Desson Thomson

Then as now, visually pleasant and (of course) musically wonderful but, all-in-all, a mixed bag.

The plot becomes so overextended, as Reeves and Hopper wage their endless public transportation battle, even the hardest Die-Harders will consider leaping off way before the final stop.

Isn't appropriate for any innocent child -- assuming such lovely creatures still exist. But boys and girls who enjoy surprise attacks in their entertainment (of the aforementioned toilet variety) are going to have a blast. Sad but true.

It is a snapshot of a great actor in his prime and a chance for us to see one of yesteryear's great films in all its kingly luster.

One thing's for sure about Amos & Andrew: It ain't no "Thelma & Louise."

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.

There's nothing authentic about this London lad ... Nothing particularly likable either.

Hampered by Niall Johnson's script, which is often confusing, muddy and ultimately cliche-ridden.

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

The movie is tentative, dramatically speaking...The most powerful moments come at the end -- documentary excerpts of Steve Saint, the son of one of the missionaries, and his friendship with Mincayani, the man who killed his father.

Unfortunately, screenwriter Sam Catlin and director Danny Leiner make the unexpected mistake of being too subtle.

Shelton's movie never quite transcends its cheap, baseball-card poignancy. You never get the feeling these pulp-fiction archetypes -- the young hack-writer and the aging bull -- are real people. [06 Jan 1995, p.N37]

Wind is about the huff and puff that's needed to win the America's Cup regatta. It's about tacking faster than your Australian competitors. It's about winning for your country and yourself -- to stirring music. It's also about an hour too long.

There are a few sight gags that might amuse the kids, but for the most part, the computer-generated effects are highly disappointing.

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.

Shaolin Soccer is "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" with soccer balls, a touch of Sergio Leone and not one microsecond of seriousness.

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.

Truly touching moments such as a surprise meeting between Ami and his estranged brother, Oscar, show us this movie didn't need any sentimental help.

Date Movie, alas, is here to remind us that slapstick can be just plain bad. These are sight gags best appreciated with a blindfold.

Raimi offers all the fantasy, camp and hardcore horror you devoured in the comics. You can feel the pen-and-ink drawings coming to life. Dipping wittily into myth, the macabre and the modern, it's an effervescent adventure that's as amusing as it is genuinely gripping. [19 Feb 1993, Weekend, p.n38]

May just be the best in its genre… Entertainment and radical street preaching, all rolled into one. If it tells black kids not to try this at home, it also revels cinematically in blam-blam-you're-dead. This is what makes the movie maddening -- and what gives it strength.

The movie, which suggests a combination of "Wait Until Dark" and "Rear Window," not only takes your breath away on an aesthetic level, it eloquently evokes the mother's and daughter's vulnerability.

Relentlessly funny satire.

It needs a wooden stake AND a silver bullet through its script.

It's one view of Kerry that seems to have been lost in the present acrimonious shuffle.

Roos and director Herbert Ross pave the long and grinding road to self-fulfillment with miles and miles of counterfeit poignancy.

Makes for interesting, rather than emotionally compelling viewing.

Makes a virtue of its own simplicity. But don't be fooled. That simplicity is mere cover. You're kept wondering about the outcome until the very end.

It's not art, but it's fun artfully done. And as long as you're paying less than the price of a cheapo motel for the night, it's worth checking into.

Wedding has enough coincidences, screamfests, drunken rants and shock revelations to fill a season of "Desperate Housewives," but it comes across as finely textured drama, thanks to the performers, who make their characters so persuasive and three-dimensional, we're too mesmerized to care about the story's more overwrought or histrionic passages.

There isn't a dull or dumb moment in this movie.

Tries to combine humor with ghostly horror but excels at neither.

Writer-director Niccol (who wrote and directed "Gattaca" and scripted "The Truman Show") uses disarming, but wicked lightness to damn the celebrity-worshiping culture and Hollywood's beyond-the-looking-glass filmmaking.

