Carrie Rickey

Irreverent, provocative and provoking.

This unassuming and unexpectedly moving picture set in Chicago's Humboldt Park neighborhood is a sugarplum-and-sofrito affair centering on the Rodriguez household.

Handles the strained daddy/daughter bond with sufficient lightness and laughs so that fathers won't mind accompanying their spawn.

Compulsively entertaining documentary.

Graced with unusually expressive and seamless voice work by Drew Barrymore and George Lopez, the best of its kind since "Babe."

As directed by the stupendously talented and aggressively eccentric George Miller (creator of Mad Max and producer of the first Babe), Pig in the City is far busier and faster than the original, which was directed by Chris Noonan. This has some benefits. [25 Nov 1998, p.D1]

While I much liked The Duchess, this portrait feels unfinished.

A triumph for Cheadle and Sandler, whose performances strew the seeds of regeneration.

You go to a Daniels movie not to be entertained, but edified. While not everyone goes to the movies for self-improvement, you will leave this one having witnessed phenomenal acting.

A one-of-a-kind experience that boasts a twice-in-a-lifetime performance from Nicolas Cage. The actor has not gone this deep into the abyss since "Vampire's Kiss" (1989).

Throughout, Bergsholm's poker-faced performance creates the effect that we are watching the misadventures of an actual teenager. It may be a slight comedy but Turn Me On, Dammit! is enormously entertaining.

Great as Whitaker is in this juicy slab of Oscar bait, Macdonald's movie doesn't have much to offer beyond a pair of stunning performances, propulsive editing, fantastic scenery and the heartbeat rhythms of African music.

A spare document featuring one talking head. But what a talking head and what a story!

Though I liked Love's unhurried pace and oddball digressions, its obligatory romantic-comedy resolution seemed too schematic for what had preceded it.

It's got one of the best kisses in movie history: Spidey, hanging upside down, delivers an open-mouth smooch to Mary Jane, a lip-lock for the ages.

Her (Chadha) film tastily demonstrates that variety is the spice of not only American life, but of American cuisine.

As a director, Cassavetes is a keen observer of character and social interaction but not yet much of a visual stylist (which might also describe the improvisational dramas made by her actor/director father, John).

The result is visually inventive, narratively edgy, and unlike anything else.

Much as I enjoyed this diversion, I couldn't help but think that The Princess and the Frog had better songs and (hand-painted) animation, and that Mulan was a ripping adventure that didn't need tweaking to qualify as an action flick.

Striking a balance between Howard's harum-scarum comedies such as Night Shift and Splash and his fuzzy family "dramedies" such as Cocoon and Parenthood, The Paper delivers the goods - and also babies and the news. [25 March 1994, p.03]

A pleasant taste of Roman life.

Few American directors drive this wedge between mind and gut as masterfully as Michael Mann.

A stylish thriller so highly strung it zings, gives us Hopkins, an actor at the top of his game, in material that's only middling.

A gentle fable about how the young boy from Zurich struggles to fit in rather than stand out, Vitus is both a cautionary tale for pushy parents and an endearing, if eccentric, empowerment fantasy for precocious children.

Franklin has enormous fun using these varied technologies to ramp up the suspense in a movie that is the most purely entertaining thriller since "No Way Out."

A jazzy, immensely absorbing thriller.

The film is an omnibus ride through Brighton Beach, Central Park, the West Village, and Tribeca.

Yelchin and Jones are up to the challenge of suggesting much by doing little.

While it lacks the heart and hipness of the similar-themed Pixar odysseys, The Meltdown has the physical humor of slapstick comedy.

Best when skewering New Age entrepreneurs for what might be called Compassionate Capitalism. Steve Martin is sublime as Kate's boss, Barry, purveyor of organic food and Zen koans.

This provocative account of a war-weary administration that denied Surratt her right to a fair trial starts slow but builds momentum in the scenes with Wright and Evan Rachel Wood as Surratt's flinty daughter, Anna.

