Jack Mathews

Paparazzi is for anyone who's ever wondered how good it would feel to knock down a photographer with his car and then back over him.

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

Failure to Launch sounds like really bad Oscar Wilde, but it's not that good. You are not supposed to dislike anybody here.

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.

Despite some clever early fantasy scenes, Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini's adaptation of best seller The Nanny Diaries won't make Bridget Jones give up her writing.

It is certainly the feel-good movie of the season.

You can't have as many twists and turns in a story as dot the i without testing the audience's patience, and losing it before delivering the punch line.

Jack Nicholson in a performance that ranks among his best, yet leaves you feeling unfulfilled as never before.

Surely, this bloodthirsty comic farce about a sadistic backwoods family being hunted by a sadistic backwoods sheriff is the "Citizen Kane" of hix-ploitation horror.

The voice performances are terrific, particularly those of Belushi and Garofalo, as the amorous squirrel and the giraffe he would like to have as his wife.

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.

On the surface, Le Petit Lieutenant is propelled by the search for two Russians somehow responsible for a pair of murders along the Seine. And though that's a pretty mundane setup for an urban drama, it serves nicely in allowing us to get to know the haunted Caroline and the impetuous Antoine.

D.O.A.P. would be more effective, and more entertaining, if it took a cue from "Dr. Strangelove" and used Sterling Hayden's paranoid, quick-triggered Brig. Gen. Jack D. Ripper as the model for Cheney to get more outlandish behavior from him.

Keaton is so over-the-top, so loud and so physically animated that when Daphne develops a case of laryngitis mid-way through the movie, it's as if a neighbor's car alarm has finally been shut down. However, in those silent moments, when Daphne is communicating with notes, you realize how much you like this actress.

If this were a more serious film, its cynicism about the U.S. government would put it in a league with "The Manchurian Candidate." But it is simply an Arnold Schwarzenegger action flick with bantamweight Wahlberg doing the heavy lifting for the preoccupied Governator.

The stars have little opportunity to engage their characters. The gang-written screenplay and Chris Koch's artless direction turn their scenes into a series of broad, overplayed comic sketches.

Michael Corrente's Brooklyn Rules takes him to the mean streets of Gotti country, circa 1985, and it's another gem.

The action in this fast-paced, hysterically overproduced and surprisingly entertaining film is as realistic as a Road Runner cartoon.

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

Director-writer Richard Ledes shows better command of 1950s period atmosphere than he does of either his subject or his cast.

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

A teen comedy so stupid that a long nose -- perhaps with a red bulb on it -- actually would have helped.

The film's overriding messages are of personal responsibility and redemption. If that is Villeneuve's objective, it's done as an insidious polemic. If not, it's guilty of an even greater sin: It's boring.

The tragedy that separates the Good Crush from the Bad Crush is a cleaver that severs the film's relationship with reality.

I don't know if that makes Infamous a better movie, but it's certainly as good and a lot more fun. British actor Toby Jones is so physically right in the role, you'll think Capote is playing himself.

Night at the Museum takes a can't-miss comedy premise and misses by a country mile.

The title doesn't hint at the unsavory mess the film actually is.

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.

So badly conceived and executed, its good intentions don't help.

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

The author is not to blame. Published in 1999, "Be Cool" is hipper, cooler and better than "Get Shorty," but everything hipper, cooler and better about it is either missing from the film or camped-up beyond recognition.

Two hours of ludicrous action, forced humor and self-conscious romance.

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.

A strong, gritty, powerful piece of film making, and one of the three or four best movies made about the Vietnam era.

Intermittently funny.

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.

It is not easy to watch, yet beyond the traps that society and the urban culture have set up for Drey and the other kids, and the traps that Dan is falling into on his own, this is ultimately a hopeful story of common humanity.

The first must-see adult film of the young fall.

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.

Funny, insightful, unpredictable and blessed with pitch-perfect performances, Ghost World is one of the year's best movies.

This is a bad time for NBA fans in Boston. Just as their beloved Celtics are about to wrap up a dismal season, with nearly 50 losses and no berth in the playoffs, Hollywood comes out with a comedy about the Celtics that’s even worse than the team. And not half as funny.

