Jack Mathews

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.

One of the curmudgeonly director's sweetest films, and features one of Richard Gere's most affecting performances.

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

The first of three planned remakes of Dutch films by the late Theo van Gogh, Steve Buscemi's Interview takes the most unnatural act in human intercourse - the celebrity interview - and makes an explosively funny two-character psychodrama out of it.

The hand-held camera work gives the film an effective documentary pulse, but it adds up to only half a movie.

Has the schematic feel of a disease-of-the-week TV movie, but the connections made between jazz and the minds that produce it turns the film into something much more intimate and compelling.

The movie doesn't remind me so much of the movies of Minnelli or Sirk as it does a lavish parody of "Upstairs, Downstairs," with musical interludes (the divas sing, whether they can or not) that are often as painful to watch as they are audaciously performed.

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.

The playfulness evident in the hundreds of bondage photos that made a pious young Tennessee model semi-famous in the 1950s and an 82-year-old legend today is also the driving force of Mary Harron's superb The Notorious Bettie Page.

An improvement over "Jackpot," but not much. The best thing about it is Nolte, playing the grizzled priest as an angel in his own right. Everyone else- - save the young boy playing the orphan -- seems to be in on a joke we just don't get.

The actresses create wonderfully rich characters, and Luis Callejo, as Caye's unknowing boyfriend Manuel, and Antonio Durán, as the sadistic civil servant, fill out the very strong cast.

From the moment we meet Abby, whimsically soothing her callers, we're turned into lap dogs, ready to follow her -- ready to follow Garofalo -- anywhere.

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.

You may have to go back to 1973's "Paper Moon" and the father/daughter work of Ryan O'Neal and 10-year-old Tatum for equal excellence in nepotism.

A metaphysical shaggy-dog story, whose unpredictable punchline is its only redeeming feature.

The laugh ratio in this run-on of skits is pretty low, at least to the unaltered mind of one who's seen enough of these films and eaten enough White Castle burgers to last a lifetime.

Wenham and Porter are appealing actors, and Teplitzky's depiction of their coupling has an unflinching realism.

A fascinating movie that, if you are able to make the leap it asks of you at about the three-quarter mark, will give you something to think and talk about for days. One thing is certain: It isn't predictable.

A black comedy that some viewers may take as an assault. The disconnect between the realism of its violence and the near-slapstick tone of some of its comedy is too much to be framed within one movie.

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

Dahl found the right actors for every part - Bill Pullman as the cynical Realtor hired to look after Frank, Luke Wilson as the gay AA member assigned as Frank's sponsor, and the always amusing Dennis Farina as Irish mobster Edward O'Leary.

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.

Manhattan has always been a fat target for apocalypse filmmakers, but with its 9/11-inspired imagery, Matt Reeves' breathlessly fast-paced Cloverfield is going to resonate with New York audiences in a way no other horror film has.

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.

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

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.

Has many of the qualities that made the actor such a great target for self-parody in Spike Jonze's "Being John Malkovich" - it's sober, deliberate, self-consciously mysterious and no fun at all.

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

The movie, shot digitally, begins as a not very compelling or particularly convincing road movie, and turns into a riveting prison drama.

While there is nothing particularly new in the film, it is a stirring celebration of a man of enormous talent, humor and humanity, laid waste by an assassin in New York in 1980.

A charming trifle, beautifully filmed in a Currier & Ives setting, with buttery-smooth performances from Binoche and Depp, and enough good tidings in its nougat center to get you through the holidays.

The casting of Ferrell and Heder turns out to be inspired. The direction, by a pair of NYU grads who've only made TV commercials and two short films, is pitch-perfect. And - miraculously - the skating sequences are passably realistic.

A stinker of epic proportions.

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

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.

Blood Diamond is, in the vernacular of Old Hollywood, a rip-roaring adventure, the kind made in the '30s with Clark Gable and the handiest leading lady on contract at MGM.

Good, indecent fun starring two of the most amiable comedy actors around.

There isn't a flicker of chemistry between these old pros in Andre Techine's peculiar melodrama.

I say bring 'em on, if the stories can be told as well, as convincingly and as inspirationally as Richard LaGravenese's Freedom Writers, an educational fantasy that happens to be mostly true.

It's not as clever, or as consistently funny, or as well-cast as "Shakespeare in Love," but Richard Eyre's Stage Beauty is the most fun I've had with the Bard since that 1998 Oscar winner.

