Carrie Rickey

Setting her (Streep) face into a mask of composure that suggests Darth Vader by way of a Kabuki actor, the most expressive of American actresses shows how power is expressed in the lack of facial and vocal expression.

With this film Daldry, previously the director of "Billy Elliot" and "The Hours," proves himself the screen's reigning master at showing passion thwarted or repressed.

Unsettling, intelligent, and way-out-there.

That rumpled grumpus Paul Giamatti seizes the title role in Barney's Version, summoning irresistibility and irritability to create a character as endearing as he is galling.

Touching historical fantasy.

For its intended audience, Horton's agenda is overt: Listen, be a friend, and most important - have fun!

Pazira, whose sapphire eyes blaze through the lattice of her slate-gray burqa, isn't much of an actress, as her singsong narration attests. But when not speaking, she has a commanding presence and is an effective witness to the ravages of war.

An elaborately presented feast that will taste familiar to the 'tween and teen audience for whom it is served. The four courses are love, war, faith and humor, served in no canonical order, and sometimes, simultaneously.

For its mesmerizing first two-thirds, Van Sant keeps the film tightly focused on his subject, superbly played by Penn and intimately shot, home-movie style, by Harris Savides. But when the director pulls back to detail Harvey Milk's fight against gay backlash, Milk gets derailed. And - dare I say it? - didactic.

Unlike most films about teenagers, the performances are happy-sad-realistic. Lerman, who plays the least expressive of the three principals, does a fine job at suggesting the active inner life of an externally inexpressive youth.

Where so many Holocaust documentaries remember the past and preach not to repeat it, Shanghai Ghetto remembers the past and teaches the relativity of experience.

Colorful, noisy, and pixel-deep.

Laced with magic-realist bittersweetness.

So realistic are Phoebe's quicksilver emotions that at first it doesn't seem Fanning is acting at all. That helps to ground the film, which swings seamlessly from the world of grown-up expectations to that of childhood reverie and rebellion.

Side-splitting concert film.

In this episodic film with a soupcon of "Sex and the City" (just as the Merchant Ivory Slaves of New York presaged the HBO hit), cross-cultural misunderstanding, not character, is the point.

Exhilarating, breathless, must-see chronicle of the skateboarder revolution and evolution.

Isaac's emotional performance as the man who learns to share the woman he loves with the God he worships is profoundly moving and gives the movie its heart.

It's a rare window on an artistic collaboration.

There are three action sequences here so delightful, so hilariously deploying an old tool for a new use, that they prompt smiles long after I saw the film.

The structure of Lelouch's pedal-to-the-metal story commands attention and suspense. The three principals are enormously engaging, and Gérard de Battista's succulent cinematography creates the sense of actually being there.

As is the case with many English comedies, some of the film's slang is hard to understand. But Jennings' sprightly films proves that although England and America are countries divided by the same language, they are united by slapstick comedy.

It's fair to say that Coach Carter is more an education film than it is a sports movie.

A keen observational seriocomedy, The Syrian Bride, like "Paradise Now," suggests that all residents of the Middle East, no matter their faith or their nationality, are more alike than not.

Crowe is so good on mood and milieu that when Elton John's bubblegum ballad "Tiny Dancer" swells on the soundtrack, in this context it sounds like a hymn.

Documents the emotional and spiritual journey of three orphans.

Some numbers: Hawn and Sarandon (both 56) are arguably the first women in American popular culture to be pushing 60 and sexy. Hard to believe, but when Joan Crawford and Bette Davis were comparable ages (59 and 54), they were the frightening gargoyles of "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?"

Apart from Luna's exquisitely subtle performance, Criminal's strongest suit is the so-artless-it's-artful cinematography by Chris Menges, which gives the impression of being shot by a fly on the wall. Similarly, Alex Wurman's jazz-infused score contributes to the improvisational atmosphere.

Apart from Connery, the star of the film is Mamet's deadpan script, which obviously inspired one of the movie's baldest old-movie tributes.

Whip It (which takes its name from a play in which skaters hold hands and form a human whip to propel the last skater forward) is heaven on wheels.

Like many Apatow films, Bridesmaids has a rambling, disjointed quality, crammed with sequences that elicit laughs without advancing plot.

