Carrie Rickey

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

A cheesily entertaining effort that recalls the irreverent '50s comedies of Jerry Lewis. [12 Apr 1996, p.03]

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.

Unlike most Sayles movies, the filmmaker no sooner introduces his memorable characters and deeply resonant themes than his From Here to Maternity melodrama abruptly ends.

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.

Overstocked farce.

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.

One reason to see Rendition is for Naor's stunning performance as the torturer who is the one character aware of the political and moral contradictions of what he's doing. Every time he was on screen, he commanded it.

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

At one point, Dulaine takes the students to his studio and they look up at the mirrored disco ball glittering above the dance floor. "Corny, but cool," says one of the sweathogs. My feelings about the film precisely.

The film is uniquely spirited, radiating the exuberance and sexual heat of an Elvis musical, a characteristic shared by its songs and dances.

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]

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.

Since the main reason I go to movies is to engage with characters, I prefer "The Pledge," the film opening today by Madonna's first husband, Sean Penn, rather than this stylish fluff by her second spouse.

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.

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.

Idle it is not. Wild it is most assuredly. Set in Prohibition-era Georgia, Idlewild boasts yesterday's style, today's music, and the Harlem Renaissance's romanticism.

Although rough, it's a gem.

Old School has all the ingredients of an uproarious campus comedy, but it lacks a boisterous short-order cook who could whip up a food fight or three.

This white-knuckle adventure is a literal and metaphoric cliff-hanger that gets a spectacular foothold on an unforgiving mountain.

While Imagine That falls short of its feel-good aim, its feel-nice vibe is a good Father's Day diversion for Dads and their spawn.

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

Bee Season is lit by human sunbeam Flora Cross as Eliza.

While Scott's movie has a consistent aura, it lacks a consistent tone. What are we to make of the movie, gauzy as a mist-shrouded lake and brutal as "Lord of the Flies?"

Hidalgo is the first Middle East western.

However improbable this sounds, The Brady Bunch Movie is to the original television show what real grass is to Astroturf. [17 Feb 1995, p.03]

As the film devolved from satire to slapstick horror, I didn't believe in it at all. But in his beetle-browed intensity and tremulousness, I completely believed in Minghella's Jerome.

Sparkle is a solid entertainment with a winning debut by Jordin Sparks in the title role.

Seething, searing tragedy of unmannerliness.

Only in its aggressively imaginative profanity is the film consistent.

A crude, cringe-worthy, and intermittently funny affair that triggers the gag reflex. I sincerely can't tell you whether I was choking with laughter or keeping from choking.

She (Hunt) is perfection even when her movie falls a little short.

A pleasant taste of Roman life.

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

Think of the film from director Adam Salky and screenwriter David Brind as "Pretty in Pink" crossed with "Cruel Intentions."

The choppy film is like a composition crowded with competing themes.

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.

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

Despite a terrific performance from Shane West, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Crash, Secret is a chronology, not a biopic.

Dramatically speaking, the movie version of The Notebook has a first act and a last act but lacks a transition. If it were a sandwich, it would be two slices of bread without filling.

If there were truth-in-titling, Burton's movie rightly would be called "Alice in Narnia: With Stops at Disneyland, the Shire, Rohan, Naboo, and Oz."

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

Too bad the filmmakers didn't trust the material. For Ella doesn't need music and references to other, better, movies to cast its unique spell.

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?

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.

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

Overwritten, over-designed, and too clever by 200 percent, the film does offer the pleasure of actors enjoying themselves.

Despite excellent elements - great actress, taut plot, slick visuals - Flightplan is like airplane food. No matter how good the ingredients the air chef has to work with, the entree inevitably ends up tasting like a Xerox of a facsimile of a meal.

The gift of Imaginary Heroes is getting to know these anything-but-ordinary people.

Perfectly cast, if insufficiently dramatized.

A triumph for its director and its star.

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.

On the evidence of Palindromes, the most misanthropic, depressing, hopeless film in memory, I'd hazard that for Solondz, childhood is a problem without a solution.

