Emanuel Levy

A vibrantly colorful, wildly nihilistic and lovingly perverse poem to America's beautiful, libidinous and doomed youth. Though not his best, Araki's sixth feature is without a doubt his most accessible, sensual and superficially entertaining movie to date.

One has no problem praising the bravura acting of the entire ensemble.

Avid users of the videogame and Van Damme’s loyal fans may embrace the film out of curiosity, but this uninvolving movie will fail to achieve the results of the star’s last outings.

But Foster is unable to give the episodic, fragmented film a coherent feel; her prosaic, sometimes irritating picture proceeds scene by scene, with the requisite climaxes and anticlimaxes along the bumpy road.

Begins extremely well as a saga of greed and conspicuous consumption, but gradually loses its bite.

Good musical numbers serve as welcome punctuation to a film that grows increasingly tedious.

A simplistic, highly contrived romantic comedy about the mysterious workings of fate.

Writer John Cassavetes wants to show that there’s nothing like the purity of first love, but he doesn’t provide his triangle sufficient psychological motivation to ground their otherwise erratic behavior. The script feels incomplete, and is further marred by a missing third act and a lack of discernible point of view.

Lacking the moral indignation, outrage and militant politics that marked Lee's earlier work, this vibrantly colorful film is a tad too soft at the center, and arguably the director's most mainstream movie.

Based on an idea similar to the premise of Home Alone, though not nearly as accomplished or entertaining, and produced by that film's director, Chris Columbus, this family comedy-adventure is decidedly not a vintage Schwarzenegger kidpic on the order of Kindergarten Cop.

Sachs commits a major error by deciding to center on Lincoln’s character, for John is a far more interesting, complex and disturbing personality.

Reflecting the zeitgeist of the last decade, with children increasingly having to come to terms with the untimely deaths of parents and friends as a result of AIDS and other illnesses, Wide Awake tackles its issues with an admirably uncompromising honesty, though it suffers from being dramatically obvious. [16 Mar 1998, p.64]

A deliberately paced literary film that takes too long to build narrative momentum and explore its central dramatic conflicts.

Unfortunately, Wolman's flat direction accentuates the predictable course of his soft narrative.

Director Mark Christopher gives the picture a brisk pace and a colorful, party-like mood that makes the experience painless and sporadically even enjoyable.

With half a dozen roles to her credit, Portman is a natural performer who brings rough edges to any role she plays -- the movie is inconceivable without her.

A solid central performance by Winona Ryder and a captivating wild turn by Angelina Jolie in the yarn's flashiest role.

Despite good acting from the entire cast, yarn is a bit dull and predictable, straining too hard to convey its spiritual message.

An amiable, middle-brow entertainment, Chantilly Lace provides a knowing, bittersweet look at the complex lives of modern American women.

The thriller telegraphs most of its suspense payoffs, and the audience is almost always ahead of the game. What's most disappointing is that the characters begin as well-etched individuals, but are gradually turned into mere plot functions.

Ultimately, the comedy comes across as a celebration of openness, alternative lifestyles and bonding, all life-affirming values that in the 1990s are beyond reproach — or real controversy.

Despite recurrent narrative and dramatic problems, each of Bigelow's pics provides a visual treat, and this film is no exception.

Each of the talented thesps has some good moments, but, ultimately, none can rise above the limitations of the material and filmmaking.

A noisy, soulless, self-conscious pastiche that mixes elements of sci-fi, action-adventure and romance, then pours on a layer of comedy replete with Hollywood in-jokes.

Not an embarrassment, but it's not distinguished, either.

Stuart Baird's new thriller is inferior to the Andrew Davis movie in every respect: script, acting, rhythm and even tech credits.

Norton directs with assurance.

Inspired by the 1959 hit song, Dale Launer’s Love Potion No. 9 is a light-hearted one-joke romantic comedy that tries too hard to be cute. Glib humor and emphasis on “feel good” values aim squarely at the dating crowd and twentysomething couples. But lack of real wit and comic vitality, absence of star names and sluggish pace make pic less appealing than it might have been.