Gluck is not a visual storyteller. He depends entirely on his performers and their snappy dialogue.

While the movie feels shelf-worn, Efron's performance is fresh.

That this ambitious, if deeply odd, film is so compulsively watchable is a credit to Gibson's compelling performances, both as spiritless Walter and the Cockney-accented voice of the tireless title character.

It's a minor work in the Yimou canon, but a major visual treat.

Despite its title, Outrage is calm, riveting, and provocative.

De Niro's minimalist performance has maximum emotional impact and succeeds in unifying the episodic film.

Great? No. Great fun? Oh, yes. Like Sergio and Aldous, this movie messes with your mind, then tickles it.

Blessed are the Pythons for making holy wit of the Holy Writ.

This soulful tale of a teenage underachiever who exhibits flashes of genius is a surprise on the order of wandering the movie desert and finding the Garden of Eden.

For the first half-hour I, too, demurred. And then the irresistible force that is Hugh Jackman -- or was it his swoony Leopold? -- swept me off my seat and into the movie.

It's a comedy that knows that no matter one's ethnicity, human foibles, follies and hopes are universal.

Though it's rife with unexpected scene-stealers, the movie belongs to Lemmon and Matthau, that perfect complement of treacle and acid. [02 July 1997, p.D01]

Lush. Debauched. Ravishing. And did I mention sexy?

Hilarious fun.

A good-natured comedy of errors from Belgium, should elicit smiles, if not belly laughs.

Stiles is lovely, forthright and believable, so much so that when the scene shifts back to storybook Denmark (actually shot in Prague), she grounds this fluff in recognizable reality.

It's the kind of film -- like Diane Keaton's "Hanging Up" -- that even as it dissolves narratively, still makes you dissolve emotionally.

Like Johnny's rants, Naked is a revelation, a parable of spiritual homelessness and the terror it engenders.

An exceptional film -- unpacks long-buried suitcases, both figuratively and literally.

Not only is there no magnetism between Fiennes and Lopez, he's a lead balloon and she's helium-filled. Happily, their odd chemistry doesn't sink this fairy tale.

Overplayed by a toupeed'n'tucked Pacino, Bank is made up to resemble Hollywood mogul Robert Evans, who produced Pacino in The Godfather. It's an inside joke for outsiders. As are the many references to the Corleone family saga.

More on-the-money than Nine to Five and a refreshing change from the Armani-clad piranhas of Wall Street, Clockwatchers contrives the rare feat of being both funny and depressing. [12 Jun 1998, p.14]

A pessimistic chronicle that even optimistic 8-year-olds can love.

Story and collaborators succeed in making a courtship comedy that will entertain women and amuse men.

It is understatement to say that Nicholson does some of the finest work of his career here, easily equaling "The Shining" for gargoyle monstrousness and "As Good as It Gets" for tortured humanism.

It is a challenging film, if not always a narratively cohesive one.

David Wain's riotous, raunchy, and more than a little raggedy showcase for Rudd's improv genius and Aniston's airy groundedness. He is gut-busting funny, she gently ticklish - ideal comic rapport.

The late John Hughes would have liked Bandslam, an upbeat high school musical that plays like a garage-band cover of "The Breakfast Club."

In his newest film Egoyan memorably gets under the skin of the skin trade. [10 Mar 1995, p.03]

A slaphappy, slapdash type of affair familiar to fans of Cheech & Chong and Pauly Shore. It's your basic object lesson in why marijuana is called dope.

For actresses of a certain age, Jarmusch's film amounts to a full-employment act...Best are Stone, transparent in her desire, and Conroy, completely opaque.

So suggestively atmospheric is Amelia Vincent's cinematography and Robin Standefer's art direction that mood -- and of course Jackson's performance -- sustains the movie.

"Capote" is serious, deep and unadorned in the manner of the 1967 movie adaptation of the writer's true-crime novel "In Cold Blood." And Infamous boasts the high-gloss frivolity of the 1961 film version of Capote's "Breakfast at Tiffany's."

Insightful and involving.

Shelly left her daughter - and her audience - a wonderful gift, this movie about the transforming effects of motherhood. Waitress shows how, in giving birth, a woman gives birth to herself - as artist and mother.

