Desson Thomson

Shines the light on a special kind of heroism -- the guts to face up to yourself and make changes. What makes this so emotionally compelling is the way Dave scrambles from this deep vale of cluelessness to something approaching moral maturity.

One of the most thought-provoking documentaries of recent times.

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

Inspired by the true story of Ellis, has Hollywood formula practically stitched to its Speedo. But the characters and the actors who play them are so captivating, we're too entertained and charmed to notice.

Shows us, in an extraordinarily simple way, the hopes and frustrations of one woman's life.

Tedious.

Suffice it to say, there is no comedy, no chemistry, no nothing in this movie.

It is a movie about the real challenge of heroism.

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.

In terms of actual social conscience, the movie gets a demagogic, rabble-rousing F. It also gets a failed grade for honest writing.

This movie is about the worst thing Chan has done in the United States.

If Honeymoon in Vegas is funny -- and it is -- it doesn't exactly ring with structural perfection. You wouldn't go to see it again. But with wonderfully bizarre Nicolas Cage scrambling and screaming his way through the proceedings, "Honeymoon" never attempts anything greater than goofy.

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.

Even if the film is only moderately enjoyable, it can create a sort of exotic escapism.

Beneath the sylvan trappings is a whodunit as riveting as any.

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.

I love the movie's originality, its sense of macabre humor, its resourcefulness, and the great Walsh, whose memorable narration kicks off the movie.

I'd give this movie about half a miracle.

You won't feel enlightened, just let down

It matters because this boxer taps into something deeper in our collective souls than the desire for entertainment. It's the hope that one day we're going to win big, too, after everyone's given up on us. It's as hokey as it's true.

McAvoy, so memorable as Idi Amin's doctor turned adviser in last year's "The Last King of Scotland," may be the most likable British newcomer since Ewan McGregor; his glistening eyes can seduce audiences with their ability to show conflicting emotions.

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.

Magnificently nonchalant about its magic.

The animation, rendered in good old-fashioned watercolors, is appealing. It's easy, rather than flashy, on the eyes. But the best thing about the movie is the humor.

Why sit through a lesser imitation, when you could just rent "Heathers" and those other movies for a far more enjoyable time? Drop-dead bitchery? Been there, done that.

Its themes of passion, heartbreak and the inexorable passage of time are eternal.

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

Slickers II is grounds for a stampede -- away from the theater.

Much of "Clerks" is extremely funny and dead-on—in terms of its intentionally satirical, Gen-X-istential gloom.

One of the most pleasurable movies of the year.

Gibson may get top billing, but it's Sam Elliott who steals all the scenes. As Sgt. Maj. Basil Plumley, a man who fires with his own .45 revolver rather than the standard M-16 rifles, he's full of hilariously colorful comments.

The script's a plodder, and the acting's unbearably stilted. The movie's intentions are like the starry constellations that inspire the eponymous hero: out of reach.

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.

There's a refreshingly unusual spirit at work.

A movie that grows better by the minute.

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

Not only visually brilliant, it's funny, too.

The result is a time capsule par excellence...This is the best of times and the worst of times, African American style.

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.

Amounts to a rare gift and an opportunity to appreciate the end of an era and celebrate one of the screen's most subtly etched heroes: the soft-spoken Monsieur Georges Lopez.

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

It's hard to tell if this thing's serious or parody and, if it is parody, whether or not it's intentional. Is it a winky joke, for instance, to have lightweight performer George Hamilton as Pacino's business attorney, or just ridiculous casting? Hamilton's performance points to the latter.

Screenwriter Michael Goldenberg and director David Yates have transformed J.K. Rowling's garrulous storytelling into something leaner, moodier and more compelling, that ticks with metronomic purpose as the story flits between psychological darkness and cartoonish slapstick.

Even if you tap only a little of the magic of "Peter Pan," you'll come away with some pixie dust.

Eve's Bayou is a movie unto itself, a rousing, original yarn about family life that includes everyone, whether they're from Louisiana or miles away. [07Nov1997 Pg N.48]

An extraordinarily riveting drama.

It's a masterful little film, and, thanks to Zhang's seasoned hands, it's subtly heartfelt but never manipulative.

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.

Documentary about rock history's biggest heavy metal band is -- variously -- serious, funny, frustrating and touching.

Bening makes the movie into something finer still.

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

A sweet movie that takes its time at first but soon takes you over.

