Bob Graham

Faye's presence provides an unexpected context for the photographer's circle, where the gay and straight worlds overlap, and adds a delightful dimension to Chop Suey.

A potential problem with the movie is that it can be a challenge watching people hand-wringing over moral decisions. But the acting is so good that it makes it worth sticking with during the slow patches.

A crackerjack combination of live action, special effects and recycled footage.

Slam, directed by Marc Levin, is schematic but effective as it makes its points about African Americans caught in the Washington, D.C., criminal justice system. It's got a wonderful eye and, for a film, ear.

A surreal comedy about sex that comes as close to charming as Greenaway ever gets.

Chunhyang is an extravagantly beautiful movie that many viewers are going to love and others are not going to be able to sit still for. That's their problem.

If the dialect is hard to comprehend, that soon becomes part of the joke. It's unlikely that even the British audiences who made Lock, Stock a big hit got it all.

It's a kind of "sex, lies and videotape'' in suburbia.

Cage gives a performance that invites audiences to lay cynicism aside in a romantic fable.

The dialogue is loaded with depth charges that take a while to explode beneath the surface.

Thoroughly engrossing.

Sets off depth charges of the psyche.

A comedy of interracial wariness and misunderstanding marked by a refreshing lack of sappiness.

While it is a spectacle of animatronics, digital graphics and other special effects, the actors are never overwhelmed by them as personalities.

Absolutely the best single moment, beautifully presented, comes when the orphaned Harry looks in a mirror and sees his parents there. It is brilliant in its simplicity and very moving.

It is a spellbinding hour and 45 minutes of pure music, Latin jazz to be specific.

Serendipity is a throwback to a more innocent era in American life, 25 days ago.

This gory parody hits television where it hurts -- and draws blood. It will bring joy to the heart of anyone who hates TV.

If it seems to have the ingredients of an after-school special, the performances take it to another level. Gut level.

A mannerless, styleless brute, Bullock's Grace Hart is Eliza Doolittle in sweats.

It proceeds, weirdly enough, from the truly annoying to the absolutely fascinating.

Totally involving.

More often than not, it's fun.

The scary thing about this spoof of '90s teen horror movies is how funny it is.

The comic drama is refreshingly anti- sentimental but will break your heart anyway.

Tends to be lugubrious.

There are times when watching this film is like a near-death experience.

Keeps sinking into its own grimness.

The specifics of their predicament are well handled -- being thrown in a Third World prison may be every tourist's nightmare -- even if the movie eventually goes soft and squishy.

Li is a phenomenon.

Astonishing visualizations of the afterlife are coupled with a drawn-out allegory about communication between the living and the dead that becomes something of a trial to sit through.

Rich supplies some eloquent grace notes, and Van Sant uses them to make understated music.

Not half-bad. It's about three- quarters bad, actually, but what's left offers some goof-off fun.

Adam Sandler finally has a good excuse: The devil made him do it.

This land of sweetness and light may appeal to many, but to some it is going to seem like living hell.

Fascinating -- up to a point.

The picture, directed by Rick Famuyiwa, becomes a juggling act, contrasting the efforts of the three grown-up buddies to get to a wedding on time, with flashbacks of their youth.

Action in an action comedy is supposed to be funny, too, as Jackie Chan well knows. The refitting of the crashed plane is so tedious we feel as if we're doing the work ourselves.

At its most interesting, and a bit frightening, when Moore starts to get a little loony. Too bad they didn't follow through and make this more of a psychological thriller than a melodrama.

Don't tell Mom, but everybody seems stoned.

For a bighearted effort like this one, some patience on the audience's part is not too much to ask. Go ahead. Take a chance.

It's more psychological than a genre movie, and that is the source of both its greatest interest and its biggest problem.

It is maliciously entertaining, up to a point.

Amusing enough.

It is the Eddie Murphy movie where Eddie Murphy has next to nothing to do. Do little says it all.

Even if his (Stallone) own star may be fading, the popularity of car racing is enormous. These fans are not likely to be disappointed by Driven.

The first half-hour of this movie is sensational, creating an atmosphere of dread that any horror master would envy.

The show takes little more than an hour to finish and less than a minute to forget, while politely reminding us not only that gay movies have fallen on hard times but also that they refuse to give up.

Gutter romance meets metaphysical thriller.

