Bob Graham

It is so propulsive so much of the time, it almost looks as if it's going to go the distance. If Washington & Co. don't quite manage to bring it home, the getting there sure is something.

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

Keeps sinking into its own grimness.

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

A coming-of-age story that gets it all wrong.

Goes Hitchcock one better by imagining what it would be like if the master had the advantage of digital technology.

What makes it interesting is the story that the viewer must put together, of a model who lives her entire life -- or at least what we see of it -- in front of the camera.

Something so sappy, no one would believe me if I told them. It has to be seen to be disbelieved.

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.

Jim Jarmusch has come up with something strange and amazing.

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.

He (Aronofsky) has put together a phantasmagoria of self-destructive obsession that is so visually astounding it becomes its own saving grace. Otherwise, we might not be able to bear it.

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

A hodgepodge of half-baked visual styles can't disguise the fact that this dismal thriller is all situation and no story.

The stuff of high romance, brought off with considerable wit, too. People are going to love it.

This warm, celebratory and very public film is punctuated by sudden and luminous private visualizations.

This movie can be recommended only to dyed-in-the-wool fans of the genre. Anyone who goes into one of Miike's films must be prepared to be put through the wringer.

I Stand Alone ("Seul contre tous" in French) is a portrait of a pathetic soul, but it is also a cautionary tale. The butcher cannot be dismissed as a monster, nor is this a creep show. Something like the butcher's story can be found almost every day in newspaper crime reports.

A venemous Valentine to Hollywood sugarcoated with laughs.

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.

Claude Rains' performance in the title role of The Invisible Man may be outtasight, but you can still see the hand of director James Whale.

Turns into one long wallow.

The class act of action movies.

The new Planet of the Apes is not a remake, and it's not a sequel. It is an amazing display of imagination.

Delivers plenty of laughs and succeeds on a level that recent ``SNL'' movies (``It's Pat!'' and ``A Night at the Roxbury'') didn't.

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.

Potentially oppressive subject matter is redeemed by impeccable moral integrity and stunning artistry.

In Ran, the horrors of life are transformed by art into beauty. It is finally so moving that the only appropriate response is silence.

Don't tell Mom, but everybody seems stoned.

At times, Anderson may be too brilliant for his own good, and there is a risk that viewers will tire of the director's relentlessly prowling camera.

All bets are off. For my money, Vincent Gallo wins the Triple Crown of indie filmmaking -- for writing, directing and starring in Buffalo '66.

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.

A tired and dispiriting affair that takes forever to get going.

It is described as about a guy who came back to life, and clearly one of Dumont's aims in The Life of Jesus is to express a spirit of charity for flawed humanity amid the rhythms of ordinary life.

Perfect Blue manages, through animation, to take the thriller, media fascination, psychological insight and pop culture and stand them all on their heads.

Amusing enough.

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

It is impossible to take your eyes off the screen.

Needs to be seen and savored.

It's got unpredictable plot twists and unexpected laughs coming out of dark corners. The sharp-edged film also looks terrific.

Gives stupid, vulgar comedy a bad name.

It's hardly possible to overstate what a welcome change of pace The Shipping News is for admirers of Kevin Spacey.

Isn't vicious. It's just cheerfully mocking as it courses the canyons and flatlands of Los Angeles.

Where it really counts, though, it's the same good old comic action fantasy.

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.

Don't be too quick to jump on Hurt with complaints of old-fashioned gay stereotyping. Only with a development well into the movie will the audience realize the layers he brought to Molina's role-playing.

Love and basketball -- if you like either one, here is a movie for you.

It would be nice to say that Blast From the Past is, but it ain't exactly. Half-blast is more like it.

This Alfred Hitchcock film on his familiar theme of the wrongly accused man is outstanding in every respect. [19 Sep 1999, p.52]

A daring, free-spirited and ultimately moving performance by Benjamin Bratt lies at the beating heart of Pinero.

Best movie of the summer.

Audiences will talk about how satisfying this movie is.

The look of the film is first class, with muted colors but deep textures, the opposite of historical kitsch.

It's astonishing that so much money, talent, technical expertise and visual imagination can be put in the service of something so stupid.

If it doesn't always come off, enough headlong energy develops to carry it through.

Gutter romance meets metaphysical thriller.

This movie knows how to entertain.

What is bloody and full of holes?