Salvadori's choppy film never establishes a comic rhythm.

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

Maybe it's the postproduction 3-D enhancements, but in this effects-laden Odyssey for tweens, sometimes humans and beasts seem more wax-and-paint than flesh-and-blood.

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

While the situations don't add up to a satisfying film, the characters are pleasing to watch.

Involving study of sibling and interpersonal relationships.

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.

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.

If the shrill Italian melodrama Remember Me, My Love were a television soap opera, it would be called The Not-So-Young and the Restless.

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.

Washington blows you away. To say he gives the performance of his career is an understatement.

Though not as lyrical as "The Road," which benefits from both its visual artistry and its humanist perspective, The Book of Eli employs the genre conventions of the western to make mythic its principal character.

It's rare that a movie is so graceful and so gross.

The movie is beautiful but, for one unfamiliar with the source material, confusing. I needed an owl scorecard.

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

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.

Roos introduces the possibility that perhaps two partials add up to the whole truth, and in so doing creates a provocative love story that sticks with you long after the credits roll.

What's on screen is a hash, though it may very well be the most comprehensive catalog of male erotic fantasies in one single film.

Not to say that it isn't fun, only to say that it is more about sensation than sense.

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.

Each actor is unusually watchful and wily, and their actorly competition underscores the one-upmanship of their characters.

It's not fresh and irreverent, qualities we admire in Allen. It is recycled and irrelevant.

A postfeminist valentine to the Paleolithic days of Woman Power when dinosaurs walked Manhattan in heels with matching handbags.

Law shines like a sunbeam, warming the film with rakish charm and unexpected emotionalism.

Watching the film is like getting hooked by a fearful angler who can't successfully reel you in.

Deadpan, dead-on parody of a schlockmeister at work and play.

By turns rowdy and rueful, The Switch is a comedy with serious ramifications, not least of which is the question, what makes a family?

Great message, so-so movie.

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.

Aja's stomach-churning remake (produced by Craven) follows the original with frightening fidelity, amping up the barbarity from a nine (on the 1-10 scale) to a 12.

At its best, Nanny McPhee Returns has the playful surrealism of "Babe," if "Babe" had been directed by Terry Gilliam.

The biggest surprise of his film is that what begins in sentimental cliche concludes with melancholy insight.

Contrived and schematic, Peter Chelsom's film is a mechanical bird that never takes wing.

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.

While his movie lacks the psychological resonance of "Rosemary's Baby" or "The Sixth Sense," it easily equals their creep-out quotient.

The extent to which The Princess Diaries succeeds is the result of how pretty Hathaway at first mimics, then internalizes, Andrews' essential majesty.

Edgeless as a marshmallow and twice as syrupy.

On stage variously with Boyz II Men, Jaden Smith, Miley Cyrus, and Ludacris, Bieber carries himself like a squeaky-clean homeboy with an angelic voice. On him, swagger looks sweet.

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.

Steamy and sexy with a smack of sadism, the movie is a throwback to old-school Hollywood action/romance.

Movie and book both are delightful, but very, very different.

However refreshing it is to see a movie about the secretary rather than the lawyer -- there is a long wait for the light at the end of the Haiku Tunnel.

While I don't always have the stomach for Woo's viscera or the heart for his pure, angelic heroes and impure, diabolical villains, I found myself responding to the context and subtext of Windtalkers while closing my eyes through what one might call its text. It's two-thirds of a great film.

For those who enjoy the non sequiturs common to Cheech & Chong comedies and Raymond Chandler mysteries, The Big Lebowski is a hoot. For those of a more serious warp, the film is a lexicon of postmodernism, a textbook example of recontextualizing earlier styles, what with its '60s casualties driving '70s cars and enjoying '50s pleasures in the '90s. In other words, this is not a movie for those who demand narrative thrust and coherence, although even they will be startled by the contrast between Bridges' teddy-bear affability and Goodman's corrosive hostility. [6 March 1998, p.04]

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.

