F. X. Feeney

Surprisingly moving -- prompting lumps in the throat over what was, after all, a historic moment of the most luminous hope.

Lyrical and funny, Full Grown Men is a tough-minded film about the need to grow up.

We may not fully grasp what Nora saw in Joyce, but what he saw in her is made unmistakable, and worth seeing.

Writer Sam Catlin and director Danny Leiner have fashioned an alert, shrewdly observed portrait of a moment in time.

Although the dialogue initially flakes with awkward exposition, writer Ruth Epstein and director Harvey Kahn have fashioned a riveting thriller full of good scares and learned, muckraking insight into the global labyrinth of oil and politics.

Excellent performances.

A refreshing breakaway from both idolatry and cynicism.

A film whose story movingly outfoxes any number of shopworn expectations on its way to a singular, heart-rending outcome.

Lurie manages, despite these obstacles, to inspire Redford to give one of the most layered and interesting performances of his career.

The love that grows between Fish and Poinsettia could have turned treacly in the wrong hands, but director Charles Burnett -- has the direct observational style of the silent masters.

The two leads have a wonderful chemistry together.

This lightweight thriller has an enjoyable premise.

They make a believable trio of siblings, but not even their combined wit can lift this script above the maudlin.

The good news is that they've resurrected a franchise with wonderful potential and may eventually grow bored enough of recapping past triumphs to take it in more daring directions.

A reliably solid treat.

A snappy, delightfully balanced bit of historic whimsy.

Williams is a great clown, and Oedekirk and Shadyac give him room to really cut loose, and cure the movie. That’s as it should be.

A happy vulgarity still reigns.

A cleverly plotted, cleanly crafted matinee item -- pure entertainment on a romping continuum with Frankenheimer's "Ronin."

Less a movie about stepfamilies than a PSA about how cancer makes everyone behave themselves at Christmas.

The interactions between the realms of the magical and the everyday are carried off with an easygoing charm.

A smirky black comedy that, like its John Lurie score, is jazzy, dry, and light on its feet.

Well-tuned wisecracks and clever plot twists.

Taymor has done an inspired job of resurrecting one of Shakespeare's unruliest works, just in time for the new century.

A fascinating tragedy, easy to underrate.

Inglis offers complicated characters and uniformly worthy performances without falsely manipulating us into sympathizing with anybody but tries too strenuously to fuse his warring polarities of character-driven intrigue and plot-driven treacheries into an allegory of redemption. In the end, that feels like one or two big things too many.

Writer-director Hernandez is comfortable with violent, perverse emotions, and can find humor in them -- a refreshing quality that keeps one watching long after her movie has jumped its own tracks and zoomed to a private world of obscurely motivated quarrels and uninvolving reconciliations.

A near miss overall, but enjoyable in its littler particulars.

Though the film overall is as disposable as a hot dog, it is just as enjoyable.

The film works, cleanly, without any tiresome reliance on computer graphics.

The Marat/Sade irony of setting these scenes in a madhouse helps, but Macfadyen's volcanic magnetism and spot-on mimicry of Hitler's body language and speech patterns make insight flesh.

The romance and sheer fun that Where the Money Is packs into its swift 89 minutes follow from the sweet surprise that neither is threatened by the other.

What is surprising, and what one takes away most deeply and happily from Triumph of Love, is a refreshed admiration for Mira Sorvino.

Overall, King of the Jungle never quite achieves a necessary, culminating insight about charity, or mercy -- though Leguizamo's performance puts one in reach.

A smoothly structured, earth-toned and well-drawn Japanese anime.

Silver, manages the deft balance of making Seagal seem both genuinely courageous and charmingly blockheaded.

There isn't a moment in the film that isn't overhyped.

To their great credit, writer Benjamin Brand and director Greg Harrison weave these contradictory variations into an effective puzzle, if one that doesn't quite transcend being a puzzle - it never becomes a mystery, like, say, "Mulholland Drive," or even "The Sixth Sense."

First-time writer-director Paul Morrison has a gift for evoking a time and place.

Although this movie doesn't have an ounce of depth, it's so thoroughly amiable and upbeat that you'd have to be in a fighting mood to find fault with it.

An abbondanza of busy, situation comedy twists that snip one's suspended disbelief and send it crashing like a chandelier.

Janssen proves herself an actress of delightful range.

Here, the volcanic villain behaves like a smart terrorist, taking over almost immediately and holding a collection of excellent actors (Tommy Lee Jones, Anne Heche, Don Cheadle) hostage for two hours of "real time."

As powerfully as the film lingers in the mind, one can't help wishing he were led just a bit more by his heart.

Some of the performances are remarkably natural amid so much farce.

At its best, there's a strong (albeit live-action) echo of Charles M. Schulz's "Peanuts" in Little Manhattan. The movie's hero, Gabe, is a world-weary 10-year-old who addresses us in eloquent voice-overs. Like Charlie Brown, he's in love with a red-headed beauty.

The barometer of the film's undoing is Burns' super-low-key performance, which starts out as a pokerfaced spoof on heroic cool, but takes a misstep more fatal than mere time travel can undo.

By-the-numbers Oscar bait -- but Penn does manage, against such odds, to make us see Sam as a person, not a performance.

These bantering would-be heroes mostly live at the tops of their voices.

Goei's sharp-eyed satiric sense evokes the diversity and energy of Singapore, and his good-humored nostalgia makes disco rise from the dead.

As with "The Blair Witch Project," one must swallow one's irritation at paying yet again for big-screen video -- but even so, the spectacle of an America falling apart is acutely and hilariously embodied by Dawn.

Economy be damned, lack of originality is the silent killer.

By the last third, one is sick to death of seeing people tortured, no real catharsis is offered, and stupid is how one feels.

If only the rest of the movie were as good as its cast.

Director Alan Rudolph kills this promising film off with a combination of bad writing and wrong-headed direction.

Alas, for now we're at the mercy of a screenplay whose beats are too often as poorly calculated as the movie's title.

Fails to fulfill.

As an audience member, you end up feeling like a sucker for even having tolerated that sickly sweet notion about a father, a son, and their silly radio.

The humor stays on one low level throughout, and thus fades fast.

The story sinks, along with any deeper laughs, under boringly formulaic motivations and plot twists.

Mike Myers wrote the abominable script, plays both leads and is miscast in each.