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

The Bridesmaid is fairly familiar Chabrol country, an exploration of the psychological undercurrent of the bourgeoisie, with heavy helpings of black comedy.

This brilliant documentary, which shows not only how Belgian King Leopold II made the huge and resource-rich central African Congo his own private reserve, but how his legacy of exploiting the land and brutalizing its people continues in modern times.

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

The Intended is well-intended, but it is also the dreariest, most uninvolving movie I've seen this year.

Preposterous, physically hideous paranormal thriller.

Features some of the year's most beautiful scenery and two of its most wooden characters.

If you liked "Van Wilder," which starred Ryan Reynolds and Tara Reid, be warned: The only person returning from the cast is the boring Indian kid Taj Mahal Badalandabad (Kal Penn).

A great family movie, with a terrifically empathetic young hero, strong messages about the powers of familial love and friendship, buried treasure and enough action to keep the little ones from getting bored.

Blunt, alternately prurient, funny and depressing.

Star-packed fiasco.

"Filthy" may have been a better title for Dirty. The rough language is not just pervasive, as the MPAA's R rating describes it, it's assaultive. The violence is not merely "strong," it's incessant, sadistic and broadly unbelievable.

A solid delight, the sort of cinematic concoction you might expect from a time-warp collaboration between Preston Sturges and Jim Jarmusch.

An astonishingly intimate and painful coming-of-age story.

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-).

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

What might have read as a dense allegory comparing the rituals of the super-rich with the tribal customs of the violent Ishkanani tribe in the Amazon becomes a tedious, over-ripe soap opera on screen.

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.

Mostow, with his first feature, has made such a convincing, fast-paced, edge-of-the-seat thriller that you'd swear you'd never seen anything quite like it.

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.

Hudson, taking over the role of Effie played on stage by Jennifer Holliday, is in charge of Dreamgirls from her opening scene, blowing away Grammy-winner Beyoncé Knowles, Oscar-winner Jamie Foxx and anyone else who gets in her way.

Most of its features work fine, and it will dazzle you with its tricks and illusions. But it is not what it claims to be on the package.

With a grating symphonic score by ­Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood and the constant sense of danger following Plainview, "Blood" does not release its grip on the audience until its last, bizarrely crazy minutes.

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

Krabbe attempts to stuff too many themes and subplots into the story.

The Two Towers moves faster, covers more ground, has more action and -- with the introduction of the marvelous character Gollum -- packs some much-appreciated laughs.

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

Allen was out of his element in creating characters who feel like East Coast cousins of the Clampetts, and his dialogue has never been more banal or forced.

There's only so much meaningful interplay you can get out of a beachful of slackers and some tanning oil.

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.

The last act, when the movie falls apart like a cheap toy, is both a deus ex machina and an anticlimax.

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.

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.

The movie's really about the impressions of the original performances by newcomers Eric Christian Olsen and Derek Richardson. Olsen does an uncanny Carrey, and Richardson vaguely resembles Daniels.

A by-the-numbers, let's-put-on-a-show quasi-musical that has absolutely nothing going for it, except Alba.

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

It is no small compliment to Pierce Brosnan to say that his performance in writer-director Richard Shephard's goofy black comedy The Matador could only be rivaled by Christopher Walken.

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

Jelski's dialogue is razor sharp and she got a terrific performance from the relatively inexperienced Gummersall, who runs a gamut of emotions and holds the screen like a seasoned star.

Fans of anyone other than Sean Connery who has played James Bond may want to look away, because admirers of Ian Fleming's 007 novels are almost bound to agree that Daniel Craig is the best Bond since Sean.

Pie 2's greatest asset is the rare, infectious amiability of its cast of characters and the actors playing them.

A very clever update of the 16-year-old heroine, managing to make her seem both as square as the Bobbsey Twins and as contemporary as MySpace.

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

The latest - and really last-minute - documentary hoping to affect the presidential election is a deceptively partisan view of the Iraq War.