There's more bathroom and slapstick humor than a sixth-grader could stand, and a veritable flood of drool, blood and less mentionable effluvia, most of it courtesy of Mr. Wayans as he tries to be – you know – funny.

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

In a movie whose texture is supposed to be hard-edged realism, the characterization seems a little too pat and jaunty.

Directed by Irwin Winkler, the movie's constantly full of big, all-engrossing moments. The performances -- minor and major -- are all superb, from Warden's hard-as-nails boxer to Lange's serene Helen. As De Niro's secret and devoted partner, with business-building dreams of her own, she exudes a graceful, happy-hour serenity.

How bad is it? Let me count just some of the ways.

Pure energy, a perfect orchestration of heroism, villainy, suspense and comic relief.

You're drawn in, like it or not. You can't get away from the immediacy. Or the feeling that you're getting sucked in, too.

The movie is given unusually wide dimension by director Taylor Hackford, who creates a subtly scary drama that emphasizes character over caricature (in most cases) and plausibility over formulaic stupidity (again, in most cases).

This is a spirited, dirty dance between the polished inauthenticity of Hollywood romance-musicals and hip-hop's central tenet: keeping it real. It's an intriguing combination, if nothing else.

You're hard-pressed to dislike the film.

Hoffman introduces a memorable sensuality to the movie.

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.

A darkly enjoyable roller-coaster ride -- Clooney and Kaufman deftly interweave the macabre with lightheartedness.

This 110-minute movie never seems to end, even after the various, idiotic storylines are finally resolved. After plying the audience with formulaic predictability, Getting Even doesn't even have the decency to end quickly.

Yes, it's that cheesy, but it's also surprisingly appealing. After all, the horse Seabiscuit really WAS that phenomenal.

Bacon's subtle, assured performance keeps us with him every step of the way.

The movie feels stretched out and thin.

Sentinel is a medium-dumb thriller that starts out with momentary promise but gets progressively sillier.

Clearly enamored with the endearing brand of drawly sarcasm for which Thornton has become known, the filmmakers aren't sure whether to paint Dr. P as an uncompromising villain or a mischievous teddy bear. The upshot is that Dr. P's most menacing aspect is Thornton's rather obvious hairpiece.

Perhaps they should have called this "Bore-a, Bore-a, Bore-a."

This vainglorious biopic about Bobby Darin is really about what the '60s pop singer and actor means to Kevin Spacey.

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

The relation between Constantine and its source material is, at best, superfluous.

Delivers the entertaining goods without fuss or frills.

Whether the lines are funny, tasteless or not-so-funny, Chase keeps popping 'em; whether the scenes are from "48 HRS." or "Beverly Hills Cop," screenwriter Leon Capetanos keeps photocopying them; and director Michael Ritchie (who also directed "Fletch") makes everything move along to a frenetic zydeco soundtrack. Sooner or later, you'll find yourself laughing at something. Unless you're dead, too.

Wings is a soaring vision that appeals to the senses and the spirit. (Review of Original Release)

Clearly targeted at Christians looking to reaffirm their faith. Its chances of crossover success with the secular crowd seem remote, given the dramatic shortcomings.

The gals are fab. And so's the movie.

Ostensibly about the banality of youthful evil, Kids is simply about its own banality. At best, it's a misplaced aesthetic experiment. At worst, it's glossy exploitation—with enough controversy to launch a thousand trite radio and television talk shows.

Emotions in this film operate on a made-for-TV level; they don't engage you.

If ever there was a case for quitting while you're behind, this "Blade" is it -- ready to be buried in a vat of garlic.

For those who accept Potter's premise -- and why not embark on a challenging, enriching experience? -- this is a unique, bold adventure of the soul.

The sexiest movie of the year.

Serves as a fascinating exploration of racial and social prejudice; and an indictment of cultural miscegenation.

Surprisingly absorbing film.