A relatively straightforward portrait of Holmes, using interviews with family members, friends, wives, X-film producers and his former co-stars.

I've laughed harder during a single "Road Runner" cartoon than I did throughout Back in Action.

Connelly's better-than-routine potboiler has a high-concept premise built for the movies, and it's the first of the former L.A. Times reporter's 11 crime novels to make the journey from bookshelf to big screen.

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.

Dispiriting, unsubtle and unpleasant.

Like a lost recording by the Beatles, Sylvester Stallone's Rambo arrives with its feet planted firmly in the past, a reminder of a time when Stallone, Chuck Norris and other wooden soldiers of the big screen filled multiplexes with the floor-shaking thunder of trivialized war.

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.

A fascinating story.

A strange creature, a narcissistic mock documentary.

Maybe you have to have experienced one of these anti-weather urban cocoons to appreciate the concept of the film, and the prickly people who populate it.

Far from the smart historical epic some might have expected, is just another feisty summer shoot-'em-up.

This kind of parody is hard to sustain for an hour and a half, and "Walk Hard" does gets wearying at times. But the humor is so outrageous, the original music so much fun and Reilly so good - both while hamming it up in the role and in singing the songs - that it's irresistible.

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

On stage, the attractive 34-year-old Silverman is very funny. She's too blue for Comedy Central, and too slow-paced for an HBO hour, but she'd come off better in either of those formats than she does in this mishmash.

Most of the film is way too goofy for all but the most thumbstruck Hitchhiker.

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."

A small gem in the postholiday depression.

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

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."

The result is a gorgeous, third-person version of an extended family-vacation movie that the Piersons, their friends and their former Fijian neighbors can enjoy for years to come.

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

It takes a while to get used to the film's campy characters and its broad, "Ace Ventura" stylings. But Ferrell is the anti-Jim Carrey -- his deadpan comic mannerisms are infectiously funny, and his cluelessly narcissistic Burgundy is a joy to follow.

The documentary fascinates not only because of its subject matter but because the three people - whose backgrounds are individually developed - are so likable.

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

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

Undertow becomes unbearably imitative and predictable. It's a kids-in-peril B horror movie in the guise of an art film.

Dunst makes Davies the most confident and interesting person aboard the Oneida and makes this voyage almost, but not quite, worth taking.

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.

This is the biggest lowdown, rotten, disgusting, depraved sideshow in the megaplex. Check your brains, your taste and your self-respect right over there with the bearded ticket taker.

Berry gives a riveting performance, but as a deeply decent man trapped in a hell of his own making, Del Toro gives the kind of career performance Berry gave in "Monster's Ball."

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.

A riveting story.

As tawdry as this may seem, Bertolucci is not trying to one-up himself. He was 27 when the student riots occurred and very much a participant in a revolution that was both complex in its implications and naive in much of the behavior. He has caught that perfectly

That final night of competition is exciting stuff, capped by a heroic victory ride, but this is otherwise a plodding feature about decent young people in a rough-and-tumble sport that makes you wonder how many IQ points they have being bucked around inside their heads.

With each succeeding picture, Linklater seemed to grow as a filmmaker, just as his characters became more defined and developed. But with his fourth picture, subUrbia, he takes two giant steps backward.

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.

Energetic, provocative.

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

A bad Altman impression of the L.A. rock scene.

The performances are first-rate, with the always inventive Macy a standout as the hopeful, tormented Chappy, and Zahn a scream as the lovably imbecilic Wayne.

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

A raunchy, irreverent, generally hilarious sendup of ritual and papal decree.

It's described as a black comedy, but you can forget the comedy part. There wasn't so much as a snicker at the screening I attended, though I may have heard a snore or two.

Its characters are as entertainingly quirky as any he's given us before, and his familiar themes -- strangers in a strange land, lives reformed by chance encounters -- are played out with much higher stakes and with greater purpose.

These are three characters in search of a moral pulse.

Danes' smart, fun, radiant and very attractive Mirabelle actually undermines the premise of the book

The movie belongs to Luke, who brings the heroic Chamusso to life as richly as Forest Whitaker does the evil Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in "The Last King of Scotland."

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.

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

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

But there were few, if any, better performances in 2000 than the one Blanchett gives here, and Raimi's crafty blend of dramatic realism and supernatural knowledge is one of the year's best directing con jobs.

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

Theirs is an affair not worth remembering.

Just as surely as the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, this domestic comedy follows a direct path through every crisis, every resolution and every sentimental heartbeat laid out in the script.

