Elvis Mitchell

Mr. Weerasethakul's film is like a piece of chamber music slowly, deftly expanding into a full symphonic movement; to watch it is to enter a fugue state that has the music and rhythms of another culture.

Despite its artistry, it seems to last nearly a millennium.

The playful spookiness of Mr. Jackson's direction provides a lively, light touch, a gesture that doesn't normally come to mind when Tolkien's name is mentioned.

The director, Mark Waters, working with a smart casting team, has assembled a superb group of players. Scene by scene you can't help being impressed by Mean Girls; it's like a group of sketches linked by a theme, with some playing much better than others.

We see the movie levitate when Ali and Brown chant, "Float like a butterfly," the slogan that takes on a different meaning in each context, starting off as hopeful and spry, finally becoming rueful and pointed. When the film pulls off moments like these, it's breathtaking -- a near great movie.

Though he can still deliver an amazing scare, Mr. Spielberg's interest now leans more toward exposition rather than the anticipatory. He is explaining the fun away.

If someone left "1984," "Fahrenheit 451," "Brave New World," "Gattaca" and the Sylvester Stallone potboilers "Judge Dredd" and "Demolition Man" out in the sun and threw the runny glop onto a movie screen, it would still be a better picture than Equilibrium, a movie that could be stupider only if it were longer.

This angular and intelligent romantic comedy isn't entirely consistent. Even as you laugh, it's a movie you admire more than love.

It's a rare entry into old-school swordplay for him, yet still centering on his themes of honor and betrayal -- with a not entirely successful attempt to blur those lines. "Chivalry" is still intense and watchable, nonetheless. [27 Jun 2003, p.E3]

Such an accurate depiction of cramped spirits, small-mindedness and men unable to make changes in their lives takes its toll. Distant feels as if it's going nowhere in no particular hurry, and finally leaves us distant from its characters.

Their comedy gives audiences that have never seen anything like it a hilarious window on a new world.

The towering, lost dreaminess at the heart of the film is an unmistakable obsession of this director.

Neither fast nor furious, this film belongs in the section of the supermarket where blah-white labels and big block lettering denote brandless cigarettes, vodka, crushed pineapple and, in this case, action picture.

The eventual video game is bound to be a lot more fun -- and less slowed down by bad dialogue -- than this "Dead."

It's more a piece to admire than to be involved by, yet it's easy to imagine children hypnotized by a hero tinier than they are when "Kirikou" is continually loaded into the VCR.

This muddled comedy of confusion feels as if it were a Farrelly brothers' comedy that has sat exposed to the elements long past its expiration date.

There is no denying that Amélie is, to paraphrase its title, fabulous.

A heartbreakingly thoughtful minor classic, the work of a genuine and singular artist.