Jack Mathews

In a clear case of substance over style, this stark, clumsy documentary tells the heart-breaking stories of a dozen law-abiding Muslim or Arab immigrants and visa workers.

Has the integrity of good dialogue and enough of a writer's preserved craftiness to make it a worthwhile date-night attraction.

As dazzling a feast for the eyes as the hungriest eyes can take.

Ends up a portrait through a rose-colored lens, turning a social parasite into a Greek hero.

The film's appeal is for the eyes. Because Henry got to call it art, it's on display once again.

This is cheeky sitcom in a minor key, and fated to be a mere footnote on McAvoy's resume.

There are terrific performances from Kline and Judd, some breathtaking staging and production design, and, of course, some of the best music and lyrics of the 20th century.

McCann's point of view overwhelms the human elements of his story, but this is, nonetheless, a riveting piece of filmmaking.

The film is beautifully shot and edited, but these emotional snapshots won't stay long in the memory.

BI2 is packed with as much lust, nudity and sexual depravity as the first. So, why isn't it as much fun? What's lost in any sequel is the freshness of the first film, and was "BI1" ever fresh!

Made for viewers old enough to appreciate a talking pooch but too young to read or write about it.

This at-times harrowing, occasionally unfocused film is a case study of one of hundreds, if not thousands, of stories of Iraqi civilians to whom the war has hit home and left holes in families. It makes you rue the most indelicate of all combat euphemisms - "collateral damage."

A thing of beauty and imagination.

Moves as slowly and deliberately as it sounds, but Seigner and Serrault are extremely effective in roles often requiring them to work alone, or together in loaded but wordless exchanges.

A feast of imagery.

The sweetness of Nacho's nature, along with Black's unselfconscious physical enthusiasm, turn all this into a live-action cartoon, with the ring violence having no greater consequence than a Wile E. Coyote fall from a high place.

It's a great performance that's a horror to watch. Of all the bleak year-end movies, Love Liza is the bleakest; of all the sad characters you've seen lately, Hoffman's Wilson Joel is the saddest. And he goes home with you.

This computer-animated feature rivals "Cars" for the year's most visually exciting cartoon, but watch your step - most of the movie takes place in the London sewers, where the script may have been conceived.

What's good about the idea is that it triggers the kind of debate we would be having over Iraq if there was a draft. What's bad about it is that the three main characters in Robert Malkani's script - anti-war lawyer George (Chris Klein), gung-ho cab driver Dixon (Jon Bernthal) and sissy novelist Aaron (Elijah Wood) - are not interesting, either as individuals or as three amigos.

For all its scale, grandeur, historical context and political brass, "Kingdom" is no more compelling a period drama than last year's "Alexander."

It may be that Gronkjaer couldn't get the nun to open up to her. But not knowing much about her creates an awkward imbalance that Vig, fascinating as he is, can't overcome.

Pure dumb fun -- horror slapstick that rudely parodies both the arterial violence of slasher films and the topless hedonism of the spring-break ritual.

A riveting story.

Once you're past THOSE scenes, and come to know the context and characters involved, you'll find something both deeply humanist and emotionally complex.

The action sequences that follow are routine to the point of monotony, involving chases through crowded streets and store fronts, a commandeered bus, a woman in peril, and so on. But Donner wisely devotes long spells in between to the evolving relationship between Jack and Eddie.

Despite some emotional dips and a see-it-to-believe-it load of schmaltz at the end, The Bucket List is mostly a joy ride with good company, and the actors obviously were having a high time on their traveling boondoggle.

The Stockholm syndrome, that strange psychological malady by which hostages bond emotionally with their captors, is the central theme in this intimate melodrama.

Given the lousy singing of Kirsten Dunst in "Spider-Man" and Drew Barrymore in "Lucky You," it's nice to report that Fisk - Sissy Spacek's daughter - shows real talent performing two songs here.

Powerful theater.

Darker than the shadow of death.

A confused, empty, only occasionally funny mess of a movie.

Coppola won't win any Oscars, but the movie is a contender for cinematography, costumes and production design, and it's a lock for Prettiest Pastries.

Pure situation comedy, and it's still fresh enough to provoke laughs.

The choice made by Kevin Spacey in taking on the role of Quoyle in the film adaptation of E. Annie Proulx's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Shipping News nearly sinks it. But not quite.

A gripping, sometimes dramatic, sometimes annoying collection of jerky images and subjective impressions.

