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.

Tamahori attempts to cover the ludicrousness of the story with a wickedly fast pace and sensational action set pieces. And in a film more than an hour and half long, events do whiz by.

A record number of movie cliches are strung together for the otherwise forgettable boot-camp drama Annapolis.

This, the 10th and worst-written entry in the series, would have been better if it had followed Dreyfuss instead of Clouseau, or if Kline had been cast as Clouseau instead of Martin.

While it won't rival the Harry Potter movies as a cultural milestone, the luminous, irresistible Stardust is no less industrious at scavenging myths and legends and making something altogether new from the familiar pickings.

Possibly the worst idea for a movie this century.

It's often maddening, because of its structure, and some of its visuals are pretentious nonsense. But, as a story of undying love, it's certainly unique.

The film makes you squirm as well as empathize, but it does need narration.

September Dawn, written by an evangelical Christian, may be the worst historical drama ever made.

The standout in the cast is James Todd Smith, whose acting talent may soon persuade him to shed his adolescent stage name of LL Cool J and concentrate on mainstream film roles.

Good, clean fun, and the view is fabulous.

It's no Runaway success, but Gere and Roberts still glow.

Though Borat has been likened to "Jackass," there's a huge difference. The "Jackass" movies are about extreme stunts. Borat is about interaction and gullibility, and its success is unique to both Cohen and to this one-time-only movie.

If you feel anything other than admiration for its craftsmanship, let me know; The Good German is as emotionally cold and unconvincing as any movie I've seen this year.

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

In Crazy Love, friends of Burt and Linda express as much confusion over their relationship as we feel, and the Pugaches themselves make an unconvincing case for theirs being a love that conquered all. On the contrary, love doesn't seem to have had anything to do with them. She married him out of desperation, and he pursued her out of a sense of entitlement.

This is a "What were they thinking?"-size disaster, with the wrong actors in the wrong roles in a project that had no reason to be remade in the USA.

the director works way too hard to cover his tracks, and the resolution is a disappointment - if you get it at all.

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

There's great music and lovely settings, but the filmmakers have done little more with their subject than reiterate the Britannica's description of her.

Ishii instills this unpleasantness with some Hitchcockian black humor.

The story itself is a smooth little gem.

A ponderously slow experience.

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.

a despairing movie that you can't look away from, though you'll wish you could.

Ale's community is like a band of pirates - collegial, bickering, larcenous and supportive - and his life within it is both heartening and heartbreaking.

A slice of life in the most profound sense.

Warner Bros. quietly releases Hiller's latest film, Carpool, without advance critics screenings, without more than a whisper of promotion, without warning or apology to the lost souls who might wander in to see it.

Some of this is elemental psychology; blood is thicker than water, etc. But the movie also reveals how the privileged class ignored, condoned or denied the reality of the Holocaust.

The Exorcist is still shocking, but mostly because of its graphic, anti-religious language. [2000 re-release]

Typical of road comedies, it's a pastiche of sketches.

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.

Asylum is as dark as Dracula's mood on a moonless night, and people suffering from depression should think twice before opening the coffin. This thing would put off Mary Poppins.

As movie fiction, I guess it is entertaining enough.

Ray and his writers found plenty of material to fill Cooper's capable hands. They've turned what must have been a tedious investigation into a sharp cat-and-mouse game between Hanssen and Eric O'Neill (Ryan Phillippe).

The individual scenes are just random, uninspired riffs by Carvey or awkwardly flat cameos by the likes of Jesse Ventura and Olympic sprinter Michael Johnson.

Until he was shot to death in 2000, Haitian radio journalist Jean Dominique was a lone voice for truth and freedom in his politically riven country.

Both frustrating and instructive.

Sensational...as authentic as news footage, and far more intimate.

The time-warp romantic fantasy The Lake House is a puzzle that is maddeningly obtuse, emotionally overstretched, and virtually absent a sense of interior logic.

A captivating piece of visual wizardry. The house, which eventually frees itself from its moorings and chases after our trio of tweener heroes, is a genuine original.

Like Stone in "Basic Instinct," van Houten has an audacity to match Verhoeven's. Hers is a role that Bette Davis would have killed Ingrid Bergman for, and she is so good in it that it seems only a matter of time before she'll star in a real Hollywood movie - as opposed to this pretender.

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.