There are barrages of fast cuts to distract us from the fact that the director is showing us no real action.

Nobody would claim it adds up to much of a comedy. It's strictly for someone looking for a goof-off.

People who see it may feel like dancing out of the theater afterward. Go for it.

Anyone expecting a flashy Bond-style fantasy is going to be disappointed.

It's the kind of unpretentious movie that falls between the cracks, and for a certain kind of audience, the thoughtful kind, it would be a shame to miss.

The audience, too, will be sorry to see this fleeting, beautifully made French film end.

An overwhelming experience.

Voyeuristically wallows in the sadistic violence it professes to deplore. What hypocrisy!

Not a routine cut-and-paste horror but a full-fledged revenge fantasy -- and a completely satisfying one.

Dumb.

It overcomes some patchiness to turn into a rich emotional experience, ranging in degree from fire to ice.

This is a solid suspense thriller that's fun. These stars have put it together in a spirit of playfulness -- as in playacting.

Some will say this film is overly ambitious, but what the hell. The man put five years of his life into making this epic mystery. We can surely give it two hours of ours.

This good-natured comedy is set off by the high spirits of its stars.

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

It is a warm, closely observed satire of lived life, and it is a charmer.

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.

Channels the spirit of Frank Capra in this serio-sentimental fable about a man who loses his memory but finds his soul.

Frequently hilarious.

A big-hearted celebration of the we're-all-in-this- together American way.

No one else makes movies like this Spanish director.

Sly and very savvy.

If this is an example of Australian live-and-let- live, it is very likable.

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

Mystery skillfully evokes Victorian London's dark depths.

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

Thank God for James Gandolfini.

What The Thomas Crown Affair has to sell audiences is a fantasy of the life of the super-rich who jet off to Martinique on the spur of the moment, and the super-smart who operate outside the rules.

Dirty Work was directed by Bob Saget, who always seemed slightly embarrassed by his enormous success as the host of America's Funniest Home Videos. Now he's got something else to be slightly embarrassed about.

This noir mystery is murkier than it needs to be, through no fault of Stallone's.

The actors have enough appeal to keep it moving over the speed bumps.

Enter the Dragon goes far beyond the philosophical, of course. Its best sequences, and the only real reason for seeing it again, involve Lee's phenomenal physical and emotional presence.

The ridiculous complications might have worked if there had been an awareness of how absurd they are.

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.

It falls short where it counts: In the final confrontation.

Stir of Echoes is much more down and dirty (than "The Sixth Sense"), and the thrills are more visceral.

Connects so often and so persuasively that its shortcomings -- the movie goes slack from time to time -- really don't amount to much.

This is almost Mel Brooks territory: The frontiersmen think the Chinese are Jews, while the white settlers think it's the Crow Indians who are. Whoosh!

It means to be knowing and cynical but is just callow.

It's an audacious little comedy with bursts of hilarity and a certain giddy energy.

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.

An actors' feast.

Seems it's never going to reach liftoff.

Although it takes something of a slog to get there, this thriller finally comes through where it counts.

When all's said and done, it turns out to be quite sweet-natured. OK. I laughed. So sue me.

A hostage drama that oscillates between soap opera and action flick.

A sly variation on the buddy movie.

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 is not merely a thriller but a shocker. It will separate hard-core Jet Li followers from the fair-weather fans.

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

A millennial medley to the max.

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

When a movie sets out to be awful and achieves its goal, does that make it a success?

The no-sweat clunkiness of the detective plot becomes kind of charming.

Has that Dickensian spirit wherein simple acts of kindness can bring an audience close to tears.

Manages to do the impossible: It makes Lopez bland.

Beatty's "Heaven Can Wait," released in 1978, was a comic fantasy about a near-death experience. This new version is a near-life experience.

This nasty, provocative comedy comes from a play by Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

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

No one is likely to claim it's a great, or even good, movie, but it does offer some guilty pleasures.

But the single most compelling performance may belong to Australian actor Guy Pearce.

Is it worth seeing once? Sure.

A viewer may even blink his eyes to be sure the turn of events is actually happening.

A quirky character study of the four-man team, led by Sam Neill as the crew leader who seems surrounded by an aura of sadness but is so dedicated that he's not above lying to Houston to buy time when something goes wrong.

The Coens' plotting, with its suspense and reversals, is a source of amazement and delight.

The belly laughs finally start to come --legitimately.