Director Renny Harlin, whose colon-studded credits include "Die Hard 2: Die Harder" and "Exorcist: The Beginning," knows the deal here: Pay homoerotic homage to youth and beauty, crank up the heavy metal on the soundtrack, and spare no effort to backlight the omnipresent rain.

Far richer than you'd ever think possible.

Edel, who supposedly fell in love with the novel as a Munich film student in the late '60s, has finally realized his adaptive dream. But for someone so devoted to the book, he (with screenwriter Desmond Nakano) ultimately betrays the novel's unrelenting brutality, its unshakably misanthropic point of view.

It's a great pleasure that -- we get to ponder one of the most involving psychological mysteries in recent memory.

This is about the rise of a pop star, plain and simple. The real deal –- and the movie's greatest fun –- is in the rap contests.

It is likely to disappoint more people than creator George Lucas would have liked.

I'd recommend you actively or passively forget this one.

Like the turtleneck cashmere sweaters and girdles that tie down these promising women, the movie is trite and trussed.

The movie's wonderfully original, fast-moving and funny.

Odd, complex and charming.

That the actor performs so effortlessly, so casually, is the real magic here. You forget about technique, and, best of all, you forget you're watching a black-and-white subtitled French movie from the dusty past.

This movie pulls out so many bad-action-movie cliches, you wonder if this is a how-not-to primer.

The movie that Disney uses to explore this premise drips with so much corporate good-neighbor syrup, you might want to wear something waterproof. And Penn's performance is, at best, ripe for discussion.

There isn't anything here you haven't seen already in It's a Wonderful Life and a thousand other wish-list movies. Writer/director James Orr doesn't even do you the favor of speeding through the unoriginality.

Thanks to two delightful performers, you're drawn powerfully to the outcome.

In the end, the movie works because Grant and Roberts are disarming geniuses at playing themselves -- and then some.

A disaster of a drama, saved only by its winged assailants. You know a picture's in trouble when you find yourself rooting for humankind to lose.

Though the story line seems grim at times, it's always made lighter by Brodsky's gentle, often hilarious presence.

Paint-by-numbers feel-gooder, in which Homer and his friends decide to win a national science fair for their little town and, ultimately, for America.

In Big Adventure, Pee-wee's gadgety bike was stolen, and the dramatic interest rode on finding it. Big Top contains three rings' worth of people and livestock, but the interest is no-show. You'd be better off going to the circus. Or the zoo.

The most cinematic of the three films. It tells its story in stark, often wordless scenes.

Like a wounded yeti, Batman & Robin drags itself through icicle-heavy sets, dry-ice fog and choking jungle vines, before dying in a frozen heap. Unfortunately, that demise occurs about 20 minutes into the movie, which leaves you in the cold for approximately 106 minutes.

Like a good campfire storyteller, writer-director Rian Johnson knows how to fuse the amusing and the edgy. And, in Brendan, he has created an endearing character.

This adaptation of the underground comic strip is mostly unfabulous.

Dramatically, this is something of a waking dream.

Although we miss some of the finer details that made Jhumpa Lahiri's 2003 book so meaningful, we're moved by the movie's themes of cultural displacement and the power of chance.

Despite amazing access to Seinfeld backstage, we don't get a peek into the real man.

Without a compelling story at the center, this is just a mediocre MTV-Wagnerian fantasy.

Intense and absorbing experience.

The joy of this movie, which features Joss Ackland as a memorably intimidating, Afrikaner-accented boss, is in the gradual revelation of intrigue.

There's something so familiar and commonplace about this story and its characters...it's hard to get particularly thrilled.

Thanks to the new guerrilla narrative, the world has a constant flow of images to file in its collective consciousness. And that camera-testable accountability slowly becomes a global civic right that fulfills the noblest purpose of journalism -- to bring truth to power.