Newark Mayor Sharpe James is the kind of politician that Tony Soprano would be happy to own.

A great movie -- and the best movie ever about the '70s rock era.

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.

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

There isn't a scene, an action or a character that rings true, yet the narrative summary of the events that inspired it is a matter of record.

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.

Like a fragile Provence wine left too long in the sun, Ridley Scott's romantic comedy A Good Year spoiled somewhere between the publication of Peter Mayle's novel and this cockamamie adaptation.

A fairly nifty piece of suspense filmmaking, with a strong if relatively undemanding performance from Douglas.

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.

If the 10th "Friday" sounds like the first "Alien," it's strictly intentional. Todd Farmer's script rips off that classic sci-fi horror film, replaces the acid-based monster with the hockey-masked Jason, adopts the self-mocking attitude of "Scream" and lets the heads, arms, legs and torsos fall where they may.

When Carrey is doing his thing as the Almighty, histrionically whipping up one miracle after another and relishing the power, "Bruce" has you spring-cleaning your lungs with laughter. But you are made to pay for it with a third-act sap-rising that's as thick as the final reels of "Patch Adams."

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

Piddington does a beautiful balancing act, creating a movie that works both on the level of suspense and as a detailed factual chronicle.

Might as well have been titled "That Kentucky Fried Chicken Movie." That's how it will be referred to, anyway, though some people may insert an adjective such as "convoluted," "disappointing," or "anti-climactic" before the name of the fast-food franchise.

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.

These are three characters in search of a moral pulse.

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.

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.

Is the story being told worth a movie on its own merits? No way. Time Code exists as an esthetic event -- either a trick or a treat, depending on your expectations.

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

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

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.

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.

"Letters" isn't about numbers or the battle or even the morality of war. It's about the sanctity of life and how we value our own.

In 1939, when "Ten Little Indians" was published, Agatha Christie mysteries were the crème de la pop literature. Her fans depended on logic in her stories, and they got it. Mindhunters would have insulted their intelligence, and it should insult yours.

To be avoided by anyone considering a vacation to anything wilder than a zoo.

The Trials of Henry Kissinger serves as both a prosecution brief on the above charges and an unauthorized biography.

When it's funny, Best is hilarious.

Shot with an annoyingly jerky hand-held camera, Virgin is a test to stick with, and despite the best efforts of Moss, it wore me out.

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

This is Murray's subtlest performance, and one of his best.

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.

This vulgar, equal-opportunity chick flick aims pretty low.

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.

Though some of the action cinematography is stunning, and practicing snowboarders will love the sense of camaraderie established, it's not riveting entertainment for the rest of us.

Director and co-writer Denis Dercourt infuses Melanie's calculating seduction of the family with a sense of genuine menace. You will not be bored.

Who knew that Juliette Binoche and Jean Reno could be unlikable? And yet, there they are, grating on each other's nerves (and ours) as strandees at Charles De Gaulle airport.

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.

In this candid, fascinating film, Cadigan has the will - and the family support - to defeat his demons. It's clear that for him, the ending is only the beginning, but it's filled with hope.

This might have come off as both self-indulgent and preachy if McElwee weren't so persuasively earnest. "Bright Leaves" becomes both a mystery and memoir in progress and though the filmmaker does not find the truth he is looking for, it was clearly a quest worth undertaking.

Does a meticulous job of summarizing these notorious events, but it is the stories of Liuzzo's five children that gives it fresh emotional power.

South Korean director Kim Ki-duk does a bizarre riff on the twisted macho ethos of abusing women until they learn to love you.

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]

The movie fascinates not so much because of Strummer, whose brooding temperament and flash-and-burn career arc seems pretty routine by rock standards, but because of the way Temple organized and edited the film.

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.

The only thing to be said for it is The Rock. I've never seen the guy wrestle, but as a movie action hero, he's the real deal.

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

When 3 Needles premiered at Toronto last year, the stories were overlapping, in the style of "Babel" but without a unifying theme. It's less cumbersome as three separate stories, but they do not add up to much.

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."

A strange creature, a narcissistic mock documentary.