All fire-and-brimstone bunk, a tired compendium of involuntary crucifixions, grim messages carved into human flesh, fly buzzings, ominous choral chants on the soundtrack and at least one head twisting.

This David Spade comedy breaks an ankle, ruptures several knee ligaments and hits the dirt harder than a felled linebacker. Best thing you can do for this movie? Leave it writhing in the throes of forced humor.

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.

Watching this masterwork allows you to return to the filmmaking sensibility of the 1960s, when epics looked like epics.

Con Air, a summer blast of a movie, teaches us many things: Producer Jerry Bruckheimer never met an explosion, a car crash or 20 tough guys talking trash he didn't like. Nicolas Cage is one of our most enjoyable screen heroes. As long as you're funny, you can literally get away with murder in a movie.

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

Larded over with le fromage, which is to say, French cheese. But as these dairy products go, Christophe Barratier's movie is delectable sentiment. Audiences will crumble into itty-bitty pieces of Roquefort watching this.

In this good-natured film, even the smallest efforts at kindness yield positive results.

Has the glorious, gaudy benefit of much stock footage of Those Days, featuring all manner of drag queen, bearded lady and lactating hippie.

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?

Lacks the spirit of the previous two, and makes all those jokes about hos and even more unmentionable subjects seem like mere splashing around in the muck.

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.

The movie, which Carion wrote with Eric Assous, has a calming quality. The story moves slowly but, given the milieu and pace of life, this seems perfectly appropriate.

It's enough of a spectacle to enjoy. It's too bad the stars are little more than serviceable and give the movie title an irony it could certainly do without.

Depp is a charm. He becomes his own, subtly compelling Barrie.

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.

We find ourselves in the fascinating no man's land between horror and comedy -- right where this movie wants us to be.

A one-of-a-kind experience, a Molotov cocktail of a seriocomedy.

For students of cool ... Le Cercle Rouge is required viewing.

As with his other works, [Mann] binds sound, music and pictures into one hypnotic triaxial cable and plugs it right into your brain. He makes this almost-three-hour experience practically glide by.

An engaging romance noir, a sort of updated "The Postman Always Rings Twice" that packs its surprises into four characters, none of them predictable.

The movie's devil-may-care freneticism is edgily amusing, almost liberating.

You're not watching anything original, you're just reexperiencing elements you've seen in a jillion other spectacles (including "Die Hard," "True Lies" and even "Mission: Impossible"), only with more heat, more crash, more burn.

Lorenzo's Oil, which stars Susan Sarandon and Nick Nolte as the Odone parents, is not superbly made. But it's adequate enough to convey the story. No filmmaker (in this case, director George Miller) could stand in the way of this drama, though certainly others could have made it better.

"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.

Isn't just for music fans. It's more accessible than that, thanks to Joel Schumacher's bright direction and a few storytelling embellishments.

The only way a self-absorbed treatise like this can get any kind of audience (not to mention distribution) is to cast famous people in it.

Unromantic, nonsexual and hellaciously dull.

There's no question the movie's entertaining. But the blatantly schematic depictions of black and white, liberal and hawk, and other tiresome dichotomies turn A Time to Kill into the moral equivalent of a cockfight.

There's little here to offend anyone, and even less here to excite anyone.

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.

A smart, restrained entertainment, it doesn't splash around in blood and hysteria. It doesn't have to.

Straightforward but nonetheless powerful documentary.

The most eloquent and exacting vision of the war to date... Inspired with technique rather than overblown with it, Kubrick, the filmmaker's filmmaker, lays one on you.

Even by Disney's formulaic standards -- is about as cut and dried as the phone book.

That's the only way to enjoy Wolfgang Petersen's nearly three-hour epic: as a Pitt vehicle. In a role that requires larger-than-life dimensions, he's pretty terrific.

A story that rips fleshy holes through your heart.

Exciting, smart and enormously enjoyable.

This French film has a breezy, documentary air that belies the important issues is raises.

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

A respectably stirring film about the rupturing birth of civil rights in the South. Although most of Walk Home heads down this ready-for-prime-time moral path, director Richard Pearce and screenwriter John Cork uncover some interesting dramatic grays along the way. 

Something to treasure: a thriller whose style, structure and rhythms are so integrated with the story, you cannot separate them.

Best news: over in 87 minutes.

This movie is all pretty faces and six-pack abs, but no characters. All surface and no soul. Come to think of it, the surface isn't so darned hot either.

