Jami Bernard

Intelligent and holds your attention, like a mystery story unraveling.

Students of acting will appreciate the relish with which the characters bite off juicy chunks of dialogue.

The action scenes, including one on that tourist sightseeing staple, the Bateau Mouche, were directed by Cory Yuen with some creative touches, including a hail of chopsticks during a fight in a restaurant kitchen.

Has been fine-tuned for adolescent boys, from the hectic pace right down to the way Cassandra's breasts are always barely draped.

Relationship comedy like this is mother's milk to Drew Barrymore, who, as usual, is adorable and perfect.

It's Rock's first venture into leading-man territory, and the material is carefully tailored to his measurements. He's fully believable as a standup comic. How he'll fare as a character other than Chris Rock is yet to be determined.

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

The movie was snatched, all right, and Ritchie is the culprit.

In a preamble that sets up Hawke's character, the jittery hand-held camera and grainy palette establish the look and feel of a '70s movie, thus paying homage to the Carpenter version, which, frankly, had more suspense.

A machine-tooled entertainment that's as fake and flimsy as a plastic Christmas tree. The only reason the movie isn't as bad as it has a right to be is the marvelous Diane Keaton.

Here's the downside, and it's not just me: You need a scorecard to keep track of the sisters, their brother, two husbands, a boyfriend, two (or three?) extramarital lovers.

This black-and-white movie features an enduring image: an ordinary couple at the dinner table with the giant, Dr. Seuss-like head of the camel ­filling their window ominously, ridiculously, like another dinner guest -- or like the proverbial elephant in the room that no one will address.

The movie portrays Guerin -- regarded by many as a hero -- as an irritating figure.

The Cold War isn't exactly a hot ticket right now, but K-19 punches up the timeless aspects of the story -- adventure, danger, teamwork, noble self-sacrifice and two forceful actors butting heads, even if you don't buy them as Russian for a moment.

A substantial improvement over "X-Men," in many ways, especially in visual and specialeffects departments.

This could be a documentary about reading the body language of childhood.

Of the several threads interwoven here, only one is riveting, thanks to the performance of Sandrine Kiberlain as Betty.

The dogs are fantastic. The humans need more work with their trainers.

The movie resembles a video game in which each victory whisks you to the next level, with slightly different antagonists and a faster pace.

Rudd delivers the best bad Franglais since Inspector Clouseau.

It has the feel of those romantic movies of the '40s that no one thinks are made anymore.

This long-awaited movie has been unwisely chopped into two pieces -- the second is due in February -- when it really needed to be one long, delirious ride.

The laughs are there, but the movie's main asset is Paltrow, mournful and always braced for the worst.

Due to budget constraints, the movie is necessarily rough around the edges. But directors Josh Apter and Peter Olsen have a sure grasp of how to maintain a mood that chills long after the movie is over.

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.

Stay through to the end credits, where the two child protagonists (Sabara and Vega) are shown as they were then and as they are now. Rodriguez's best achievement is in spotting the innate talent that would shine through in those two kids.

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

Half a barrel of laughs. The other half is made of slime.

The best part is during the closing credits. Dustin Hoffman does a brilliant, dead-on impression of Evans that captures the essence of the man more than all the self-serving grandiosity that preceded it.

Even Isabelle Huppert Lite is more profound than the best work of most other actresses.

Doesn't flinch from the serious stuff.

A temple of enlightenment posing as a movie.

There are plenty of chuckles at the expense of Dr. Phil, Shaquille O'Neal, Carmen Electra, Charlie Sheen and series stalwart Leslie Nielsen. But with no comic carryover from one skit to the next, true belly laughs are few and far between.

Even aside from the metaphorical aspect, this may be the first movie to give a precise sense of what drives people who self-mutilate.

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.

The cottage industry of the mockumentary has produced another pleasing trifle, the cute and smart Lisa Picard Is Famous.

It's not the best of von Trier, but the movie is shot in an unforgettable, haunting style that evokes both Bergman and the silent era.

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.

A thin, by-the-numbers romantic comedy that nevertheless features one saving grace: Matthew Perry.

Touching and saddening.

In the new, personal documentaries in which you pick up a camera to help get a grip on your own life, there is a queasy line between inspiration and therapy. Mark Wexler crosses back and forth over that line.

Daylight sets a record for implausible scenarios and lack of character development. But let's face it if you're going to be stranded in a fireball, you might as well be stranded there with Sylvester Stallone. Twenty years after "Rocky" punched him into the limelight, Stallone presents a more human-scaled character, and he's charming, even gracious. His acting range may not span Manhattan to Jersey, but he inspires confidence even in material as pre-fab as this. [6 Dec 1996, p.59]

About two faces of healing.