A solidly crafted, entertaining melodrama.

Offers a dazzling showcase for Samuel L. Jackson.

Keane is a movie you might see on a dare, and though I think it is brilliantly conceived, I wouldn't dare to dare you.

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.

What might work as a narrative device in a novel - the spirit guiding readers through Nick's revelations - is just plain ridiculous in a movie.

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

Sin City snaps, crackles and pops like no graphic novel ever brought to the screen. Mixing live-action with computer-generated images, it looks like the novels, talks and bleeds like the novels, is as muscular and voluptuous as the novels - and it leaves you breathless as only a movie can.

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

You never know what these people are going to say or do, but you're pretty sure it will be whatever they want to.

George Bush supporters may think this dissection of the President's narrow and decisive 2004 election victory in Ohio is better than sex. But Democrats and Bush voters who have come to rue the day are more likely to compare it to losing the World Series on a seventh-game walkoff home run.

An awkwardly executed, tedious and -- a near impossibility for a Holocaust movie -- emotionally uninvolving bore.

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

If, unlike his friends, you don't take anything Andre says seriously, there is a wicked sense of fun about it, and you may even see a little of yourself in one of the characters.

Despite the audience pandering -- not just in its violence, but in its wall-to-wall sexual vulgarity -- there are terrific elements in Baby Boy.

A hackneyed movie of zero social, political or dramatic consequence.

The film's pace is just plain wacky, moving with the haste of a receding glacier most of the time, but then jumping ahead as if Hartley hit the gas on a time machine.

If you have seen the play, especially if you've seen it with the original cast, treasure the memory and protect it. The movie will attack it like a virus.

As inventive as "Being John Malkovich," as psychologically quirky as "Ghost World" and as honest as the day is long.

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

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

The joke is that the salesmen believe they're actually trying to discover talent and - like the people they're encouraging - are victims.

Something bad happened on the way from the book to the movie. [15Dec1995 Pg. F.01]

The strength of Windtalkers is in its occasional, all-too-short respites from battle, when Enders is struggling with his demons and Yahzee is trying to understand his aloofness.

The upside and downside of surveillance cameras are explored in ways both funny and sad in writer-director Adam Rifkin's imaginative, ultimately disturbing ode to high-tech voyeurism.

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

Why Travolta is slumming in B movies is anybody's guess. (I'll take a wild flier: "Battlefield Earth"?)

This may be the best-looking film in the series; certainly, the Paris setting, with a climactic battle among the girders of the Eiffel Tower, keeps the visuals interesting. Better you buy a postcard.

Obliterating the original structure and intent of "Body Snatchers" is cinema-lit blasphemy.

Though Morrow and Forlani are fine actors, they can't even fake a physical attraction between their characters, let alone orgasms.

On my list of favorite sports, I rank sumo wrestling just ahead of the truck pull, so I'm not a prime candidate for a "Full Monty" wanna-be about female sumo wrestlers.

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.

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.

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.

Ford, soon to be eligible for Medicare, gives his entire performance without losing his breath or changing his expression, and Bettany, a British actor whose pasty complexion won him the role of Silas the Albino in the coming "The Da Vinci Code," is an apt tormentor cum foil of his prey.

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

Though the film is dark and the ideas run deep, it's perversely fun to think about.

Beautifully shot, and graced with another winning performance from the lovely Beart, Strayed nevertheless fails because the relationship between Odile and Yvan never makes us feel the sexual passion it implies.

If there's anybody left who believes in free discourse, the students were clear winners.

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.

Earnestness is the primary appeal of Meng Ong's clumsy melodrama.

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.

Shortland's script takes some unnecessary turns, mostly with Joe's drinking and sexual insecurities. But as long as it's focused on Heidi's predicament, it is riveting drama.

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."

To say Spike Lee is repeating himself is itself repetitious -- he is getting B-O-R-I-N-G!

The result is a movie that talks big, even walks big, but has no scale whatsoever.

But for that one bright, incongruous yuk-fest in the classroom, Luther is deadly material, full of self-righteousness and devoid of balance.

A long and uneventful snooze.