The lead actors on both sides of the vampire divide are all strong personalities.

Handsomely weathered John Hurt, as Pelagia's father, gives a performance of such unhackneyed dignity that it provides a moral compass for the action and helps to keep the ricocheting emotional content of the film in balance.

The film is well shot and has titillating action without a single persuasive emotion.

Kline, in particular, has the spark and know-how to overcome some awfully belabored writing and situations.

Thank God for James Gandolfini.

For quite of few of The Whole Nine Yards, it appears that the most clever thing in the movie is going to be the opening credits, monstrous close-ups of the morning toothbrushing routine.

It is wonderful to see how Sheedy gives shape to this performance -- her eyes, a photographer's eyes, carefully sizing everything up. [18 June 1998, Daily Notebook, p.E1]

If the movie sometimes seems not to come to much either, it does have something to say to those patient enough to stick with it.

Has all the elements of a satisfying movie except knowing when to stop.

Straddles a number of genres -- horror film, lovers on the lam, fairy tale -- and gives them all a cool, knowing spin.

It is well-made in an old-fashioned way, and its straight-arrow lack of cynicism may be old- fashioned as well.

The warning against actors playing with dogs or children should be expanded to include men in gorilla suits.

There is a very good movie stuck somewhere on The Thirteenth Floor trying to get out. Too bad this isn't it.

It comes down to a pair of appealing performers in a series of bad-relationship skits.

It's called One, and the hemorrhaging begins with the so-called story, which doesn't quite add up to one.

Manages to do the impossible: It makes Lopez bland.

In special effects, Lucas has moved a galaxy beyond. In energy, not yet.

Is it worth seeing once? Sure.

Beat Takeshi fans wouldn't think of missing this one. Moviegoers who hate violence wouldn't be caught dead at it.

The glossy ensemble cast is consistently interesting.

Curiously enough plays like a 90-minute version of the old television show. That's not necessarily bad.

A strange mix of the campy, at least in the English dubbing, and the awesome.

Summoning silliness Roman Polanski salutes and spoofs satanic thrillers .

Solondz should have called this one "So-So Storytelling."

If this movie ever figured out what it wanted to be when it grows up, it would be a terrific one.

When the film sticks with the eccentric comedy of a highborn woman attracted to a preoccupied genius, it works splendidly. When it strays into melodrama, it is as ill-equipped as Luzhin.

Wants to be a brightly colored bubble but has trouble getting aloft.

There may be no more unusual movie around than Vengo.

Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence are back together and give both of their careers some new life in this sentimental comedy.

A very smart noir about gambling, smartly directed by Mike Hodges -- until almost the very end. It craps out in the decisive London casino heist scene.

A pleasant myth.

This is no-holds-barred filmmaking. Some viewers will find it disgusting. Others will call the director's bluff.

It's probably pointless to complain when a movie sets out to be stupid and actually is. (And the people who came up with a couple of these ideas think male models are dumb.)

Cube falls into the dreaded trap of allegory -- aaaaaargh! -- and the clunky dialogue makes a midnight bull session seem brilliant by comparison.

It's good for a few guffaws and chuckles, but in between the screen has a tendency to stretch at the corners and go flat.

Story pitches are made. Coke is snorted. There is lesbian sex. Fellatio. An earthquake. A murder. Just another day in Hollywood.

The movie's gimmick for airing the contents of a woman's head is not unlike that used for the dogs and tots in those "Look Who's Talking" movies.

It would have been enough that Singleton raise these difficult questions without trying to wrap them up, too, in the last five minutes.

It is never less than interesting. But who wants interesting from a movie called Cats & Dogs? It needs to grab the audience by the scruff of the neck and shake it.

Appealing, and ultimately moving.

Poetry, lesbian sex and murder might be a killer combination if a deadly pace weren't included in the mix.

The good ol' Jim Carrey we knew and loved is back, rude, crude and unglued.

Before it runs off track--it does have some spectacular moments.

Hardball works where it counts, on the emotional level.

Won't work until the film comes out on video.

At least a half monty.

The lowdown on Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, Rob Schneider's first starring role, is that it is. Lowdown, that is.

Brothers Oxide and Danny Pang co-directed. What they lack in discipline they make up in razzle-dazzle, even if it sometimes is pointless.

Doesn't look like a movie somebody made. It looks like a movie somebody hallucinated and put up on the screen.