Meant to be an offbeat, darkly comic tale of a triangle of losers desperately clinging to their versions of the American dream, pic comes across as a charmless high-concept indie.

What makes the film involving and enjoyable in its first hour is a thick, multilayered plot, a rare sight in mainstream movies nowadays.

Four gifted and attractive actresses struggle hard to lend a semblance of dramatic coherence to The Craft, a neatly crafted film that begins most promisingly as a black comedy a la Heathers, but gradually succumbs to its tricky machinery of special effects. Still, young audiences, particularly women, are likely to connect with this energetic high-school tale about the vengeful empowerment of rebellious misfits.

Schumacher takes a step in the right direction with Flawless, a small-scale, intimate serio-comedy.

Intermittently funny movie. Almost every scene recreates or alludes to a Hollywood or foreign classic.

A mediocre attempt to recapture the exuberance and candid portraiture of such high school movie classics as "American Graffiti," "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" and "Dazed and Confused."

Johnny Depp and Mary Stuart Masterson render such startling performances in the romantic fable Benny & Joon that they almost overcome the trappings of an emotional tale that is not particularly well written or directed.

As a high-concept mating of two familiar genres, the police story and the supernatural thriller, "Fallen," Gregory Hoblit's sophomore effort, is a movie that might frustrate aficionados of both genres, despite some strong elements.

Unfortunately, Center Stage is directed and shot (by Geoffrey Simpson) in a way that doesn't let the audience feel the exhilarating pull of the dance world.

Whimsical, intermittently enjoyable but decidedly unmagical.

An extremely handsome production that meticulously evokes the 1920s, and a likable male-dominated cast, headed by Matthew McConaughey in his best screen performance to date, only partially compensate for a story that's too diffuse and lacks a discernible point of view that would make it dramatically engaging.

Political correctness is such a natural target for satire, it’s surprising that it has taken so long to hit the bigscreen. At the same time, given the issue’s extensive media coverage, it wouldn’t have been too much to expect PCU to cut with a sharper and nastier edge.

Despite the imaginative setup and the original sensibility, pic ultimately suffers from a slight, rather contrived narrative and a lack of secondary characters.

A pedestrian and gruesome, but never really scary, story of how the undead zombies interact with the living.

Occasionally biting but excessively melodramatic.

The material is slender, the characters not sufficiently engaging or eccentric for a feature-length movie.

An idealized tribute to a charismatic teacher who has devoted his entire life to music appreciation, Mr. Holland’s Opus has the same old-fashioned texture as Goodbye, Mr. Chips. Older audiences will be moved by the story, but the crucial variable is to what extent younger viewers will embrace this schmaltzy, Capraesque saga that’s not only set mainly in the past but also feels as if it were made back when.

The atmosphere is properly bizarre and in moments even scary, but there's no involving story or characters to sustain the feature-length narrative.

It takes some time, but ultimately “Fluke” turns into a charming, positive message story about love of life in whatever form it assumes.

A notch or two above the level of a TV sitcom, Slums of Beverly Hills, Tamara Jenkins' semi-autobiographical feature directorial debut, is a bawdy, extremely broad comedy.

Though intermittently engaging and decently acted, the movie suffers from a repetitive format, with too many shifts in time that prove disruptive.

A pleasant but ephemeral spoof that may disappoint Waters' hard-core fans while not recruiting many new devotees.

The large, talented cast elevates the film above the trappings of its loquacious debates, particularly Allen.

In actuality, however, what unfolds onscreen is a simplistic and obvious expose about the manipulative power of the news media that by now is so familiar that its cynical perspective is not likely to upset or provoke anyone.

Lacking the manipulative structure of "Speed," which shrewdly interspersed rousing set pieces throughout the story, Speed 2 is vastly uneven, trying in its second hour to recoup energy and compensate the audience for all the exposition of the initial reels.

Her (Foster's) performance is contained in a schmaltzy, ultra-elaborate, overly long production.

Gilliam's work is long on sensibility, short on sense.