Watching these pros in a dance of things unsaid is breathtaking, but it's a lugubrious, claustrophobic tale.

Although way too long at 146 minutes and extremely confusing in structure, the story of a lonely, picked-on eighth-grader (Hayato Ichihara) who finds refuge in the ethereal music of a Bjork-like pop singer packs a solid punch.

In this story of suburban teenage angst, the parents are weird and often cliché to the point of incomprehension, as if seen through the prism of ... a 25-year-old.

It's an intelligent, chilling movie, but one that can't quite shake those stage origins.

The funny thing about RV - no, it's not the jokes, which mostly bomb - is that the characters are actually pretty likable. It's an odd achievement for a road-trip comedy that wants desperately to be loved for its potty jokes, not its humanity.

You know this movie is French (apart from the subtitles), because everyone looks great, gets naked and later breaks into a peppy musical number about the joys of lobster and shellfish.

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.

Ultimately, it's a compassionate view of marriage and its stressors. But the filmmaker and actors do their jobs only too well. Watching "Secret Lives" can be as uncomfortable as sitting in the dentist's chair.

The eccentric chocolatier Willy Wonka (Johnny Depp) can't feel pleasure, even though he's surrounded by it, so it's weirdly appropriate that the movie isn't "fun," even if it's amazing to look at.

It's weird and wonderful.

Unfortunately, Mad City merely pumps up the volume on material that has already been picked clean. [07Nov1997 Pg 74]

Kelly McGillis quite literally as you've never seen her -- as a manipulative, icy sex goddess in whose bedroom there are no limits.

Miss Congeniality would not be out of place as a TV series, so it makes sense that Candice Bergen and William Shatner appear as pageant co-hosts.

Farrell has the toughest role, playing a man who doesn't understand the powerful crosscurrents of his own emotions, the love, guilt and loyalty that become opposing forces and begin to destroy the relationships he covets.

And still the dialogue is astonishingly feeble, the acting unforgivably wooden. To paraphrase Yoda, the only creature with ­truly human dimensions ever since Harrison Ford's cowboy-mechanic Han Solo departed the galaxy: Bored I am.

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

Its leisurely pace and reliance on Ambrose's pale-lashed gaze make it more of an interior monologue. That may not please viewers who crave action, but those with patience will be rewarded.

Trixie has "cult favorite" written all over it. That is to say, the general public is likely to say ixnay.

Gosling's performance is a stunner, although the story-telling is otherwise pedestrian. It is the movie's blessing and curse that it does not shy away from Danny's murderous, inexplicable contradictions — or explain them.

Farmiga is excellent as a woman who is like the mouse she feeds to her son's pet snake - trapped and about to be eaten alive by ordinary circumstance.

The first two stories are so well-drawn you hate to leave them. But Miller's femaleempowerment anthology carries a smart whiff of other literary looks at ordinary, extraordinary women, such as Grace Paley's "Enormous Changes at the Last Minute."

Craggy oldsters Mick Jagger and James Coburn steal the show from the young uns in The Man From Elysian Fields, a mostly entertaining twist on the Faust story about a writer who sells himself cheap.

Even with the requisite melodrama, it's a rollicking, optimistic movie.

While it's not quite as satisfying as Chabrol's underappreciated "Merci pour le chocolat" (2000), it's still nasty fun at the expense of the upper middle class.

A by-the-numbers tearjerker notable mostly for the most adorable little sluggers this side of the "Bad News Bears."

The four ladies of Friends With Money are people I wouldn't want to ride the bus with (not that some of them would be caught dead on public transportation). They're whiners with little self-knowledge. Perhaps that's what holds them together, but it's not pretty.

The performances are all on-target. Shelley Long and Gary Cole reprise the lady and her fellow, with Tim Matheson as the interloper, Christine Taylor as the hair-obsessed Marcia and Jennifer Elise Cox as Jan, the mouth-breather.

What has changed most dramatically over the years is the camera's ability to shoot as if it were stationed on the wall of those rolling pipelines. For some, this is the next best thing to being there.

The lightweight bauble is perfect entertainment for now.

David Cronenberg is one of the most intellectual film makers around.

Fathers and sons with problems expressing their feelings makes for a story that is universal, and that has also been done to death. Thankfully, the boxing scenes are extensive and pack the appropriate punch.

This intelligently acted and well-paced story avoids most of the clichés.

Adrien Brody is cornering the market on roles where he's hunted, haunted and under-nourished.