A diverting comedy that in its last act becomes unusually sober. While the film both explicitly and implicitly pays tribute to Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life," the upshift from irreverent slapstick to reverent sermonette is extremely abrupt.

The violence here is never in the service of spectacle, always of the story.

Michael Jackson's This Is It looks beyond the reconstructed face and spindly body of the late King of Pop and basks in his meteoric light.

The results are exhilarating, thrilling, and extend the wingspan.

He may be a barber, but by saving the community one strand at a time, Calvin is the heir apparent to populist banker George Bailey of "It's a Wonderful Life."

The film's humor comes in part from the gap between what Oliver says and what the audience sees.

The two generate more heart than they do heat, but that's the point. You want to see them together not just because they're adorable, but because you believe that their characters can take each other to a place neither could get to on their own.

What's not to like about a girl detective who is a good citizen and better student, a leader rather than a follower, a resourceful seamstress who won't cut her clothes to fit this year's fashions?

Has the confessional intimacy of a video diary and performances to match, particularly those of Kyra Sedgwick and Parker Posey.

The story is as basic as a peasant meal - and just as hearty.

It's a joyride until you think about the film's biggest contradiction. How come this movie celebrating the superiority of human feelings over machine precision is most alive when thrilling in the mechanical perfection of the Terminator and T-1000? Inside Terminator 2 beats a human heart. But its soul is that of a killer machine.

Director Jean-Pierre Denis doesn't explore psychological motives, which are, finally, unknowable. What he accomplishes in his chilling, unnerving film is a double portrait of two young women whose lives were as claustrophic, suffocating and chilly as the attics to which they were inevitably consigned.

In the end, Ficarra and Requa take all the formula ingredients and blend them into a satisfying - and tasty - concoction. "A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy," meet "All's Well That Ends Well."

The film equivalent of Maya Lin's Vietnam monument, that collective gravestone to the fallen, in the way it employs abstract means to quantify the loss of life and elicit a profound sense of grief.

What's refreshing about Beginners is its sympathy for all of its characters, which translates into the characters' sympathy for each other.

Though his film is a tad choppy and a lot chatty, Hindman elicits sympathetic performances from leads who demonstrate a deep understanding of movie physics.

Admittedly, it is redundant to make a comedy about the Celtics because their current team is a joke. But it is also deeply satisfying. [19 Apr 1996, p.03]

Did I enjoy Shadyac's film? Very much. Do I think he made many of his points more accessibly and entertainingly in Bruce Almighty? You bet.

Serves up a dramatic comedy piquant as its title.

At the multiplex where so many holiday movies feel regifted, This Christmas is a gift.

Yojiro Takita's movie simultaneously tickles tears of mourning as it wrings laughs about the meaning of life.

In addition to Carell and Fey, Date Night boasts a deft supporting cast...Best of all are a very droll James Franco and Mila Kunis as the downtown hipsters for whom the Fosters are mistaken.

Makes for the most thrilling action movie of the year.

House is one of the most exciting genre discoveries in years. [17 Jun 2010, p.14]

There is so little emotionally or intellectually at stake in most popular entertainment that Goya's Ghosts, Milos Forman's challenging, compelling and wildly uneven film, shoots like a cannonball into the solar plexus. I can't remember when I've been so physically and mentally shattered.

Ain't no mountain high enough to keep the Funk Brothers from getting to you.

Fascinating and flawed spy thriller.

Brazenly enjoyable, The Matador is a picaresque cocktail with a Tarantino twist. It is The Odd Couple with a buzz on.

For its first two acts this flashy vehicle is an anodized titanium streamline baby. Then comes a robot rumble that brings the action to a crashing halt.

Remarkably poignant (and pungent) when it comes to child psychology.

For its first hour, it's a delightful cloak-and-dagger comedy starring a brave Beagle James Bond and a depraved Persian Dr. Evil.

The four women couldn't be better - or better matched. As always, Parker is the standout, cracking your heart and cracking you up with equal ease.

While Weitz's story is diverting, the performances cut deeper than the film.

Jackson's superior sequel to last year's first installment in his Rings cycle - resurrects the beloved Gandalf (majestic Ian McKellen) and rejuvenates the audience, too.

Riveting and heartstoppingly fine documentary.

