Desson Thomson

It yields surprisingly unspectacular results.

While director Aronofsky pistol-whips your attention with his style, the characters (mostly relegated to human mannequins in Aronofsky's visual schemes) suffer big time.

The problem is, Europa is episodic rather than cumulative. Europa is about the highlights in Solly's wartime life. But it's not about Solly.

Intriguing, oddly banal and ultimately deflating.

Isn't much more than another conveyer-belt romantic comedy.

Amazingly stilted before accelerating into its exciting finish.

In the end, what started off as playful becomes tedious.

The only active ingredient is the dynamic between Smith and Jones. There's just enough of that to get us through.

The movie, which is based on the Lowell Cunningham comic book series, throws out some wonderful implications, but they’re frustratingly few and far between.

O'Neal's performance, on the other hand, could incite angels to throw tomatoes from heaven. As the meek-and-noble reporter (who never seems to find time to file stories), he seems to be a confused Barry Lyndon, inexplicably whisked into this century and given a Georgetown lease, a ridiculous movie role and a byline. You get the feeling that, like this movie, his news stories need editing.

Essentially, Chuck & Larry is an oafish chance for audiences to laugh at gay-bashing jokes and then feel morally redeemed for doing so -- courtesy of an obligatory wrap-up scene that reminds us that homosexuals are humans, too.

If you're a fan of Witherspoon, this movie was produced, shot, edited and distributed entirely for you.

Never was the case for psychotropic medication more acute than in Jovovich's performance.

A well-mounted, macabre seriocomedy with passing punchlines. And for about half the movie, it's compelling stuff.

Unfortunately, the story, adapted by Anne Rice from her best-selling novel, sucks at the neck a little too long. A 23-minute snipping from this 123-minute movie would have done wonders.

The Return is a pleasant if superfluous invasion of your local theaters. Everyone in front of the Cocoon Uno camera is back, including Don Ameche, Wilford Brimley, Brian Dennehy, Hume Cronyn, Jessica Tandy, Steve Guttenberg and nine others. It's nice to see the old codgers still alive, kicking and making whoopee. But don't look for more than extra-terrestrial homecoming.

An easy-on-the-sensibilities family film, Eddie Murphy practically assumes the easygoing manner of Mister Rogers, a character he used to wickedly lampoon on "Saturday Night Live."

[An] appealing, if overcooked romantic comedy.

Sketchy but often entertaining.

In the end, however, when all Pacino's demons are bared, they don't add up to the poignant punchline you were set up for. The movie seems to have two or three finales too many -- a disturbing trend in all too many films of late.

Kids will understand this stuff. If you can remember your younger, goofier roots, so will you. Sandlot isn't well made but it's alive with dopey, summertime spirit.

This is not a fantastic movie. But there's more to it than just an MTV-slickified "Midnight Express" starring two young, photogenic stars.

Lawrence's material runs between mediocre and offensive, and then he rescues it with his physical humor. He's at his best when he lets his face or inflection do the talking.

Ultimately, the movie's biggest crime is its inability to convey the delicate, damaged texture of Kahlo's life, but also the triumph of her will over intimidating defeat.

For my money, the best thing about Affair is Shandling, whose amusing quips and facial reactions steal what little of the show there is to steal. You almost wish the story would switch to him permanently.

It's very funny in places, even sort of tender. But let's not get out of hand.

In Lost Highway, David Lynch dabbles in spooky, chilly implication and a sort of hip incoherence.

It's a grab bag of small delights -- and that includes a workmanlike performance by Toni Collette -- but it never quite amounts to a full load.

It's a workmanlike transmogrification from a 1950s fairy tale to a brash present-day romance. Thanks to Julia Ormond's rather delicate Sabrina and Harrison Ford's amusingly deadpan performance as Linus Larrabee, the movie certainly has its moments. But this "Sabrina" never evokes the sweet allure of Billy Wilder's original film. How could it?

"Axe" is not art by any means. It's often overly taken up with resolving itself. But Myers and others create an enjoyably loose, anti-slick feeling about the affair.

This mixture of comedy and super-agent spectacle works well at first. But when Schwarzenegger's family and working worlds link up -- an inevitable development -- the plot becomes increasingly ridiculous and overwrought.

Cornish provides a counterbalance for Ledger's authoritative presence, turning what could have been just another heroin movie into a flawed but engrossing parable on love and sacrifice.

At first, the picture is moving. . And suddenly charm turns to quasi-commie didacticism.

Noyce's direction moves impressively from sensual tenderness (between husband and wife) to edge-of-the-seat horror. he finds lurking dangers in quiet, peaceful waters and goes down with the good ship Dead Calm, his head held high. If you don't mind 11th-hour disappointments (including a laughable, Hollywood-kicker ending), you'll enjoy going down with it too.