It is also to Khouri's credit that she has written a movie that begins with the men on Mars and women on Venus and ends with their being able to share a planet. [4 Aug 1995, p.03]

Give Saldanha's film an A-plus for visuals and a B-minus for story.

Gives audiences something more than just a heart-stopping beauty to contemplate.

Rodanthe is a reliably steamy stormy sultry story.

An improbably entertaining, if overlong, adventure that brings new meaning to the term "summer camp." Doubloons! Ripped bodices! Unbuckled swash! Rum galore!

Guggenheim doesn't bring much visual style to the game. But he brings heart (and some Bruce Springsteen on the soundtrack) to the story of a lost Jersey girl redeemed by sport. Yeah, I cried. And cheered. You will too.

The film is enjoyable as a performance piece, an eminently watchable contest between two actors at the top of their games.

Heavyhearted without being heavy-handed, Corbijn's lyrical movie is about a man who has built his own cell and become his own jailer.

The unassuming performances by Krasinski and Rudolph help make this the first Mendes movie that feels lived-in rather than staged.

Jon Favreau, the actor-director who made the delightful family film "Elf," has a firm grip and a light touch with this material about bickering brothers who find a board game that zaps the family home into hyperspace.

In her byplay with Clooney, Roberts only occasionally strikes a spark. Clooney, on the other hand, generates heat.

Searing and hypnotic docudrama.

Lovely performances from McDormand, Downey and Richard Knox, who looks uncommonly like Little Richard, as a bar owner named Vernon Hardapple.

The Big Easy is an extremely enjoyable (and well-lubricated) vehicle for two actors who aren't quite yet stars, but should be.

A clever feature-length cartoon just as entertaining as the hit Nickelodeon series on which it is based.

Mendes nonetheless works this screenplay like a jazz virtuoso plays with a familiar theme such as "Mary Had a Little Lamb."

Would Backbeat be as compelling a story if it were about, say, Freddie and the Dreamers? Probably not. But despite mostly undistinguished acting and some directorial gracelessness, Backbeat is potent because it tells this emotionally complex and musically exuberant story from every angle conceivable. [22 Apr 1994, p.03]

Though not as great as "Toy Story 2" and "Monsters, Inc.," Pixar movies that are the gold standard for family movies, Finding Nemo is visually entrancing.

Smart, curious and brave.

Happy Accidents is romantic perversity in reverse.

In this it succeeds. Like the Bard said, better witty foolishness than foolish wit.

It is earsplitting, crowd-pleasing, and, no doubt, 'bot-pleasing, too. If you told me I would get emotionally and viscerally involved in two machines punching the hard drives out of each other, I would tell you you were crazy. I would be wrong.

An altogether enjoyable ride.

Witcher makes a remarkably confident filmmaking debut, eliciting excellent performances from his leads and underscoring their romance with a sound track that flavors, rather than overwhelms, the story. [14 Mar 1997, p.03]

Besides Paquin, who delivers a once-in-a-lifetime performance as the maddeningly inconsistent Lisa, also wrenchingly fine are Jeannie Berlin as the best friend of the deceased and J. Smith-Cameron as Lisa's actress mother.

Like many graduate students, Love and Other Catastrophes is smart, droll and doesn't always know when to stop talking. [11 Apr 1997, p.03]

Lee distills the flavor of this transforming event and hints at how it transformed some who were there. His movie is a contact high.

This is a documentarylike film about a man who creates a castle in the air and then moves right in, the "Harold and the Purple Crayon" of the workplace.

By turns wry, rueful and explosively funny.

Burton's film is an American version of the Odyssey.

Like a piece of music, Godard structures his film in three movements.

A film of haunting eloquence and justifiable fury.

The three (human) leads are perfection. Bridges' Howard is as breezily garrulous and glad-handing as Cooper's Smith is laconic and withdrawn. Maguire's Pollard has haunted eyes and orangey hair that makes him look like a human jack-o'-lantern, and establishes his own unique rhythm and less-is-more style.

