Carrie Rickey

Burshtein keeps the camera tight on the faces of her actors in a way that succeeds at making visible the invisible heat between the characters. The film's chaste eroticism and the community's deep respect for Shira's emotional and spiritual growth keep the audience in thrall.

The result is a film that deeply engages us on multiple levels. Not only do we wonder what Maisie knows and how she knows it, we want to get this seedling to a place where she won't have to be transplanted every day.

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.

Parental Guidance is an engaging comedy that bridges multiple generation gaps, making it that rare movie that grandparents, their kids, and their kids can enjoy.

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 takeaways of the film are horror and hope: horror that institutionalized homophobia was so pervasive, hope that that intolerance is a thing of the past.

This saga of a former soccer star coaching his son's team in order to worm his way back into the heart of his ex-wife aims to be warm and funny. Alas, it is mechanical and exhausting, like a windup toy of a monkey crashing together cymbals for 106 minutes while incrementally winding down.

The shaggy, whimsical characters have a primal familiarity, as though they were developed by a tag team of Maurice Sendak and Walt Disney.

Much as I was moved by the film, I have one reservation and one warning. The framing device of the older Pi recounting his story to the author (which worked so well in Martel's novel) is intrusive and significantly detracts from the story.

Colorful, noisy, and pixel-deep.

DuVernay, a low-key director sparing in her use of emotion and music, has made an existential drama that is European in its feel.

I smiled for the first half of the movie and started laughing hysterically when a supporting character hijacked it from its stars.

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.

Backwards - its title referring to the wisdom that life is lived forward but understood backward - has no forward propulsion.

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

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.

The main distinction of this particular raunchfest, about the economic opportunities available to women in the phone-sex industry, is that it does not reconcile its slim narrative conflict with a big, fat wedding.

It's hard to know whether this is a function of the sympathetic screenplay or of Krieger's sympathetic direction - or both - but Celeste and Jesse are endearing even when they do unsympathetic things.

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

Rather than plunge into the murky marital waters of ambivalence and power struggle, the film bobs on the surface. No one would ever mistake David Frankel's dramedy of sexual healing for Ingmar Bergman's psychologically astute "Scenes From a Marriage."

For lovers of classical French cinema, and I am one, this earthy throwback is a whiff of lavender borne by the bracing winds of the mistral.

While most of the talking heads, including the funny and articulate Barbara Ehrenreich (herself a breast cancer survivor), are not likely to join runs and walks for the cure, Pool shows how such events create community and sisterhood.

Shelton and her cast are so skillful that before long it seems we are not moviegoers watching a screen but flies on a wall witnessing real encounters and the beauty of the Pacific Northwest.

Scafaria's movie never catches fire. The bad news: The end of the world comes with a whimper. Worse: And two wimps.

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.

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.

The mosaic of cases and caseworkers is like a season of "The Wire" distilled into two hours.

So although this multicharacter stew has a tasty morsel or two, in the aggregate it makes one long for the comparative complexity and subtlety of "Valentine's Day."

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.

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

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

Whatever you call 21 Jump Street, this potty-mouthed and drug-laced reimagining of the 1980s TV show has one of the highest laughs-per-minute ratios since the "Naked Gun" films.

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

As lovingly written as it is beautifully rendered.

Madonna the director deserves a script better than the one Madonna the screenwriter handed off to her. The movie is full of incidents that don't quite cohere into a story - kind of like a Power Point presentation without a throughline.

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.

Rees tells Alike's story in vignettes that are sometimes slapstick, sometimes heartbreaking, always tender.

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.

Often I couldn't see the character for the metaphors.

Beautifully photographed by Crystel Fournier, Sciamma's film has a floaty weightlessness (as opposed to the heavyosity of "Boys Don't Cry") that neither judges nor pathologizes Laure.

McQueen finds the exquisite tension between the brother wanting to disconnect and the sister longing for connection. To paraphrase a line of Sissy's, it's a good movie that comes from a bad place.

Williams never defaults to mimicry. Her Monroe doesn't have the breathless whisper and quivering lips/quivering hips quality of the Marilyn impersonators. Her Monroe is a lightbulb on a dimmer, suddenly bright, and just as suddenly, indistinct.

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.

By turns pleasant and preposterous, The Greening of Whitney Brown is a reverse Cinderella tale for tweens.

