Carrie Rickey

In the odd, and oddly compelling, biopic The Notorious Bettie Page, Gretchen Mol is a delight as the saucy brunette.

This delicious adventure of crude betrayal and elegant revenge is yummy even when reheated by director Kevin Reynolds.

Romance and Cigarettes is lewd and it's lurid and looks to be a lost pop opera, but it has more vitality than anything else out there.

Skin is both exasperatingly choppy and exceptionally moving.

While the impulse for his concert may have been confession and atonement, the cumulative effect is one of a guy struggling mightily to reconcile his divided self.

Heartbreaking? Sometimes. Involving? You bet.

Though a fine specimen of cultural anthropology, The Aristocrats is too shapeless to be satisfying as a film.

As efficient and zippy as its subject.

Evening might be the most shocking waste of natural resources since the despoiling of the Amazon rain forest.

First and last, Appaloosa is the slow-but-sure story of the friendship between Virgil and Everett, one a man of action surprised by emotion, the other a man of emotion surprised by action.

Israeli filmmaker Eran Riklis' Lemon Tree is a lively deadpan comedy which, like his prior film "The Syrian Bride," satirizes Israel's bureaucrats while remaining sympathetic to citizens who live within and adjacent to Israel's disputed borders.

In the end, Bellocchio suggests in this spiritual thriller that perhaps faith is the dream from which we do not awaken.

Though Black Hat is not as tightly structured as Spinal Tap or as pointed as the blaxploitation-movie parody I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, in its rambling way it is the ultimate comic indictment of rap as a kind of equal- opportunity opportunism. Hats off to Cundieff. [15 Jun 1994, p.F02]

With its first-person-shooter perspective and gun-andrun narrative, this one’s for the PlayStation crowd. It’s not a movie. It’s an adrenaline pump and purveyor of raw carnage.

Shulman photographed buildings as if they were movie stars: He found their best angles and immortalized them.

As always, Freeman is a one-man charm offensive.

A naughtily funny, skin-deep satire.

Boasts rich texture, sly vision and rueful humor.

For the most part, Michael Winterbottom's well-intended film, the true story of an idealistic journalist and his gallant wife disinvites emotion by focusing on process at the expense of passion.

Here, love and violence are random, everyone's a fool for love, and tomfoolery often has a shocking twist. And every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

The marching bands' duels are as fun as the cheerleader wars in "Bring It On."

Ultimately, this movie cowritten by Shelton and former L.A. police detective Robert Souza has more laughs than suspense, but not enough of either.

The resulting drama is more deeply felt than it is deep. But I can't think of another film so frankly dealing with what we expect from friendship, so tenderly showing how friends can fail in one area, yet be there in another.

A movie that provokes as many rueful sighs as it does bruising laughs.

A supremely silly eco-thriller with aspirations to Dances With Wolves. [22 Feb 1994, p.D03]

Ramsay's child actors are nonprofessionals who can only express what they feel — which gives her film an unusual degree of emotional authenticity.

Proves a theory first advanced in the movie "Repo Man": The more you drive, the stupider you get.

For all its brilliant touches, Dragon loses its fire midway, nearly flickering out by its perfunctory conclusion.

The overall tone of the film is sunny, with Ramona and Beezus resiliently turning life's lemons into lemonade.

The imagery is uniquely that of Oshii, who deserves a place in the pantheon of visual artists.

Standouts are Gary Oldman as Sirius Black, Harry's sly father-surrogate, and Imelda Staunton as Dolores Umbridge.

Freely mixing reality therapy, fairy tale and satire, Dobkin's film does not maintain a consistent tone. Is it a seriocomedy about brothers who need to work on unfinished business? Is it a holiday fable about a Scrooge who comes to surf the yuletide? Is it a satire in which an efficiency expert (Kevin Spacey) puts pressure on St. Nick to outsource gift allocation and distribution?

In its first half, Honeydripper trickles. In its second, it really flows.

Where Denys Arcand's delightful 1986 comedy "The Decline of the American Empire" celebrated the good life, his profoundly funny sequel The Barbarian Invasions heartily toasts the good death.

Here is a movie with everything going for it and nothing working.

Startlingly original film.

During its two hours-plus running time, Field's movie veers from dark comedy to melodrama, not always gracefully. But tonal inconsistencies don't blunt the keenness of its satire, so sharp that I walked out with emotional razor burn.

Most parents will find the movie has the familiar feeling of one of those kid birthday parties where the little ones are on chocolate highs and the adults run out of scheduled activities after 20 minutes.

It's indescribable fun.

Exhilarating, edgy and wryly comic.

Combines fingernails-on-blackboard audio agony with bamboo-under-fingernails physical torture.

It's hard to say with assurance whether the flaw is in Bloom's performance or in Monahan's politically correct conception of Balian, precociously secular for a Crusader.

It is an exploitation picture disguised as a hipster comedy.

Holds the audience captive and unusually vulnerable to psycho- and viscero-terror.

She's So Lovely means to be a parable of the inextricability of mad love and madness, a longtime obsession of the elder Cassavetes. Only in Penn's performance does it begin to grasp its elusive goal. [29 Aug 1997, p.03]

Encourages viewers to think outside the big box of super stores such as Wal-Mart.

Short, sweet-and-sour, and amusing rather than funny, Despicable Me can't help but be likable.

It's an action movie that's also an intellectual-action flick.

A light-as-powder family comedy.

Featuring seasoned warriors reflecting on whether we can best fight violence with violence is enormously compelling.

What's frustrating for the viewer who wants to support the Jamaican economy is that "Life and Debt" does not suggest how Jamaica-lovers can help the island's citizens.

Funnier than his criticism of egos on the rampage is Guest's rare talent for double-edged satire that tweaks one convention by means of another.