Basic as a home movie -- and twice as touching -- Charles Lane's Sidewalk Stories is a black-and-white silent comedy that pays tribute both to Charles Chaplin's The Kid (1921) and to the urban homeless. [06 Apr 1990, p.4]

Feels both absolutely of the 1970s and absolutely fresh.

In presenting their testimony to the jury of public opinion, Morris would seem to be building a case for absolving some of them of mistreatment charges and implicitly asking for an investigation of those who were not charged.

A feast for the eyes and ears as its story is a banquet for the heart.

Was it just three years ago that Perry made his feature debut with "Diary of a Mad Black Woman?" Then his filmmaking was strictly amateur; now his sweeping pans and portentous closeups approach those of Pedro Almódovar.

Carion's cri de coeur is at once a historical chronicle, an ode to the European Community, and a not-so-veiled critique of a 21st-century war.

Like Connery - but in different proportions - Craig is earthy and erotic, holding himself like a smoking gun.

Melodramatic and strangely moving.

Remember the name Shohreh Aghdashloo. The heartbreakingly fine Iranian actress is only a subsidiary character in House of Sand and Fog...But she is the soul of this pungent film.

The movie has a musical rather than a cinematic shape, defined by songs played in their entirety.

A very curious and very entertaining mix, the Labradoodle of inspirational romantic-comedy-melodramas.

In supporting roles, Bullock and Hanks deliver performances that are low-key and perfectly scaled. Viola Davis and Jeffrey Wright are, likewise, excellent as a couple Oskar meets on his reconnaissance expedition.

Both austere and garish, simultaneously dry and sentimental, tightly repressed and extravagantly expressive, bourgeois and bohemian. It's a seesaw, but Dorrie finds the balance.

Mr. Hulot's Holiday is concerned not with character, but with how the unreliability of nature, human nature, and mechanical objects makes human actions and interactions awkwardly funny. [05 Mar 2010, p.W12]

Trumbo, a rousing documentary as ornery, orotund and captivating as its subject (1905-1976), is an anatomy of irony.

An unexpectedly moving family portrait of cousins we didn't know we had.

It mostly is a triumph of stagecraft and speaker-blowing freestyling.

A high-performance low comedy, House succeeds because Martin's Peter Sanderson and Latifah's Charlene Morton each plays Henry Higgins to the other's Eliza Doolittle.

Stern and Sundberg, best known for their Darfur documentary "The Devil Came on Horseback," did not shrink from the atrocities in Sudan; nor do they shrink from the fame-hungry excesses here.

Hopelessly raunchy, helplessly romantic, and wickedly, wickedly funny.

Kenya and Bryan are both victims of racism and also guilty of it. But the colorful mosaic of their courtship is no downer like "Crash," but rather an upbeat account of expanding social and romantic possibilities in a world where women wear the suits and men speak the language of flowers.

At its best, the film's visual dazzle equals the tasty wordplay of the novel. But it is overlong, overscored, and curiously misshapen.

A movie about people who literally carry a lot of emotional baggage, metaphorically unpack it, and spiritually lighten their loads. By the end, I felt lighter. Which is closer to enlightenment than most movies get.

The matchless Alberto Sordi - a contemporary of Peters Sellers and a progenitor of Steve Martin - stars as the buffoon Everyman, Antonio Badalamenti, a perfectly poised figure destined for the pratfall.

It's a gently provocative film diary about tobacco and its mixed legacy.

Sweet. The pun is unavoidable. It's the only adjective that fully captures the flavor of the romantic comedy Brown Sugar.

The humans, particularly the wistful Wilson, deadpan Alan Arkin (as Grogan's editor) and Nathan Gamble, a 10-year-old who plays the eldest Grogan child, are very affecting. Aniston, who has great offbeat comic timing, doesn't quite find her rhythm here.

A snappily fun Mantrap Movie, as films about husband-hunting gals are known, is that rare hybrid of romantic comedy and Super Bowl.

Until its conventional third act, Elysian Fields takes surprising turns. Garcia, Coburn and particularly Jagger surprise throughout.

Here, Jews are not victims of genocide, but victors in the organized resistance against it.

Enormously satisfying.

I also like that when Our Hero starts swinging from skyscrapers, he's not just emulating Tarzan, but is working out the Newtonian physics of action and reaction.

A comedy as likable as its stars.

