Jami Bernard

This is a wickedly funny skewering of a prewar London society gone mad with frivolity.

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

Who knew a drama about numbers could be so thrilling?

Visually, Robots is fun and imaginative. The wow factor is enhanced in the IMAX version, also opening today.

There is a very sharp, funny critique of ambition and self-made gurus in The Mystic Masseur, but it is obscured by a softening bloat.

What is meant to be an innovative, cutting-edge musical melodrama is so jumbled, irrational and amateurish that it makes dinner theater look like the Old Vic.

A beautifully rich performance by Meryl Streep, [18 September 1998, p. 57]

The movie doesn't stoop to cheap psychoanalysis and must be commended for a bravely ambiguous ending. But most of the credit goes to Lane, who is simply extraordinary as a woman whose body is at war with her conscience.

The tension of Matt having to work alongside his wife without being able to trust her provides the movie's real electricity, sexual and otherwise.

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.

Taking one's pound of flesh and having it, too, leads to a queasy comedy in which Pacino burns a hole in the screen while the frivolity around him sputters.

The movie suffers from tipping its hand too easily and hating its subject so much.

Life-affirming story of love, kinship and sacrifice.

So lacking in insight and gravity that it makes Dahmer seem like a pesky, pasty-faced loser who just wasn't popular enough.

It is a sweet, wonderfully acted cameo of a movie about the lengths to which a lioness will go to protect her cub.

The script provides an excellent payoff, although action fans may not agree, because that payoff is the equivalent of a Cheshire cat's grin.

Annaud is a filmmaker who often works with a bare minimum of dialogue. Yet his storytelling is so strong and emotional that words are barely necessary.

Letting any other actor run wild like this could have been a disaster, but Depp's peculiar buccaneer is an instant classic of actorly charisma.

A slight movie and a major downer, is an acting showcase for Sean Penn. That's good, but not enough.

You'd think it would be boring to stare at Thomas's computer screen so intently for 97 minutes, but the movie is eerily riveting.

Dispels myths about the "gangsta" aura that clings to rap and shows this poetry of the streets in all its different forms: social protest, entertainment and aggression.

The girl's blindness may have been meant to symbolize a trusting populace, but she's the one character who clearly sees what's what and who is trustworthy.

Cinephiles and Billy Wilder fans get a rare opportunity to see the "slightly dirtier" European ending to the director's 1964 sex farce.

A Jane Austen-like tale of sense and sensibility, with some of the wit, but, alas, none of the linguistic legerdemain.

In making such an appealing movie about characters who are usually swept under the Hollywood rug, Binder does us all a service.

Nicolas Cage does such a persuasive job of portraying Chicago TV weatherman Dave Spritz as a train wreck of a guy that you wonder whether this might actually be a training film for a psychoanalytic convention on hopeless cases.

Crushingly realistic.

Fresh and unexpected. It feels like a real window on the lives of disenfranchised youths - these are in South Atlanta - as they make their way in a society that doesn't cut them any breaks.

Hugo Weaving, weaving deftly beneath a fixed plastic grin and Prince Valiant wig as the mysterious avenger in V for Vendetta, both chills and amuses throughout this enjoyable - if occasionally irresponsible - comic-book thriller.

Tough going for most audiences and should be considered more of a rough draft full of lofty ideas unevenly executed.

Charlize Theron's Gilda in Head in the Clouds invites comparison to Rita Hayworth in 1946's "Gilda," which adds a touch of the ludicrous to this already strained material set in wartime France.

There's something sweet yet chilling in When the Sea Rises. If it had explored more of the chill, it might have turned into a knockout, absurdist thriller.

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

Niccol doesn't always get the mix right, and the tone here is inconsistent. But the movie remains compelling, largely because of Cage's dry, deadpan delivery.

Has that same air of silly innocence, a rarity in today's movies.

None of the criminal skulduggery feels quite right, but the comic bits between Bobby (Favreau) and Ricky (Vaughn) are freewheeling fun.

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.

An "American Pie" wanna-be that, in trying to be as tasteless as possible, sometimes succeeds.

The best way to look at this installment, however, is as musical theater of the absurd. The song-and-dance set pieces are brilliant, including a rap-style "It's a Hard Knock Life" in a prison.

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

It may be a dismal comedy thriller, but Antoine Fuqua's Bait has one piece of bait that's definitely appealing: Jamie Foxx.

Written, acted and directed so intelligently that it stands out from the pack, and is guaranteed to give you the warm glow of holiday movies past -- the kind that celebrated faith in human potential and the value of hard work.