I winced more than laughed at this movie, which has almost as many broken bones as punch lines.

The performances in Girl, Interrupted resonate, but the movie does not.

Despite Angela's skills - and Bullock's charms - director Irwin Winkler's film is so pedestrian that his movie has all the thrills of a school crossing.

Mighty Joe Young is a movie only an 8-year-old could love. How cheesy is it? Well, it leaves the ooze of Velveeta in its wake. [25 Dec 1998, p.4]

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.

Verdict? Mixed. Loved the slapstick, winced at the toilet humor, and mourned that the female performers were given so little to do. Funeral is funnier the second time around.

Quickly devolves into a violent thriller that resolves itself in sadomasochistic romance.

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.

By turns entertaining and excruciating.

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

The script, which needs not just doctoring and could benefit from a spell in the critical-care ward, is full of dress-up and put-downs, and comes alive only when Prinze or Cook are on-screen. In short, She's All That aspires to be Clueless. It succeeds in being clueless.

It would seem that Allen and screenwriters John Quaintance and Jessica Bendinger couldn't decide between making a movie about the summer that 'tweens become teens or "Scenes From a Mal"l for the MTV set.

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

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

Jon Amiel's moody, and strangely moving, vignette of the naturalist is something else entirely. It is more about Darwin, father and husband, than Darwin the scientist.

Frisky, raunchy and frequently riotous.

At its best, the movie is a catalog of doggy stunts.

Unfortunately, the plot runs out of dilithium crystals, and drifts to a sluggish and predictable conclusion

Cheesy and loads of fun.

At its best, Worlds Away is a parade of mostly attractive acrobats performing physically improbable feats. At its worst, it has the humorlessness of Ridley Scott plumbing the deeper meanings of an Esther Williams water ballet.

The movie avoids most of the romantic comedy cliches, and its leads are appealing. That's almost enough for me. But not quite.

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

An airless, bilious, endless pageant of pseudohistory.

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.

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]

Kutcher and Portman have terrific screen physics, using their 12-inch height difference to considerable slapstick effect.

At its best, Shange's work is a lyric journey through the storm to the rainbow. At its worst, Perry's movie is a relentless dance between the victimizer and his victim. Shange's poetic flow gets choked by Perry's stilted prose.

Shaft is still enormously involving. It's popcorn, but very fresh.

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

Although it would be understatement to call their characters unsympathetic, Van Der Beek and Sossamon play their parts with such doomed passion that they have some affecting moments.

Alas, not even Eckhart and Breslin can get Zeta-Jones to simmer.

Though there are chases galore and stampeding dinos aplenty, Dawn of the Dinosaurs is a nicely rendered travelogue without storytelling. There is little to bring an audience along for the ride.

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

If Sweet November were a puppy, it would have rabies.

A goofy sports inspirational.

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

When Bullock is on screen, Murder by Numbers is as far away as a sleepwalker's gaze. But when Schroeder focuses on the teenagers, the film is wide awake, eye-to-eye with adolescent angst and anomie.

Ultimately the voyage is so choppy and long (2 hours, 48 minutes) that into the third hour I found myself yawning, "Yo-ho-hum and a very sore bum."

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.

Although Solondz's view is omniscient, as a filmmaker here he condescends to his characters' innocence, ignorance and bigotry, making him guilty of the same narrative crimes.

It's also a case of art imitates life imitates art. If that makes it a tribute to a tribute to a classic, then it is no less enjoyable for that.

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

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.

Despite lovely songs from k.d. lang and Bonnie Raitt (written by Beauty and the Beast composer Alan Menken), this range is about as serene as a hen party.

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

While Grant is sublime, the "Godfather" spoof he's in sleeps with the fishes.

The good news is that it sees what a jihad looks like from both sides. The bad news is that it's not a very good movie, with three fine performances and two great sequences.

One wishes that Chambers had more gracefully integrated the stories of the individual players into this celebration of Rush.