Not only is Bossa Nova a lovely romance, but one can say, as one can about few films, that it is restorative as a vacation.

Its portrait of an artist hungry for experience is as timely today as when it was written.

Harvey's a gifted physical mimic who demonstrates the comic waddle of the church usher with fallen arches, as well as the poor parishioner etiquette of grabbing too many communion wafers.

The film is intermittently funny and strangely intermittent.

The scenery is majestic, the goats adorable, the characters alternately gruff and tender. Like the best storytellers, Carion delays vital information about his characters that makes their dynamic increasingly interesting.

The three parallel love stories of daughter and dad, girlfriend and boyfriend, sister and brother, are nicely handled. Robinson is a sympathetic director of actors, allowing almost everyone their dignity. For the most part, she keeps this emotionally charged story in the schmaltz-free zone.

Over-orchestrated and underdeveloped interpretation of Jeffrey Hatcher's play.

Whether it's the clothing, cars or furniture, everything is sleek and chrome-plated. That is, with the exception of Bening's alchemical performance, which turns brass to gold.

While on its face, Mother and Child is about the impact of adoption, in its heart Garcia's movie reckons how consequential motherhood is in the calculus of womanhood. The fine actors show how we bond to those not related to us by blood - and also how we love. Bring Kleenex.

It's not a great film but it's pure pleasure.

It might not be good enough to make you laugh consistently, but Hollywood Ending looks good enough to eat.

It's a shameless don't-hate-me-because-I'm-beautiful-and-impulsive performance (Diaz), and it throws the entire movie out of balance.

As it progresses, the film takes us to another borderland, that between reality and delusion. This is where Harlan's mind freely gallops.

Despite a winning performance by Anna Faris, the cutest thing in platform shoes since Goldie Hawn, the film falls on its keister so many times that before long the perky pinkness turns bruising black-and-blue.

Preposterous, if diverting, revenge fantasy that rivals Rambo in sheer narrative chutzpah and vigilantism.

There are sniff movies and there are snuff movies, but Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is both. It has the bouquet of balm and blood. Imagine "Fragrance of the Lambs."

Clark denies his audience the catharsis, resolution and renewal of classical tragedy. The film reduces its viewers to helplessness, and I'm not sure that's its intent.

The moral of this crude, intermittently funny Adam Sandler comedy costarring the reliable Kevin James is that: It's OK to be gay, it's not OK to call someone a faggot, and it takes a real man to admit he loves his man pal.

What threatens to be 80 minutes of hypochondria turns into an inspired travelogue of nontraditional remedies. [13 June 1997, p.03]

With mixed results, Moore singles out those who profit from the misery of American workers.

Startlingly original comedy-drama.

If you can tolerate the redneck-versus-blueblood cliches that the film trades in, Sweet Home Alabama is diverting in the manner of Jeff Foxworthy's stand-up act.

It's wholesome as a glass of milk, and as refreshing.

The film is completely forgettable, frequently funny and weirdly satisfying in a Jersey Loser Gets Respect kind of way.

What Raising Helen doesn't offer is a competent (never mind compelling) performance from Hudson, who is as cute as lace pants and has approximately as much acting skill.

A double shot of Saturday-night lowdown chased by a cheery chug of Sunday-morning uplift.

A vaguely creepy and mildly diverting rom-com.

In its juxtaposition of voluptuous nudity with the horrors of war, in its evocation of idealized beauty draped like gods and goddesses of Grecian art, the film invokes classical ideas about how the life force asserts itself most aggressively in the face of death.

Subversively funny, Stick It sees gymnastics as a microcosm of teen life.

This one has some originality, even though it unfolds like Ingmar Bergman's divorce melodrama "Scenes From a Marriage" - without the marriage.

The treasure of the film is the unearthing of the family bond, magically played by Douglas and Wood.

Not only do they (Gere and Ryder) lack chemistry, they lack physics, zoology, botany and geology.

Because the movie is about addictive behavior dulling the pain of grief rather than in the larger drama of dealing with grief, the movie reduces the scope of Hoffman's performance.

This sophomoric mix of the supernatural and screwball from Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters) is diverting, cheesy fun, with Thurman's G-Girl as a droll combination of Superwoman and Uber Shrew.

It's a testament to Cage's canny performance and Jonze's seamless use of special effects that you believe Charlie and Donald are two entirely different people.

While "Boogie Nights" was a dirge for the death of pleasure (which coincided with the death of the porn-film industry), Wonderland is death warmed over. Literally.

The most moving aspect of this indelible documentary is that it chronicles its subjects' growth from instinctively going for the goal to deciding which goals are worth shooting for.

The movie about literature's luckiest orphan may teem with children, but it is not for them.

However terrific Murray is, if Antonio Banderas, mellifluous voice of Puss-in-Boots in "Shrek 2," went paw to claw with Garfield, Puss would definitely triumph.

The trippy creation of onetime marine biologist Stephen Hillenburg, SpongeBob is a cockeyed optimist toiling at the bottom of the fast-food chain.

Offers a primal vision of the primate order turned topsy-turvy. It is provocative. It is frightening. It is a mess.

A disturbing and forceful drama.

If it were a landscape painting, Gerry would deserve a place in the National Gallery. But as a movie...deserves its own wing in The Old Curiosity Shop.

Riddled with romantic and political cliches but is often redeemed by the charismatic performances of Braun and Sullivan.

Given the filmmaker's privileged perspective of hindsight, to not consider the real-world repercussions of their theater, to not connect the dots between 1968 and 2008 is a squandered opportunity.

Fraser and Elfman are goofily endearing even if they seem more sincere acting opposite the rabbit and the duck than they do each other.