F. X. Feeney

It's a sweet chamber piece, beautifully played.

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.

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

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.

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

The Messenger may be a caricature of theology, but then Besson is a cartoonist of genius.

Their discretion makes From Hell less a horror movie than a classical film noir.

Some critics are badly selling the film short, when the story it tells, measured strictly in terms of emotional power and overall fun, is as moving and pleasurable as any matinee item by Ford, Hawks or Raoul Walsh.

This gets my vote as director Franco Zeffirelli’s finest film. Certainly, it’s his most personal.

Thrillingly unpredictable.

Pellington's sharp, fastball compositions and nerve-splintering cutting style are of a piece with such intelligence, devilishly mixing shock with optimism.

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

May lack any transcendent point that would make it exceptional, but it is certainly a worthy start, and worth catching.

A snappy, delightfully balanced bit of historic whimsy.

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

Even as the psychological interdependencies of the two boys take the foreground, the movie gets more and more crowded with fun-house surprises and cliffhanging set pieces.

I've not stopped thinking about it -- weighing might-have-beens and alternative courses of action, as though remembering an actual event rather than a nimble, superbly-realized fantasy. That's a first-rate achievement.

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

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.

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

This is such a dazzlingly self-assured directorial debut that it's hard to know what to praise first.

Christine Lahti, making her directorial debut, wrings good laughs and strong emotion throughout, largely through the performances.

Khouri manages, with terrific flair, to keep the extremes of screwball farce and blood-curdling family intensity on one continuum -- not only through the strength of the performances (including one from James Garner, who, as Sida's dad, gets the best one-liners) but in the ways they match across time.

A superb, instructive portrait of an artist at work.

Well-tuned wisecracks and clever plot twists.

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

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."

A reliably solid treat.

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.

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

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

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

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

Janssen proves herself an actress of delightful range.

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

This bright farce is spun from interlocking coincidences that only seem far-fetched.

Celebrity is one of Woody Allen’s finest. This is a minority opinion….But I prefer Allen when he works in a minor key – “Broadway Danny Rose,” “Radio Days” --precisely because he’s not trying to be profound, only true to firsthand observation.

It's great unruly fun.

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

A happy vulgarity still reigns.

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

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

First-time writer-director Mark Hanlon creates a solidly trippy atmosphere.

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

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

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.

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.

The Wayanses can be crude beyond crude, but they're so clever that their inventiveness takes the place of taste.

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

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

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.

The two leads have a wonderful chemistry together.

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.

This lightweight thriller has an enjoyable premise.

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

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

Fails to fulfill.

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

Is it possible for a movie to have a worse title? This might not matter so much if the film that followed were any good, but for the most part it's drudgery.

There are ticklish moments, but no real laughs.

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.