A sumptuous feast for the eyes and an occasionally exhilarating stimulant to the heart. But beware my hearty: It will tie your rum-soaked brain in knots.

The movie is bookended by a powerful indictment of apartheid and a study of white guilt.

Imagine that, instead of trying to solve his wife's murder, the amnesiac character in Christopher Nolan's "Memento" had gone on "50 First Dates." That comes close to describing French director Jean-Pierre Limosin's playfully sexy tale of memory lapse.

Becomes a very conventional suspense film, replete with virtually every cliche of the genre, some used more than once.

Clearly meant as an endorsement of the Democratic presidential nominee's character.

Digital video is both the blessing and the curse of writer-director A. Dean Bell's well-conceived but underachieved What Alice Found.

The sole asset of "Bobby Long" is Johansson. Blossoming before our very eyes, she gives Pursy the combination of hope and determination that makes her journey worthwhile.

We never really learn what Lee thinks of this man, other than that he is worth every second of a 130-minute documentary.

It takes us about half the film to adjust to its quirkiness, and we leave the theater with both laughter cramps and the feeling that it should have been funnier a lot longer.

Mostly a lazy string of setups and sight gags, of tongue-in-cheek confrontations between the two stars that barely amount to sketches.

The film is at its most compelling when the witnesses are telling their stories, and at its least in covering Pinochet's circuitous legal route to Britain's House of Lords.

Structurally, Love Actually is less like "Four Weddings" than it is "Scary Movie 3." ­Curtis throws every gag he can think of at the screen and the ones that don't stick, he throws again and again.

As the latest in a never-ending chain of thrillers about young people lost and dying in a hostile land, John Stockwell's Turistas at least offers the visual benefits of exotic settings and a cast of barely clad hardbodies.

As a conventional drama, Rent would be a pretty corny soap opera. As filmed theater, it's only slightly more con­vincing. The saving graces - and there are many - are Larson's original songs and the comfortable fit of its ensemble cast.

Much of the film is sub-sophomoric, but Campbell and Davis give hilarious deadpan performances.

Princess is far more contemplative than "Run Lola Run," far less energized, and the little tricks of fate that made his last film so unique seem like sophomoric affectations here.

It is driven by the finely expressed -- if nearly mute -- performance of Lemercier. We learn a lot about this woman and her emotional state from Lemercier's subtle body language. As for Lindon's Jean, well, it's enough that he's there and doesn't require batteries.

The best performance comes from Venora.

Eisenheim's storybook romance with aristocrat Sophie (Jessica Biel), the childhood sweetheart now expected to become Leopold's princess, is the most compelling thing about a film that should dazzle the eye as much as stir the heart. It does not dazzle.

It's hard to get a fix on what Hallstrom had in mind. The first half of the movie plays like a frenetic caper comedy...The second half turns psychologically dark.

The Macao settings are beautifully rendered, and the dark humor is often very funny. But it is noisy.

The humor in de Heer's script is mostly anatomical, and the performances of the nonpro cast are stiffer than bark. But you've never seen anything like it.

Designed as a giant put-on, "Kiss Kiss" is so inside Hollywood, so anxious to bite the hand that fed Black, that it plays like an elaborate prank. Some of it is a lot of fun; most of it is a lot of nonsense.

An amazing physical specimen, beautifully photographed and edited. If you think of it as your own opium dream, you may dismiss the lousy story as a mere side effect.

Part soap opera, part sitcom and part relocated French farce.

It's a bit of a hodgepodge - unnecessarily complicated, clumsily structured, uncertainly directed and, as a whodunit, ultimately unsatisfying.

There's no question Carnahan has an eye for composition, an ear for dialogue and a sense of pace that, if put to better use, could make an audience beg for relief. But the characters in Smokin' Aces are about as lifelike as the occupants of vehicles destroyed in a car-safety test.

Creepy in 1980, Cruising is almost macabre now, knowing that most of the young men involved in rough, unprotected sex then began dying of AIDS shortly afterwards.

Glover, wearing his close-cropped hair in a pompadour and striking beady-eyed, furrow-browed poses that scare the hair off a tarantula, makes it as much fun as a rat revenge movie can be.

When it goes wrong, specifically when Bobby is given a badge like an angry Earp brother in "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral," the story turns into something barely at the level of a TV cop show.

Provides an intimate, nonpoliticized, uncensored and totally unappealing look at the lives of U.S. soldiers serving during a grim and uncertain period of insurgency.