First-time writer/director Tom Hanks stays about a half-beat ahead of the cliches with rim shots of boyish enthusiasm and deft comedy.

A sequel that eclipses the original. The toys are back with even more hilarious vengeance. The story's twice as inventive as its predecessor.

Performances feel too manufactured to be charming.

She’s the One, Edward Burns’s swift follow up to "The Brothers McMullen," may not have the primitive charm of its predecessor, but it retains the humorous spirit. It’s also graced with returning cast-members Burns, Mike McGlone and Maxine Bahns, whose bright comic interplay makes an enjoyable family reunion.

A Sidney Lumet movie is loose. It's a big vehicle, loaded with the usual artistic statement. But Running on Empty is coasting downhill fast.

A movie that appeals to the eye, mind, heart and funny bone; that's a pretty good quadruple for any movie.

In terms of sheer belly-laugh count, this one's in the same plentiful company as "There's Something About Mary" and "Road Trip."

Penn, who also wrote the script, burdens the story with so many self-indulgent side developments that he loses emotional drive and Freddy's desperate obsession gets lost in the shuffle.

But when mechanical plots are a drama's main engine, we look for something else to divert us, preferably good comedy. That's in short supply, unfortunately. And it's no fun to sit through the movie's retread Woody Allenisms.

Fractured, tentative, oh-so-artsy and very much in the style of Wong's previous Hong Kong-set boy-meets-girl movies. But this time, the effect is contrived: a star-driven pseudo-indie affair that will please neither celebrity worshipers nor cineastes.

Although Ryan is cannily cast against type, she doesn't bring much more than muttery incoherence and nudity to the role.

You judge a movie by its own standards, right? Bulletproof, starring Damon Wayans and Adam Sandler, is rambunctious, crude, ridiculous, violent and -- incidentally -- very funny.

Feels like a prolonged campfire conversation, filled with weathered, measured talk about holistic thinking and finding a new perspective.

The story (adapted by Spielberg and David Koepp from Michael Chrichton's "Lost World") isn't much better than "Jurassic Park." And the predictability factor is high.

Uneven, not particularly inspired comic thriller.

Another handsome, dramatically moribund adaptation of a grand old classic.

The movie, a frenetic, explosive experience full of car crashes and gun battles, is original and exhilarating. But more often, it's so overwhelming, it'll make you want to watch "Die Hard With a Vengeance" for peace and quiet.

There's an extra dimension here, not present in the other comedies. Not only is the material amusing, it's charmingly engaging.

When Gray brings things to a narrative conclusion, the movie feels perfectly structured. If it were any longer, it would tip the overindulgence scale, and lose its effectiveness. But at 80 minutes, the film feels compact and pithily observed. And you're quite prepared to meet Gray on his next flight of self-absorbed fancy. [30 May 1997, p.N41]

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.

To watch this movie is to not only appreciate the majesty of Shakespeare's poetics but to engage in a profound, subtextual dialogue with bigotry.

This one's for Silverstone fans only.

The story moves episodically, almost painstakingly.

Death Sentence, directed by "Saw" co-creator James Wan, swings the pendulum too far. One day Nick is a mild-mannered nerd who spends his days making (and loving) risk assessments for his company; the next, he's Travis Bickle from 1976's "Taxi Driver."

"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.

Shows firsthand the appreciation and warmth from the musicians who worked with him.

A wonderfully unhurried and precious yarn.

Although this dialogue-free, mostly animal-action movie has its moments, Gerard (The Name of the Rose) Brach's man-meets-bear scenario is barely a soft, high-budgeted muzzle ahead of the Disney wilderness pictures. [27 Oct 1989, p.N43]

The most screamingly obvious reaction to Gerry is: what a load of pseudo-arty you-know-what.

To watch "Lives" is not just to enjoy a fabulously constructed timepiece; it's to appreciate a deft cautionary tale.

A Mexican movie in which the outcome is never in doubt, the scenes are endless -- sorry, we meant poetic-- and the false beard on the central character's face looks as though it could use a little extra gum.

In many ways, watching the movie is BETTER than concertgoing. We can enjoy that buzzy feeling of community without the fist-pumping biker obscuring our view.

In a sense, this is a horror film, worse than anything Andy Kaufman could dream up, in which Green tries to outgross himself.

A passionate murder mystery with more twists than a thrashing alligator.