The story, which deals straightforwardly with racism, miscegenation, adultery and consumerism, is a fascinating combination: a movie with an almost Capraesque heart and pristine, almost stagey lighting schemes, that addresses uncomfortable moral issues with today's perspectives.

As in Chaplin's films, humor and tragedy dance a wonderful tango throughout the movie. Baran is heartbreaking and laugh-out-loud funny, sometimes apart, sometimes together.

The personable star of the TV series "Home Improvement" turns this Walt Disney film around. He may not be as effervescent as, say, Robin Williams, but he's full of understated, ticklish charm.

Its story -- and eerie allure -- comes from our evolving perception of Jackie (Kate Dickie), a surveillance operator in Glasgow, Scotland, who spends long days and nights monitoring the screens.

For those who enjoy cinematic visits to other, darker worlds, this blood's for you. Watching Ringers is not unlike watching a critical operation -- unnerving but also enthralling. [23 Sept 1988]

There doesn't seem to be much purpose to it except a half-baked notion that the histrionics of the mentally insane (or a moviemaker's idea therein) are eminently cinematic. They aren't.

If the scope of the film feels small, Girl With a Pearl Earring fills that scope to bursting with subtle glory. It takes things as far as they can -- and should -- go.

Engaging, energetic film.

Guilty, deftly orchestrated fun.

Screenwriter Robert Getchell and director John Badham (whose resume includes the fallen "Bird on a Wire") wouldn't know a believable moment if it hit them. Fonda's transformation to lethal weapon, her affair with Mulroney and the implied romance with Byrne are all lukewarm, lazily outlined conceits. There have been deeper human relationships in TV commercials.

Director Van Sant, who made the lyrical "Mala Noche," "Drugstore Cowboy" and "My Own Private Idaho," returns to his favorite hunting ground -- the subworlds of grimy, poetic lost boys -- and pulls us right in

Evolution is bad. How bad? Who cares? Do you ask how hot the fire is before running out of a burning building? No, you just run for safety.

Reconfirms Tarantino's status as the master of pop cinema and puts a sense of excitement into the year. He has matched, if not eclipsed, the power and scope of 1994's "Pulp Fiction," though not its human charm.

It's a piquant story but unfortunately the movie creaks with European-style artifice. It tells its story in a rather cinematically stilted style, and some of the dramatic moments come perilously close to unintentional parody.

Self-respecting humans with strange kicks, such as family values or an aversion to nasty sex and violence, already know not to see this movie, but those with strange axes to grind (like, you hate Richard Gere, for instance), or too much time, or demented senses of humor, and you know who you are, may just have a fun time of this.

Hums with compassion for its outlandish, lonely but always sweet characters.

An unimaginative boy-and-his-mammal saga with only tenuous connection to the old television series of the same name.

This unusual convergence of stars doesn't amount to much.

The satire of the season, a hilarious, razor-sharp indictment of the American Dream.

A classic like this deserves to be unearthed! After all, this picture is likely to command a pedestal of its own at the local video store. Just check for shelves marked either "Sharon Stone" or "Staff's Worst Picks of 1999."

This is a captivating experience.

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.

The images are crisp. The story is restored. And there's no sign of Raymond Burr.

You don't watch Bad News Bears for the action out on the diamond. You hang out with that hangdog coach so you can catch every slurry, sour-mouthed retort coming out of his mouth.

A great movie, easily the most brilliant of the “Nightmare on Elm Street” series. It’s witty, smart, funny, entertaining, and you’ll still like yourself in the morning for watching it.

Works best when it concentrates on O'Grady and the ever-rippling effect of his transgressions. Viewers may not remember the victims whose stories practically pierce the heart, but they're unlikely to forget O'Grady's deceptively innocent face.

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.

A crashing letdown.

Three sterling performances from Moore, Haysbert and Quaid, all of whom grapple with psychic pain in different, touching ways.

Even the staunchest of golfheads must know they're watching a cut-and-trite accounting.