Refreshingly subversive.

The more Pacino overplays, the more Cusack underplays, which makes for a fascinating contrast in acting styles. True, Cusack's dialect is more "Louie, Louie" than Louisiana, but he projects such moral spotlessness that none of the film's cynicism can soil him. That's acting. [16 Feb 1996, p.03]

Sneakily funny and hopelessly romantic, Reality Bites speaks with the distinctive, ironic voice that marks it as The Graduate of Generation X. [18 Feb 1994, p.03]

The best performances are those of Portman and the resourceful Peter Sarsgaard (Shattered Glass) as Mark.

I mean no disrespect to Rosenthal when I say I laughed louder during the movie than during any episode of his hit TV show.

It's a soaring, crashing, blazing affair with pyrotechnic performances by real-life spouses Marc Anthony and Jennifer Lopez as Lavoe and his wife, Puchi. Like a plane disaster, it holds you in thrall of ¡ay, Dios mio! drama.

The result, if occasionally forced, is also irresistible.

Delicious confection about the resilient Czech character, tastes like a bittersweet chocolate souffle, it's much more substantial than dessert.

Do you need to have seen A Chorus Line to understand or enjoy Every Little Step? I think not. This companion piece to one of America's most beloved musicals is about human longings and shortfalls.

Unlike the previous two films in this series, Abrams is more concerned with his hero's heart than with his hardware. The result is a pulse-racing thriller that restores the human factor to the franchise, and to its producer-star.

The new film compensates with Gere's wry performance as a man who lacks for nothing material but hungers for something spiritual. Even better is Stanley Tucci's delirious turn as Gere's balding, button-down colleague.

Excellent performances make the movie effective. Yet the flashbacks have a depth and resonance largely absent from the modern scenes.

A touching, family-friendly entertainment

The filmmakers give Latifah and Fanning room to create characters that breathe in the sweet smell of clover and breathe out the contented sigh of independence.

If the heart of the film is Hartford, who late in his struggle with cancer conveys the luminous colors of a man at his twilight, its soul is Welch.

Despite an exceptional performance by Paltrow, whose Plath is a layer cake of infinite intelligence and bottomless need, Jeffs' film is an icy affair lacking the fever of Plath's and Hughes' poems.

In terms of character, McConaughey is the toxin and Garner the antitoxin. It's not exactly chemistry, but as pharmacology it's effective.

A bewildering but never boring yarn.

What's a fish-lover to do? For starters, know where your fish comes from. Don't consume endangered species. After watching this film, you may never want to eat fish again.

Like its own hero - and so many recent films - The Shadow suffers from a split personality. At some moments, this can have a poetic impact. More often, though, it seems the result of sloppiness. [01 Jul 1994, p.05]

Would I see it again? Not even for a Scooby snack.

While the film starring Abigail Breslin as a resourceful 10-year-old is faithful to the Kit books, it's pokey where it should be perky.

Despite good taste and good will, this romp through Victorian parlors frequently falls flat on its rump.

Great? No. But Bran Nue Dae is great good fun.

The film is better on mood than on message, sharply etching the professional desperation behind the forced gaiety.

With ambitions greater than comedy and results that fall short of character study, The Big Year is neither fish nor fowl.

Hunt, whose flutelike voice makes music of Wilde's dialogue, has the most difficult role. While she acquits herself honorably, she nudges her lines a little too broadly, as if she's worried that the audience will miss the double meanings and wordplay.

Unlike the first film, which was broader and more episodic, this one has a narrative throughline.

A goofy sports inspirational.

Based on the charming young-adult novel by Florida bard Carl Hiaasen, Hoot is a pleasant diversion on the order of a gloriously photographed after-school special.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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]

Because Trance is principally about the thrill of the ride rather than the inner lives of the riders, it lacks that outlaw humanism specific to Boyle films such as "Trainspotting," "Slumdog Millionaire," and "Millions." In other words, it's an ingeniously built automaton, sexy as hell, and devoid of a heart.

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.

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

While the plot may be too twisty for most kids (and adults) to follow, the art of Cars 2 is as imaginative as anything Pixar has ever done.

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

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

Burlesque is a preposterous and intermittently entertaining lesson in how to make a movie musical with a little brains and a lot of talent.