"Mr. Jones" does have some things to savor. Director Mike Figgis, who made "Stormy Monday" and "Internal Affairs," has a distinctive, atmospheric touch. There's something memorably restless about Gere's performance. He never stops. Olin gives her white-uniformed, statistics-spouting, let's-work-together role an off-center appeal. And there are likable supporting performances from Delroy Lindo, as a construction worker who befriends Gere; Lauren Tom, a hauntingly beautiful but distraught mental patient; and Lisa Malkiewicz, as a bank teller who giddily falls for Gere when he effortlessly calculates accrued interest on his account. But these worthy elements can't completely disguise the conventional medicine we're ultimately being asked to swallow.

Actually, any fun you might encounter in Recall can be traced, most often, to director Verhoeven, who injects some of his "Robocop" camp into this mega-dumb project.

Surely it will not be giving things away to tell you there's absolutely nothing new about the latest episode.

For all the When Irish Eyes Are Smiling's and Love Is a Many Splendored Thing's filling the soundtrack, Voices never engages more than your eyes and ears. It leaves you out in the cold and vaguely wondering, Is the entire British nation depressed?

As long as you focus on the central sniper-versus-sniper story -- and not the dreadful mishmash of jarring accents or the film's unconvincing romantic subplot or any of the personal relationships -- you'll enjoy it.

We may enjoy watching the spectacles, but we don't much care for, or even have a feeling for, the guy in the cockpit.

It's hardly the best film in the world but you can have fun with it.

This ensemble comedy has its inventively funny moments. But ultimately, it gets a little too cute for its own good.

May not rock the joint. But then, it isn't trying to.

This movie should have blown us out of the water. Instead we catch ourselves occasionally thinking the unpardonable thought: "OK, sink already."

Not about good storytelling, but it knows to turn up the volume, cut to dizzying closeups of driver's eyes as they negotiate dangerous bends and indulge its audience in the soul slaps, fanny grabs and head nods that govern this racing lifestyle.

Moore provides a rather rambling discourse of causality, which includes racism, white flight and Africanized bees.

The central story, in which Helms has to make up his mind whether to attend his sister's funeral, is too limited a conflict to hang a movie on. Ultimately, audiences will have to satisfy themselves with the collective presence of these actors and the movie's obviously good-hearted intentions.

Entertaining for so long it's a downer to sit through the dumbed-down finale.

The suspense and technical wizardry are the only reason to watch Jurassic Park. In a summer movie, that's more than enough, of course. But screenwriter Michael Crichton, adapting his popular novel with David Koepp, slashes almost everything that made the book an entertaining read.

Like most thrillers, from "Fatal Attraction" to "Basic Instinct," the ending can't possibly live up to the expectations it creates.

A Prairie Home Companion tries to embrace the spirit of that longtime radio series but suffocates the very qualities that make the original show so special in the first place.

It's just a simple, actorly drama about big, gaping emotional needs and the consequences a woman can face -- particularly during the 1960s -- for simply owning up to them.

The direction has a fluid, no-nonsense authority, and the performances by Harris, Phifer and Cam'ron seal the deal.

The geological equivalent of an albatross around the neck. It's another of those Warner Bros. productions that are heavy on star iconography and production values but AWOL on story.

The acting is occasionally creakily theatrical; as is the script. But some important things come through.

Directed by Davis Guggenheim ("An Inconvenient Truth"), the movie is heavy on hokum but easy to like, thanks to the spunky Schroeder.

There is no evidence of life outside the immediate world of the movie.

Left-wing filmmaker's attempt to call foul on megamedia owner Murdoch's exclamation-point news network.

The movie is visually stirring. And the locations, in Zimbabwe and Mozambique, imbue the story with eerie authenticity.

Moderately pleasing adaptation of the W. Somerset Maugham novella.

Maestro is for people already aware of this history. For everyone else, this is pretty much invitation-only.

Carrey lights up an otherwise over-scripted, over-frenetic potboiler.

Another Stakeout -- like the original, directed by John Badham -- feels more like a rousing encore than a bold, new development. It's basically straight-out situation comedy, merely punctuated (or interrupted) by the evil doings of hitmen, FBI agents and other gun-toting suits. To those who seek these things, don't worry: People still get plugged with bullets. But comedy is the main artillery and Dreyfuss and Estevez, effortlessly replaying their elbow-nudging relationship, do most of the shooting.

By many other directors' standards, Au Revoir would be a major achievement. But Malle has reached higher. If he'd made his childhood movie earlier in his career -- when he didn't have the sense to be so dispassionate -- it might have packed a meatier punch. Now it's just a deftly aimed poke.

The movie -- adapted from James Patterson's novel by David Klass -- operates on the crime-movie equivalent of automatic pilot. It takes off, flies and lands without much creative intervention.