While the football sequences are carefully constructed, the sensation we get from the blizzard of images and teeth-jarring sound effects is of having our head used as the football.

The flat narration by Queen Latifah doesn't help, but Adam Ravetch and his wife Sarah Robertson's nature film, Arctic Tale, fails to inspire the kind of rapturous response we felt for "March of the Penguins" for other reasons.

The two-part film focuses on Jung-rae's one-night stand with the protégée of a colleague he invites to his seaside retreat, and then with a second woman who merely reminds him how much he liked the first. The scenery's great and the performances adequate, but wake me when it's over.

But Allen can still write a good joke and there are some here. Not enough to say he has returned to form, but enough to remind you of what that form was.

This strikes me as the final nail in the franchise's coffin. I can't name an actor who could have made young Lecter as interesting as the older one, but Ulliel does not come close.

No second or third act... a one-joke premise and a hundred punchlines.

Not bad. It actually might have been considered pretty good had it been made 30 years ago, when people might have cared about the backstory of Father Merrin.

Schrader's main interest is not in the mystery, per se, but in the political intrigue of incestuous Washington, where conflicts of interest are the norm and morality is indeed relative. The points are well-taken, but Harrelson's performance often gets in their way.

"Love" would be intolerably boring were it not for the frequent injections of humor, thanks largely to Hector Elizondo as Florentino's uncle, and for Bardem's ultimately winning performance.

This is ensemble work at its best.

It's just twice as much as we need to know about the Sex Pistols.

Jake Gyllenhaal is 21 and looks as though he's going on 16. This is not a problem for films like "Lovely & Amazing" and "The Good Girl"-- It is a problem in Moonlight Mile, where he plays a grown man recovering from the murder of his fiancée.

Chamber is chockablock with action (including a far more exciting game of Quidditch) and crafty special effects.

Heartbreakers is too long by a half-hour, and there are entire sketches (including a horrid nightclub sequence with Weaver trying to sing in Russian) that could be mercifully sacrificed.

Everything about this political thriller is ridiculous.

The romantic subtext of their characters' relationship is the film's chief liability, and feels forced and undeveloped.

That (cinéma-vérité) feel is absolutely convincing, as are the performances.

It's corny, plodding, implausible and - on occasion - seriously creepy. At the same time, it contains a couple of this movie year's most sublime sequences, and features one of Nicole Kidman's bravest and best performances.

Garlin, like Oscar winner Ernest Borgnine in "Marty," is good company, even when his out-of-control eating and self-loathing threaten to overwhelm him.

But Burton and August have added ­anger to the mix, and it sours much of the otherwise wondrous tone.

Enjoy Christmas in Paris, if you don't have enough problems of your own, with this slice of family life from French director Daniele Thompson.

Mildly entertaining trifle.

There is no doubting Jonathan Demme's admiration for our 39th President: It's apparent from the opening scenes.

A well-conceived story that is very hard to shake.

Scanner is mostly all talk, and the talk is entertaining only when it's coming from Downey. The actor's long history of drug abuse taught him a thing or two about cooked behavior, and he gives some anxious run-on monologues that are very funny.

Not enough to overcome the proven axiom that although you can make a bad movie from a good script, you can't make a good one from a bad one.

While not nearly as elaborate as either film, Heist plays like a combination of "The Sting" and "Mission: Impossible."

The failure of a movie that is so good in so many ways leaves me to wonder if Spielberg is up to this kind of complex, multi-tasking story.

An ambitious film that sticks with you long after you have left the theater -- because of both what it achieves and what it does not.

There are funny bits strewn throughout Game 6, and it's good to see Keaton in a meaty, nonshowy role for a change. He has the chops when he's not mugging.

Miami Vice is the last of the predicted summer blockbusters, and it delivers a reasonable amount of popcorn excitement. But if nostalgia for the TV show is the source of your interest, expect some disappointment.

If Mussolini had a Monica Bellucci to inspire his troops, we might still be trying to take Palermo.

Though it happens two-thirds into the movie, when Lili is abandoned by the others in Greece without either luggage or money, Le Besco's vulnerability draws us into her predicament.

The movie still isn't great, but it's an important remonstration to that oldest of all studio-system curses: the producer who thinks he's more creative than the director.

Where good satire is drawn with a surgeon's scalpel, this comedy is done with a brush broad enough to paint - or, at least, hit - the side of a barn. But in the softer realm of parody, it has a good premise, a couple of funny performances and enough giggles for a reasonably good time at the movies.