This is an entertaining Western with some earnest ideas about forgiveness, redemption and the loss of innocents.

Fascinating and often very funny behind-the-scenes look at the tedium and hard work that go into making strangers laugh.

Its sprawling canvas is mere backdrop for the most intimate of character studies -- a portrait of a man who chose material wealth and found emotional ruin.

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.

CSA is a sophomoric film essay that would have barely rated a passing grade from a tougher teacher.

Cats Don’t Dance treads this territory with a whimsy that will be over the heads of young kids and too unimaginative for adults.

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

As an answer to the spreading cultural virus of evangelical conformity, Brian Dannelly's teen farce Saved! is about three teeth short of a full bite. But it leaves an indelible impression.

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.

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.

Herzog, who deadpans his way through the high jinks, is the best thing about the movie, but even he gets wearisome before Nessie has sunk the boat.

A two-hour, one-joke comedy that never gets old, Stuck on You is the most mature, consistently funny and satisfyingly sweet movie in the rollicking careers of brother filmmakers Bobby and Peter Farrelly.

One of the more uplifting films of the season.

A tale of love, desperation and conspiratorial madness, comes off on the big screen as a wacky psychological snow job.

Though we had just heard the name Lee Harvey Oswald, I believed he had done it alone. I still do, even more so after watching Robert Stone's meticulously researched, seemingly unbiased summary of the killing and the major conspiracy theories.

Among the funniest and most satisfying films I've seen in years.

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

If there's anything more tiresome in film today than hip irony, it is forced irony, and here comes a boatload with Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou.

Ultimately about the indomitability of faith, and the Christian symbolism is laid on thick. But the story, adapted from a famous behind-the-Iron-Curtain novel, sheds light on a subject few people have known about.

Though there is enough haute couture on display for a season of "Sex and the City" envy, it has definite off-the-rack appeal to regular moviegoers. In fact, it may be the one film this year where you'll see Manolo Blahniks and Doc Martens on women sitting in the same row.

Its story, characters, dialogue, humor and voice performances are first-rate.

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.

Private, Italian director Saverio Costanzo's stunning human drama, would seem like something out of Kafka if it weren't based on real events and a relatively common fact of contemporary Palestinian life.

It's a sensation - both a milestone in computer-animation and a likely Christmas classic.

From the beginning, Edmond is too self-absorbed for us to care much about his fate, but like the proverbial train wreck, you can't tear your eyes - or your ears - away from the spectacle.

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.

The incredibly moving post-9/11 drama Reign Over Me proves that behind the funny guy facades of former standup comedians Mike Binder and Adam Sandler are a pair of very serious talents.

Offering often-hysterical testimony to Vilanch's talent.

What they say, mostly over black-and-white stills from his early career and meandering footage of desolate Mali, could be said in 10 minutes. The good news is that much of the remaining documentary is devoted to Kar Kar's elegant voice and exquisite guitar playing.

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

Parents, who are more apt to be bored by the simple story line, are going to be amazed nevertheless by the smooth, convincing animation that lends Stuart his lifelike physicality and expressive facial gestures.

Mostly, though, Hayek's problem is one of physical miscasting. She's so tiny next to the tall, rotund Molina that she looks like child in their scenes together. And despite a fake caterpillar brow, she's just not believable as a woman bemoaning her disfigurements.

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

An underdevelopment of a bad idea that is entertaining, so far as it is, because of McDormand's totally unselfconscious performance. This wonderful actress is never less than interesting, and even as a caricature of a stereotype, she's fun to watch.

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.

The movie is filled with sweetly funny moments, but its exposure of class, income and cultural differences makes it an uneasy charmer right up to its violent denouement.

Offers a chillingly effective look at the ease with which a suicide bomber could wreak havoc on U.S. soil - specifically in Times Square.

The second half, picking up 10 years after Eddie was institutionalized, is pure screwball comedy. It's as if Cassavetes had written the first half for himself to direct, and the second for Carl Reiner. [29 Aug 1997, p.F10]

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

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.

I didn't feel the love between the flowering idealist and the ruthless killer. If I did, I would have given the movie four stars. Everything else is wonderful.

The movie includes a postscript about her (McKinney's) loss, blaming it on more dirty tricks. That may be true, but it doesn't put the steam back in the film.

Bale gives a near-great performance as a man with all the symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia and the film weaves an ingenious psychological web.

Given the grim events, the buoyantly goofy An Amazing Couple has the effect of laughing gas pumped through the vents in a funeral hall.

