Carrie Rickey

A story with a beginning and end but without a middle. Two slices of bread without the sandwich meat, I wrote in my notes.

The moral of this softhearted tale is that family values can rehabilitate and tenderize even the toughest of birds. But you'll forgive me if I liked it less when Stuart smoothed Margalo's feathers than when Snowbell's fundamental cattiness made the fur fly.

Overall, Matchstick Men, which is based on the novel by Eric Garcia, is more memorable for Lohman's naturalistic acting and Scott's mannerist direction than it is for its O. Henry surprise.

An undeniable pleasure of National Treasure was watching a movie shot locally that wasn't haunted by a virus or by dead people.

The film is suffused with the generous, nonjudgmental spirit of Uncle Tomas, whose live-and-let-live attitude warms like the sun and who helps Magdalena and Carlos make the safe passage from adolescence to maturity.

A heartbreaking elegy to mature love that honors the lovers and the long, neurodegenerative tango that is their last.

Sex and the City 2 is a champagne cocktail on a runaway train -- fizzy, sparkly, giddy-making, and splashing all over the place.

Forget its dubious ancestry as a popular TV show of the '50s. The combined charms of Maverick's genial cast, its sly script and its punchy direction make it the legitimate heir to escapist crowd-pleasers such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting. [20 May 1994, p.03]

Keener makes this sometimes inert but always intimate tale of love and ambition burst with dynamic energy. Keener doesn't just have attitude, she has maditude.

Alas, this joyless affair doesn't have a clou.

Paradoxically, the closer Mendes gets to his characters, the more remote Perdition becomes. One wishes that his film had as much heart as it does art.

A ridiculously entertaining romp based on the graphic novels of Bryan Lee O'Malley and directed, with mash-up mastery, by Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead).

For the most part, the film's musical numbers are dynamic, propelling the story forward. The same cannot be said about Peter Barsocchini's colorless screenplay.

Acting-wise, the showstopper is Jason Bateman, with a diabolically entertaining turn as a smarmy PR man remarkably free with confidential information.

Probably better than anyone else working today, Donaldson knows how to knit a thriller. Each time you think this taut yarn is about to unravel, that's when he pulls the wool over your eyes.

It's a fun gimmick -- the sartorial equivalent of those red shoes in the fairy tale that made an ordinary girl dance like Terpsichore -- if not an altogether fun movie.

Brody plays Chess as a slightly crooked but well-meaning musical cheerleader without fully emerging as a character.

The kung fu sequences, although enjoyable, probably would not make the Jackie Chan Top 10. However, Chan's acting is his most affecting since the 1993 policer "Crime Story."

Apatow's film succeeds in having its virginity and losing it, too. Like "Wedding Crashers," it purges its cynicism with romanticism.

Mildly diverting but slight, the screwball comedy Gray Matters changes it up, more or less creating its own genre, the curveball farce.

Eloquently adapted from the collection of A.M. Homes stories of the same title, Troche's film derives its voltage from the way it burrows to find that the connections within -- and among -- families are very much alive.

Not only is it the best documentary in a vintage season for nonfiction films (see "American Splendor," "Capturing the Friedmans," and "Spellbound"), it's also one of the best films of the year. It's as lyrical about the particulars of Kahn as it is about the universals of fathers and sons.

The result is Woody Allen lite, with some deft observations about how the social media designed to bring singles together are actually coming between them.

Peppy, painless and -- happily -- not altogether brainless.

Rather prosy until its final third. Then it grabs you with unexpected force.

Actresses such as Maglietta are why movies were invented: You never get tired of her mercurial personality or of her infinitely compelling face.

Hot Rod never establishes its own personality.

Exceptionally funny, unexpectedly tender, and lewder than a teenage boy's dreams.

It is with gravity and levity and incomparable grace that Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon -- by light years the best movie of 2000.

Stunning, beautifully observed character study.

Spoofy and sweet... endearingly old-fashioned.

