Jack Mathews

Billed as an action thriller, it plays out as an urban-fairy tale version of "Bonnie and Clyde," with an ending suitable for a Harlequin romance.

A giddy black comedy about a homicidal housekeeper in rural England, is a hilarious reminder of that 1944 Frank Capra classic about two old maids whose cellar is cluttered with the bodies of would-be suitors.

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.

This epic tale of survival, love and adjustment covers a 59-year period - from 1910, when a band of urban émigrés arrives to start a settlement, to 1969, when only one of them remains.

This year’s foreign language Oscar scandal – there is always at least one – is the snub of director Cristian Mungiu’s disturbing, masterful realist drama following two college roommates as they carry out plans for one’s black market abortion in Communist Romania.

Turner's guileless amateurism stands in refreshing contrast to the rest of the performances -- stilted, self-conscious and sleep-inducing -- that fill this tedious 3-1/2-hour marathon, the Civil War in real time.

The very thought of humanizing Hitler makes me queasy. If he had a good side, I don't want to know about it.

No actress of her generation inhabits characters as thoroughly and convincingly as she (Streep) does, and this performance carries the movie

We're left with virtually no insight into the appeal of a movement that lasted 30 years.

In the year of the animated movie, this one soars above them all.

There weren't enough good laughs for me to recommend it to anyone other than the most devoted Beanheads.

I don't mean to demean it; it's smart, inventive and well-crafted. But as a feature film, it's a novelty item at best.

For a much better film about a similar story, rent "The World's Fastest Indian," with Anthony Hopkins on a motorcycle.

A great big sloppy kiss of entertainment for audiences weary of explosions, CGI effects and sequels, sequels, sequels.

Casting Williams in this thriller, adapted from Armistead Maupin's novel, was a bigger mistake than the actor's performance.

Italian actress, writer and director Asia Argento's performance in the godawful Scarlet Diva is one of those bawl, spit, scream and vomit exhibitions that provoke admiring applause in acting classes and great gales of laughter in theaters.

The Coen brothers might have pulled this off, but it's out of Allen's faltering reach.

Billed as the first film to go from conception to the big screen within the Sundance program, Dopamine is an amiably slight independent film that probably should have gone directly to the Sundance Channel.

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 writers, and director Miller, an MTV veteran making his feature debut, are never able to mesh the film's contradictory tones. [11 Dec 1998, p.F14]

Left-wing flame-thrower Robert Greenwald (Uncovered: The War on Iraq) gets after the global giant anyway, and he may have you thinking twice before entering another Wal-Mart parking lot.

Larry offers enough scatological humor to fertilize the wheat fields in the star's home state of Nebraska.

Might have worked as a sex comedy, certainly as porn. But as a suspense thriller, it's creepy for all the wrong reasons.

Clever, compelling, funny and unpredictable, and it has a lollapa-looza of an ending.

A claustrophobic psychodrama.

It's a good thing Jaume Serra's House of Wax wasn't shot in 3-D like the original 1953 horror classic - Paris Hilton is in it and she doesn't have a third dimension.

Where's the levity, you ask? There is none, or rather, there is none that Manuel can perceive.

Oddest-of-the-year romantic comedy.