Barbara Shulgasser

MANNY & LO grows on you, largely because of the charm of its youngest cast member, Scarlett Johansson, who plays 11-years-old Amanda.

Largely a disappointment.

Now and then the script reaches admirable heights of humor.

Franklin juggles it all with wit and style, and suddenly you feel fine that this is only Mosley's first Easy Rawlins novel. Several more are just waiting to be adapted.

The real trouble with this movie is that it represents the continuing departure of Almodovar from the chaotic, riotous and anti-social roots that gave his best movies their zest.

Especially fine are Spade and Louiso, the latter possessing a quality of injured integrity that is priceless here.

Freundlich's problem is that he has made an essentially interesting movie that never seems brave enough to say what it really intends.

This movie may not be brilliant, but every now and then it's really funny.

My guess is you'll probably have more fun watching a game at the ballpark than you will at The Fan.

Directing his first movie, Jack Green, cinematographer on several Clint Eastwood films, shows an ease with the material (written by Jim McGlynn), but there's something a bit dull about the movie.

The Frighteners is a gooey pastiche of Casper, Ghost, Poltergeist, Back to the Future (it's produced by Future director Robert Zemeckis), Ghostbusters, and episodes of Columbo.

A smart, funny and endearing movie. It has enough cynicism to satisfy the part of DiCillo that would mock a blue-eyed superstar, yet enough genuine sentiment to make it possible for us to swallow the cynicism.

Tedious, unfunny.

For all its lazy beauty, the movie is rooted in the personalities of its lead characters and they, unfortunately, are bloodless, affectless, emotionless dopes who turn their considerable lack of scruples on the business of senseless killing, for which they seemingly have no remorse. [13 Feb. 1998]

The animation is dazzling (two-thirds of the movie is set underwater). The love story between mermaid Ariel (the sweet voice of Jodi Benson) and mortal Prince Eric (Christopher Daniel Barnes) is fairy-tale wonderful. And there is a slew of terrific side characters that make the movie as entertaining for adults as it is for children.

The film will intoxicate children and charm the parents in their company.

A hokey summer entertainment that is full of big machinery, satellite dishes du jour, long embarrassing close-ups and gaps in logic through which large UFOs could hurtle. No need to go into that here. Anyone who might enjoy The Arrival would be impatient with logic.

Although most of the stars of this movie are real, live actors, Casper is mostly just a big cartoon in which those live actors must interact with some devilishly clever spectral animation.

The acting and writing is a cut above the ordinary.

Tyler is a find for a director like Bertolucci. She is a blank slate of prettiness with her unadulterated, thoroughbred, long-limbed looks.

Here he has Whoopi Goldberg, Mary-Louise Parker, Drew Barrymore and James Remar to distract us from the depths to which Ross habitually stoops in the never-ending quest to reacquaint an audience with its cheapest emotions.

Clooney's stiff cornball delivery and tendency to smile during the most tragic moments bring this as close to the cartoonish Batman television series of the 1960s as any of the movies have come.

Voight's Wright is one of many examples of how Singleton and Poirier succeed in suggesting the ambivalence and shadings that make movie characters believable.

All the performances are good, the script is subtle and waste-free and Danny Elfman's score is evocative and appropriate, but the direction is what gives the movie its sweep.

Hackman is, as ever, a master performer, an actor at the peak of his powers. However, he can't carry the whole movie.

Huston manages to bring the unavoidable brutality of this story to the screen without seeming exploitative. And she gets good performances out of Malone, Leigh and Eldard. Glenne Headly gives a great performance as Leigh's saintly sister.

I wouldn't say this movie is actually harmful, but skipping it is probably the wisest policy.

To enumerate exactly how Bean messes up would be to expose the silliness of this movie, and since Bean's humor is terribly silly, rather, wonderfully silly, there isn't much point in going into detail.