What's touching about Rocky Balboa, the sixth chapter in the saga of Philadelphia's lord of the ring, is the small-scale stuff. Not the spectacle of the has-been, now 60, connecting with a punch. But the sight of an actor connecting with a character.

On the plus side are engaging performances by Jason Biggs and Christina Ricci. On the minus side is . . . everything else.

Miracle really isn't about the game. It's about the game as metaphor for united we stand.

This unsettling, shaggy, surrealistic pillow of a movie - a mixed bag more funny-strange than ha-ha.

The film has two curious subplots and supporting performances that feel tacked on rather than organically part of it.

A very sweet, very slight family movie that scores smiles and tears of joy.

The cast is full of fresh-faced unknowns ready for their close-ups. Most likely to succeed is Kayla Jackson, an almond-eyed dreamer, as Brittany, anchor of the Ovations and of her family.

Once you get past that golden swag and curtain of hair, Paltrow's performance is devastating, cutting to the pith and marrow of parent-child relations. The other actors in this stagebound movie fare less well.

Told in a leisurely though concise 92 minutes, Shower is a purifying and refreshing spray of hope that family and lifestyle differences can be reconciled. Lovely.

Should you take the kids? Boys 8 to 11 are the target audience for this gross-out film. A better question might be, should they take the parents?

Although Angelopoulos' film is not for all viewers, it rewards the patient moviegoer with an incomparable emotional journey. [09 Jul 1999, p.04]

Apart from Williams' presence, director Christopher Erskin's feature debut isn't worth the price of submission. It's not a road trip; it's a road trap.

Despite Sigismondi's fresh eye, feminist perspective, and rapport with actors, The Runaways feels like a long-form music video, recycling every trope from the doomed-rocker handbook.

Where Finding Nemo suggested that under-the-waves adventure was limitless, Shark Tale suggests that this sea is over-fished. The krill is gone.

Bills itself as a comedy but unfolds as the drollest of dramas, an extended-family album for the age of abortion, adoption and donor sperm. It's a cheeky story about turning the other cheek.

Succeeds as a do-it-yourself handbook of guerrilla filmmaking

So profoundly does The Third Miracle live up to its title that Agnieszka Holland's exceptional meditation upon a priest's crisis of faith might win the endorsement of archdiocese and agnostic alike.

Scenery rushes by, noise blares, characters pop up wearing new costumes that they couldn't possibly have had time to change into as they eluded their adversaries.

To the extent that movies bear the residue of their filmmakers' autobiographies, I found The Pianist particularly compelling.

An involving fantasy for beamish boys and girls - and their parents.

This film that imagines the end of the world not as a whimper but as an implosion is a preposterously diverting, instantly forgettable, big-screen video game.

He (Lee) combines the daredeviltry of Buster Keaton with the devil-may-care of Errol Flynn.

An unnerving and astonishing thriller.

English wrangles her talent like a virtuoso. Best is Murphy Brown herself, Candice Bergen.

This intelligent, postmodern biography from director Irwin Winkler and screenwriter Jay Cocks uses Porter's songs, by turns haunting and hilarious, to decode and reconstruct a life hinted at in the familiar words and music.

An unsteady empowerment film for 'tweenage girls and their moms, Ice Princess boasts more spark than sparkle.

Two of its youthful actors, although adorable, are not skilled enogh to carry their parts.

An enjoyably sudsy romance starring a moody Keanu Reeves, a broody Sandra Bullock, and the titular structure - a jewel box of glass and steel perched on stilts over Lake Michigan.

Like this diabolically designed weapon of war, Tanovic's film is coil-sprung to explode on the unsuspecting.

The film underscores the power of reading, and applying what we read to problem-solving. The story suggests that we don't really see the natural world around us, and if we did our lives, like Jared's and his siblings', would be immeasurably richer.

Also quite fine is the film's musical score from David Byrne, as unsettling and edgy as the story.