Barbara Shulgasser

Douglas Carter Beane's script is so wickedly clever (the title refers to an autographed photo the drag queens carry with them), you come away from this film with the impression that you've had a much better time than you've actually had.

Unfortunately, this movie needed an attractive, irresistibly charismatic performer to give us some reason for watching. Madonna is made up to look like Eva, but this is hardly enough to carry the movie.

Particularly because unlike so many other boring movies one sees, Jarmusch films require many more words to explain the boringness than less certifiably artistic films would.

Leonardo DiCaprio? Excuse me, Leonardo DiCaprio? I know he makes teenaged girls cry, but, I mean, Leonardo DiCaprio?

The thrill is most certainly not in the script by David Koepp, written from Michael Crichton's novel....Most of the writing is the blandest sort of twaddle, jokes you can practically recite along with actors.

A handbook on cinematic lucidity. All events are described clearly. Motives of all the characters are set right there on the table next to the pasta for our consideration.

While the original conception of The Saint gave us a debonair, sophisticated and roguish detective, the new movie, directed stiffly by Phillip Noyce ( "Clear and Present Danger" ), gives us Val Kilmer as a greedy high-tech daredevil thief with the moves of Batman, the clunky disguises of Tom Cruise in "Mission: Impossible" and the morals of an alley cat.

With this marvelous premise to launch it, the film fails nevertheless. The trouble is that none of the dialogue is funny enough to fulfill the expectations that Brooks' full-bodied stand-up comedian delivery promises every time he opens his mouth.

I'm not sure someone with Shrader's pessimistic outlook ought to be making comedies. I think the strain is too much for him.

Caruso doesn't leave much of a mark in the movie. On the smaller screen he smoldered. He seems to need the cramped space to seem sexy. The big screen isn't claustrophobic enough to pinch and squeeze the talent out of him.

Big swirls of computer-generated dirt, a bickering couple and the dead certainty that the fiancee will leave and the bickerers will get back together. An exciting night out, or what?

The trouble comes when Woo's patented - that is, oft-repeated - style overwhelms any hope of discerning story or acting through the haze of burning, crashing, bleeding and exploding.

It is by far Bogart's most successfully playful role.

First Knight has all the elements of a crowd-pleaser.

I like that Sheridan's girlfriend works at Starbucks. Snipes plays the part with the kind of high energy that large doses of caffeine would explain.

Private Parts is a sparkling, nonstop entertainment written by Len Blum and Michael Kalesniko and directed by Betty Thomas, but sometimes it gives the impression that Stern is nothing short of Nobel Peace Prize material.

Think of this as "Die Hard" in a suit, with an election coming up.

It took four people to write the screenplay for The Relic. All I can say is that I hope these people have not quit their day jobs.

The script, by director Richard Kwietnioski and adapted from the Gilbert Adair novel, is poignant and well constructed.

This is a good-hearted movie that unfortunately is wildly implausible and makes no sense.

The ordinariness of the material gives way to the winning personalities of the stars.

In stupidity, this movie ranks up there among the greats.

The disappointing ending aside, there is much to enjoy in The Game, a creation with a sheen so highly burnished that sometimes you feel you must look away.

It's funnier, and bitchier, than Clare Boothe Luce's "The Women," and, best of all, it showcases three wonderful actresses who have rarely been better.

Scott treats the material as if it were grist for a 30-second spot or a rowdy music video.

Hytner uses 360-degree camera turns and strange angle shots to inject this largely lifeless business with some drama. Ryder tries to do the same by nearly working herself into cardiac arrest in several monologues. Day-Lewis is acting so hard you can see his lower teeth, which, by the way are sometimes horribly decayed and other times white enough to blind a dental hygienist...See this movie at the peril of your soul.

Unfortunately, it stars Keanu Reeves and Cameron Diaz, so it has, more than anything else, a sense of ridiculousness.

Copycat is as steady and reliable as a pulse and as exhilarating as a surge of adrenalin.