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

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.

More than the sum of its parts.

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.

You have to look at the earlier film to understand where the Coen brothers went wrong - terribly, noisily, annoyingly wrong. They've made a broad comedy out of a black comedy and completely lost its charm in the process.

Greenwald has created a crisp historical document that is worth your time, even if the information in it was not worth the President's.

If you want an hour or so of terror, put your faith in Them.

There's an inherent distance between movies and their audiences that -- combined with the distance between 9/11 and today's opening of the film -- The Guys can't bridge.

Father Amaro comes off as another pedophile in a frock. You'd have to hose this guy down if he were driving a school bus.

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.

Written to skewer the upper class of its time, the script is now just a broad joke-fest, clever lines batted back and forth like badminton shuttlecocks.

Redford has rarely done this kind of intimate drama, effectively a two-character play on the mountain, and he's very convincing. As is Dafoe.

A weak documentary. There's very little here to demonstrate the personality and leadership qualities that made Massoud both a legend and a martyr. Raw, sloppily edited, unfocused and without any sense of scale, it's personal journalism with its heart in the right place, and that's about it.

The script (written by Susan Minot from a story by Bertolucci) suffers from the same tired blood as his characters, and his direction is often ponderously self-conscious.

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.

A mostly accomplished first film, with precise comic timing and some hilarious moments.

A bungled mess that spends an hour creating two characters whose lives are about as believable as a successful ambush set by Wile E. Coyote for the Roadrunner.

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.

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.

Vampire movies aren't what they used to be. How about a little mist, some shadows, some pale gray faces set off by stark red lips? Maestro, a little Transylvanian mood music, if you please.

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.

A potent drama.

If I were in the sign business, I'd produce a bumper sticker that reads "Even smart people make dumb movies" -- and give the first one to David Mamet.

It is a sign of the times that audiences will watch these equally selfish lovers and find one infinitely more sensible than the other.

I quibble over a film that has none of the artistic pretensions of "The Silence of the Lambs." This is more of a greatest-hits Hannibal movie, with a thunderingly portentous soundtrack, lots of mugging and autopsy detail, and a bang-up double ending.

This is good clean fun, with or without the soap, and one of the most spirited entries of the season.

Chinese director Zhang Yimou has made some of the most beautiful movies of the last 20 years, and with his latest, Curse of the Golden Flower, he has also made one of the most deliciously nutty.

Whether it's any good depends on your expectations.

The screenplay is laced with wit and sharp dialogue, and the supporting cast more than makes up for Johnson's inexperience and occasional stiffness.

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

With nifty new villains, a revived Green Goblin, plus $300 million worth of aerial special effects, Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 3 is definitely good to go.

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."

Powerful theater.

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.

The story is fascinating for its simplicity and its inherent truths about the downside of progress.

Lurie has made an impressive contribution to the bulging library of political film, and he has showcased some performances sure to get Oscar consideration.

The subtitle of this interview/documentary about the late, great French photojournalist should be "For Collectors Only." There is no theme, no point, no history, no illuminating insights - it's just Bresson talking about his individual photos and early sketches.

It takes chutzpah to title this movie Déjà Vu; every scene in it rings a bell. Certainly, I had just seen the same affable-righteous performance from Washington in Spike Lee's "Inside Man."

If "The Godfather" movies were based on real gangsters and some of them were still around to talk about the good old days, they might be as fascinating as the characters in Billy Corben's documentary about the cocaine import business in 1970s Miami.

A film of epically hollow sentimentality, a movie that tells you how to feel every step of the way and ends on a symphony of false notes. The moment when we learn what Mr. Holland's Opus really means makes the ending of It's a Wonderful Life look like an exercise in restraint.

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.

The scourge of the 20th century has become a sage and hero to a new generation of haters.

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.

Shyamalan has learned from his idol (Spielberg) how to manipulate audience emotion through the intimacy of an ordinary family that is "contacted." But he is even more shameless about it.

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.

As pulp entertainment, Confidence is great fun and Foley's first good movie since the very different "Glengarry Glen Ross."

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.

If you're in the mood for a horror movie, this ought to do you.

Images wash over you like wind-blown rain, fierce and beautiful at the same time, largely shaped into themes by the haunting music of Philip Glass, who is here joined by cellist Yo-Yo Ma.

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.

Queen Latifah, as the proprietor of the ­lady's salon next door to Calvin's, brightens things up in the brief appearances that serve as symbiotic promotion for the producers' coming spin-off movie, "Beauty­ Shop."