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

Though one gets a sense there is part of the story Marks isn't telling, we do pay attention to the man behind the curtain.

An airless, bilious, endless pageant of pseudohistory.

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

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

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

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.

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.

In some scenes, Faris' sheer velocity gives the movie liftoff. In others, it doesn't hurt that Evans, who looks like the very young Alec Baldwin, and has the sonorous voice of Mark Feuerstein, is the film's sex object.

It's half hilarious, half serious; all poignant.

Between the earnest boy, his playful mammal, the film from actor-turned-director Charles Martin Smith is a winning family entertainment.

Corinne's journey begins with an act of blind faith. The movie ends, but you have a palpable sense that the journey does not.

It fails as a gripping home-invasion thriller.

In describing the conflict of a woman who has it all without enjoying it all, Pearson's book had teeth. McKenna's screenplay has only a smile. But is it ever good to laugh.

Plays like an exalted episode of "Miami Vice" or a stealth version of "Shane."

The story, inspired by Bolkovac's experiences in Bosnia and her subsequent book account, is dynamite. Alas, Kondracki's direction fizzles. While she elicits a tense and eloquent performance from Weisz, the first-time filmmaker fails to maintain a consistent tone. Her film samples multiple genres.

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

Like its characters, it has its faults. But overall, it is a movie of imaginative sympathy that gets into the skin of its characters, into their hearts, and, ultimately, into ours.

It is painful, it is funny, and it marks the remarkable debut of Wysocki.

Like the kids in detention, The Change-Up wants to offend your sensibilities. It sets new records for scatological humor and profanity.

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

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."

Nim is as unforgettable as the treatment of him is unspeakable.

The connection between the two time frames and stories (the contemporary one with the addition of screenwriters) is flimsy as a frayed rope bridge, forced as the stepsister's foot into Cinderella's glass slipper.

From its antagonists to its art direction, everything about Johnston's movie has a been-there, seen-that familiarity. Yet Evans' clean-cut idealism and objectives make old-fashioned patriotism look fresh.

Its deceptive simplicity makes A Better Life so emotionally profound.

Although not blessed with a cinematic eye, Yates, a sensitive director of actors, structures his movie like the final movement of a symphony. He reprises themes and characters from the previous films that swell in the epochal siege of Hogwarts and ends his films with an almost wordless coda that will wring tears even from Harry haters.

Short, sour and scabrous, Bosses is that paradoxical thing: a situation comedy where neither situation nor comedy is particularly effective where nonetheless Jason Bateman is sidesplitting, as is Colin Farrell in a supporting role.

The actresses are appealing, the settings photogenic (Budapest doubles for Monte Carlo), and the clothes ideal for a triple-Cinderella fantasy. It's not art, but it is entertaining.

Like the Jerry Seinfeld documentary "Comedian," Conan offers a glimpse of the host's restlessness and creative process.

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.

The beauty of the actors and the ravishing landscape of New Zealand goes a long way to make Ben Sombogaart's sudsy film so eminently watchable.

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

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

What has Campbell wrought? An intermittently amusing, interminable affair that for sheer ugliness and a scenery-chewing performance by Peter Sarsgaard has a certain Camp appeal.

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

The unforced performances of Courtney and Fanning are remarkable.

Midnight in Paris is not a perfect movie - as in "Julie & Julia" one senses its creator's impatience to leave the bleached-out present for the colorful past. But it is warm and effortless, qualities that make it embraceable.

While Pierre Thoretton's film boasts vivid archival footage of some YSL couture collections, Bergé's lugubrious tone renders everything black.

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

Its surgical candor makes Forks Over Knives a little bit like a food horror movie.

If Martin Scorsese updated "The Roaring Twenties," the classic Jimmy Cagney movie about World War I vets who come home and find that the only jobs available are with gang lords and bootleggers, it would look a lot like Sean Kirkpatrick's rookie feature, Cost of a Soul.

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?"

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.

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

This buoyant, multigenerational comedy that takes its title from the African American wedding ritual has other distinctions as well. It's relatively raunch-free, it has a sparkling cast that reunites "Waiting to Exhale" stars Angela Bassett and Loretta Devine as combative matriarchs, and it likes its characters well enough to forgive them their faults.

To paraphrase one of its few laughs, it's a zombie movie directed by Vera Wang.

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

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.

