Barbara Shulgasser

I tried to find in Paltrow what all her admirers in numerous magazine articles have reported. I tried to ignore a less than enchanting English accent and a tendency to be wiped off the screen whenever other actors were given much to do.

Director Gary Fleder seems to be trying for the mood and atmosphere of "Seven," another Freeman film about murder and police work, but this movie isn't as stylish and the script by David Klass, based on the James Patterson novel, doesn't really hang together.

By the time you get to the end of the movie and our heroes and Regis' cop buddy Dennis Miller must sprint through a series of tunnels beneath the White House racing against evil to save the presidency, if your credulity hasn't been tested you'll probably find your heart racing pleasantly.

Get On the Bus might just be Spike Lee's best work yet.

Director Lesli Linka Glatter, making her first feature, is another talent to watch. In addition to guiding the young actors to good performances, she sets up scenes knowingly, usually with a punchy comic touch.

Even overlooking the fundamental inanity of the movie, one is left to contend with some offensive racial stereotyping.

Trash is trash, even if it used to be in French.

If the idea is to teach us something about the 37th president of the United States, then you would think Stone would resolve to stick to what can be proven about the man's life, or at least indicate when he's speculating. But Stone is the Great Explainer, and facts have an annoying habit of mucking up his explanations.

I'm not really sure who would enjoy this movie.

This sure beats "Major League II." In fact, this movie is a lot more entertaining than the Michelle Pfeiffer showcase "Dangerous Minds." That was a big hit. Using Hollywood logic, I have to assume that this one won't be.

Things to do in the movie theater until you mercifully die of boredom sums up this witness' response to the ordeal of sitting through this movie.

Except for the casting, it would be difficult to find any substantial difference between this movie and the previous ones, or this movie and any number of high-tech adventure movies of the last decade.

Lee seems to think that all his major characters are basically good people who deserve another chance, and so for the sake of an inappropriate happy ending, everyone important gets one.

The moment this movie began to go wrong, so wrong, was when the word "angels" started working its way into the script, coming out of the mouths of people we are supposed to respect and look to for hope.

If there is a reason anyone would voluntarily agree to make this movie it probably dwells somewhere in a realm only accessible to the thinking of ambitious actors.

As always, Duvall is magnificent. Even in this small part, he manages to give one of the most stirring performances in the movie.

The light and heavy flow with equal ease and expertise from McKellen's enchanted kitchen.

Cop Land presents a fairly involved plot, and Mangold is not equipped to do more than blurt all the information onto the screen and let the nuances settle where they may.

It is familiarly old-fashioned, complete with montages of newspaper clippings fluttering past and calendar days slipping by. The sets, costumes, old cars and general atmosphere all beautifully recall moviemaking of a bygone era. And for that, hats off to Duke.

Add to that a perfect cast and one's only complaint will be that this is, at heart, another tear-jerker about how good it is to love and be alive and all of that.

When the mystery is unraveled and the frame-up is revealed, I, personally, had no idea what anyone was talking about.

An old-fashioned movie. It is simplistic, full of stock characters and easy solutions to difficult problems, and I absolutely loved it.

Dern is nothing short of brilliant here.

This is right up there with the dumbest pictures of the year.

Let's just say that not revealing this film's idiotic intricacies would be like not divulging that the fish is rotten lest the news spoil the surprise of food poisoning. [28 May 1999, Friday, p.A]

Gray is more interested in hobnobbing with thespian greats than he is in making a good movie.

Sandra Goldbacher, writing and directing her first feature, is a sure-handed filmmaker. The movie is a tableau of sensuality.

The movie is a turgid, swollen, wheezing old contraption, a crashing bore of special effects in which the most exciting moment gives us two ships sitting in water sending cannon balls at each other for what seems like hours on end.