Hard to take stone-cold sober.

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

I don't know why Redford and the white-hot Gandolfini signed on for this fiasco, but the give-and-take between them is the film's sole pleasure.

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, Eyes Wide Shut doesn't rank among Kubrick's best work.

Perhaps the most evocative movie of the new year, Campbell Scott's Off the Map, moves at the pace of a Southwestern sunset and ends before you're quite ready to let it go.

Showing as much courage and talent behind the camera as he has while acting in front of it, Roth has crafted for his first film one of the most bluntly graphic and disturbing movies ever done on the subject.

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.

As with all ensemble horror movies, your first challenge is to guess which of the Carter kin will survive to destroy the creatures killing them, and in what order the family members (and their pets) will fall.

Eastwood's sepia-toned combat scenes are as graphic, if not quite as jolting, as those in "Ryan." And without a Tom Hanks-size star in the cast, "Flags" is not likely to do "Ryan's" blockbuster business. But "Flags," a true story directed by someone with far more faith in the audience's ability to empathize, is the better movie.

Passionate, enlightening and unabashedly one-sided, Abby Epstein's documentary is not for everyone. But at the very least, it should be seen by every pregnant woman in America.

Beware of movies whose creators boast of the little effort involved. Little reward is what you're likely to get.

Super Size Me produces more laughs than a man's gastrointestinal distress should.

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.

Only Emily Mortimer maintains a measure of dignity, playing the slinky assassin named Dakota. Whether her restraint was by her design or the filmmakers', she'll come to appreciate that she all but disappears amid the caterwauling and purging of a story that should have died in Liverpool.

The star of this overachieving trifle is not Kidman, it's Paul Rudnick. The New York playwright and screenwriter ("In & Out") has taken a pair of dated watermarks from the '70s - Ira Levin's horror novel and its faithful 1975 movie adaptation - and turned them into a broad, feverishly fey parody.

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

Nearly devoid of both dialogue and narrative cohesion, Yongman Kim's first feature - Part 1 of a planned trilogy inspired by Dante's "Inferno" - suggests that the founder of the popular downtown Kim's Video store should not give up his day job.

The course of Martha's relationships with Lina and Mario holds no surprises, but the performances of Gedeck and Castellitto, like the work of a great chef, make something special out of something very ordinary.

A critic trots out the word "masterpiece" at his own peril, but there it is.

Compelling and highly informative.

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

Trapped does have a fine ensemble of actors and, except for what may be the most outrageously idiotic and improbable ending in a few years, is not that bad a movie.

Barely qualifies as a documentary. It's the personal journey of a man hoping to claim a million-dollar literary prize by proving that Marlowe wrote Shakespeare.

Lady, like all of Shyamalan's movies, is a slick production with consistently interesting visuals... But the story is so convoluted and ultimately preposterous that you're almost embarrassed by the earnestness of the actors trying to carry it off.

Back to Wisteria Lane, Eva, and stay there until we call you.

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.

Director Margarethe von Trotta nearly buries the drama of the protest itself within the awkwardly sentimental framework of a contemporary New Yorker's quest to learn the truth of her widowed German mother's grief and history. But while the film concentrates on Lena, eloquently portrayed by Katja Riemann, the movie earns your empathy.

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.

It needed a star like Clooney at its center, and a character actor like Alan Rickman as Dr. Doom. You don't expect realism from a comic-book movie, but you do want the characters to seem larger than life.

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.

One of Rohmer's more engaging slices of life. The acting is impeccable.

Given the physical limitations of their characters, Polley and Robbins give remarkably compelling performances, and though the resolution of their slowly evolving relationship is a bit too pat, it is one you won't soon forget.

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.

Breathtaking.

It comes off as a fairly straightforward assault on the kind of political corruption that has crossed party lines in movies since the dawn of the medium, and in books before that. The pleasure here is in the dialogue, the characters and the cast.

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

Eddie Murphy's latest comedy, The Adventures of Pluto Nash, takes place in the year 2087, which is about the earliest he can hope to be forgiven.

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.