In rhythm, humor and performance, Morning Glory is, at best, sporadic.

Though one wishes Graff's eye were as developed as his keen ear, he elicits rafter-raising musical performances from Latifah, Palmer, and Jordan that are irresistible fun.

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.

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]

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

A light-as-powder family comedy.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Not an entertainment but an experience. And a kind of cinematic sensitivity training.

One admires Wallace's intentions while despairing at his execution. Yet as clumsily directed as his film is, it inspires compassion for Moore, his men and their foes. And in that, there is merit.

Binder has written himself a scene-stealing supporting role as Shep, sleazeball producer.

Franco, the hollow-cheeked, pouty-lipped actor best known as Spider-Man's nemesis Harry Osborn, plays Tristan like a biker boy with a broadsword.

An appealing, low-budget musical.

This profanely hilarious and tonally erratic spoof of buddy movies is funny as it begins in "Miss Congeniality 2" territory, funnier still as it zooms into "Lethal Weapon" climes. But it stops dead, and I mean that literally, when it takes a U-turn into a "Pulp Fiction" sinkhole of slapstick violence.

The film's atmosphere is incendiary. It has style to burn. But for the most part, the performances are all wet.

It is not unforgettable, like the original Love Affair. It is not An Affair to Remember, like the remake. It is not laden with ironic humor, like Sleepless in Seattle. This Love Affair is . . . fair. [21 Oct 1994, p.03]

Amalric's performance is comically moving in the manner of silent actors, and the film is beautifully wrought with moments of enchantment. Alas, Chicken is a movie that begins with a crescendo and doesn't sustain its lyricism.

This bracing adaptation of the Nurse Matilda books by Christianna Brand is the acidic antidote to Mary Poppins sweetness.

Breslin, so memorable in "Little Miss Sunshine," suffers the most. Skilled and reactive with humans, she doesn't quite muster the same engagement with her finned and flippered costars here.

Both consoling and confounding.

The good news is that this daddy/daughter reconciliation story connects with the ball. The not-so-good: It's a blooper.

Their exhaustive tribute to hungry zombies, fast girls and faster cars is . . . exhausting, if intermittently entertaining.

Tennessee is drenched in melancholy, a trip through a tunnel of pain illuminated by a lone ray of light at the end.

Less like "The Waterboy" and more like "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry," only funny.

Perfectly cast, if insufficiently dramatized.

Follows its heroines' rise and wising-up with a giddy, "Hard Day's Night" enthusiasm.

Working from a story by Antwone Fisher, screenwriter Tina Gordon Chism is tender toward characters balancing where they come from with where they'd like to go. Fisher was the subject of an inspirational biography by Denzel Washington.

The second-best film parody (after The Brady Bunch Movie) of a '70s TV phenom that unaccountably looks better the further you get from it.

What is lacking in this version, with its hasty third act and abrupt denouement, is the surprise that their union may be the deepest love either will ever know.

Feels somehow incomplete. It may be that its visual metaphor is more effective in literature than in film.

Shannon is flawless.

My guess is that The Dreamers will have a certain resonance for those of us who discovered movies and sex at the same time during the '60s. For the rest of you, the film is a curiosity about cinegenic youths baring their bodies while thinking they are baring their souls.

Those who know Austen novels will recognize how much each character resembles a figure in one of them. Those who do not will enjoy the amusing types. Men, this means you.

So many characters to keep track of, so little time!

Like Kevin's lucky fortune cookie, Lottery Ticket is a sweet treat with a substantive message.

Not a great movie, but it's affectionate. It reveals the cuddly side of Mac.

A gorgeous, gory epic, is a blow-your-mind masterpiece about the emperor who ruled more than 2,000 years ago.

An accomplished feature debut with stunning cinematography (by Elliot Davis), a jambalaya story line and yet another heart-stopping performance by Scarlett Johansson.

Best of all is Hoffman, who hasn't had this much obvious fun since he played Hollywood producer Stanley Motss in "Wag the Dog."

Either Campion is the most inspirational director of performers or Winslet the most carnal.

An upbeat-if-shapeless Canadian comedy about two adorable young women, an artist and an aspiring writer, who fall in love at first sight. [26 Jul 1999, p.C06]

Chris Columbus' relatively faithful and intermittently affecting adaptation boasts the boisterous vitality of its performers, particularly Jesse L. Martin and Wilson Jermaine Heredia as lovers Tom and Angel.

