Desson Thomson

Amid the violence, the one-liners ring out. Nobody speaks for real. It's as if they all know they're in a movie.

Instead of an originally conceived movie that reflects Nash's troubled but brilliant mind, we have one of those formulaically rendered Important Subject movies -- the kind that seem exclusively designed for Best Picture nominations.

Unfortunately, "Youth" becomes so lost in its own conceptual, convoluted vortex, it becomes virtually incomprehensible. Coppola proves that even the best of our film artists can lose sight of what this medium is all about: entertaining, enlightening and including its audience.

Rather like the faltering way Dennis runs the race, Pegg the performer insists that we keep watching, ever hopeful for a decent gag. And we spend most of our time thinking back to movies that better showcased his talents, such as "Shaun of the Dead" and "Hot Fuzz."

Hoot may be warm and fuzzy with its adorable owls, triumphant kids and inviting Florida groves. But its forced, innocuous humor is unlikely to amuse anyone but the very young -- and the extremely forgiving.

It's clear this sequel (directed by Darren Lynn Bousman) doesn't have the same smartness (I speak relatively) of the original. Nonetheless, "Saw" fans can still look forward to involuntary incineration, wrist and throat slashing, bullets through brains and the bashing of someone's head with a nail-festooned club.

Creepy and truly suspenseful in some places, unintentionally comic or plain awful in others.

This is a movie that knows its audience and realizes it doesn't need much of a story to hit that audience, literally, where it lives.

A British black comedy, saves its best for last -- and God bless Maggie Smith for, well, being Maggie Smith -- but that requires sitting through a frustrating, uneven hour of sluggish preamble.

Only fitfully amusing. More often, it feels like a mediocre attempt to reprise the central elements of the infinitely funnier "Napoleon Dynamite."

Ultimately, SLC Punk! doesn't have enough dimension to maintain dramatic interest.

In the end, we're treated to an overture of possibilities rather than a satisfying film.

It yields surprisingly unspectacular results.

The worst mistake is the screenplay, which not only cuts everything into superficial pieces but fails to make authentic moments of anything. In the end, White Oleander isn't an adaptation of a novel. It's a flashy, star-splashed reduction.

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.

What's Eating Gilbert Grape is a tad too precious. One of those movies that wants to address life's quaint wackinesses, it's full of characters who are quirky, lonely, bizarre or retarded. There's something intensely earnest about the project. But there's something equally manufactured, starting with the casting of Johnny Depp and Juliette Lewis.

Although this film about a zebra who aspires to win horse races has a marvelous premise, it slows to a mediocre canter right out of the starting gate.

There's grist here for a genuinely stirring film. But writer-director Bruce Beresford -- who created the screenplay from interviews with real-life World War II prisoners (who also performed music for the Japanese) -- reduces everything to its most uninteresting banality. [18Apr1997 Pg. N.44]

The best element of the movie is a subplot involving Noah's spiritually obsessed teacher (Rainn Wilson) and his wacky girlfriend (Kathryn Hahn), whose bumbling eccentricities give the movie an emotional liveliness it otherwise lacks.

A blithely unfunny, low-budget comedy from director Barry Levinson.

If any element takes us through the movie, it's him (Depp).

Aiming to blur the distinctions between truth and illusion, it simply blurs its own effectiveness by relying on predictable and not particularly convincing mystery-thriller formula.

The movie loses all authority, despite wonderful work from cinematographer Peter Menzies and composer Patrick O'Hearn. In screenwriter Daniel Pyne's hands, every character becomes a disappointment. Even Dafoe loses his zest as the movie progresses.

Intriguing, oddly banal and ultimately deflating.

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

Amazingly stilted before accelerating into its exciting finish.

Another sentimental mushfest disguised as a movie.

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

Its main purpose -- and no, you are not experiencing ocular breakdown -- is spiritual.

Feels so slight and pointless.

Its hackneyed themes prevent the sci-fi flick from feeling like anything more than well-directed mediocrity.

Never transports you to another place and time, as it intends to.

Unfortunately, the film, written and directed by Sue Kramer, starts with a distinctly uncomfortable moral baseline: How exactly is any audience supposed to identify with a character whose relationship with her brother borders on the incestuous?

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

A great director's losing battle against a goofy script.

It's not often you find a movie as exciting and awful as Rumble in the Bronx. But the sole aim of this so-bad-it's-funny action picture is to introduce Jackie Chan to American audiences. In that narrow sense, it's completely successful.

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.

The movie Casanova, starring Heath Ledger, not only fetters the randy Venetian in political correctness, it condemns him to dwell inside the modern equivalent of a bad Shakespeare play.