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

[The children's] remarkable lack of self-consciousness ... and Kore-eda's quasi-documentary style give this movie a stunning credibility.

If you appreciate fine animation and edgy material, this blood's for you.

As Benny (short for Bernadette), a big-boned, headstrong lass who strains winningly against the restrictions of family, religion and just plain growing up, [Driver's] a comedic breath of fresh air, easily the best thing about the movie.

As they stumble, bumble and fumble their way to love, they get more charming by the minute. Which makes them more interesting than Hollywood-style characters, anyway.

A wonderfully unsentimental parable that backs no horses in the movie's secular/religious dualities.

Possibly the worst thug-life flick to be released in the past 72 hours, this movie sags under the weight of the bling-bling cliches strung around its headless neck.

It's an exhaustive, and exhilarating, document of an overwhelming lifestyle.

Batman Begins emerges from the darkness and leaves a powerful, lasting impression.

This doggy flick, starring Matthew Modine, Nancy Travis, Eric Stoltz and Max Pomeranc, is one of the weirdest, most depressing family films ever made.

Suffused with sunlit, sensual images, Chocolat feels rather than finds out, implies rather than blurts out. Like an odd collection of old-time photographs, it seems to hold enigmatic truths -- ones that can't be expressed but that you have an instinctive understanding for nonetheless.

A devilishly, hysterically, cacklingly, subversively funny picture that builds and builds until it literally self-destructs.

Entertainment more suitable for the living room than the movie theater.

You will surely leave this movie shocked, shaken and surprisingly moved. And definitely stuck on that poor octopus.

A movie with the visual expanse of a John Ford western and the ensemble grandeur and long takes of a Robert Altman picture. The movie is definitely Chinese in content, but it exudes American style and spirit.

It doesn't help matters that The Libertine seems to unload every olde English cliche on file.

It's not the deepest thematic concern you ever saw on screen. But it's watchable, great fun.

Never has an actor embodied the passing down of violence and bitterness from father to son more powerfully.

Although Mistress has the spirited participation of De Niro et al, the in-jokiness seems to wear itself out. The tedious journey the movie has to go through to get made is well-defined. But there's something hackneyed about the thematic plight of artists in this modern, commercial world.

Some of it is funny in a Zucker brothers slapstick way. And as the Man's geeky lieutenant, Chris Kattan has some amusingly kooky business. But there's not enough to sustain the comedy. Ultimately, the movie's short running time becomes its finest quality.

Francis Veber's Three Fugitives, a heist caper, starts off with comic promise then limps all the way from the bank.

Even though it sounds awfully depressing, there's something moving about watching people go at their lives with everything they have -- or don't have.

A fast-paced, twisty-turny, high-fiving, but ultimately spiraling disaster of a movie about air traffic controllers, gets lost in this hyperbolic cloud cover, never to be found again.

A documentary that uses Pierson's self-congratulatory mission to explore a deeper story about cultural clashes and the complex dynamics of the modern American family.

It scores its comic points with dire one-liners, an astringent dearth of sentimentality and only-in-America developments.

If 8½ seems stuck in the early 1960s, it's only superficially so. Somehow, the movie is more than the dated crisis of a naval-contemplating artist. It's about the inability in all of us to make sense of our lives, put it all together and come up with something meaningful.

Energetic and slickly done, but also somewhat soulless.

Instead of maintaining its edgy sense of constant discomfort, the movie is compelled to make Neville as fuzzily adorable and messianic as possible.

No matter what's coming their way, post-apocalyptic doom or gloom, this James Gang of the galaxy is just plain fun to watch.

A chalice of unpretentious delight, flowing over with goodwill, a cheeky love for soccer and, uh, Buddhist humor.

Drowning in uncharted waters and way off-center in any world.

Tatum, the hunky object of Amanda Bynes's fancy in "She's the Man," and an engaging basketballer in "Coach Carter," is the best thing about this uninspired formula-thon.