I like the idea of a cybercrimes agent cracking cases through superior knowledge of the Internet. Marsh could be a great heroine for a continuing series. But Untraceable essentially forces its audience to identify with those who would be willing accomplices to torture and murder. To understate the point, that's not an audience-friendly approach.

A speculative re-enactment of the 1999 Columbine slaughter, told from the point of view of two suburban high school nihilists as they videotape themselves preparing for the last and "best day" of their lives.

It takes nearly an hour before Stephen J. Anderson's 3-D, animated comedy Meet the Robinsons begins to make sense, and when it does, the film literally takes off. But unless you're familiar with the children's book by William Joyce from which it's adapted, that first hour is a cluttered, noisy, nearly unendurable mess.

I'd never seen anything like it, and can say that I hope to never see anything like it again.

A harmlessly cheery confection.

Whether it's any good depends on your expectations.

Like Ceylan's earlier films, Climates is as gorgeous as it is self-consciously composed, but an hour and 40 minutes is a long time to spend with Isa, forget three seasons.

A potent drama.

It turned out that he (Duffy) had an ego like a giant ChiaPet. With a little money sprinkled over it, it grew out of control.

Meryl Streep narrates this global update on child-labor abuses with all the enthusiasm and alarm of someone reading "The Pet Goat" to a classroom of second-graders.

Without a persuasive ending, Zodiac is an exercise in frustration if not futility. But before it hits the inevitable wall, it does something better than most genre films even attempt: it perfectly depicts the obsession that often overtakes cops and reporters involved in high-profile crimes.

When you realize The Cooler is not a comedy but a dark and violent love story, it's hard to reconcile its premise with its mood. The saving graces are the performances of William H. Macy as Bernie and Maria Bello.

Though there are no Montys, full or otherwise, the finale will lift you up.

After dazzling us with its undersea discoveries, "Aliens" turns downright silly at the end, with a fantasy sequence set in a presumed ocean on Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter.

Barry, with a raspy Southern accent, gives a chilling portrait of a man who is absolutely sure he killed JFK. Whether he's a psychopath or a schizophrenic is not satisfactorily answered, but it's a fascinating question nonetheless.

Even without nudity, the sex scene between Meg and Auster is one of the most uncomfortable on film. Not just because of the actors' age difference (Strathairn is 54, Bruckner 17), but because of Meg's inexperience and misplaced trust.

Jovovich needed a steadying hand to keep her from flying out of her socks, and Pritikin, on his maiden solo as a director, couldn't or didn't have the heart to provide it.

The ethical issues driving Michael Hoffman's The Emperor's Club almost outweigh the improbable arc of its story, and Kevin Kline's endearing performance as a prep school classics teacher is almost worth the price of admission.

The performances are all solid, but Sheen, last seen as Tony Blair in "The Queen," is so good in his incredibly demanding role that he makes the natural discomfort people feel at seeing someone so debilitated disappear completely.

Personally, I'd rather have my brain invaded by flesh-eating beetles than listen to 10 seconds of the Sex Pistols -- Truth is, I've rarely had a worse time watching a good movie.

It's sort of like getting off the plane in a strange place without a guide. We can figure it out, but it takes some work, and the music is more of a distraction than an aid.

The film lacks a certain coherence, and Levi - one of Italy's most important postwar writers - is mostly relegated to an excuse for a sociopolitical travelogue.

The banter between these unlikely partners seems inspired by Quentin Tarantino's ingeniously insipid dialogue, delivered with indelible deadpan sincerity by John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson in "Pulp Fiction." Neither the dialogue nor the characters are as interesting here.

Though Jessica Sanders' rambling documentary about the damaged lives of wrongfully imprisoned men would have made a better subject for an hour-long "Dateline" special, it's still a powerful indictment of a judicial system too anxious to close cases, and then close ranks when someone tries to reopen them.

Some viewers will call the whole business pornography, though it doesn't really qualify. The sex is blunt and enthusiastic, but arousing it ain't. In fact, when Shortbus arrives on DVD, viewers may be fast-forwarding through the sex to get to the acting.

In the end, Weaver provides a moving and sensitive portrait of one person out of an estimated 400,000 in America with this mental disorder we are just beginning to understand.

The final image of the snow-covered landfill, having consumed the debris, provides a kind of closure for Sauret. But for the firemen, the nightmare continues.