Though African Cats is G-rated, scenes of animals chowing down on other animals are not for the faint of heart or delicate of stomach. I don't think it's suitable for those under 6, and they should be prepared for real animal behavior. But it's deeply involving and primally moving.

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

Speechy and preachy and just a teeny-weeny bit naughty.

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

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.

Half-baked, both in plot and execution, this spoof's for adolescent boys who find Minotaur private parts amusing and Queen Amidala in a chastity belt sexy.

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

A seven-word review: Very good performances. Much too much weather.

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

A big fat geek kiss to the movies of Steven Spielberg and his fanboys, Paul is a mild, meandering comedy.

Shamelessly entertaining.

Throughout Flatley, now 52, is triumphal and indefatigable. There are two mysteries here: From whence comes Flatley's boundless energy? And why does it make me feel so tapped out?

DuVernay has confidence in her actors that is reciprocated in kind. Richardson-Whitfield gives a remarkably empathetic performance.

That this is a cautionary tale about any people who would wage war in order to win the spoils of oil and water? Your guess is as good as mine.

A movie where the action scenes feel like filler, the romantic leads have little magnetism, and, before long, its metaphysical underpinnings fall to pieces.

Rango is best enjoyed by those over 10 who have an idea of what "existential" means and can appreciate a surreal mashup of "Chinatown," "Gladiator," "High Noon," and "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly."

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

A gripping French-Algerian coproduction that makes Algeria's epic struggle for independence from France look like a gangster movie.

While the film grows increasingly preposterous in its final act, the enigmatic performances of Youn and Jeon carry the day.

For a movie loaded with ear-scorching profanity, oceans of booze, and illegal drugs enough to keep all of Cedar Rapids in high spirits for a month, there is something fundamentally decent about the film.

Though not deep, the movie is diverting.

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.

In A Somewhat Gentle Man, a deadpan comedy best described as the Coen Brothers Norwegian style, Stellan Skarsgard is colorless and oddly configured, like a potato fallen from the sack.

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.

Part biography, part idol worship, Bhutto is a bullet train through South Asia, chronicling its subject's 54 years, a period of unrest in her nation and family.

It all comes down to affirmation vs. denial. Leigh chooses affirmation. And the result is life-affirming.

Whether it is truth, fiction or, most likely, a little of each, the story Weir tells is a powerful parable of man's charge for freedom and his humbling by nature.

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

Though not blessed with a cinematic eye, Wells is a gifted storyteller who gets nuanced performances from most of his actors.

Hiring this sensitive fantasist (Gondry) to make the superhero saga The Green Hornet is like hiring satirist John Waters to make "Rambo." Hard to think of a more mystifying mismatch of filmmaker and material.

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

To the extent that this mostly sunny excursion succeeds, it's due to the irrepressible Hawkins.

Wrenching, poignant, and quietly healing.

The million-dollar cast doesn't make the vulgar penny-ante jokes any funnier.

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

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

Under Hooper's deft direction, it packs the suspense of a thriller.

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

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.

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

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.

Among the leads, Radcliffe alternates between playing the wet blanket and the dry wit, and Grint strikes a few sparks as his ambivalent protector. It is Watson who catches fire as the strategist and soldier of this penultimate Potter quest. Watson's so good that one wishes Rowling had built her septology around Hermione Potter.

Making a remarkable feature debut, Hamilton distinguishes herself more as a filmmaker than as a screenwriter. While she elicits smoldering performances from Mackie and Washington, the movie around them is rather diffuse.

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

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.

It is a damning indictment of the individuals and institutions who made money while customers lost their shirts.

It's a coming-of-age story - blunt, mythic, gut-wrenching.

I was with the movie until its head-scratcher of an ending, too oblique for its own good.

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

Although rough, it's a gem.

Isn't like the classic Japanese drama "Rashomon," which suggested that one person's perspective of an event gave him a different truth from the person standing elsewhere.

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.

This sparrow's flight lifts the heart.

While its careful pace and seemingly opaque story may not satisfy every moviegoer's appetite, the film's final scene is soaringly, transparently moving.

"Zis is not verking! Zee glitter cannot overpower zee artist!" That, in a sentence, sums up what is wrong with this picture.

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.

One thing Kidman is not is a clown. She thinks fizzy and dizzy and klutzy are funny. She is mistaken. To be a clown requires a kind of witchcraft.

Apart from its intriguing religious implications, the film is also a compelling look at the family, community and congregational pillars that support Lior.

