Desson Thomson

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.