That Williams occasionally comes close to the author's layered spirit is a tribute to his passion. But the film fails on a number of levels. First, it is what it is: the prologue to a story that covers four(!) decades.

It's not all bad. There is a funny early sequence where Prince Charming is being jeered for his lousy cabaret act in a village pub and a hilarious death-lily scene with the bullfrog King Harold (John Cleese) trying to squeak out the name of his heir while snapping up one last fly.

Paints itself into a corner from which it cannot escape. By the end, the movie is still in that corner, tossing out overlapping notes of hope and gloom and counting on viewers to write the ending they want. I'd leave the movie in the corner.

Shines an admiring light on some lawyers who endure low pay, terrible win-loss records and the occasional scorn of family, friends and the media for "defending the bad guys."

Julie Taymor says the idea for her Across the Universe was "to create an original musical using only the songs of the Beatles." That's like saying you're going to create a new element using only gold.

This is a midnight stoner movie if there ever was one.

If Lazarescu's experience is typical in the former Soviet bloc, democracy hasn't done much to humanize the bureaucracy.

He (Hogan) and the other backers of the movie are betting that Dundee has been gone long enough to make him seem fresh, or -- like that old uncle -- at least welcome.

Hoffman is a fine actor in a rut, working on a string of socially alienated characters who are variations on the same theme. That's too bad, because the story being told around his static presence is amazing.

Despite being abandoned in the late going by his director, Cheadle gives one of the year's most fully realized performances, and Henson is a revelation.

Uneven but fitfully entertaining.

Deeply disturbing, but dramatically realized, and the movie marks Burke as a young talent to watch.

Does an excellent job of telling Kerry's side of it.

I don't know if it was intentional, but Drake seems to come out of the same sandy hole in which our troops found the cowering Saddam Hussein.

Johnson combines the elements of classic 1940s film noir and "Rebel Without a Cause"-style teen angst in a movie that is as phony as it is ambitious. It's an A+ film school exercise with zero emotional or social impact.

Ultimately, it's the casting and the story that are too good to be true. If a newspaper's classified ad section could document a success like this one, there would never be a slump.

Missing beneath its fabulous surface, however, is anything like a beating heart.

The movie ends on exactly the right note, but it hits a lot of bad ones on the way.

Julie Taymor's beautifully stylized but nauseatingly violent adaptation of Shakespeare's first play.

In the end, Phantom needed more human and less digital scale. The magic of "Star Wars" lay in Lucas' ability to play the human comedy in a fantastic future. With Phantom, he has brought the series to the brink of total artificiality, the future as a video game.

It's no great thing, but in their (Weinstein brothers') heyday as Oscar campaigners, they could have made Redford a contender.

The voice performances are great, particularly those from LaBeouf and Bridges, who's in a "Big Lebowski" mood. But a moratorium on penguin movies may be in order.

The problem is that the movie spends as much time on the boring detective chasing Lucas as on the drug lord himself.

So far beyond Bollywood, I think it's set in the suburbs of L.A.

Vardy draws the moral conflicts in broad strokes, but as a portrait of a man torn between his faith and the urges of his liberated hormones, it has honest depth.

It could do without any kind of love story, let alone the one it got.

Draggy for long stretches, and never funny, Comedy of Power is a showcase - as if she needed another - for Huppert's chameleon qualities. She's an actress who can make a phone-book reading interesting, and that is pretty much the challenge she meets here.

Frears story's grotesque subject offers an opportunity for a sick audience payoff that is more "Death Wish" than social commentary, and he takes it. It works -- you'll laugh! you'll gulp! -- but it's cheap.

Treu and screenwriter Jessica Barondes may not have their ears to the ground that's trod by real kids, but as they did with their previous film, "Wish Upon a Star," they're allowed to dream.

Some of it is brilliant, some is tedious and some is just plain incoherent.

Rather than heightening our sense of empathy, we become numbed by the repetition.

There are two reasons to see - and hear - Agnieszka Holland's Copying Beethoven. One is Ed Harris' performance as the nearly deaf and totally egocentric Ludwig van; the other is a cherry-picked 10-minute chunk of the composer's soaring Ninth Symphony.

All trash, all all the time, a run-on burlesque of lust.

Alche has an amazingly expressive face and becomes such a magnetic presence that you'll feel a distinct need to rescue her.

Ultimately, The Four Feathers is strong where its predecessors were weak (in the authenticity of combat) and weak where they were strong (in the larger-than-life quality of the characters). It's not a good exchange.