With echoes of "Dave," in which Kevin Kline takes over for the comatose U.S. President he resembles, Kristoffer begins to feel the power given to him and to make his own decisions, leading to some hilarious situations and an unpredictable ending.

Their ultimate success is a classic victory for the little guy.

The result, at best, is a sweet failure.

Stamp, whose ability to make Wilson simultaneously coarse and charismatic is irresistibly entertaining.

Banderas has some very effective moments, but in his emotional scenes, Cristofer has him screaming his lines into Jolie's face with such a spritzing fury, she might have filed a union grievance.

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

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.

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.

Fonda's performance is a perfect storm of histrionics, and she leaves nothing and no one standing.

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.

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.

Often tedious, sometimes fascinating anthology.

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

The worst performance in a film that diminishes even the talented Stockard Channing is given by Allen. He's never written a more unpleasant, vapid or irredeemable character for himself, and he makes it worse by overplaying.

What Andersen does best is capture the sense of growing up and living among the landmarks of Hollywood's authentic back lot.

What keeps the film from becoming obnoxiously redundant is the conviviality of the comedians. These are funny people even when they're not telling the joke.

Wells' vision of the distant future is cartoonishly simplistic without the subtext of British class consciousness that informed the novel.

In a sad twist of technological birth and infanticide, General Motors - with assists from the oil industry, the Bush administration, cowardly California energy officials and apathetic consumers - doomed the future car to the literal scrap heap of history.

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

If it weren't based on a true story, you might suspect Sydney McCartney's A Love Divided was created by a panel of militant Irish Protestants.

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

The Last Time feels like a script that was written backwards, as if the twist ending occurred to Caleo first and he then filled out a story to get to it. Fair enough, except getting there in this case is just no fun.

Goldblum, who has made psychological confusion his actor's stock-in-trade, gives Nolan's behavior just enough credibility to keep his quest alive for us, and Heche gives a delightfully unaffected performance as Lucy.

The Specialist allows Eichmann to convict himself, not of complicity in the Holocaust -- to that he pleads guilty, by reason of nationalism -- but as a man unfazed by his own inhumanity.

I watched A Good Woman with a fixed smile frequently interrupted by giggles, but I didn't believe a second of it.

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

Evening is a case study in how a subtly evocative book can elude the most well-intentioned filmmakers and some of our finest actors.

At times, the giddy tone makes it feel like a musical set on the eve of Pearl Harbor, but the acting is uniformly good and it's an absolutely gorgeous film to watch.

The second half of Antoine de Caunes' Monsieur N., about the post-exile life and death of Napoleon, plays less like a movie than a suggestion for one. This is a great disappointment because the first half is very cinematic and very compelling.

The result is a performance that is neither funny nor empathetic, and the romance that develops between the dentist and the junkie patient is not strong enough to support the mystery.

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.

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.

This particular script is deplorable. It's a pure cribbing of Ron Bass' screenplay for "Sleeping With the Enemy," which was no prize itself.

The dialogue between the captive and the captors gets a little didactic, and the ending is as contrived as it is cynical. Weingartner obviously has more in common with the rich man than the kids.

More than the sum of its parts.

Perversely funny.

That's a lot just to justify a cute title, but cuteness is the engine driving the slight, obvious but occasionally very funny film.

Given the tragic events that actually happen, "Nickleby" ends not knowing what it was supposed to be. But those first two acts are nearly worth the price of admission.

Josh Hamilton gives a marvelously engaging performance in this fish-out-of-water comedy.

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.

One of the most original and ultimately confounding mind games to reach the screen since "The Usual Suspects."

The Spanish writers-directors often overreach for humor, and really overreach for a happy ending. But there's a strong heart beating beneath the foolishness and one wonderful performance from Leonor Watling.

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

Joy Ride is plenty spooky but there's also plenty of comic relief -- mostly from the perennially goofy Zahn.

Built from a perfect story-telling collaboration.

If you're game for something different, it's worth a few giggles.

Like previous films by the literary-minded auteur John Sayles, Honeydripper takes forever to develop its characters, its period and its location. But once it's done all that, the payoffs are rich.

Having these characters interact is both the joke and raison d'etre of "League." Its story is beyond banal.

If you approach this movie in the right frame of mind -- that is, with total contempt -- you can still enjoy it as a comedy.

The story feels as urgent as the latest bad news out of the Middle East.

Sitting through the film is punishing work. The jittery closeups create a response that is more physical (I'm thinking nausea) than emotional, and there are no respites.

