Chris Kaltenbach

There's tremendous energy in How She Move, so much that the audience can't help but be swept up.

There's much more than a little Stifler here. Still, there's a recklessness to the character, as well as Scott's performance, that almost engenders respect; he's so determinedly unregenerate, so outrageously lewd, so unrelentingly grating, one almost looks forward to seeing just how far he'll go.

To be fair, Friedkin does amp up the tension when called for. If only it were all for some purpose, or in service to a story that actually went somewhere.

The animals in Road Trip are pretty hilarious; as a five-minute short on cable TV's "Animal Planet," this film would be a stitch.

Perhaps the best thing about Better Than Chocolate is that it works as a comedy of characters, not of morals. If there's such a thing as a screwball same-sex comedy, this is it. [10 Sep 1999]

What can you say about a film where Carmen Electra's performance is one of the high points?

Looking for comedy in Albert Brooks' Looking for Comedy In the Muslim World is a fool's errand. There's hardly any there.

Arthur and the Invisibles tries way too hard.

Nobody does this stuff better than Disney, and there's plenty here to like.

Refreshingly, the movie never wavers in the importance it places on friendship over just about anything else.

There's more than a trace of James Dean in Gosling, except that he's a rebel with a cause.

The astonishing brio and verve of street dancing deserves better than this.

Washington is wisely cast as Marco; few actors command more instant respect, and the movie uses that to make his character both believable and sympathetic.

Outside of a strong (and largely misused) cast and an abundance of moody atmosphere, there's precious little to recommend this exploitative mess.

Still, it's hard not to long for the Pooh stories of old, those endearingly anarchic little tales that captured the wonder of a child's world without ever once condescending to it.

It's a deft sleight-of-story Aniston, White and Arteta pull off, giving us a character who seems more than she is, but is really less than she appears.

Hero is a movie that lives up to all the nobility of its title, a gift to movie audiences who cherish the opportunity to be transported to a heretofore unimagined world and absorbed totally into what happens there.

But there's a discomfiting side to her comic riffs, because in our all-too-concerned-with-image society, they ring far too true.

The final resolution is silly by just about any standard. A little grounding in reality and a larger effort to avoid the trite could have made Everyone's Hero fun and inspirational for everybody, not just the very young.

To its credit, Heartbreakers lives up to expectations. Almost.

Whereas the TV series rarely flinched when it came to showing the animal world as it is, Earth always pulls back at the last second. It shows a cheetah pulling down a gazelle, but not the feast that follows.

With all its cloying, tone-deaf attempts at genuine emotional warmth, all it really deserves is to be avoided.

Engaging though flimsy, lively though occasionally tone-deaf, it's a movie that thrives on the strength of its affable co-stars and a sense of adventure that provides just enough brio to get audiences through some energy-sapping rough spots.

Girls Will Be Girls thinks watching outrageous people acting outrageously is its own reward. It isn't.

Benefits from an amiable chemistry between Harrelson and Banderas, and Davidovich always makes a good tough-as-nails dame with more smarts than any man will give her credit for.