Fresh, funny and perceptive.

The delightful G-rated film has a story line simple enough for pre-schoolers to follow and comic sensibility complex enough for adults to savor, with an emphasis on howlingly bad (by which I mean good) puns.

The fascinating aspect of the rambling and involving film is how Ralph and this no-nonsense dame who married Dad become confederates.

Given this swoon-inducer, Summit Entertainment would be well-advised to set up fainting couches in the multiplex lobby and provide smelling salts to those who need them.

With the exception of one sequence, this PG-13 movie is so youth-friendly that I thought I might take my 10-year-old. But that sequence, upsetting for those of any age, makes the movie better suited for mature 12-year-olds and older.

Mostly this elegant little film is a case study in the inconsistency of thoughts and feelings. Here, moralists break commandments, intellectuals act emotionally, and cynics have moments of idealism.

This seriously funny group portrait of third-generation clam diggers (and their wives and sisters) is fresh as today's catch and about as tasty. Its '70s soundtrack positively swaggers.

At times Let It Rain recalls one of those Katharine Hepburn comedies where the New Woman gets cut down to size so as not to intimidate the Old-School Men. Yet the film so likably deflates the pompous and pumps up the humble that it's hard not to like.

It's a heavy-metal opera with humor.

The plot is canny, but it would be little more than an ingenious springloaded device were it not for the performances by Howard and Iures.

Few movies are as eloquent in their performances and their art direction.

Man, oh, man, much of the dialogue is so heavy, and heavy-handed, that you can see fine actors such as Derek Luke and Michael Ealy buckle under the weight. Clearly, Lee fell in love with McBride's words and couldn't bear to cut them, even when the visuals made those words redundant.

It's an involving journey, remarkably free of sentimentality, deepened by the performances.

Seething, searing tragedy of unmannerliness.

A coming-of-age film that has the jaunty mood and egg-cream flavor of a Philip Roth memoir.

Adoration, Egoyan's most affecting film since "The Sweet Hereafter."

A throwback to the days when gangs met in clubhouses instead of crack houses, raced go-carts instead of stolen cars and brandished slingshots instead of semiautomatics, The Little Rascals is the best 1936 movie made in 1994. [05 Aug 1994, p.03]

While Smith gets into Ali's head and under his skin, the movie around him has more footwork than punch.

Solitary Man is a wafer-thin film with a river-deep, mountain-high performance from Douglas.

What's admirable about Save Me is that it grounds its religious and cultural debate not in vilifying one side but in sympathizing with both.

I enjoyed the spectacle of middle-aged people making spectacles of themselves.

Heigl, a double-dip of praline with caramel, is so beautiful that initially you don't notice her comic chops.

Paradise Now plays like Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot," but with explosives.

Silly, but irresistible.

As adorable and predictable a film as the Helen Fielding best-seller that inspired it.

In her clear and compelling film, Sanders lets the innocents do the talking.

Because the confrontations between power and powerlessness are so dramatic and because Hirschbiegel's editing is so emphatic, Das Experiment is practically over before you realize that you don't know what its point is, exactly.

Kudos to Clifton Collins Jr., who appears as a dispenser of cleaning products and common sense.

A movie as generous, stingy, and biting - and memorable - as its six main characters.

Evocatively shot by cinematographer Lance Gewer in warm browns and reds that make Tsotsi seem all the more chilling, the film records his gradual metamorphosis from id-driven brute into empathic, if crude, care-giver.

Peter Glenville's staging of the material is the opposite of cinematic, but the pleasure of these two extravagantly gifted actors at the top of their game - their diction! their conviction! their beauty! - is enormous.

Not an easy movie to watch.

A third-generation performer, this daughter of actor-director Ron Howard makes a stunning feature debut.

It succeeds as a vivid video album of the metropolis at the millennium, a lilting musical album of the varied carols Americans play and an all-too-rare depiction of what the pursuit of happiness actually looks like.