In trying to disguise his themes within the structure of a noir thriller, Parker was simply more successful at fooling himself than us.

A grim, poetic, heart-wrenchingly fine ode to the lost children of Glasgow's forgotten class.

Japanese Story could have been a two-character play staged in front of a desert mural. It wouldn't have been as pretty, but it's that tight.

Not wildly imaginative, and it has a tepid mix of movie references. But the physical environment and characters make it irresistible.

The memories recalled here aren't epic tales, just moments that make life worth living. Like seeing a good movie. [12 May 1999, p.44]

When the producers of Eros, a triptych of short stories about eroticism and desire, described what they wanted from Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai, American Steven Soderbergh and Italian master Michelangelo Antonioni, they must have written the memo in Chinese. Only Wong attempted something sensual.

A fascinating story.

The movie turns into something strange and annoying, an attempted blend of a suburban thriller with an Old West shoot-'em-up.

Despite a relatively paltry $40 million budget, Stormbreaker has the sheen and special effects of a Bond movie, and the ambition as well.

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

Drifts from goofy situation comedy to pop culture parody to a last-act load of sentiment that would sink a trash barge.

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

Minghella has certainly mounted a gorgeous movie and the battle scenes are brutally spectacular. But overall, "Cold Mountain" is like a fine piece of hand-crafted leather, where the stitching shows its quality. That looks good on a handbag, not so good on the big screen.

What is lacking in suspense is more than made up for in passion and in sports cinematography virtuosity.

Surely, Vinterberg was high on some inert gas when he embarked on it.

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

Works on every level. The humor and language are as crude as an R rating allows, but Carell and Apatow's script is so hip, funny and - yes - innocent that it's never offensive.

If there is a casting agent in hell, ­Martin Lawrence and Tyler Perry will soon put on their fat suits as Big Momma and Madea Simmons and show up as a tag team in a big-screen ­Wrestlemania.

Meandering, overlong digital soap opera.

There is one good, legitimate scare in Robert Zemeckis' quasi-ghost thriller What Lies Beneath, and that's just not enough for a movie that lasts more than two hours.

Arguably Lumet's best film in 20 years.

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

It's never a good thing to notice that the actors in a movie are having a better time than you are. It's so unfair. They're paid to work, you're paying for fun.

The documentary plays it down the middle, neither condemning nor romanticizing the political outlaws, but making sense of who they were and what they did.

Humorist and liberal radio talk-show host Al Franken is a funny guy, and most of the people he attacks - Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Dick Cheney - are not. But the joke was on him when George Bush won re-election in 2004.

I'm no psychologist, but it took about half this film's overlong running time to figure out that Metallica's problem is that Ulrich is a major pain in the butt.

Neither can I imagine many sane adults wanting to put themselves through this movie.

As a story, Burton's Planet of the Apes is more of a comic-book creation than either of his "Batman" movies.

For each joke that is fresh, there are at least three that fall thuddingly flat. Rock suffers a problem common to comedians moving from sketches to features; he hasn't quite been able to get his performance level above caricature. To his credit, he's made more of this than you'd expect from the lame premise.

Directed with his usual flair for the obvious by Dennis Dugan ("The Benchwarmers), "Chuck and Larry" has the nowness factor of a Polish joke. Does anybody laugh at this stuff anymore?

Locks in on its self-destructive subjects so precisely, it's almost unbearable to watch.

The movie has a terrible premise compounded by a lame script and the miscasting of its surfeit of talented stars. You have to wonder why Dobkin, whose last film was the hilariously raunchy "Wedding Crashers," would be attracted to this tame material.

Every once in a while, a performance pops out of a Hollywood movie that is so brilliant and unique to the matching of actor to role that it's impossible to imagine anyone else achieving it.

May be free of gay stereotypes, but it's absolutely riddled with romantic cliches. It's hard to see the progress in that.

Given the near total absence of intellectually ambitious American movies today, a critic's first impulse after seeing Francis Ford Coppola's reedited Apocalypse Now may be to treat it as the new, improved version he says it is and proclaim it a masterpiece - if not in 1979, then now. But it's not that simple: Apocalypse Now Redux is not a new movie, and neither is it necessarily improved.

By describing the structure of a great trick in a movie about a great trick, The Prestige makes a promise it can't keep. Its third act is about as convincing as a photo of a cow jumping over the moon.