The movie, written and directed by Jeremy Leven, may not be one for the ages, but it's a pleasant, involving experience that intermixes fairy-tale romance with modern, deadpan comedy.

A pretty dreary affair to sit through. It's not even scary.

Trapped in Paradise, a heist caper starring Nicolas Cage, Jon Lovitz and Dana Carvey, gets lost in a snow flurry of subplots and formulaic run-and-chase -- right around the time you've settled in for a good comedy.

But despite the overall thinness, there's a great spirit afoot. It's a TV-cultural guilty pleasure to see this charming, dust-covered series from the 1960s gussied up and ready to go. Which is why it will work better back on your TV screen.

As a satire on Tobacco Inc.'s outrageous ability to market carbon monoxide as the elixir of life, this movie should be packing more nicotine.

I had to beg my 8-year-old to stop laughing.

If you don't operate on the premise that soccer is the most important thing in the universe, you might not go along with everything in Fever Pitch.

A refreshingly tender treatment of love gone wrong -- we mean, for a movie that's got enough lowdown sexual content to start its own Kinsey Report.

In a sense, Shattered Glass is a parenthetical horror movie in which someone discovers (or worse, denies) the monster within themselves.

Feels like "Alien" as directed by Jim Henson. And the suspense is restricted to mundane slasher-movie tactics, including the frequent use of a mobile camera (call it the ’condacam) that’s supposed to represent the snake’s point of view.

A pretty woeful affair...a sitcom disguised as a movie.

A great little film, dignified by a superb performance, Diamond Men is a gem.

This saved-by-an-angel story is redeemed mostly by Smith's comic instincts.

The scenario may be dumb and predictable, with a wimpy ending to boot, but it's also sort of fun.

There are so many things to enjoy here.

Radcliffe is good at showing vulnerability but without the skills to give it gradation. The magic doesn't work for him this time.

Stumbles right out of the gate and never regains its footing. It's sad to see a gifted comedian like Janeane Garofalo trying, but failing, to anchor this mediocre affair.

There are several requirements for you to enjoy Sister Act. Your love of Whoopi Goldberg must be infinite. The thought of her in nun's habit must be an automatic scream. Finally, your ability to forgive bad comedy needs to be celestial.

Stephen Frear's The Snapper hits the spot nicely, if your spot likes hearty rounds of working-class comedy.

A potential cultural juggernaut.

So wonderfully antiquated, so blissfully free of postmodern cleverness.

A longwinded, predictable scenario.

But this cruise is also a gruesome one. You may find yourself shaken -- not stirred -- by the screenwriting cruelty and cynicism behind the 16th "Bond."

The story moves so slowly and obviously, you don't even need to be in the theater very much (or your living room when the video comes out) to follow it.

An irredeemably transparent... DIRECT RIPPING OFF OF "SPEED."

There's nothing to stir us, no scene to savor for life -- such as the father-son battle between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader in "The Empire Strikes Back." Back then, we were watching a classic, still the best film in the series. This time, we're watching just another "Star Wars" flick.

Kids who love Pokemon movies are no doubt going to see this movie, and they'll have a blast watching it. Very soon they will become older and more sensible and understand how terrible these movies are.

The movie is wry, touching and fun to sit through, thanks to Rosenberg's amusing script, Ted Demme's vital direction and zesty performances from everyone.

There's nothing "wrong" with this movie but it feels like warmed-over business as usual.

The Treatment gets this year's Rip van Winkle award.

If it wasn't for some exciting roundball action, Shaquille O'Neal's hulking-dunking presence and a wonderfully guttural performance from coach Nick Nolte, you'd slither off the bench asleep.

Doesn't connect with its audience in the one place that matters most: the heart.

The more the movie progresses, the more you realize how much Seinfeld's voice sounds like a droning bee -- the kind you want to swat away.

That sense of fun is jackhammered into our skulls. The tongue that was so firmly in cheek last time has punctured through muscle and bone.

