Barbara Shulgasser

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

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.

It isn't as charming as "Beauty and the Beast" or "The Little Mermaid" (especially musically), but it's an easy-to-swallow entertainment.

The good guys metamorphose into bad guys and back into good guys with dazzling efficiency in Brian Helgeland's disturbing, comic script.

The whole thing seems awfully familiar, not to say boring.

Sometimes the movie lacks a quietness, an omission most egregiously felt at the end.

Ryan has an edge that is extremely becoming…This is her best work yet.

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.

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.

The direction by Roger Donaldson is facile and understated, as is, for the most part, the script by Dennis Feldman. Even the actors pitch in to play down the silliness of it all.

A rather wan version of "Jurassic Park" - a series of setups featuring humans being picked off by bigger, faster and stronger carnivores.

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.

A workmanlike effort. It's not startling and it's not incompetent.

The plot falls with a thud, but the movie is surprisingly involving owing to performances by Connery, who is always an unfaltering standard of honesty and truth; by Fishburne, who has to flip-flop his meanness for frustrated indignation in the end; and by Harris, who actually seethes so hard the veins stand out on his bald skull.

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.

The best way to characterize "The Blues Brothers 2000" is as a fabulous concert film with incredibly bad patter between the songs. If you ignore the silly plot that links the extravaganzas together, you'll have a great time.

Neither offensive nor inspired.

Bilko and his gang are far less concerned with valve jobs and retreads than with greyhound racing, off-track betting, numbers, poker and pool, and most of the movie's gags reflect this limited premise.

Now and then the script reaches admirable heights of humor.

Although Where's Marlowe abounds with many supposedly clever ideas, it's about as badly made as anything you'll see anywhere on television.

There is really no one to like in this film.

It's all quite inspiring, but despite the fact that this is based on someone's actual experiences, the whole thing has an unfortunate Hollywood ring to it.

So while at times, Penn's film is moving and insightful about the way the heart survives tragedy, at other times it seems to have been made by a gifted schizophrenic who thinks that weird behavior is perfectly normal.

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.

This is the kind of story that might have been interesting had it not been populated with dreary characters played by actors who were clearly coached to be as dull as possible.

Offers two or three worthwhile laughs.

My question is, why has director Costa-Gavras taken it upon himself to dissect American cultural foibles when he has so clearly proven himself unequipped for the job?

The adorable overacting of the twins [Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen] make this otherwise dopey movie watchable.