There are certainly glimpses of his underused talent. But there aren't enough of those moments to elevate Croupier above the level of routine melodrama.

An unabashed celebration of her (Amalia) distinctive voice.

In any case, the movie moves only when she's (Richardson) in the center of it, and her complex performance as a woman balancing her dignity with her survival instincts is one of the year's very best.

Dumb fun is the best way to describe The Independent, and I mean that as a compliment.

A popcorn movie with a protein center, satisfying neither taste.

You watch with amazement their physical movements, how closely their lips match their overly precise, prerecorded dialogue, yet they're not human enough to get us past the stunt factor and lost in the drama.

There's no question she's a smart cookie, but as she herself says, "There's a thin line between smart and crazy."

By turns brilliant and tedious, imaginative and mundane.

More amiably mindless summer distraction than just about anything Hollywood has to offer this season.

There’s no questioning the sincerity of the filmmakers or the urgency of the subject matter, but the clumsiness with which this harrowing story of a child soldier in Africa may wear you out long before the puzzle is put together.

The movie crams in so many of the events and characters of Thack­eray's 900-page novel that the story often seems to be moving on fast-forward, pausing here and there to introduce a character, then skipping ahead — from London to the country to Brussels and on, eventually, to India.

Treats the poets not as creative equals but as a groundbreaking genius and a jealous, vindictive hack. Wordsworth is Salieri to Coleridge's Mozart.

Among the unforgettable images is that of artificial limbs floating to earth on parachutes, while below, one-legged men on crutches race each other to the prizes.

If you care more about the quality of the movie than the food, language or location, there's no choice: Order Chinese.

Plays like a long TV sketch, but with an array of characters, themes, subplots and situations just clever enough to keep it moving, and to give cover to its underlying cynicism.

There is really nothing wrong with Peter Chelsom's Town & Country that younger stars would not have solved.

It's galling to see such a low-life canonized in a film, but it's also riveting drama.

Commits the sin of a hundred sports biographies in overselling its inherent drama.

The movie is full of freshman mistakes, but Maggie Gyllenhaal's performance in the title role is the gutsiest thing she's done since her breakout in "Secretary," and she succeeds despite serious contradictions in the writing of her character.

Passingly enjoyable summer fluff, but if you can find a more genial, less edgy caper movie, you might want to own it as a pet.

If you get through the first hour without slitting your throat, the cautiously optimistic last third offers some intriguing options.

The movie adds up to one of the smartest and most ambitious political thrillers in years. But if you find a more difficult movie to follow this year, it will be in Mandarin without subtitles.

Apocalypto exists solely as an action-adventure and a deft cinematic demonstration of man's capacity for cruelty. This is the true passion of Mel.

Rai's acting is frustratingly passive in Provoked, and the script is laced with prison and courtroom cliches. But the movie gets most of the facts straight and the flashbacks to the wife's abuse are harrowing.

Turturro's Luzhin is a cinematic soulmate of Dustin Hoffman's Rain Man and Geoffrey Rush's David Helfgott.

A perversely dark romantic comedy shot and edited in the contemporary fairy-tale style of Jean-Pierre Jeunet's "Amélie." But this one has a dagger for a heart.

In any case, this is the image of the marquis we would know had he been handled by a top publicity team.

The dialogue often sounds like arch Mamet, and John Swanbeck's direction is as spare as the hotel-room decor.

Moore is as gutsy an actress as there is today, and I'm not sure I've seen a star as dressed down for a psychological unpeeling since Jessica Lange in "Frances," in 1982, or farther back, Olivia de Havilland in 1948's "The Snake Pit." It's strong stuff.

The story, which was inspired by an Albanian novel and the Greek tragedies of Aeschylus, ends with a literary patness. But it's still a potent tale of fraternal love and the loss of innocence.

A curious entry in the current wave of raunchy youth comedies. It's refreshingly free of scatological humor, but even while aiming higher, it can't raise its focus above the belt.

With any sitcom, the freshness is ultimately in the writing, and I think the jokes are better here than in Analyze This, and the actors are more comfortable together. I don't know if De Niro is softening or has lost his edge, but he now seems content mocking himself.

Unrelentingly bleak, the movie is nonetheless a riveting drama with some outstanding performances.

A slicker, faster-paced, high-tech upgrade that lifts the sprightly spirit and the main action set piece from the original while developing its own twists and a new ending that, though a bit too pat and eager to please, is a vast improvement.