There's a certain trashy fun to this combination of "Blackboard Jungle," "The Principal," "Dangerous Minds" and the old "Miami Vice" TV series.

It's a pleasant movie, written with care for the characters. But as the film's title suggests, scriptwriter Mark Andrus has made too obvious and clunky a metaphor of George's house.

Its greatest asset...Flora Montgomery, a flash of blond, Irish fire who makes Trudy well worth Brendan's trouble.

Burton has evoked the surface of Ed Wood's life, but in a story about a man who loves angora and frilly panties, he has barely unbuttoned Wood's uniform.

A heartfelt but eccentric, pseudo-documentary tribute to his sister Maria.

A subplot involving Griffith and first boyfriend Alec Baldwin becomes the-subplot-that-wouldn't-go-bust, and comic scenes sometimes go bankrupt because they just hold their stock too long. Light entertainment like this should zip along like those financial quote boards.

Below the attention-getting surface, there's no sense of humanity underneath. The day De Palma pulls away the masks from his characters, they'll start to breathe -- and so will his films.

But for most audiences, this bittersweet family saga is going to feel like an ordeal.

There are many periods when the two men are traveling and you feel the need to fast-forward the movie to another scene. This is not a great comedy but it's a string of funny highlights.

Things become almost too strange and convoluted to handle. The story's dramatic effectiveness starts to seriously malfunction. The fascinating and the mysterious become the silly and occasionally comical.

A medium-boil good time, mostly for its humor.

Nothing more or less than a moneymaking encore. The story is functional. The performers assume their marks with almost flippant ease.

It's really no pain to sit through Object. Even at its most drawn out, the movie has its comic moments. Malkovich makes a perfect, plastic-souled being.

The stranger and more unusual the characters, and the less they're explained, the better.

The Trigger Effect enjoys bursts of energy as people confront each other in low-budget groups of twos and threes, but it never becomes the subtly powerful experience Koepp was clearly after.

In visual terms, it's clear McKee has a talent for moviemaking...But he's going to need better stories than this.

Although the film starts out with well-mounted menace, Arlington Road becomes increasingly overwrought and predictable.

Watching Ali, you can be sure of experiencing two opposing things: a sterling performance from Will Smith as Muhammad Ali and a bewilderingly punch-drunk movie from Michael Mann.

Afterglow may not bestow Julie Christie with the hip imprimatur of a Travolta-style comeback. But the British actress coyly and elegantly updates the siren-ish presence she exuded in "Darling," "Far From the Madding Crowd," "Petulia," "The Go-Between" and even "Shampoo." [16Jan1998 Pg N.32]

Let's make things perfectly clear. "Gladiator" is utter trash masquerading as an action picture with a message. You can listen to the lip-service about the importance of an education, about the evils of boxing, and laugh. It's a joke. The filmmakers know it. You know it. "Gladiator" is a fight movie, pure and simple. It's about breaking jaws, cutting eyes open and beating your opponent into a bloody pulp. It's about the joy of winning ugly. If you like your meat red, this one's for you...What makes "Gladiator" so watchable is the primal excitement of those life-and-death bouts. The fighting is choreographed convincingly by boxing coordinator Jim Nickerson and director Rowdy Herrington and it's filmed with gritty vitality by Tak Fujimoto, Jonathan Demme's cameraman.

May be one hundred percent sap, but its spirit is anything but cloying, thanks to persuasive performances, most notably from Rachel McAdams.

Although "Pluto" has a rollicky, endearing air, it's cooler than Jordan's other films.

Obviously, this was just meant to be a fun experience. But the movie fulfills those duties on the most mundane level. You have to treat Space Jam like that well-known fast-food Jordan loves to promote: It doesn’t matter how the movie is prepared, only that it’s served and ready to go.

Had The Cooler stuck to its dark guns and not turned into a treacly, love-conquers-all fairy tale, this movie might have gone somewhere. In the end, you're only watching this with a sort of mercenary interest in the actors.

There are no dramatic peaks and valleys in this story line, just a uniform, dramatic flatness.

Makes for interesting, rather than emotionally compelling viewing.

Bridges can't be a whole movie. But he's the main reason to watch.

You're hard-pressed to dislike the film.

Making a film about mob violence while showing restraint and humanism is a difficult procedure. Singleton and screenwriter Poirier search for some gradations within the white ranks, but for the most part, every cracker's a psycho with a short, smoking fuse.

If you're not rolling in the aisles, you're definitely in the wrong theater.

Wuornos was unambiguous about one thing: She wanted to die. In the end, that's the only assurance the movie provides. It's an odd kind of closure for her and for us.

Thanks to screenwriter Alan Sharp's fast-moving scenario featuring a healthy array of rape, pillage, burning, deceit, swordfighting, treachery and murder, it's a watchable hoot.

Sunrise feels more like an absorbing experiment than a supple success.