Not all cartoon violence; there's cartoon nudity, too. Berry was paid a well-publicized $500,000 bonus to bare her breasts in the movie.

Every potentially worthwhile or amusing moment in writer-director Brad Silberling's 10 Items or Less could be told in 10 minutes or less, with credits included.

There is no great story being told here. Mostly, it is a conventional road movie - a buddy comedy even - about the quests of two likable guys. The memoirs exist only because of Guevara's subsequent fame as a revolutionary leader in Cuba, Congo and Bolivia.

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

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

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

As joyously energetic now as the day it arrived.

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.

There's a lot of flashy acting going, notably by Travolta, who has not been more engaging on-screen in a decade, and by newcomer Barrett, a willowy Aussie who, as a woman living with the specter of death, gives the film's most complete performance.

Rates an inquisition of its own. It may not be heresy to fill out an ensemble cast of Peruvian and Spanish characters almost exclusively with non-Hispanic actors, but it certainly destroys any sense of authenticity.

But look up the word "slight" in the dictionary and you could find a still from this film.

Overwrought comedy-drama.

A brutally claustrophobic battle of wits and will, whose cruel nature ultimately seems to turn on the audience.

If it weren't for retro-gartered Milla Jovovich, I don't know why anyone would want to survive the virus that is turning humans into zombies and destroying the Earth in Resident Evil: Extinction.

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

Judd has genuine movie star magnetism -- beauty, intelligence, presence and talent to spare. In the old studio days, she'd be Ingrid Bergman by now.

Mattei's script was written in 1998, and the absence of any sense of the impact of 9/11 on New Yorkers is palpable. While watching "Love," I was thinking what great potential there was - still is - for a Manhattan "La Ronde" set in the days following 9/11, when strangers sought comfort from each other in spontaneous sexual alliances.

Gaudi Afternoon, adapted from Barbara Wilson's novel, is a setup for a smart ensemble comedy, and the cast delivers in hilarious deadpan style.

The sex may be real, but the violence and acting are comically phony, resulting in something that, while intended to shock, merely revolts.

This is the worst performance by a pop star in a dramatic role since Madonna suited up for "Shanghai Surprise."

Beyond the cliches, there's something deeply offensive about the way Hostage exploits our empathy for children in peril.

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

Something's wrong with the math here -- the inheritance of the story's small-town hero is enlarged from $20 million to $40 billion, yet the new movie isn't worth the price of a Depression-era ticket.

I may be wrong, but I think Guy Pearce is wearing Nicole Kidman's false nose in The Hard Word. Whatever it is that's on his face, it looks like a dead cod and won't win him an Oscar.

Deep into Hollywood's Dumb Season comes one of its dumbest offerings.

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.

An absolute mess with no coherent tone, story or point of view.

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.

Carrey's performance is a tour de force of physical mime.

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

Whatever it was in Romanian philosopher Mircea Eliade's novella Youth Without Youth that drew Francis Coppola out of a 10-year retirement to make a movie, the result is the year's most bizarre novelty item.

Unlike pop rival Britney Spears, Moore does project star quality on the screen, but she gives Halley an edge of nastiness that makes her harder to empathize with than she should be.

There is not a frame of "Cheaper" that doesn't feel contrived. It fails the most fundamental test of movie logic.

The intimate love story is overwhelmed by the carnage. It may be an accurate picture of life in Medellin, but it's not convincing.

Buscemi handles all of this with a casualness that seems exactly right for the milieu. His characters aren't caught up in a great dramatic crisis, they're caught up in everyday life, going over these events like so many speed bumps in time. [18 Oct 1996, p.F12]

Shot in Morocco with hand-held cameras, the movie has the urgency of a heart attack. Clearly tilted against the war, and heavy on explanatory dialogue, it paints a bleak picture of a desperate country that is being exploited by extremists at the expense of the despairing citizens. The situation is dire.

A grab bag of sitcom jokes that work about 20% of the time.

A gorgeous, wonderfully inventive computer-animated comedy.

Sometimes painful, often joyous, and altogether illuminating.

Feels like a college knockoff of Billy Wilder's "The Apartment."