The saga might have worked better as a novel, where we could cast the characters with our imaginations, and keep them straight.

Once again, the director's eye is faultless as he captures both the essence and beauty of the art of Jang Seung-up, Korea's legendary 19th-century painter. But he doesn't capture the artist's soul.

It's frightening because it's so effective in fomenting fear and because it's so easy to recruit bombers among repressed and hopeless societies.

Some of the banter is fun, like Randal's debate with Elias over the relative merits of "Star Wars" vs. "The Lord of the Rings." But most is just trash-talk as shoptalk.

The result is a handsome, action-packed biographical drama with a credibility gap wider than the screen.

The skiers' explanations, on the order of "no risk, no adventure," won't wash with people born without the daredevil gene and watching them fly down these vertical blankets of snow, often out of control, is a little like watching a train wreck

Levin learned nothing that should surprise anyone who is both sentient and sane. But in tracing much of this contemporary anti-Semitism to a phony 19th-century document in which Jewish leaders lay out plans for taking over the world, we at least get some understanding of how some twisted people justify their hatred and fear of Jews.

Polley, the paraplegic incest victim in Atom Egoyan's "The Sweet Hereafter," gives a mesmerizing central performance.

The result of Moskowitz's sleuthing is Stone Reader, a combination mystery, book celebration and -- sorry to say -- intrusively annoying self-portrait of the filmmaker.

Intermittently funny.

Berg has an excellent eye for violent extravaganza and the action - especially a 10-15 minute set piece midway through - is as cleansing as a high colonic.

Miller's film shows how quickly Americans facing perceived foreign threats are willing to ignore basic liberties. Sound familiar?

There's solid chemistry between Cruise and the stunning Newton, a superb actress previously restricted to such ethnic roles as Sally Hemings in "Jefferson in Paris" and the title role in "Beloved."

Most of the film is so purposefully bound by its construct that it feels more like a creative-writing project (sure, give it an A) than a movie (B-).

This is an eye-opening story that doesn't quite hold together as a movie, but it deals with honor in men's lives in ways rare to mainstream film.

First-time feature director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo's dark, complex allegory about luck, chance and fate is one of the year's most morbidly fascinating foreign films.

But for what is at heart a thriller, Code 46 lacks both energy and tension.

A safety-first, tried-and-true inspirational story that stays the course right down to its "It's a Wonderful Life" ending.

A series of unfortunate events occurred during the making of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events and they all had to do with Jim Carrey.

Maybe Miss Potter will be best appreciated on video when you will intuitively know when to turn it off. On the other hand, Potter's pastel illustrations, which often come to life to her and to the camera's eye, deserve the larger canvas. Tough call.

Gilliam's first fully equipped playpen and if he musses it up -- I mean, really musses it up --well, prodigies will be prodigies.

Feels less like history than a bad episode of "Mission: Impossible."

Anything, Steven, anything would be better than making us watch the same movie again.

Gerstel's efforts are a testament to her own humanity and a ray of inspiration for some ultimate peace. But it also speaks to the near futility of individual forgiveness in a continuing tinderbox of hatred.

As delicious as this premise is, Cats & Dogs is about as funny as a hairball left on your pillow.

Penn is projecting heroic qualities onto a young guy who simply got in over his head.

The film makers are so anxious to please their audience that they turn the last act into a preposterous cat-and-mouse game that nullifies the integrity of the story.

Inexplicable human bondage is a literary staple of film as well as literature, but Kurys ("Entre Nous"), usually so sure-handed with her actors, has trouble making this bond compelling.

There's no avoiding the fact that it's a one-joke movie, 86 minutes in the telling, and without any serious social underpinnings, it grows old pretty fast.

The film's asset, in a walk, is Bening, whose comic timing puts Shandling to shame.

Much of this is pretty funny, in its perverse, disorienting style, and there's an irrepressible sunniness to the relationship between Lola and Hlynur's mother.

The veteran Cranham and young Bill play their incompatible characters with dead-pan aplomb, and Derek Jacobi adds heft as Churchill's chief intelligence officer.

A movie with better parts than a whole. But where it's right, it's really right.

It's beautiful to look at, and marvelously edited, but it's hard to know exactly what he's getting at. [28 May 1999]

A sports movie for people who may not care about sports but can't resist a heart-tugging underdog story.

The performances by Smith, Brewster and veteran David Morse, as a morbidly depressed widower, elevate Nearing Grace to something near grace.