It's great to watch characters in The War Room operating as most of us do -- by the seat of their pants.

Spielberg has made a small and charming story out of The Terminal.

Appealingly, the movie has a certain lightness -- like the aforementioned butterfly -- which makes its foreboding qualities surprisingly user-friendly.

A three-ring circus of visual pleasure, showing us the beauty of Korean garment, custom and national character.

It will often tear at the heart too -- at least, when it doesn't feel like the rap equivalent of a classroom lecture.

It's just respectable trash, and a dress rehearsal for better things ahead.

Despite all the life-threatening situations, warrior deaths and heroic feats, it's hard to get behind characters who feel like lazy archetypes.

Maintains its artistic magnificence after more than 30 years.

If the story seems a little waterlogged, it's still big, loud, and fun to watch.

The best thing about this movie? It's short.

It's simple, sizzly and very funny.

Surrender and enjoy the spectacle.

Both Scott and screenwriter Roselyne Bosch provide absorbing period detail. You learn about garrotings and massacres, Indian hairstyles and Spanish royal gowns. But this cinematic scrapbook of Columbian highlights is as beautiful as it is empty.

Aims for the fun and sensation of being inside a video game, but not a whole lot more.

It's just too lost in its own presumed self-enchantment.

All in all, this is a celebration of Australian exuberance, a national ethic of adventurousness and enormous charisma.

This is Disney at its live-action best and brightest.

It's good for a silly laugh, this stuff. And maybe this movie will draw renewed attention to Carpenter's eminently better movie.

There isn't much to the movie, and you can see where it's going from kilometers away. But [Daniel] Auteuil gives the silliness a surprising heft.

A movie that clearly aims to be a cool, picturesque modern film noir becomes another moody banality.

Intentionally defies categorization and explication.

It's best appreciated by assuming something of a dream state ourselves and enjoying the giddy flow.

Despite drawing from one of the most powerful and true stories from the Cold War, K-19 is only moderately moving.

Another day, another inept homage to "Vertigo."

This digitally animated movie, filled with a cast of charming, funny critters from long ago, is family entertainment at its most bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

What makes Nanette Burstein's movie so powerful is its uncanny sense of familiarity.

But even though Marcos, in this film, provides enough material for a few hundred giggles and head-shakings, she also shows a pathetically human side.

Seems like a pretty cool movie -- at least, for a remake of a 1970s Saturday morning TV show.

This movie reeks, stinks, smells and destroys life as we know it with one olfactory destructive blast.

Anguish ranges from gritty and realistic to the tragicomic soap opera found in Pedro Almodovar's films.

Whatever its ultimate position on the greatest hits list, Monsters, Inc. is supple and technologically sophisticated entertainment.

Mulholland Drive is an extended mood opera, if you want to put an arty label on incoherence.

Although the plot is crucial, it's the interaction among characters that makes Snatch percolate. Ritchie knows when to stop and smell the comedy.

If watched from a mildly amused, forgiving distance, the movie has its enjoyable moments—good and campy.

Ultimately, the movie's too uneven to be totally satisfying.

The only reason to watch this movie is for stargazing, nice shots of the sea and to revel in a world where false promises, lies and empty posturing are actively encouraged.

Eugenio Zanetti's set design is wonderful. But the movie isn't enough to make people check the shadows when they leave the theater.

Myers, who created the original characters, has to make a feature film out of a teeny sketch. With cowriters Bonnie and Terry Turner, he fares better than you'd expect.

Stumbles and screeches on for an interminable two hours.

It'll keep you amused enough to sit still and even remember it fondly.

If only Shadowboxer had gone for more than an unwavering commitment to imitate better movies, it might have been one for the cult shelves at the video store. Right now, you'll be lucky if you find it in the giveaway bin.