The philosophy is even less plausible. But the action -- oh, the action! There's nothing else out there like it.

The action is tightly focused and well-paced.

Nolte, at least, delivers his lines with laser accuracy, and gives The Golden Bowl the life that so much cogitation could have drained from it.

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

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.

Hasn't a single original idea in its bird brain. But it clowns around just enough while sitting in the dunce chair that after a while it's mildly amusing.

With its scenes of full-frontal nudity and its references to the Tiananmen Square protests, Lan Yu may be a breakthrough film for China, but it's well-trod territory for American viewers.

Vardalos is a breath of fresh air. After all the little nipped and tucked bunnies we've been seeing onscreen for so long, we forget what real women look like.

"Sixth Sense" fans will be intrigued at first, then disappointed.

Only two hours long but it may take your mind another day to get through it. Egoyan has stuffed a lot into this personal and strenuously opaque film, which perhaps explains why its over-plotted, elliptical structure seems so onerous.

The nasty, violent material has two small beacons of hope - Nielsen as a fair-weather stripper in the manner of old film-noir dames, and Quaid as a scurvy ­mobster who hates being cheated. With his puffy, reddened face, Quaid looks like a bad Santa.

An intelligent, old-fashioned nail-biter.

The humor is simple but far from dumb. The dueling "walk-off" between rival male mannequins is inspired, as are the sly juxtapositions of the male model's faux physicality with such real-world demands as coal mining.

An impressive portrait of the migraine of teenage girlhood, and also works on the more modest level of teen romance.

Brisk pacing and a remarkable cast achieve the sleight-of-hand effect of making you forgive some implausible twists and a sanitized ending.

Some segments are anti-American, but to concentrate on that is to miss the variety, depth of opinion, and fierceness of the emotions that drive each director.

Amusing and slightly alarming documentary.

With more buckling than swash, The Count of Monte Cristo is a good-looking, poorly acted washout.

A prettily photographed yet morbidly gloomy movie.

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.

With destitute and disillusioned Mexican laborers much in the news lately, Star Maps is timely, and Spain is effective and affecting in the lead role. The movie's efforts at realism, however, are undermined by a cast of scenery chewers starved for attention. [23 July 1997, p.45]

Here's one movie you'll want to see with an audience of squealing, excited, terrified kids, their arms extended greedily to grab, squish or ward off all things exoskeletal and beady-eyed. It's gross, but in the nicest way (meaning no roaches).

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

Thanks to Grant's script and direction, the exotic Swaziland location (a film first) and an engaging cast, this smartly crafted drama radiates a gently comic pulse.

It is not the worst movie ever made, as some critics claim, but it does a passing imitation.

The movie is fast and fun. Best of all are the actors, who likewise seem to know they've lucked into a rare good gig.

Has a simple but exceptionally powerful and uplifting emotional lure.

Feels like an old-fashioned movie in the way it deals with bold sacrifices made in the name of love, while its setting and chary view of the era's political machinations mark it as distinctly modern.

Certainly there are people who will welcome this kind of "wholesome" family entertainment, but it feels false.

Movie love is usually so idealized it ennobles behavior that ordinarily would be considered stalking. Enduring Love deliberately smudges the line between what is bizarre and what is simply human nature.

Makes a fine date movie...thanks to its life-affirming view of friendship, love and honor.

Surprises, repulses and provokes. It's also brilliant and infuriating, wise and naïve, outrageous yet unforgettable.

The movie ever so slowly builds to a startling finale, one that puts new meaning into passive-aggressive relationships.

The hand-held camera is much too insinuating for what is essentially a story we have seen many times before. And the cuts and transitions are dizzyingly abrupt.

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.

Truth is, it' not very good.

Sexy, witty, energetic and gorgeous, but it is as stripped of the human element (in some of its production design, as well) as a minimalist Calvin Klein store.

The movie then becomes John's story, making an unbelievable leap of psychodrama to do so.

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

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.

A bit of a slog for anyone not thoroughly Olsenized.

The plot is contingent on everything going perfectly in ways no one can possibly predict, right down to the most outlandish happenstance of timing and human behavior.

Beneath the noisy, farcical surface of John Turturro's Illuminata is a thoughtful and unusually mature meditation on love.

The movie's key asset is young Bettany as a worthy successor to the "Clockwork Orange" tradition of McDowell. With Bettany, a star is born, even if his character is horrific.