A pretty run-of-the-mill B suspense movie.

Campion has made something that's almost unbearably pretentious.

Finally, you get down to the music, which is easy to take for the first hour, before it starts doubling and tripling back on itself, in an unnerving and seemingly unending spiral of repetition.

If you have a serious interest in wine and the ­patience for this kind of rangy, undisciplined filmmaking, you'll learn something. But you'll have more fun at a winetasting.

The performances are all terrific, but Gene Hackman is close to a career best as the family patriarch Royal, the most useless man you can't help loving.

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.

A flawed but highly entertaining B Western blown up to John Ford scale.

Gerry isn't much of anything, and doesn't claim to be. It's a movie stripped of its movieness.

It has a nifty premise and outstanding performances from Ferrell, as the protagonist-in-progress, and Emma Thompson, as his blocked creator.

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.

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

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

A slick, fast-paced production with first-rate performances and an emotional punch you won't soon forget.

Frenzied, gothic nonsense.

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

Represents the year's biggest gamble - and it delivers the year's biggest and most ambitious fantasy.

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.

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.

Fujimori comes off as amiable and in full denial, recalling the positive headlines of his presidency - and there were many - while laying the scandals off on Montesinos.

Does something no other Jesse James movie has done: It tells the truth.

The best comedy of 2004. In fact, it's so far the best movie of the year.

Bernstein blunts the inherent tension by zipping everything along at the pace of a snail with a sore foot. Still, Montenegro does wonders in her long silences, and makes her love scene with the eager 72-year-old Cortez look like a hookup at Club Med.

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

If "The Sixth Sense" was a bad movie redeemed by its surprise ending, Marc Forster's Stay is a seemingly good movie leading to a devastating letdown.

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

Reilly can play nuts, too, and in a lower gear that reins Ferrell in. They're a great team.

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.

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.

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.

Jovovich, Besson's 24-year-old ex-wife, hasn't a clue how to project shadings, interior emotions, character or personality. Everything's in a full screech.

Darkly hilarious.

If you've got the patience, this is still one of the all-time exercises in cinematic cool.

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

Beautifully shot but overly spare documentary.

It's a slice of life, with all the trimmings, and one of the strongest films of the year.

The only good thing about this on-the-fly, low-budget quickie is its Cape Cod setting and the in-focus cinematography of Ernst Kubitza. Very pretty. Otherwise, it is a speechifying bore.

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

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.

28 Weeks Later has a stronger story line, equally fine performances, greater tension, enough gore to satisfy the most hard-core zombie fan, and a narrative pace that flings us from the opening scenes to the very last image.

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.

The cat-and-mouse game between the patient and doctor and the coy is-he-or-isn't-he? game being played on us by the filmmakers becomes tiring.

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!

It is remarkably, unsentimentally dramatized by Fred Schepisi, courtesy of the pitch-perfect performances of its ensemble British cast.

Except for Hempf, every character is under incredible duress, and the performances are exceptional. With his first feature, an Oscar nominee for foreign-language film, von Donnersmarck has certainly left his mark.

Energetic, provocative.

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

Plumbs the issue of sibling love and family responsibility in quietly powerful ways, and the performances of the two stars surpass convincing to reach a level of biographical realism.

So riddled with plot holes and implausible actions, you can't help feeling insulted by it.

Whether he'll achieve his goal of setting the world land-speed record for motorcycles is never in doubt, of course, but getting to a film's climactic scene has rarely been more fun.

Levinson is so skillful at developing personalities, even among the story's would-be villains, that by the halfway point of the movie, every gesture and expression has unexpected depth and texture. The performances are across-the-board superb.

Intimate, deeply affecting family drama.

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."

Awkward, unconvincing bisexual roundelay.

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

It's a human drama, drawn in such careful emotional detail, its two acts of violence -- one shown, one not -- are almost incidental.

This will qualify as a spoiler only for those who have never seen a really bad movie before.

A mindless, cliche-riddled action-cartoon, a blur of metal and fire and screeching tires, with bad dialogue, cardboard characters and a volume set so high, it makes the Indianapolis 500 sound like chamber music.

A thing of beauty and imagination.

Chevy Chase looks tired, Pam Grier looks embarrassed, and pop star Iggy Pop gives a performance that -- if you can believe it -- is even sillier than his name.

As cool a summer lark as you'll find.

A combination homage, living obituary and darkly moody piece of cinematic poetry.