Truly a movie for world audiences with a message that's devastatingly subtle.

There's nothing to recommend about this film except its sheer innocuousness. And Bill Murray's off-screen voicing as Garfield adds no "Robin Williams" element to the movie.

Doubling duties as director and cinematographer, Peter Hyams seems to have tossed the former for the latter. The Presidio, purported cop thriller, looks great. It is, in fact, less filling. The maker of "Outland" and "2010" infuses a San Francisco setting with evocative misty grays, but screenwriter Larry Ferguson's dull doings hang thicker than smog.

The only quandary in this film is in where to begin despising it.

When I say this movie's a charm, I'm really talking about Irwin.

Like rubbernecking motorists, we can't help but watch with lurid fascination.

It's a brilliant concept, one of Allen's finest. Love the concept, baby. But the execution is, well, average.

May not be the first movie to examine the creative process. But it's the most playfully brilliant.

About as funny as malaria.

Throws humorous fish bones to the older crowd, too.

It's a magnificent comic experience.

I suggest you think of this movie as another bad sausage from the Warner Bros. meat-packing factory. And you should think of this review as a government health warning. Eat this thing at your peril.

A small masterpiece of a documentary that takes us into the heart of a complex darkness.

Nadja has some delicious qualities. Most delectable of all is Elina Lowensohn as Nadja, the brooding daughter of Count Dracula, an otherworldly being with ebony lipstick, lusciously dark eyebrows, a dark hood and a great accent to match.

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.

It's a movie of deft impressions and telling human moments. Whether or not those impressions and moments add up to anything is almost beside the point.

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

Director Jean-Jacques Annaud and adapter Gerard Brach provide more than a few effective moments. Beyond her corporeal qualities, March is thoroughly believable. When she walks up to Leung in his car and plants a kiss on his window, her swoonish tentativeness gives the act incredible weight. But the story is dramatically not that interesting. After establishing the affair and its immediate problems, "Lover" never quite rises to the occasion. Scratch away the steamy, evocative surface, remove Jeanne Moreau's veteran-voiced narration, and you have only art-film banalities.

Let's wait for a movie where they do get it all right: story, acting and dancing. It'll happen, just not this time.

The story may be based on real events, but most of it feels patently false.

Awash in hackneyed old-time secrets and hydrophobic metaphor, never consumes us as it should.

Not just a bad thriller but also a thing of pain.

To watch Carrey leering with joy at the prospect of making respectable people guess dirty words, and Broderick trying to avoid the whole thing, is to enjoy their best comic synergy.

It's sheer agony to sit through, and not for the reasons Lee would relish. It's just bad.

This bizarre little diversion will soon scamper into the wild grass, never to be seen again.

Leads you through a miserable childhood without sentimentality or relief. The effect is torturous.

In old-fashioned movie terms, it's enjoyable, thanks mostly to Neeson who, not unlike Jeff Bridges, always eclipses your expectations of him. [25 Oct 1996, Pg.N.42]

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?

This is an odd amalgam of bleeding-heart sentimentality and over-the-top guts-and-glory action. You're not sure how to feel. But you're certainly not as moved and stunned as you were in "Black Hawk Down."

Even though these characters are hogtied by the story's unimaginative conventions, at least their lively interactions feel genuine.

What's best about "Upside" is its gonzo-sitcom craziness, a situation that lends itself to enjoyable performances.

It's too bad we don't have red, glowing DELETE buttons next to those soda cup holders. I could have done the world a favor.

Keeper is nonfiction in name only. Unabashedly subjective and dramaturgically conscious, it squeezes reality until the drama collects. Luckily for filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, this reality was juicy stuff.

You feel as though you're watching a filmed play rather than a movie. Nothing wrong with that. But The Human Stain, directed more than well enough by Robert Benton, doesn't reach the emotional pitch it's shooting for.

There is nothing worth getting steamed over or particularly excited about.

This is a charmfest of a movie, for bird lovers and non-bird lovers alike.

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.

In this loser-and-the-whore story line, Allen's sensibilities have taken a turn for the nasty.

I watched Mona. I felt like drowning.

Makes the mistake of including too sweeping a scope in too small a movie and with too few resources.

Unfolds with a marvelously understated humanism.

The trouble is, since few characters are fully developed, it's hard to care who's doing what to whom and why.