It's certainly not scary; it's not even suspenseful. The tension in Hannibal is purely sexual.

Not a great movie, but it certainly does justice to the great historical event it dramatizes.

The play's most acclaimed performance - rotund Richard Griffiths as the closeted teacher Hector - is great in the movie, too.

Might be thought of as "Memento" for people who didn't get "Memento."

A near-saving grace is Christopher Walken, perfectly cast as the creepy store clerk who gives Michael the magic remote, then follows him through life like a gleefully incompetent guardian angel.

The framing sequences with Downey and the climactic scenes between father and son are a mess. Downey, at 41, is too old to be playing a character who can be no more than 31 or 32, and 50-year-old Eric Roberts is an even greater distraction as Montiel's imprisoned friend Antonio.

You won't find many insights into the personalities, or even a hint of the demons that plagued Garcia until his death, but seeing the two men together -- keeps a smile on your face and your feet tapping throughout.

If it's not one of the five best of 1999, it's a personal best for Weaver, and that's pretty good.

Not quite as funny as it wants to be. Mostly, it's just silly. But as always, the Coens are entertaining themselves first.and their quirky individuality has served them and their fans well so far.

At one point, Junge complains that her memories are banal, and they are -- But when sounds of war penetrate the bunker and the end is near, the details become high drama.

Ultimately, it's too much information coming too fast.

Ozpetek moves things along at a snail's pace and lays the sentiment down thickly. But it's a potent tale, wonderfully acted by Mezzogiorno and Massimo Girotti as the old man.

May have more enthusiasm and attitude than good story sense, but it, too, is the work of someone who might be at this game for a long time.

Beautifully assembled and edited by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato ("The Eyes of Tammy Faye") and is often very funny.

There are jolts galore in a movie stuffed with the basic tricks of the evil-spirit trade - banging noises in the attic, slamming doors and windows, spinning clocks, shaking beds, rabid beasts, disappearing children and the occasional moment of eyeball-rolling possession.

Less a complete story than a work-in-progress.

Whether you're charmed or bored by the movie depends entirely on your feelings for Amelie, a young woman whose hyper-quirky personality both takes some getting used to and grows old fast.

Writer, director and star Anthony Hopkins releases his inner muse with Slipstream, and guess who shows up - David Lynch!

A missed opportunity to shed light on one of America's most turbulent times.

Carell and Freeman are great together and Wanda Sykes' acerbic humor is perfect for her role as Evan's perplexed assistant.

A fragmented, episodic feel and a conclusion that seems both remote and remote-controlled.

I wanted more. I expected more. The filmmakers said it was going to be smart - really smart - like all of Lee's movies. Instead, it's big, dumb and fun.

The Brighton Beach crowds come off more like tourists, and the Odessans in Israel can't seem to decide which is their real homeland. And it's all very confusing.

The whole movie is something of a country-music clich, and it takes all of your imagination to be as enthusiastic about the characters' singing as they are. But The Thing Called Love is worth a look on the big screen. [16 July 1999]

The movie has an ironic and unpredictable ending, but it doesn't wash away the sour taste of Brad's behavior.

Paltrow does this role exceptionally well, but it is underwritten.

An unusually shallow and facile work for Brooks, but the writing and the performances - other than Leoni's - keep us at least halfway involved.

What Haggis obviously wants to explore is what the war in Iraq is doing to the humanity of our soldiers there. By approaching it indirectly, he simplifies it to a degree that I expect will anger many Iraq veterans.

Meadows is very good with the boys' relationship, and achieves his and Fraser's central goal of showing how childhood bonds can be simultaneously fragile and strong.

The good news here is that Woolley and his writers have taken the mystery surrounding Jones' tragic 1969 death as their main interest, and have adopted as fact the long-cherished rumor that the blond rocker's drowning was a case of murder. It may be speculative history, but at least it's a story.

Though it is not nearly as funny as last summer's "Wedding Crashers," directing brothers Joe and Anthony Russo's You, Me and Dupree has plenty of chuckles and another sparkling, post-adolescent surfer-dude performance from Owen Wilson.

A light-footed comedy that suggests that for even the most desperate, love is just around the corner.

A meticulous, elaborate stunt, a movie two degrees of separation from its source, and maybe another degree from viewers' hearts.

Like Wong's past films, 2046 is lovely to behold, elegantly moody and rich in atmospherics. And the women caught in Chow's web are extraordinary beauties.