I don't think 50 First Dates is a great movie, or a particularly funny one, but I admired its romanticism and its gentle plea for the acceptance of difference. Of how many romantic comedies can you say they are sweet and disturbing?

The American public likes nothing better than a tragedy with a happy ending, William Dean Howells observed. But Marshall so cautiously downplays the tragic elements of his plot that the sweetness and light left a sour taste in my mouth.

Feels less like an epic drama about power and the power of love than an episode of a Masterpiece Theatre mini-series.

What I most appreciated about the film directed by Matthew O'Callaghan is that it doesn't go for amped-up effects. No bells, whistles, or nudge-nudge, wink-winks to the adults in the audience.

It's larky, snarky fun.

Despite problems of tone and tempo, Steins is appealingly cast.

McConaughey tucks into the role like a hungry man gobbling a ham sandwich.

So powerful and tender are the scenes between Falk and Dukakis that by movie's end, I was wishing that the film had been more about the marriage of Sam and Muriel and less about the father and son.

An inconsistent and endearing sports inspirational that aims to be "Chariots of Fire" for golf.

A far sight nimbler than its plodding predecessor, where the Holy Grail turns out to be a Holy Girl. The sequel is a little like CSI: Vatican City.

Elle Macpherson? Not much of an actress, but nobody who goes to see Sirens is likely to notice her thespian endowments. [3 March 1994, p.05]

Under Michael Apted's direction, Nell is a pleasingly tranquil experience, its epiphanies as understated as Richardson's and Neeson's low-key performances. [25 Dec 1994, p.G01]

Almost reflexively, the filmmakers skirt Dan's messier conflicts. But it is the moments when they don't dance around the awkward issue of a brother falling for his brother's girl that Dan is the most poignant.

The best that can be said about Collateral Damage is that it offers a fleeting fantasy of American invincibility at a time when we desperately crave the reality. It functions as a movie narcotic.

Family. Can't live with 'em, can't kill 'em. Little Miss Sunshine, a stormy quasi-comedy destined to polarize audiences, is a perfect specimen of this unsentimental attitude.

It's a pretty nice movie until, like a Ponzi plan, it collapses.

The film's focus on the contest between the two agents does throw the film off-balance.

I'm not sure that the endearing charms of the assorted fogeys and whelps add up to a movie. But I always enjoy how Altman weaves the warp of professional life with the weft of the personal.

If time and space hooked up and got so hammered that they staggered beyond inebriation into delirium, the result would be Hot Tub Time Machine.

I was shaken, but not stirred, by Babel, a globalist melodrama that careens from Morocco to Mexico like a revved-up "Crash."

In 50 years, film lovers will look back on 9 as the debut feature of an original talent.

I wish Eragon's cinematography were crisper, the music less Wagnerian, and the acting more consistent. But this movie isn't for me. It's for my 10-year-old, for whom the subtleties of narrative, photography and acting mean nothing.

Think of it as"Airplane"! with controlled substances.

Three things make the film worthwhile: Shatner's performance; the sequence involving Data getting his "emotion chip" implant; and John Alonzo's crystalline cinematography, which makes Generations the most beautiful Trek ever. [18 Nov. 1994, p.03]

The fluid film cinematography of Christopher Doyle and Rain Kathy Li, intercut with grainy Super-8 shots of park regulars, tracks the skaters in their free-flying, free-styling and free-falling grace. In these privileged moments, the film is close to transcendence, defying time, space and gravity.

As a mainstream Hollywood film about men in skirts, the assumption here is that drag queens Make Accessories, Not Love. Even if you're offended by this, or by the attitude that all of life's problems can be solved by a change in decor or lipstick color, or off-put by the assumption that every town in America between the two coasts is populated by rednecks, there are things to like about Wong Foo. [08 Sep 1995, p.03]

If the only measure of Fur's achievement was in how well it conjures the fairy-tale mood of Arbus' most memorable photos, then it is a modest success. But as a chronicle of the turning point in an artist's creative life, it falls flat on its viewfinder.

A feeling man's buddy story that's user-friendly to men and women alike.