Besides repeating his premise that only fools fall in love and deserve whatever circle of hell they enter for it, he seems to really believe that morality has no place in art. Certainly, he's keeping it out of his.

Heights is stage-bound throughout, and the secrets it would like to keep are very predictable. But its heart is in the right place, and the performances are first-rate.

Miller takes Chekhov's themes and checks them off, but he never gets under his egocentric characters' thin skins.

As a premise, this is thinner than a strand of cotton candy, but fairy tales have been hung from less, and what keeps this one together is the surprisingly easy chemistry between Grant and Barrymore.

Makes you appreciate opera, or NoDoz.

While "Cars" may have the most elaborate CGI effects of the season, and "Monster House?" the most original character (the house), The Ant Bully can lay claim to the most entertaining story and most rewarding ending.

Frankly, after watching writer-director Timur Bekmambetov's grim fantasy - the first leg of a trilogy adapted from the sci-fi novels of Sergei Lukyanenko - I'm still a little confused.

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

If you're at all curious about what it feels like to be inside a race car going 200 miles per hour at Daytona International Speedway, I don't think there's a better, quicker or safer way to find out than Simon Wincer's documentary.

As an allegory of religious conflict, the '73 film is brilliantly constructed and ends with a punctuation mark that was shocking in its day. LaBute's movie attempts to shock, as well, and does: Given the names involved and the casting of Cage, it is shockingly bad.

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

Smith turns it on with co-star Eva Mendes in a manner that will have George Clooney taking notes.

The actress' [Julianne Moore's] goodwill, alone, holds this schizophrenic story together - if just barely.

The brutally ironic ending, I might add, won't make anybody very happy about having chosen The Mist for their evening's entertainment.

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.

Rush has never played anyone this starkly unsympathetic, and he proves to be very good at playing very bad.

Surely among the darkest-themed movies ever made.

Eric Steel's documentary has more than a whiff of exploitation about it.

Hilariously funny, full of fang-popping scares, and guaranteed to increase travel by train.

The fourth documentary screed this summer to have grown out of the left's frustration with the nation's turn to the right. Keep 'em coming, I say.

Filmmaker Steve Anderson stuffs an astonishing 800-plus mentions of the F-word into this 90-minute documentary. When the spectacle ends, the same question lingers: Why?

If you can watch it without weeping over your own predicament, you'll see some serious talent bursting out.

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.

The unlikely cowboys play off each other's strengths like the best doubles team in tennis. The exquisiteness of this match is that Chan and Wilson are both reactive comedy actors.

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

The occasionally amusing, generally fatuous romantic comedy about a dazzling divorcee, a smitten Jewish boy and a controlling Jewish mom who also happens to be the divorcee's psychotherapist, is a high-concept movie with a Yiddish accent.

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

A sad, almost morbid -- and cinematically inert -- eulogy to a complex man whose own genius was dampened by arrogance and politics.

The greatest strength of this modest production is Jones. ZigZag's autism is mild, meaning his symptoms are subtle, and the 19-year-old novice is completely convincing.

Yukol has spread a huge canvas, gloriously costumed and photographed, but the staging and acting are often awkward and the saga is simply too dense for good drama.

It doesn't strike a single note of authentic emotion.

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

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.

Offers nothing new to the long tradition of boxing films. But Hill's reverence for the classic form and the stone-cold performances of Rhames and Snipes propel the whole thing forward with a prefight buildup that's more fun -- and probably more honest -- than the awkward attempts at macho showmanship we get from real fighters these days.

The successful bits, along with an amiable cast of losers and their prom-night prey, make American Pie a winner.

As movie fiction, I guess it is entertaining enough.

It's as if two-thirds of the book have been reduced to one-word chapter headings.

Winslet and Keitel are brilliant as cult member & deprogrammer.

I hated it, but I grant that it does tap into a vein of technological horror - the fear of the VCR! - that will have young videophiles chatting it up for weeks

More than a bad movie, it's an anti-movie.

That's what Bond is all about -- dazzle, some really bad puns and the kind of sexy fun that satisfies high-school urges while masquerading in tux and tails.

Refreshingly nondogmatic.

The film should have the edgy wit of "Election" here, but instead is played so straight it's hard to make the shift when things start getting really crazy. But stick with it and you'll be rewarded with a new kind of superhero and a couple of the ghastliest, most outrageous penis jokes ever imagined.