There are two questions to ask about a film such as Chloe: Is it erotic? Yes. Is it good? Yes, until it devolves into third-act pretentiousness and preposterousness.

A comedy as likable as its stars.

Happily, Perry's strength as a filmmaker is that he genuinely loves his actors, and they love him back. What his movies lack in exposition they make up for in performances.

The film is cannily made.

I watched this movie thinking that it used the idea of taking a chance on cards as a metaphor for taking a chance on love. I was dead wrong.

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.

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]

Legacy is a two-hour light show with a lot of flash, a little style, and not one byte of narrative originality.

Raunchy, raucous and riotously funny.

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

This furry family comedy about a boy and his border terrier is irresistible, if not exactly in the league of "Babe."

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

Easily the best 1975 B-movie made in 2005, Four Brothers is a raucously entertaining vigilante film.

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.

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

Her (Angela Ismailos) generic questions about the politics, economics, and aesthetics of film yield predictably generic responses from her subjects.

It's a stylish package with not much inside.

Not even Chan's imaginative fight choreography redeems this folly.

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

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.

At 24 minutes, Lola Versus might be a middling episode of a sitcom like "New Girl." At 87 minutes, it is a gracefully aimed arrow shot in the air. Where it lands, Wein and Lister Jones know not where.

Sadly, the combination of gauzy photography and cheesy music gives the film the aura of a fragrance commercial.

A spectacle where A-list talent strives mightily to elevate a C-plus effort.

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.

Don't blame Kline. This most thoughtful of actors is trapped behind the lectern of a film that spouts contradictory lessons it can't reconcile.

Both consoling and confounding.

That very curious thing, a Shakespearean happy meal.

Cobbled together from memorable parts of Allen's own (not to mention Hitchcock's) classics, Scoop doesn't establish its own identity.

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

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?"

Not a movie, it's a museum catalog of gorgeously rendered portraits and landscapes. What a crashing disappointment.

It's a parable as timely today as when it was written. But except for Paymer as the boss who ultimately expresses empathy for Bartleby's pain, the performances are so stylized as to be drained of human emotion.

A human-scale comedy that reaches across generations to tickle, connect and embrace.

A pepperpot bubbling with pungent insights and sharp wit, Spanglish is about how people, like cultures, are more alike than not.

An uneasy mix of hand-painted characters and digitally rendered photorealistic backgrounds, the film never fully reconciles its two-dimensional and three-dimensional worlds.

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?

If there's going to be a "Rush Hour 3," the filmmakers need more of the Ziyi/Sanchez women warriors to punch up the sagging cross-cultural buddy humor of the Chan-Tucker partnership.

There's no rhythm or rhyme to it. The subplots don't organically connect to the main narrative. It's a series of brightly lit tableaux in which we see the end result of an action but never the action itself. [18 Aug 1995, p.03]

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.

Suffers from "Bridget Jones" Syndrome but without that movie's charms.

What makes the new movie almost bearable is the byplay between Sandler and Chris Rock.

As in "An Education," Scherfig's settings are unshowy, imparting period flavor without overwhelming what is, ultimately, an underwhelming film.

In this G-rated movie the effects are gee-whiz, with live giraffes amid the stuffed animals and bouncy balls so manic that they could use some Ritalin.

Less successful in exploring the long-term effects of mental breakdown than in dispensing short-term comic pick-me-ups, Ya-Ya wrings abundant laughter and tears.

If you like movies with plots, skip this review. If you like movies with realistic characters, ditto. But if all you want in a picture is a few smiles and two hours of toe-tapping music, Blues Brothers 2000 is a potlatch of blues, bluegrass, country, gospel and soul, a celebration of the awesome diversity - and uplift - of American music. [06 Feb 1998, p.03]

If the filmmakers had a script half as good as their special effects, Night at the Museum would be a must-see.

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

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.

Hilarious fun.

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

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

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

A diverting action fantasy that modernizes the stories of demigods and monsters.

Paradoxically fast-talking and laid back, Long's Bartleby appears to be the illegitimate child of Groucho Marx and Ferris Bueller, one whose schemes are far more impressive than his deeds.

