understand at crucial moments, and partly because it's tough to keep track of just who's working for whom...and why...and even where.

This is mostly well-constructed fluff, which is all it seems intended to be.

An occasionally funny, but overall limp, fish-out-of-water story.

As worthless a piece of garbage as we've seen this year.

One of the glories of the film is that Ramsay keeps us rigorously to Morvern's point of view without ever being explicit about what's going on in her head.

It more or less makes sense and it's not dull -- more than can be said for many similar attempts.

It's moving; but it's also endlessly engaging, uproariously funny at moments, informative, and eventually touching in ways one might not have expected.

It doesn't add up to much more than a trifle that might have been more impressive as a short.

The actors labor long and hard to bring some semblance of reality to the proceedings, but the whole affair has a distinctly faux '50s feel to it.

The problem with Wendigo, for all its effective moments, isn't really one of resources. At its heart, the story seems confused, as though the director has given it one too many twists.

It just doesn¹t get very good until halfway through, in large part because the usually excellent Walston is miscast.

Just barely diverting, even at under 80 minutes -- a TV episode inflated past its natural length.

This is as close to a total wipeout as can be imagined.

Inert, unfunny, and not even interesting as a dirty movie, 8 1/2 Women could well rank as one of the worst films of the year.

This sweet little movie is a mild comedy, a much calmer cousin to "Sister Act," with men in robes rather than women in habits.

Takes roughly a third of its length to really get going, but, once it does, it's a devilishly clever, engaging piece of work that milks every cent of value from its tiny budget.

It's funny and exciting on enough levels that adults are likely to enjoy it just as much as the rug rats.

Festival in Cannes is an amused indictment of Jaglom's own profession; he doesn't seem to be making excuses for anybody's compromised (or even downright immoral) behavior here.

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

Unless you're deeply familiar with Korean culture, you've truly never seen anything like it.

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.

Middlebrow art has its built-in pitfalls, not the least of them sentimentality and intellectual flabbiness -- both of which are in abundant supply in Bagger Vance.

Fails dramatically as well as ideologically.

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

While the whole is diverting, the ending's utter repudiation of reality seems like pissing on the audience; -- we feel like we've been suckers for bothering to care about the characters at all.

For most people, four hours pushes the outer comfort limits for theatrical viewing. My Voyage to Italy is well worth the time, but bringing along a thermos of espresso isn't a bad idea either.

Dominik's stylistic choices are savvy, but what really makes the movie work is Bana's extraordinary performance as Chopper.

In short, the film is emotional, perhaps even sentimental, but it strenuously avoids the sort of blatant manipulation that marks cheap sentimentality.

Reasonably well-made and all, but it's simply too familiar, too derivative and too inferior to its predecessors to have any reason to exist.

Abandon all hopes of common sense, and enter the theater with high expectations for visceral entertainment. You won't be disappointed.

Compellingly watchable.

Nowhere near as bad as distributor New Line seems to think.

The efficiency of his (Donaldson) direction renders the movie somewhat characterless, like a top-rank made-for-TV production.

The pacing is slow, but the film is entrancing and earns a permanent place in the viewer's mind.

It's a strange, entertaining little film that derives its weird tension from a blend of comic and serious tones.

Casting is perfect all down the line.

First, the good news: Unlike most action film sequels, Speed 2: Cruise Control is not a mere retread of the original. Now the bad news: Better it had been.

Cube is essentially a glossy, beautifully designed 90-minute Twilight Zone episode.

Rea hits just the right balance of sympathy and self-interest.

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

All the new plot stuff is way old hat, as though straight from a textbook chapter called "Conflict Drives Your Narrative!" And at times the motivations are either unclear or senseless.

The over-the-top sincerity that is so rewarding in "Face/Off" (1998), Woo's best American film, feels too clichéd in this more conventional context.

The underlying theme constantly changes shape, not in a way that seems rich in ambiguity, but in a way that seems poorly worked out.

Once the action kicks in -- starting with an extraordinary balletic fight in the rain featuring the two masters and a flying wooden beam -- you can't take your eyes off the screen.

More than just a disappointment. It is also a spoiler, possibly weakening the impact of "Silence" for its fans.

Pecker is a satire, but an incredibly good-natured one, which is not quite the contradiction in terms it might seem.

It's sweet and well intentioned, with occasional amusing moments.

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.

Star Jeremy Renner seems shorter than Dahmer, but is otherwise a look-alike and gives a convincingly intense and weird performance. Bruce Davison (as Papa Dahmer) and the rest of the cast also do nice work.

It doesn't have enough power in the first place to make a strong claim on our attentions.

Brosnan proved his worth last time around; but, sad to say, the rest of Tomorrow Never Dies lacks the wit and inventiveness of GoldenEye, let alone of Goldfinger.

As satisfying as much of the film is, there are a few missteps, large and small, that may require indulgence on the part of viewers.

This is a dark, often funny walk through Ingmar Bergman turf.

For all of the heroine's shockingly "modern" lifestyle choices, the thrust of the film is remarkably old-fashioned. It embraces the notion that you can have only a single great love in a lifetime...and that's if you're lucky.

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

There is nothing particularly interesting about either the people or the situations. Barrial might as well have filmed ANY body.

Two minor drawbacks: Onscreen IDs of speakers are sometimes omitted. And Kissinger's crimes seem almost paltry in comparison to current American policies.

Allen produces a lovable, relaxed--although not uproarious--comedy.

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.

A political film in the form of a thriller, rather than a garden-variety potboiler gleefully helping itself to stock political tropes from the genre's grab bag.

Slips by quickly enough, but it never engages our interest more than passingly.

Les Destinées has a leisurely, contemplative pace without ever growing boring. Still, at the end, we are left somehow empty. For all the time we spend with these people, we never really get inside of them.

Zemeckis is more interested here in getting us thinking (and feeling) than in telling us what to think.

With no aspects of the personalities represented outside of their music, Grateful Dawg ends up feeling dry and incomplete; its two subjects are stripped of all other characteristics and come across as not very interesting.

Eureka is, quite extraordinarily, never dull.

A mostly well-constructed action flick with a number of flashy, well-choreographed fight and chase scenes.

Doesn't show us much of anything we haven't seen better already.

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

It's an amazing story, but, in addition to its intrinsic interest, the Shackleton expedition has another remarkable draw: Crewman Frank Hurley had brought along not only still cameras, but a movie camera as well, providing us with an extraordinary record of the ship's voyage.

While the idea may be good, its execution is awful.

O'Connor as Fanny is irresistibly appealing.

Comes across as artificial.

Nobody can convey more while doing nothing than Thornton. And while his minimalist style is appropriate for the ironically named Levity, what is conveyed never quite generates the emotional charge of "Monster's Ball."

I found myself roaring at the grotesque way some of the characters talk to their pets, pausing only briefly when I realized that I do precisely the same thing.

Goes by relatively swiftly and painlessly, despite the completely ragtag nature of its construction, but there is not an inspired moment in it.

The film is often moving and explores the discomfort inherent in the contacts between the American "hosts" and their "guests," but its effect is diluted by slow pacing and lengthiness.

At best, second-rate pulp, hampered by excessive length, a thematically meandering screenplay, and a general lack of excitement.

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.

An amusing trifle. There are few comic staples less convincing or more timeworn than charming lunatics in love, and the only thing that lifts this film beyond TV-movie quality is Jones' performance.

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.

Released in 1962, it was pretty clearly the most intelligent spectacular within living memory. On its 40th anniversary, it's even better.

The film could be subtitled "Six Characters in Search of an Ending:" When they find that ending, it is gently, delightfully uplifting.