Jami Bernard

In addition to the strong script, the ensemble performances are topnotch, with no one hogging the limelight.

The best performance is by Rampling. (The) camera hangs on her, knowing that nothing escapes those wise, sad-lidded eyes.

Best of all, and worth the price of admission, is Cedric the Entertainer.

Slick entertainment.

In a hilarious bit of actorly sleight-of-hand, Holm (who is not new to the role of Napoleon, having it played it twice before) slips effortlessly from emperor to impostor.

The daring, funny and quirkily erotic Secretary examines power exchanges between consenting adults in a way that other movies have not managed without turning off swaths of the squeamish.

Unflinching in its depiction of racism, anti-Semitism, violence and jailhouse politics.

Of them all, only McCartney looks out of place, perhaps mistaking the venue for Vegas. There in a nutshell could be the answer to why the Beatles broke up.

What could have been a run-of-the- mill story becomes a superb policier in the hands of writerdirector Joe Carnahan.

Like most Iranian films, it's a shaggy-dog story that builds so slowly you don't see the quietly shattering climax coming.

Forget the awful trailer that makes the movie look like chalk screeching on a blackboard. The Banger Sisters is sheer fun, and a great showcase for Hawn.

This is a quieter, more psychologically dense movie, where the payoff is sometimes no payoff at all - for instance, Tim Roth plays a cut-rate divorce lawyer whose own weirdness (he seems to live out of his car) is never explained.

The triumph here is the natural, fluid way the characters interact, many of them displaying real-life, quirky senses of humor you don't often find in screenplays.

Pai is resourceful and in harmony with the natural world in a way that will charm and enthrall young viewers.

This movie is not as intricately rewarding as Zhang's others. But because it is so Westernized, it could do even better at the box office. [21 Dec 1995, p.60]

Soldier's Daughter is at its best when alluding to the quasi- romantic attachments and undefined crushes that develop in small groups and keep the engines whirring. The inchoate longings go round and round, as subtly as befits the movie's rather smallish canvas. [18 Sep 1998, Pg.57]

Without excusing Stevie's behavior, the film makes a compelling case for how a child molester can grow from the bitter seeds of neglect and abuse.

A delightful comedic twist on Martin Scorsese's "King of Comedy."

A fine example of how a character-based story can be so compelling you don't miss the frills.

A beautifully composed tone poem about unspoken group dynamics in an isolated community. It is also, in its way, about how love endures.

Enjoyable, intelligent little heist movie.

Fun and frivolous, packed wave to wave with gorgeous young creatures reveling in their physical prowess.

The movie may be set in prewar Japan, but it's pure 1940s Hollywood. There's costume, pageantry, melodrama, the feeling of a sweeping epic without the bother of too much accuracy, equal doses of heartbreak and uplift.

The real highlight is when Bateman and his co-workers compare custom business cards in a grueling, ego-shattering game of one-upmanship that is so linked to their sense of self it might as well be Russian roulette.

Director David Kane handles the sprawling cast with aplomb as his characters learn some new steps in this life-and love-affirming movie.

Cho is funnier — and raunchier — in this, her second concert film, than in 2000's "I'm the One That I Want," even if she doesn't break any new comedic ground.

A guilty pleasure, right up there with "The Water Boy."

A brilliant example of the genre -- with romantic subplots to boot.

It's a sad, rich story, full of misunderstandings, bad bargains, odd parallels.

Petersen's speculative reenactment makes for gripping summer entertainment -- if you don't mind a little corn floating in your brine.

Its leisurely pace and surreal poetry won't break box-office records, but will surely serve to introduce Mendelsohn as a major new talent.

An amusing and unusually compassionate look at today's corporate culture.

A worthy addition to what must take up a whole section of the video store - the heartwarming comedy that reaffirms the power of personal choice, while also promising to love and to cherish even the most hidebound cultures.

Matt Damon's performance isn't bad, but it pales in comparison with Law's.

Along with "The Others," -- represents a welcome diversion from loud, senseless Hollywood extravaganzas.

A no-frills, homespun documentary that gives so much more than its humble technical credits would suggest.

Time of the Wolf is grounded so deeply in the reality of society gone awry that the anxiety faced by Isabelle Huppert's character as she struggles to keep her family together transfers onto the audience and never leaves.

A merry romantic comedy in the screwball tradition.

It revives an innocently pleasurable genre - shades of Burt Lancaster and Errol Flynn - that combines lusty adventure, humor, the great outdoors and satisfying storytelling without having to concoct it in a special-effects lab.

Santa Claus and the Snowman stage a scaled-down "Star Wars"-type battle for the rights to Santa's sleigh on Christmas Eve in the pleasantly goofy, irreverent Santa vs. the Snowman.

The result is an undeniable and effective authenticity.

Most of the movie's rewards are in watching Morton.

If you're seeking transcendent love this season, skip the morose "End of the Affair" and go with Anna and the King.

It stands apart when it comes to its extravagant humor and non-judgmental '70s-era reality (smoking dope, hitching rides, playing Frisbee, hanging out).

Scary, all right, but not for the reasons the Dallas church had in mind.

Busch lovingly and meticulously channels such grand dames as Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck and Norma Shearer in a way that surpasses imitation, camp and drag show. He captures their essence, and therefore the essence of cinema itself.

The supporting cast, including Ving Rhames, Laurence Fishburne and gorgeous Maggie Q, is underused, but the movie delivers the goods.

Stoked supplies a unique perspective on the hazards of rock-star fame that went with the sport's explosion for a band of rebels who didn't see it coming -- or going.

