Bill White

The Beautiful Country has an epic bearing, but a trite and troubled script makes it more a visual tirade than an engaging odyssey.

The story is pure gobbledygook.

Pleasant viewing, but the unbalanced script and amateur performances keep it from being much more than a walk in the park.

At its best, The Promotion offers a sympathetic view of ordinary people caught on the hamster wheel of corporate politics.

Garity, son of Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden, gives the kind of performance rarely seen in today's movies.

Despite its flaws, Walk on Water is a sometimes engaging story of emotional opposites who become mystifyingly attracted to each other.

The result is an initially hilarious picture that grows perplexingly trite as screenwriter Peter Straughan transforms Young's sly observations into assembly-line pap.

Amounts to little more than high-class soap opera.

Most of the film, however, goes down easily enough. The Queer Strokes, an all-gay rowing team, provide a humorous contrast to the less sexually confidant characters.

While their stories are well worth telling, first-time director Ruskin fails to shape his material into the dynamic film it might have been.

This is standard fare on the subject of father and son relations.

An inspiring story of pluck, but its politics fall flat.

There are shocking facts and supportive images, but the film lacks investigative spirit.

Its combination of maudlin sincerity, cruel slapstick, exotic romanticism and boogie-down dance sequences may befuddle more than it entertains.

Perhaps, like Al Gore's lecture on global warming, the force of its argument will stir some of those who see it to further research the subject.

So slight that it barely qualifies as a movie, 10 Items or Less squeaks by on the charm of its leads.

The concert footage, which is exceptionally well photographed and recorded, offers clips of varying lengths from a wealth of songs. The rest of the film glimpses the stress disorders that can develop when average people with problems become popular celebrities.

One of the strangest things about J.L. Aronson's often fascinating film is the presence of Sufjan Stevens, who recently has become a star in his own right, as Smith's bandmate and protégé. One can only wonder what Stevens, who possesses a pleasant voice and a solid grasp of song craft, found in such a mentor.

There is a lot of history to be learned here, but the teaching is so slow paced that the most alert student may fall into a stupor by the end of class.

Director Takashi Miike's dish of sukiyaki spaghetti ala Sergio Corbucci is badly seasoned with scraps of reservoir dogs.

As a sports documentary, Murderball is tame and uninvolving. It does however, offer a hard-edged and unsentimental portrait of strong-willed people.

The most interesting moments in the film are the videotapes sent back and forth between the parents and students, as they communicate the sadness of children separated from their distant families.

Failing to make a lick of rational sense, Silk grasps at poetic straws.

In what essentially is a two-character play, Kirk and Nicholson behave more like acting partners than real people. Their lack of appetite for each other is particularly awkward in the frequent scenes requiring casual nudity and sexual activity.

Its comedy too often blunders into meaningless slapstick, with bombs and bloodshed replacing pratfalls and pies in the face.

Jimmy Carter documentary is a smug, self-righteous monologue.

Although entertaining, Rize is a somewhat duplicitous undertaking.

An exceptional Italian film becomes an average American one in this bland remake of Gabriele Muccino's "L' Ultimo Bacio."