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

Unpretentious fun.

When it works, which is often, Kitano's movie is an anthropology of the distinctions between Japanese yakuza and American gangsters.

The overall effect is one of a sumptuously laid table where the main course is overcooked.

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.

Fresh, funny and perceptive.

As a horror movie, Jennifer's Body doesn't fully deliver. But as a comic allegory of what it's like to be an adolescent girl who comes into sexual and social power that she doesn't know what the heck to do with, it is a minor classic.

All in all, a resonant theme, poorly played.

Just as a fistful of drooping stalks does not a bouquet make, director Charles Herman-Wurmfeld's random collection of think-pink gags, canine couture and smart/dumb blonde jokes does not a comedy make.

Crudely entertaining comedy.

Fails as drama but succeeds as a "When bad things happen to good firemen" procedural. It's sensitivity training for civilians.

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

Swing Vote is messy and its targets are relatively safe. But its aim is true. And Costner's performance hits the bull's-eye.

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.

Kids under 6 will dig it - though the alligators and wildebeests might scare them. Certainly they scared this groan-up.

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

The trouble with Nine Months is not that Grant's monologues sound like an apologia to his real-life paramour. The trouble here is that not even a comic actor of Grant's skill can tickle such tired material to life. [12 July 1995, p.E01]

A movie-movie - big, lush and sexy. And formulaic, saddled with more plot than it needs and more "Spy Kids" references than it should have, but still . . .

Much as I gnashed my teeth during 27 Dresses, I genuinely enjoyed the warmth of Heigl's and Marsden's confident ease. While both might be a few minutes past their star-is-born moment, these troupers with more than 30 years of professional work between them have never shone so brightly. It may sound contradictory, but loved them, hated IT.

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 basketball Fantasy Camp for the cost of a movie ticket.

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

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

Except for a handful of scenes, Hancock's film isn't good enough to be memorable. Neither is it bad enough to be entirely forgettable. It's just one of those compromised movies that makes one look forward to the director's cut.

Mildly diverting and utterly dispensable.

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

A groaningly awful romantic comedy.

Too much Good Friday and not enough Easter Sunday. Emphasizing Jesus' agony over His ecstasy, Gibson has delivered a blood-drenched epic more stunning for its brutal violence than for its depiction of the calvary.

If your kids are old enough to safely see the movie by themselves, drop 'em off and pick 'em up after. You don't need to see this one.

An appealing, low-budget musical.

George, director of "Hotel Rwanda," is better at directing actors than visual storytelling. Every time the camera tilted to suggest a character's shaken world or distorted worldview I didn't feel heartache, I felt headache.

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.

It isn't a good movie, but it is diverting, a showcase for Anouk Aimee, Greta Scacchi and Ron Silver, and a peephole on behind-the-scenes moves.

On the whole, the movie is more Cheez Whiz than wizardly.

Fortunately, the actors are so likable that these wincingly unfunny moments don't spoil the party.

It is a keenly observed movie about loss of identity and finding love, in which Brooks serves up funny-ouch humor with slapstick heartbreak.

A curious screwball "noir," doesn't so much bend established genres as blend them into an unappetizing cocktail, where they curdle before pouring.

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.

As Roscoe's parents, Margaret Avery and James Earl Jones emerge with drawers undropped and dignity intact.

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

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.

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.

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

Individually, the actors are endearing. But together in this charmless Gary David Goldberg sitcomedy, inspired by the Claire Cook novel, they are as oddly paired as chalk and cheese.

Serves up a dramatic comedy piquant as its title.

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.

Like many previous Carrey vehicles, the point of this one directed by Peyton Reed is that one should not live at the extremes, but should achieve a balance between low and high, no and yes.

Much as I adore Martin and Hunt, whose matching tongue-in-cheek delivery and finite patience make them seem more like siblings than spouses, their movie is indistinguishable from an Afterschool Special.