While this charmer about a canine James Bond does not pack the emotional punch of "WALL-E," it's frisky fun to see the white shepherd get a new leash on life.

Six guys and a gal who flatline on arrival. Easily the lamest action-adventure fantasy since “Wild Wild West.”

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]

A rocking, rollicking crowd-pleaser.

Verhoeven's most deeply disturbing film yet.

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

Shakespearean but overlong, The Dark Knight is two hours of heady, involving action that devolves into a mind-numbing 32-minute epilogue.

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.

Johnny Mnemonic may aspire to be Blade Runner. It succeeds only in being a parody of Flipper. [27 May 1995, p.D09]

This is a quiet, meticulously plotted chamber piece, not the booming, lightning-paced orchestral affair we know as the contemporary action film in the Age of Ludlum.

Unfortunately, this all proceeds at a supersonic tempo, with Shyamalan's directorial finger stuck on the fast-forward button. Significant plot points whiz by in this movie equivalent of speed-dating.

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

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.

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.

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

For the first 100 minutes of his 117-minute film Spielberg holds the audience in a grip of fear. When Ray and Rachel take refuge in the storm cellar of a survivalist (a miscast Tim Robbins), the director's grip relaxes only a bit, but the film never recovers from this excursion into the Gothic.

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

Cinderella Man is not a movie about boxing, but about this boxer who personified the heart and hope of 1935.

While Gyllenhaal has playful puppy eyes and energy, his performance as Jack is a blur of mustaches, sideburns and spurs that never achieves the weight of Ledger's.

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

Stronger on character than on story, the film version of Janet Fitch's best-seller is shaped and propelled by the astonishing performance of Alison Lohman.

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

A scabrously funny look at the cutthroat game of statecraft.

Develops microclimates of mood without fully developing the same shadings of character.

Unlike Gondry's previous features, Human Nature and Eternal Sunshine, Science lacks the sturdy armature of a Charlie Kaufman screenplay to support its eccentricities. The flood of delight in the film's first 90 minutes slowed to a trickle and, finally, a drip.

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

Haggis' earnest and eloquent film about the impact of the war in Iraq on U.S. soldiers, and by extension, their nation, is human-scaled. And as deep and harrowed as Jones' crevassed face.

You watch a Miyazaki film with the pie-eyed, gape-mouthed awe of a child being read the most fantastic story and suddenly transported to places previously beyond the limits of imagination. It's quite a trip.

The lead performances are very strong -- few actors possess as much sheer physical presence as this pair -- but their dialogue is stilted, as though lost in transit from a Victorian hothouse.

On a Paris rooftop about an hour into this 2-hour film, the tone shifts and the atmosphere lightens into giddy farce.

For a film about suicides, Wristcutters: A Love Story is strangely life-affirming. This film about slackers stuck in limbo between life and death is upbeat in an offbeat way.

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.

Shrek 2 is a dream, a sequel as exhilarating and riotously funny as 2001's top-grossing original.

Cluttered as it is colorful, Robots is a visual delight.

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.

It may not be the worst war epic ever made - that probably would be "Battlefield Earth" -- but it's darn close to being an unqualified disaster of that magnitude.

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.

While at times the improvisational dialogue sounds like audio filler, the three leads are poignant and perceptive.

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.

If all you ask of a movie is that it have scenic stars and some scenery (here the Sierras of California substitute for the Rockies of Wyoming), then Flicka is adequate. Me, I expected some conflict, some resolution, and a horse that took me on a wild ride. This one really never gets out of the gate.

So incrementally does Eastwood's film build toward what seems like an inevitable resolution that when it concludes, you're sucker-punched. You haven't been watching a police procedural, but a Greek tragedy. You haven't been watching a drama about the catharsis of vigilantism, but sitting vigil for a community diminished, and permanently damaged, by violence.

If we approach the unfamiliar with fear and apprehension, we will be met with fear and apprehension. But if we approach with sympathy and curiosity, we will be rewarded with same. And our souls, not to mention our bicycles, will soar to the heavens. [2002 re-release]

A boisterous and improbably entertaining action comedy.

It's a stylish package with not much inside.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hot Rod never establishes its own personality.

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

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

Stunning, beautifully observed character study.

Spoofy and sweet... endearingly old-fashioned.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An unnerving and astonishing thriller.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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