Newton may not be a great actor, either, but she's full of life and charm. She's the only thing holding this movie together at all.

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.

A little too shopworn and pokey to be more than a respectable European diversion.

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

Fails to capture the spiritual hallelujah of the novel.

Ruben, at least, is adept with suspense tactics. He keeps Bergin lurking off screen for an agonizingly long time and he knows his suspenseful way around a bathtub. There's also some respectably scary business to do with neatly arranged bathroom towels and food cans in the pantry. But Ruben is merely modulating mediocre material.

The longer I take to review this movie, the more the absurdities loom. So let me finish before I think about the story's stupidly plotted structure or recall how tiring it was to watch apes perpetually pushing humans to the ground or sending them pirouetting into the air.

The only reason this dilemma has any import is thanks to Bardem, who almost single-handedly drags the film along.

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

All the movie's treacheries, deceptions and story twists are marred by our lack of innocence. We see the big picture way before the characters do, and that pushes us right out of the movie and back into our seats -- the last place we want to be.

It's too bad the movie's intriguing effect wears off (so to speak) about two-thirds through.

There's a problem: This romance isn't developed enough to be truly satisfying -- it's fat-free SnackWell's when you want Godiva. It's not the original story we signed up for -- or thought we did.

With the exception of a few enjoyable action scenes, such as when Aeon and fellow operative Sithandra (Sophie Okonedo) flip and backflip their way across a lethal garden of bullet-spewing trees and spikes disguised as blades of grass, Aeon Flux is surprisingly draggy.

If you're looking to take your children to something harmless, that doesn't embarrass anyone, this light comedy (a gentle parody of those "Behind the Music" specials on cable TV) is your next outing.

Despite a subject of immense potential -- the movie's surprisingly uninvolving.

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.

Director Phillip Noyce has made a serious movie that switches to almost popcorn entertainment.

Disappointingly facile and unenlightening. Things are only interesting when Spacey is on screen, which makes a video rental worth it -- for that tour-de-force nastiness. [12 May 1995, p.N50]

It's been gunned before -- and so much better.

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.

Faraway...is vaguely deflating, a film that doesn't build to a powerful climax so much as gradually run out of air.

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

Taxes the threshold of acceptable cuteness.

Should have never made it up the distribution aisle.

Talk Radio, despite its collective intensity, is itself just another unenlightening late-night call-in session.

It's simultaneously arty, arcane and nasty.

Throughout, Garner retains a permanent grimace, as if persuasive acting can be achieved by contorting cheek muscles and pouting lips. It's not just depressing to watch; it's tiring. We want to tell her to relax -- for our own relief.

This muttering boatman seems to have lost his old-time heroism. No longer is Rambo killing for a cause, but for kicks. And his portentous blather, even by Rambo standards, becomes unintentionally hilarious.

Forgettable the instant it strafes your retinas.

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.

You leave Creatures with the unsettling sensation of being highly tickled yet greatly dissatisfied.

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.

This latest project, a murder mystery scripted by Aaron (A Few Good Men) Sorkin and Scott (Dead Again) Frank, is bilge water.

Even by the art film standards it apes, Solaris lacks conviction. And although it's meant to be restrained and free of emotional hysteria, the result is a movie that pretty much lies dead on the screen for an hour and a half.

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

John Schlesinger, who directed Midnight Cowboy and Marathon Man, knows how to weave edge-of-the-seat tension. But Mark Frost's screenplay, based on Nicholas Conde's occult mystery novel The Religion, is a haphazard affair of implausibility and pseudo-Voodoo.

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

For horror fans who appreciate a bit of craft with their second-rate experiences -- Paul Haslinger's fear-mongering score is terrific for what it's worth -- this might merit a future late-night rental.

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.

Keeps you hanging on until the very last moment, not because it's scary, but because you can't believe that's all there is to it.

In the end, Stage Beauty is in over its mediocre head.

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?

At its best the movie displays a vital playfulness. But at its worst -- and there's far too much of that -- Alice continues Allen's endless, banal quest for the Big Answers. All, of course, at the mild-mannered elbow of Farrow.

A fairly ordinary drama about young love, basketball, petty jealousy and high school politics. The movie also has one of the goofiest, over-the-top finales in recent memory.

Nobody likes a fixed fight, except the backroom boys making the deal. Which is why The Break-Up may have its share of laughs, but isn't much fun.

"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.

There's so little authenticity between them, it destroys the story's most crucial element: the love between father and daughter. And finding the gold becomes our only reason to watch.

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.

Even Thompson, the one you look forward to watching, is disappointing.

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.