Desson Thomson

Devil leads us into that dark, uncharted valley where evil, genius, divine inspiration, insanity -- and other unfathomable mysteries -- commingle. It also examines the hyperbolic industry of instant celebrity and ultimately shows us the complex algebraic equation that is Daniel Johnston's life.

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

It yields surprisingly unspectacular results.

Cro-Magnon-dumb...Less funny than your own funeral.

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.

The exuberance of the Rugrats seems nullified by the effete quirkiness of the Thornberrys.

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.

Rather than the mad, kinetic video-game vigor you'd expect, the movie proceeds at a more leisurely and methodical gait. I rather liked that.

Lilya's struggle to make a life for herself is both heartbreaking and heart-stirring.

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.

The movie does present solutions, including its urging of consumer demand for more accountability from restaurants and the building of marine reserves.

The cast, all classically trained on the stage, is simply commanding.

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.

Imaginative, slightly creepy, but tremendously appealing to all ages. It's ripe to bursting with visual effects a heady combination of stop-motion and computer-generated imagery. And it has a delightful cast of personable bugs and larvae, all bound for New York City via floating fruit.

An uneven collection of bodily function jokes, facial gyrations, sexual jibes and pedestrian slapstick, Dumb and Dumber appears to have been conceived by the leading lugheads themselves.

This fictional documentary's films-in-miniature -- subdued, engaging grace notes that run from 45 seconds to several minutes -- create a subtle, appropriately unconventional portrait of this eccentric man.

Corbijn makes us achingly aware of the singer's talent, the haunting poetry of his songs and how, living in the gloomy culture he did, his passing was virtually inevitable.

The 11-year-old Osment evokes the boy's terror and awful predicament so memorably, you'll never forget him.

The film oozes sentimentality, soap-opera bathos and clumsy cribbings from the Frank Capra book of small-town values. Those are its good points.

To watch "Time" is not merely to marvel at the heavens we cannot yet know; it is also to admire Hawking, now 50, for approaching such daunting problems on a daily basis, despite every possible problem the cosmos can throw at him.

In this sprawling oglefest, such things as "narrative" and "story" are remote little abstractions indeed.

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.

What keeps "Cinderella" from complete hokiness is Crowe's utterly believable performance.

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]

A sort of romance noir -- spruced up in pressed white linens -- this British-made film is elegant, uncompromising and oh-so- veddy nasty.

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.

Robbins, who scripted and directed, creates more than enough on his own. Bob's un-hackneyed character is the prime case in point.

A beautifully textured, disarmingly simple movie about romantic devotion.