But the film has a poetic pulse, its ups and downs accompanied by some smartly chosen pop songs, a seductive original score and McKidd's husky voice-over narration.

The themes are about the power and consequences of sex, but the stories are too glib and episodic to leave any impression.

This is ensemble work at its best.

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.

Looks stunning, but it's an ill-conceived mess that plays like two movies awkwardly spliced together. In one movie, parents are asked to stand by while the kids are entertained with cute animal tricks and slapstick pratfalls. In the other, the kids will be hushed while the parents are treated to inside jokes.

Essentially conversations, confrontations, and an extremely pat -- and very verbal -- reconciliation.

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

Amen is propelled by a most dubious assumption -- Gerstein's belief that if the German people knew of the Holocaust, they'd stop it.

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

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

Showing the movie would be a great way to open a debate. I would love to hear its charges answered as clearly as they're stated.

It's an interesting profile in self-destruction until the script becomes unhinged itself and has Laura doing things that are not so much outrageous as hilariously stupid.

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

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

The jokes are so sketchy and silly it quickly passes the point of wretched excess.

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.

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

Greenebaum's tedious, film-school level exercise in self-indulgence and exploitation.

The stories are eye-opening and heartwarming at the same time, but you'll be moved less by empathy for the characters than by the summoning of your own emotional memories. This movie is personal.

Director Emmanuelle Bercot's film offers a fascinating account of how a vulnerable star might mistake fan worship for something real.

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.

Creates a hellishly evil portrait of a police department in which every white cop is either a racist thug or an enabler, and every black cop a disgusted observer or crusading hero.

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.

The film is lovely to look at, but makes not a lick of sense.

An unabashed celebration of her (Amalia) distinctive voice.

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

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.

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.

Though the film, adapted from a novel by Robert O'Connor, is obviously trying to reference "Catch-22," it is far too dark and violent to be funny.

This is a crazy, gorgeous, disturbing, darkly comic horror story about an early-18th-century Frenchman born in a Paris fish market without any odor of his own but with a sense of smell that would make a pack of bloodhounds wail with envy.

It's the banal romantic triangle that inspired Sverak ("Kolya"), who obviously didn't see "Pearl Harbor" in time to stop himself.

For the initiated, the third time's a charm. For everyone else, it's just a scream.

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.

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.

The result is an angry, violent mess of a movie with a central character threatening to implode right on the screen.

Fresh and often very funny, and it makes its point that when our native urges conflict with social norms, the former shall give in to the latter, or else.

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

This plodding British revenge thriller has less energy than a pint of Bass that has sat out overnight.

A tormented dramatization of the exact same events, and it's as bad as the earlier film ("Dogtown and Z-Boys") was good.

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-).

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

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

Danny Deckchair may be a trifle, but it offers a breezy lift for the dog days of summer.

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.

This is the kind of misfire that can take everyone down with it. It's not just bad, it's mean-bad.

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.

Farrell, adding to the case for his impending stardom, locks into his role with the laser precision of the sniper's rifle scope.

A "Ben-Hur"-size epic with beefcake, beauty, outsize heroes, flashy duels and epic battles. There are breathtaking vistas, taut political intrigues, dangerous romantic liaisons and one of the greatest wardrobes ever assembled for a costume drama.

So much is so good about The Recruit that you'll wish the ending were better. It's like opening the last lid in a Chinese box and having a clown figure pop out on a spring.

For sheer bravura film making, for creating a cartoon world with real air, flesh, blood and the exhilarating cycle of fear and escape, Dinosaur is tops.

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

Tarantino's gift, at least with "Reservoir Dogs" and "Pulp Fiction," is his ability to create comedy within horrific violence. In "2 Days," the comedy and violence travel along different paths altogether, and when they finally do merge, as is often the case on the highways in the Valley, it isn't pretty. [27 Sept 1996, p.14]

A slog to get through, but Jeanie Drynan's nuanced performance as the enduring matriarch makes it all worthwhile.

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 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 film itself is a tedious melodrama whose sole saving grace is the performance of Samuel L. Jackson as Tommy Kincaid.

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

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.

LaBeouf ("Holes") has a scrubbed, ego-free innocence that is perfect for his working-class hero.

Its premise had me worn out by the second reel.

In what is more a cry of regret than a coherent story, Shepard's character mopes his way through meetings with an old girlfriend (Jessica Lange) and the grown children he sired, the only apparent lesson being that bad behavior has a way of circling back on you.

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.