Knowing that the director is Robert Altman gives you a good idea of what to expect: a demimonde of locker-room chatter, catty sniping, backstage politics, high art and low self-esteem. Altman constructs the movie with the same cross-currents of his other ensemble movies.

Offers only the smallest glimmer of hope that the two sides can work things out through ingenuity and compromise.

A marvelous cross between "Secretary" and "Lost in Translation."

Don't let the slow, deliberate pace fool you. A lot is going on in David Cronenberg's masterful A History of Violence, and you'll miss it if you blink.

The startling documentary Daughter From Danang cautions once again to be careful what you wish for.

There was no burning need for a remake, but this one is respectful of its predecessor. It incorporates the technology and acquisitiveness of the intervening quarter century since Romero's vision. It even features a metrosexual, something unheard of in 1978.

The combination of the ancient tinted footage and Butler's crisp, sweeping vistas of the same areas provides a breathtaking recap of one of history's most stirring rescues.

With its cheerful hailstorm of anachronisms and classic-rock soundtrack, there's nothing medieval about it.

Nachtwey's pictures tell a tale of grief and suffering, and Frei's you-are-there approach gives those photos startling immediacy.

A psychosexual thriller that treads a thin line between art and exploitation. The mere fact that it manages this queasy high-wire act is what sets debut director David Slade's slick mind game apart from the drooling pack.

With its intriguing relationships and sacrificial acts, Alice is a good alternative to happily-ever-after fluff.

What a treasure - a funny, tart, romantic comedy about tweens suffering the pangs of first love. It makes the cityscape an essential part of the romance, like a junior, vintage Woody Allen.

The plot is formula all the way, but Lawrence has found a way to incorporate the physical techniques of the great silent stars with his standup comic's arsenal, and it's a pleasure to watch him at work.

A remarkable second feature from writer-director Yesim Ustaoglu.

A plague of child kidnappings in Italy during the '70s provides the background for this chilling, deceptively simple tale of a rural boy who unearths terrible family secrets and rises to the moral challenge they present.

O'Connor plays Fanny with an appealingly direct, unflinching gaze.

The production is fantastically funny, high-energy camp, punctuated by Trask's infectious score and by Mitchell, dressing in a succession of wigs twice the size of his body.

The remarkable footage includes damning evidence of how the media, the people and the army were manipulated. Which leads to that eternal question - if it's not on TV, did it really happen?

Sometimes veers off into preciosity. But it offers something rare in the bond between Andrew and Sam.

A farce nearly as cracked as his previous "The Dinner Game."

With its colorful embroidery, Monsoon Wedding feels pleasurably grounded in a reality about which most Westerners haven't a clue. This may be their only engraved invitation.

A fascinating, somewhat frightening documentary.

The jokes are wild, raunchy, surreal and dead-on.

It's a wonderfully silly family movie that holds its audience in high regard.

Seems like a genteel "Psycho."

Gentle, funny and full of the lessons one expects from the scions of the late Jim Henson.

A satisfying chick flick that follows all the usual rules of the modern romantic comedy except one - it's not stupid.

A comedy hit, but its secret is that it delves deeper than the usual summer fare.

Jacques Audiard's amusingly stinging A Self-Made Hero toys with the subjectivity of historical truth by presenting one Albert Dehousse (Mathieu Kassovitz), loser, cipher, liar. But a brilliant liar. [12 Sept 1997, p.44]

Forces the audience to rethink the riots in new and difficult ways, to find empathy and revulsion where it might not have known they existed.

The movie raises questions that are on plenty of minds right now, including whether and how much the rules should be bent to wage a war (in this case, on drugs) that cannot be won conventionally.

Winterbottom uses effective imagery to establish the horror and absurdity of war. [26Nov1997 Pg.39]

Work was never funnier.

What the movie cannot take from the book is its dreamily descriptive prose and interior monologue. Perhaps because of that, the movie changes the focus from Ingrid, the more fascinating creature, to Astrid, whose clay is more malleable for the big screen.

This movie is not of a style that will speak to general audiences. It is nearly wordless, spare to a fare-thee-well.

Career Girls reaches a little too often and unconvincingly for convenience... But Leigh remains one of the few film makers today to make movies that are solely character-driven, in which personal insight is its own reward. [8 Aug 1997, p.46]

Although "Jam" is clearly a marketing tool with not much to say beyond "be the best that you can be," it strives to preserve the humor that made Looney Tunes so popular among adults.

Michael Jackson is an alien? Tell me something I don't know.

A comedy that successfully plays with stereotypes, both racial and personal.

High spirits and colorful hissy fits go a long way toward masking the inexperience of this cast of mostly nonprofessionals. It's a charmer.

Like all blond jokes, Legally Blonde is basically meanspirited, and that's when it's funniest.

The result is a bit of a mess: sometimes delightful, sometimes tedious, always creative.

The movie's pleasures are spare, and will appeal mostly to die-hard Rivette fans and viewers with slow pulses.

This languorous art movie is somewhat like "Memento," with its narrative fragments and memory mixups. It never explains itself, which means that the audience, like the protagonists, must take a leap of faith.

With one exception (hint: Faye Dunaway), the actors seem remarkably at home in their milieu.

The movie exaggerates a common dynamic between men and women.

Many of the right elements -- the '40s look, the melodrama, the love that transcends reason.

A magnificent looking and occasionally very silly Chinese Western.

Who knew a drama about numbers could be so thrilling?

Graham is lots of fun to watch, but it's hard to reconcile the split halves of her character.