Charles Taylor

The characters in the Argentinean heart-warmer Valentín spend so much time squabbling and yelling that after a while I began to long for a nice movie about a family of mutes.

A bigger problem is that since the movie is a straight remake that reprises many of the original's scenes, we have those scenes playing in our heads, and the Russos' execution just isn't up to Monicelli's. It's painful to see gags that worked so beautifully fall flat, or wither and die because of indifferent timing.

Nothing is more dispiriting than forced high spirits. Bandits keeps reminding you of what a good time you should be having. You leave with a feeling of being swindled, and that's the only genuine thing about it.

A pretty good example of how the studios have taken over the junk that used to be left to the exploitation hacks. The hacks here have millions to work with and the end result isn't nearly as much fun as a cheap, gross horror movie can be.

Songcatcher is like an "All Things Considered" report on "a vibrant and lasting folk tradition" that goes on for two hours. It's so relentlessly, goddamn worthy that you long for some cheapness and dirt, some energetic pop trash to liven it up.

This Saint is a glum piece of post-Cold War paranoia, and director Phillip Noyce approaches it with the same plodding earnestness he brought to his Tom Clancy adaptations ("Patriot Games," "A Clear and Present Danger").

A long plod to the finish line. It's a movie about a long con that, like its leading man, has no wit or style to speak of.

Wants to be a dizzy, precarious thrill ride. Glenn provides the only gravity that doesn't seem dull, literal and earthbound.

Turns out to be merely bad -- not a train wreck, not the crime against humanity it's been rumored to be.

"Larry Flynt" should have a slick, whorish look, but there's no juice in Forman's sleaze. Hustler's centerfolds look like Renoirs next to the cold-eyed way Forman shoots women's bodies.

There are five writers credited with the script for The Medallion, and between them they don't come up with a single original or amusing or clever idea.

As Tolstoy observed, all sappy ethnic family comedies are the same. None is sappy in its own way.

There's some good acting in this mess.

You need a pair of huge, hairy ones to make a picture this bad and call it Flawless.

Had Payne the grace or generosity to present the vulgarity and naiveté and tackiness of these characters as something vital and endearing and delightful, the movie might have been explosively funny.

The Myth of Fingerprints is only 90 minutes long, but watching all this tasteful torment, you can't help thinking that if you were watching a Jewish family or an Italian one, the air would be cleared -- and you'd be out of the theater -- a hell of a lot quicker.

Might be entertaining for those who like seeing a terrified teenage girl watch a loved one get beaten to a pulp while she slides into a diabetic coma. For the rest of us it's both stagnant and vaguely unpleasant.

Will Smith flies like a butterfly, but what director Michael Mann does to the greatest fighter of all time just stings.

The most dispiriting thing about Kiss of the Dragon, is that it's another example of how Western filmmakers fall on their faces when they try to evoke the feel of Hong Kong action films.

The movie is a garage-sale conglomeration of anecdotes and oddballs.

The most dispiriting thing about Gloria is that it's further evidence that filmmakers just don't know what to do with Sharon Stone.