Between Owen's quiet intensity and Mirren's showy color, they make a complementary pair for screen or garden.

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

Callan McAuliffe, a handsome Australian youth, looks right as the perma-press Bryce.

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]

It fails as a gripping home-invasion thriller.

I had the sense that Gordon's ambitious, if awkwardly assembled, film had so many terrific ingredients that he felt compelled to use them all. In this case, alas, more is less.

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.

As artistic achievements go, Mona Lisa Smile is strictly a paint-by-numbers affair. No shading. Little in the way of perspective. To call it one-dimensional would be an act of charity.

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

For Hickenlooper and Mauzner, Sedgwick is more interesting for whom she slept with than who she was. Their movie may indict Warhol for exploiting Sedgwick, but they're just as guilty.

A case of when bad scripts happen to good actors. Given its similarities to a bygone sitcom, one might call it "Friends" without benefits.

For this dynamic to work, the actors need to be of complementary temperament and equal power. This is not the case.

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

Fortunately, even when star and story are ineffectual, Fears' supporting players are all thrilling, especially Morgan Freeman.

Isn't that good. But Moore is.

Whatever romantic tension the film has is communicated in the coiled-spring performance by Crowe, one of the most remarkable actors working.

Spurlock's intermittently entertaining travelogue ultimately reveals that people in disparate countries of different religions and wildly divergent ideologies are more alike than not.

A touchy daughter and her feely mom form the emotional axis of Peace, Love, & Misunderstanding, a touching, feeling, touchy-feely series of emotional encounters that generate much warmth in Bruce Beresford's balloon-light family comedy. If it were any lighter, it would float away.

Brosnan, who finds the truth in his character, is quite affecting. And Mulligan, gamely defining a surprisingly undefined young woman, is like a sunbeam piercing the gloom.

Worthy of mention is Carolina Herrera's design for Bella's wedding dress, sophisticated and demure in the front and Pippa Middleton sexy, and proper, in the back.

If, like me, you were hoping for "Scarface" as a hip-hopera, I am sad to report that Get Rich or Die Tryin' has heat, but not sweep.

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.

The only likable characters are ebullient Omer (Sam Golzari), a show-tune-loving reluctant Iraqi suicide bomber who comes to the O.C., and earnest William (Chris Klein), an American GI wounded in Iraq, who are mirror images.

Blanchett commands the screen as she commands the royal navy. Her unforced majesty makes a so-so film worth watching.

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.

Most gaspworthy is that this raunchy, transgressive comedy about would-be adulterers turns out to be a hot, wet reaffirmation of marriage.

An unmitigated, inexplicable, unforgivable flop.

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

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.

The glaring weakness of Country Strong is James, underwritten and ambiguous, more like Kelly's pimp than her manager.

There is no shape or pacing to Daniel Petrie's movie. It's like a bottle of soda left uncapped. So thus a story that promised effervescence ends up being flat.

The 3D effects are of a gimmicky 1956 vintage, with hands thrusting from the screen to give the illusion of reaching out and touching the audience.

A casualty of its own clumsy storytelling.

Despite the appeal of cobra-eyed Thornton and bunny-nosed Heder, Scoundrels trips early, and often.

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.

While the movie is content to be merely atmospheric, the performances convince you that here are two misfits who might be a perfect fit.

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.

By no means is it a great movie, but it is great slapstick fun, one of summer's guilty pleasures.

A script with the most underdeveloped characters and spectacularly realized visuals since "Titanic."

The Jacket is both a genre movie and a symptom, a gothic treatment of Gulf War syndrome.

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.

Handsomely photographed by Eric Schmidt and nicely underplayed by the actors, the film relies too much on its jukebox soundtrack to convey mood.

Hostage may well be the first action flick cited both for child abuse and audience abuse. In a singularly sadistic and degrading way it has something to offend everyone.

Did I laugh? A handful of times. Did I cringe? For 101 minutes.

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.

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.

The chief appeal of this affectionate story is its embrace of those who are not thinner, richer and more glamorous than the moviegoers.

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