Emanuel Levy

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 briskly vigorous, occasionally brilliant actioner.

There's no particular reason to see this disappointingly trivial picture on the bigscreen.

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.

A top-notch production, exuberant period music and Hanks the actor in an important role cunningly disguise a rather slight and inconsequential narrative.

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.

The pic is so well directed and lead performance by Sanaa Lathan so charismatic that audiences will overlook the script's flaws and root for the central duo.

A darkly intriguing drama that probes the very nature of love and the lasting effects of loss.

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

Reveals Soderbergh in peak form, as he endows Leonard’s postmodern yarn with a meticulously detailed mise en scene that helps each member of his terrific ensemble soar.

In what's easily his most zealous and fully realized performance since "Malcolm X," Washington elevates the earnest, occasionally simplistic narrative to the level of a genuinely touching moral expose.

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.

The most amazing thing about Another Stakeout is that even though some of its skits are dopey and cloying and its plot recycled and derivative, the movie is still very amusing.

Still, this strikingly proficient production boasts genuinely scary thrills and first-rate visual and creature effects.

Riveting, often haunting.

Few actresses can convey the kind of honesty and humanity that Zellweger does here -- it's hard to imagine the film without her dominant, thoroughly credible performance.

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

Though often enjoyable, it’s an old-fashioned, feel-good movie whose significance is more sociological than cinematic.

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.

Heartbreaking yet truly inspirational.

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.

An emotionally powerful but extremely old-fashioned coming-of-age saga.