Failures on the scale of writer-director Steven Zaillian's All the King's Men are as rare as falling sequoias, and they make a noise even if no one's in the woods to hear them. This sequoia is very noisy indeed.

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."

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]

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 film's biggest problem is its psychologically false ending. Having created a complex relationship, Anselmo seems to throw up his hands at the end and admit he doesn't have a clue about how to resolve it.

While there is a great deal of laughter among the quartet, there's scarcely a giggle in it for the audience.

A lump of coal, sculpted from the kind of high-concept idea screenwriters find scribbled on bar napkins after nights of heavy drinking.

Among the year's biggest disappointments.

The first pleasant surprise of 2003, a cross-cultural romantic comedy that doesn't stint on romance or comedy, and- - when you least expect and most need it- - throws in some jaunty musical numbers of its own.

A feast of imagery.

The dubbing from German to Polish is off-putting, but it is Schlondorff's best film since his classic "The Tin Drum."

Really, women drag their husbands and boyfriends to films like writer-director Susannah Grant's emotionally bogus Catch and Release and I feel their pain. They should get a free Boys Night Out pass every time they make the sacrifice.

Has the gentlest feel of any movie I can remember.

Not to be cruel, but the aspirations of the movie and its principals are so far beyond their reach" not to mention budget"that it arrives in theaters dependent on the kindness of strangers.

As much as I love swing, all I got out of Martin Guigui's murky, incomprehensible grade B romantic fantasy was a few twitches of nostalgia for the music.

It's a slight, old-fashioned B movie, the last thing you would expect from an actress coming off a breakout year, but it has a charm and freshness we don't see much these days.

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 80 minutes of frantic mugging, of silly pratfalls and clown fights, of ideas lifted from other children's movies, design schemes from Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and characters from Toys R Us, all patched together without an innovative stitch of its own. [22 Nov 1996, p.F6]

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.

At the half-hour mark, Godsend falls off the edge of reason, veering wildly away from what seems the promising beginning of a drama about the ethics of human cloning and instead becomes the cheesiest of hallucinatory horror movies.

Boorman signals that he may not like what the real Cahill did, but as a storyteller with a proven affection for larger-than-life subjects, he can't resist him, either.

The things you can look forward to, however, are the humor, intellectual musing, emotional tumult, superb acting and challenging adult questions.

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.

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.

Critics are already comparing the two movies and largely agreeing that Tarantino?s story about a psychopathic stuntman who targets women for highway carnage is the best. I disagree.

Turgoose, in his first film role, is entirely convincing as the strong-willed but naïve Shaun, and Graham is a genuine fright as the feral prototype of the violent skinhead culture on the horizon.

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.

Toback is a smart guy with kinky tastes who has nothing left but to tempt actors into performing in his sex fantasies.

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

This is melodrama with broad theatrical flourishes, but Dietrich's sensuality is still a natural wonder, and with a new print, the Film Forum run offers a rare opportunity to see it big-screen-size.

I have an idea for a Mars movie. When our first astronauts step onto the Red Planet, they discover that Martians not only exist but that they've hired Johnnie Cochran to represent them in a massive defamation suit against American filmmakers.

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.

As tension mounts through the evening, Giraldi cleverly sweeps in and out of conversations -- and brings it all together in a climax that is as hard to see coming as it is to resist.

First-time writer-director Hunter Richards? London is even worse torture than it sounds. It includes flashbacks that actually demonstrate just how miserable a jerk the main character is.

This is a pitch-black sendup of a classic femme fatale, a teenage version of the husband-killers in "Double Indemnity" and "The Postman Always Rings Twice," without the saving grace of passion.

While I understand Vergès' oft-repeated claim that he wants to use these sensational cases to point out that the French were no better than the Nazis in their treatment of colonial subjects, it's impossible to overlook his glib dismissal of his clients' crimes and the smug righteousness that rests in the smirk constantly on his face.

The characters she (Ephron) invents are not very interesting, and aside from the always reliable Travolta, the performances are uniformly aligned.

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.

For Hobbitués and adventure fans of all other ages, it's the year's best thrill ride -- maybe the best film.

You have never seen a concert film like U2 3D, and it may change your expectations for the rest of your rocking years.

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.

By turns cheerful, funny and melancholy, and at all times honest, Nicole Holofcener's Lovely and Amazing stands out in the current run of ensemble women's films.

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.

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

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.