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

Penn's performance is the movie's ultimate grace note. As funny and ingenious as Allen's films can get, they are rarely known for depth of character.

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

Works better as a subject for high school study rather than lasting art.

Almost every scene has something to chuckle over.

A jarring amalgam of sitcom goofiness and uncomfortable ooginess.

A mediocre comic romance.

The Rookie is like one of those maddening, waking dreams when you spend the whole night thrashing in bed while tediously repetitive images batter your racing brain. But at least morning comes. This movie, directed by Eastwood, never ends.

Some routines are funny, it must be said. But more often than not, you'll be groaning with painful recognition rather than actually laughing.

Unfortunately, the drama operates on a see-through, easily shatterable metaphor: the frigidity of the WASP soul. [17 October 1997, p.N32]

To introduce an archetype like this to western audiences -- as the world weathers culturally and religiously demonizing times -- may have been worth this whole flawed movie. Too bad the story didn't just start with him.

It's one of the most powerful films of the year.

Peppy, funny and sensual. If you have to see any romantic comedy that's not directed by Billy Wilder, or written by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, this wouldn't be a bad choice.

If you don't like Who Framed Roger Rabbit, have your pulse checked... You'll forget yourself right through to the end when Porky Pig, dressed as a cop, says "M-move along, there's n-nothing more to s-see folks." [24 June 1988]

Unfortunately, the idea for Dirty Dancing exceeds the execution...and the story resolves itself all too conveniently in that final scene.

It's too bad the filmmakers didn't take a breath, look at the rushes and see what a comedic gem they had. With just a few tweaks, The Merry Gentleman could have made a wickedly funny parody of the over-earnest, lyrically hard-edged indie movie. But it's too late for do-overs.

Director Fernando Eimbcke, in an extraordinary debut, never expresses contempt for his characters. By examining their inner lives with compassion and respect, he inspires us to do the same.

The movie's pace is unhurried by Hollywood standards, but it's all the richer in character detail.

Let’s just say that, for the right audience, Junior may deliver. But there’s a whole lot of pregnancy to go through first.

This Is England, set in the social dystopia of Margaret Thatcher's Great Britain, gives us something far more humane and complex than a culturally specific memoir about Doc Martens shoes, reggae music and mindless aggression.

Equally earnest and unconvincing.

Pontecorvo's pointed 1969 drama of the politics of war feels surprisingly timely.

His (Tarkovsky's) pictures, and his sounds -- such as the symphonic drip of raindrops in a wooded pond -- tell more than just the immediate story; they rejuvenate the mind.

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

Sweet Land is as empty and beautiful as the picturesque Minnesota terrain it's so clearly taken with.

Remember the peaceful atmosphere of bedtime storytelling? The kind that allows parent and child to take satisfaction in the story, not the teller? That's how "Charlotte" draws you into its web.

Watching Kidman, Leigh and -- in his nutty, damn-the-torpedoes way -- Black as they torment, confound and torture one another amounts to a vicarious thrill ride in human behavior.

Girls is certainly fun for a time, and Goldblum, Davis, Wayans and others have their moments. But you may find your stomach rumbling from a certain emptiness under the glibness, and when it's time for that inevitable return to the planet Jhazzalan, you may hear yourself breathing a sigh of relief.

Testament to the emergence of a visually masterful filmmaker, capable of ingenious, low-tech special effects.

It's uncompromisingly bad, single-mindedly off-target.

I'm talking cheap visual gags, painfully embarrassing moments and other sophomoric humor guaranteed to get you and your friends almost vomiting with laughter.

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."

A great American picture, full of incredible images and lasting moments.

Lures us in with extraordinary subtlety. Keeping sound effects and incidental music to a relative minimum, it builds its suspense almost subliminally. So when something scary or shocking does occur -- deprived of those Hollywood-style cues -- we are truly startled.

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.

Gets more operatically farcical (most of it unintentionally so) by the minute.

Probably the most engaging Potter film of the series thus far.

Even Posey -- who brightens most movies she's in -- fails to stir the movie's unresponsive tectonic plates.

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.

There's a little too much over-the-top drama, as well as superfluous detail, in this Icelandic film.

You believe in everything.

A hilarious fantasy, about a plucky piglet that learns how to tend sheep, Babe is a barnyard charmer.

Fails because of its gratuitous rape and violence and also because of its pretentious and intellectually one-dimensional grounds, which make the violence at the end feel even worse.