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.

Neither true believers nor newcomers to the phenomenon will be disappointed.

It is impossible to think of anyone but Costner in this role. His commitment and sincerity are never in doubt.

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

It is an exceptional accomplishment.

Most of the right laughs in most of the right places and some unexpected ones thrown in.

Slowly unfolding but liberating film, which is also a rare look inside a circumscribed community.

This feast of fantasy is worth it.

The Corruptor' quickly turns into a good bad-cop drama of fascinating moral complexity.

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

Summoning silliness Roman Polanski salutes and spoofs satanic thrillers .

The most striking effect of the Technicolor process is its subtlety. The viewer is aware of the gradations of flesh tones in Leigh's face and can see the color rise in her cheeks. The exact color of her eyes is a source of fascination (they are gray-blue with flashes of green).

It comes as a bonus that this romantic comedy is one of the rare pictures of its type that actually is about something -- the double-edged sword of celebrity.

Any way you slice it, it is still pointless.

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

This poor excuse for a thriller turns, with a great crunching of gears, into a mess of a buddy comedy. Either way, it misfires.

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

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.

The movie lacks the one thing that the classic "Three Musketeers" story can't do without: panache.

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

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

Bride is often cited as Whale's masterpiece, and one of the reasons surely is his intentional lacing of humor throughout that never completely undercuts the horror or pathos.

Tends to be lugubrious.

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.

Runs out of ideas long before the projector runs out of film.

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.

The comic contrast between the genteel snobbery of von Bulow, a Danish aristocrat, and Dershowitz's dry contempt for his well-tailored client is treated with understated but stinging wit in Nicholas Kazan's brilliant script. [9 Nov 1990]

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

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.

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.

A pleasant myth.

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

De Palma seems to be trying too hard to make somebody else's great movie, once again an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Would someone please tell this guy to relax?

The last 15 minutes finally get it together for what passes as a movie experience with a considerable "gotcha!" quotient.

Part of the appeal of Topsy-Turvy is its generosity about human folly and shortcomings. Its wistfulness is very touching.

Digs up both laughs and chills from timeworn material.

Delivers a sucker punch to the audience and then pulls the rug out from under it. It is sensational. It is also grimly funny.

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.

The thriller is populated by the usual dimwits who stumble into horrific situations and don't have the good sense to leave, and it tries to pass off some of the sorriest excuses for zombies ever seen.

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

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.)

There still is no life on Mars. Red Planet is airless.

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

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.

Thoroughly engrossing.

A steady undertow of sex gives this French thriller a scintillating surface.

This is a transcendent film, deeply committed and beautifully wrought. It will make anyone who sees it look at the world with new eyes.

Has a saccharine quality but also offers a memorable performance by famed Spanish actor Fernando Fernan Gomez.

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

Don't even try to make any sense of this --none of it elicits a moment of genuine concern.

This lurid thriller comes to life in fits and starts, and then sinks into the bog of its own cleverness once again.

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.

Sets off depth charges of the psyche.

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

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.

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.

Appealing, and ultimately moving.

This thriller is so expertly -- and perversely -- poised that audience members may find themselves secretly rooting for the duplicitous Ripley.

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

Welles goes for broke in his performance and direction, and the only trick he misses is a tracking shot around his own bulging waistline. [Director's Cut]

Anybody with a soft spot for fakers, who either identifies with them or just admires their chutzpah, is going to get a kick out of Happy, Texas.

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

This half-baked sci-fi horror film, filled with jerky, washed-out, highlighted, blurred and toned imagery, is a tiresome experience.

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.

Haunting music, the seriousness of the allegations and riveting interviews with Alexander Haig, Christopher Hitchens (whose book inspired the film) and others give "Kissinger" extra drama and urgency.

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

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

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

Leigh is perfectly cast as the game-pod goddess.

Hardball works where it counts, on the emotional level.

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.

Neither a "gay" movie nor a straight one; it is simply a funny one.

Earnest, but a work in progress.

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

At least a half monty.

In the person of Cameron Diaz, Mary is an island of sanity, good-natured humanity and genuine sweetness in an ocean of anarchy. Without her presence, There's Something About Mary would be merely sophomoric and tasteless.

Maybe it's no mystery how they did it, considering the aggregate comic talent, but this bunch achieves peaks of sublime nuttiness.

It's standard slasher fare but has its moments.

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