Vietnam will do well on the strength of Williams' performance: He's Groucho in 'Nam, with his rapid-fire quips and cast of imaginary guests. But when it's time to mourn Cronauer's departure, after a final softball game with the locals and a farewell to buddies-in-arms, there isn't a wet eye in the house. [15 Jan 1988, p.N31]

It does honor the book's flavor and spirit with a bright, funny treatment. Voice performers Jim Carrey (as Horton) and Steve Carell (the Mayor) play their roles just right, without making the movie about them.

The cliches are obscured by the sheer fun of it all.

Love! Valour! Compassion!, an adaptation of Terrence McNally's Tony Award-winning play, which has piano music and exclamation points to spare, is excruciatingly predictable, creatively inane and almost offensive in its depiction of gay characters.

The movie's a gas. Very funny, to a rather dark degree.

There are so many good things to say about this film it's hard to find a statement that really nails it. Perhaps we can leave at this: Y Tu Mama Tambien is originality writ large.

In a harmonic convergence of narrative, cinematic expertise and performance, Nelson’s chilled expression—and this movie—will stay with you like a closely held, personal memory.

Ron Howard somehow makes a great movie and an awful movie, all at the same time.

Co-directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel, whose visual schemes lent a hypnotic aura to their previous collaborations -- "The Deep End" and "Suture" -- don't find the right balance of story and image this time.

Apart from moments of conventional schlock (the ending included), "Serpent" twists with expertly drawn menace. The editing's snappy, the images visceral, and Craven's Haiti is a craze of blood ceremonies and political rioting -- it's set during the fall of "Baby Doc" Duvalier.

There is but one reason to sign up for Driving Lessons: to watch Rupert Grint -- Harry Potter's redheaded pal Ron Weasley -- squaring off with Julie Walters, Queen of the English Scenery Chewers.

Brain-numbingly innocuous, cliche-soused melodrama.

Sure, it's the corniest of conceits, but "Astronaut" taps delightfully into one of our deepest cultural values: the one about the pursuit of happiness. And the movie's unpretentious lightheartedness, which echoes the old-fashioned, corn-fed lore of Frank Capra, or even "The Andy Griffith Show," makes it blissfully easy to sign on for this good-natured voyage.

After 36 years of making movies, Polanski may be off his creative rocker, but he's still having fun.

Though it might lack in Hollywood production values, it overflows with moral impact.

A rare commodity. It's brilliant and a guilty pleasure. A subtle damning of things Hollywood, Robert Altman's seriocomedy slices its target with a thousand, imperceptible razor cuts.

Ed...is thrown together with such little concern for originality or its audience, it's appalling.

The compositions are masterful, especially the snow-covered scenes in Istanbul and, most memorably, the spectacle of an overturned ship in the wintry harbor.

Hovers frustratingly somewhere between charming and only mildly amusing.

Belgian actor [Jan] Decleir's tough-guy vulnerability ... gives an otherwise standard police procedural extraordinary grace and power.

Only Human, a Spanish farce, has absolutely no business being as laugh-out-loud funny as it often is.

In this touching story of boy toys helping boy toys, it's almost impossible to root for characters who are dead in the first place.

Obviously, this movie isn't for everyone. But if anyone can take a crossover audience through the gay terrain, it's Stafford. As Eric, his utter heart-stopping anticipation when he sits alone in a car with Rod, is palpable. Through his eyes, you can feel so much at stake here, not the least of which is his innocence.

One imagines that Bigelow's story conferences with ex-husband Cameron (maker of "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" and "True Lies") and Cocks were free of such apparently anti-entertainment concepts as "character development," "predictability" and "believability." [13 Oct 1995, p.N44]

Mamet's graceful, reverent movie adaptation moves along with a deliberating, almost hypnotic flow, strengthened by impeccable, dignified performances from Nigel Hawthorne, Rebecca Pidgeon and others.

Cut-and-dried sci-fi thriller.

In the Name of the Father is as good a compromise of fact and fiction as you could hope for -- and still call it a movie.