The reunion is fun and frantic, like the original on double nitro.

The best moments occur when -- as in reality -- we're still in the dark. As soon as the movie gets to its version of a punch line, it turns into another Hollywood vehicle spinning aimlessly in space.

A bewildering, boring assembly of rock-video-surreal nightmare sequences with more repetitive episodes than Groundhog Day.

Such a bizarre movie that it has completely occupied my thinking for days. Not because it's a good movie, mind you. It's more like the equivalent of a botched tooth extraction with a coat hanger. Some bloody shard remains stuck in an inflamed, fleshy part of my psyche, and it's going to take some serious tugging and tearing to root it out.

The movie holds you in thrall from first frame to last. Hatred is hatred unslaked. So is racism, ugliness, love, lust and sorrow.

Soccer needs this movie like Georgia needed "Deliverance."

Roll past this casino.

The kid chews up the scenery like a baby T-Rex, egged on, no doubt, by director Agresti.

She (Madonna) really ought to be tried for impersonating Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct. Or playing a second-rate Hitchcock mystery blonde -- she's even named Rebecca.

Even by its own standards, the movie becomes increasingly macabre and ludicrous as Anne's machinations get the better of her, and everyone, including the audience, is left feeling shattered, shaken and vaguely unclean for having participated in all this.

Feckless and crude without any particularly funny redeeming value. If there's anything more to this poor excuse of a movie than immediately meets the eye, I'll get back to you.

A thematically bleak yet subtly comic film.

Takes the spirit of their late night TV show and flies with it.

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

A well-intentioned, reverential but unenlightening portrait. It pays tribute to the artist. Yet it doesn't scrutinize him.

After a promising beginning and an amusing middle, the movie gets stuck in limbo.

Apocalypse Now Redux, which contains about 50 minutes of extra footage, is Coppola's final artistic assault. This is the one where he honors his vision -- or clears his name, whichever way you look at it. Does he do it? Perhaps the first thing to get out of your mind when watching this "Apocalypse," or the 1979 version, is worrying about whether the film's a success or failure. It's both. The more you see of "Apocalypse," the more obvious its triumphs and mistakes.

Let's accentuate the positive: Saving Silverman really stinks. No, really. It's bad. Awful.

Robocop is one weird and entertaining hybrid of camp and sci-fi shoot-'em-up.

An intriguing idea for about two seconds.

Despite an appealing, even ingenious premise, "Scorpion" is another quippy but uninspired comedy.

It's definitely NOT a conventional biopic about Kurt Cobain. (Nor, as its title oddly suggests, is it about the demise of writer-director Van Sant.) It's a tone poem, an elliptical, fictionalized meditation about the ill-fated rock 'n' roll superstar.

Dull, plodding comedy.

A delirious mixture of spectacular gun battles, furious explosions and breathtaking stunt work, it's also one of the strangest stories to ever get the green light at a Hollywood studio. You have to take your hat off to Paramount Studios for allowing such inspired weirdness to see the light of day.

What starts out as a moody arthouse flick rapidly becomes an uneven B-movie yukfest (sometimes intentional, sometimes not), with low-budget concessions to the Hollywood cop-versus-killer industry.

Tracy is Tinseltown's annual celebration of everything that's wrong with itself: the hype, the agent-negotiated star system, the Hollywood "fun" assembly-line method of copy-cat mediocrity, etc.

Insufferably cloying experience.

The lighthearted buoyancy comes through. Silver takes her time, just as surely as slowly, searching for nuance between the hackneyed lines of Jewish Moms, Barrow Boys, Famous Authors and English Lit Groupies. Everyone at least has flickering moments of originality.

Has so little going for it, you wonder if you've missed something.

If you do not bring pride, good taste or sense to this third American Pie installment, you'll have a good time.

The movie doesn’t hit one out of the park, the way Get Shorty (another Leonard adaptation) did. But it racks up points with stolen bases and singles.

An engaging battle between terrific acting and a flawed script.

Allen, who's a natural charmer, seems to be at half-strength here.

The wacky incongruity works when debuting director Mamet has tongue in cheek. But all too often he's rechewing film noir, Hitchcock twists and MacGuffins, as well as the Freudian mumbo-jumbo already masticated tasteless by so many cine-kids.

Thanks to Caine's subtly nuanced performance, there's a deeper dimension to everything. He's snappily ironic at times, sometimes amazingly delicate, always engaging.