There's humor and expected back-story pathos.

Buscemi wittily captures the desperation of lives gone downhill in prettified surroundings although, like the Trees Lounge patron who suddenly stops breathing, the audience feels the life force slowly being sucked out. [11 Oct 1996, p.70]

It's reassuring to see love and sex in one's 70s depicted as fully replenishing. At the same time, it's sobering to think that it's no easier in the twilight of life to make rational decisions regarding the heart.

Michael Winterbottom nakedly goes where no "respectable" director has gone before - to sex and beyond! His provocative 9 Songs is the first movie by a director of Winterbottom's standing to depict real, uncensored sex between its lead actors.

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

It's hard to imagine anyone other than Keaton pulling this off.

Handsomely mounted but disappointingly slight.

While Pfeiffer is a stickier subject, Clooney is so game he could have chemistry with a sandbox. [20 Dec 1996, p.61]

As filmed by Steven Soderbergh with appropriate visuals for a movie about perceptions, Gray's quest for ocular health leads from an Indian sweat lodge to a Filipino psychic surgeon. [19 March 1997, p.39]

La Promesse believes that decency is an innate human quality that can surface from any rubble. [16 May 1997, p.47]

The comparison to Woody Allen is obvious, not only in the New York setting and the characters' comic approach-avoidance to sex, but in Burns' casting of his real girlfriend to play his screen girlfriend. Uh, Eddie big mistake there. [23 Aug 1996, p.41]

Beautifully acted and exquisitely photographed, director Claude Miller's superb drama, from Philippe Grimbert's autobiographical novel, is awash with the ripples created by unlived lives.

Tomorrow Never Dies delivers the goods with tongue in cheek, if not Bond's tongue in someone else's cheek.

The faux-documentary format does nothing for the material, but Kaye turns in a chaotic and ultimately moving performance.

Like many dreams, you won't remember it when you wake up. The style obliterates any emotional attachment.

There are many delightful movie techniques out there available for making animals appear to speak, so it's too bad The Shaggy Dog doesn't use any of them.

The best part of Zatoichi is its fine sense of rhythm, culminating in a galvanizing clog-dance finish.

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.

It was filmed in and around the World Trade Center, and the subsequent cuts, reshoots and sleights of hand designed to obscure that fact prove devastating.

Nothing you haven't already seen elsewhere, except for Vin Diesel looking even then like a box-office champ.

It's a misguided, miscast remake of the 1974 Robert Aldrich classic.

This has all the ingredients for a top-notch thriller except one - a thrill.

Nearly scrapes the bottom of the cracker barrel in search of suspense, now that the humans accept the polite mouse as one of their own.

Hurt is slumming in an unchallenging role.

Some of the scenarios are funny. But they're uniformly overplayed.

What's subversive about the movie is that it comes off as squeaky-clean, when in fact it's irresponsible. Worse, it's not that interesting.

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

Reefer mildness.

A period romp that tries too hard.

Director Charles Herman-Wurmfeld ("Kissing Jessica Stein") misses several opportunities to go all out and be, as Elle would say, "superfun."

Mark Wahlberg could lose some of the good will he generated from his performance in "Boogie Nights" by playing an idiotically gentle killer for hire in The Big Hit. [24 April 1998, p. 53]

Searching for a documentary feel, the camera here is so shaky that you cling to the arms of your chair lest you pitch into the next row.

As a boxing movie, Against the Ropes is perfunctory, with a well-muscled Omar Epps diligently enduring predictable montages showing his rise to fame as Jackie's first protégé. As a biopic, it's likewise uninspired stuff.

Go for the extraordinary special effects, by all means, but not if you want to feel good about yourself or humanity. And heed the PG-13 rating, because this movie takes no prisoners.

The wheezy Mighty Wind can't blow out the candle of this group's first musical mockumentary, 1984's "This Is Spinal Tap."

A prettily photographed yet morbidly gloomy movie.

I'd like to believe I could watch ­Cedric the Entertainer all day long. The tedious comedy Johnson Family Vacation puts a strain on that theory.

Without Crowe and Paul Giamatti, this movie would have little in its corner.

The slapstick is broad to the point of overkill.

The already minimalist filmmaker has gone positively threadbare with Ten, a movie that feels as if there was no director on the set. For the most part, there wasn't.

The makers of Seducing Doctor Lewis have a cute idea, but they milk it for all they can, sometimes to the point of embarrassment.

The movie delivers the promised ballroom action, but not the charm. And if you think the title is endless, wait till you see Goodman's death scene.

When improv is done well, it sheds a unique light on the human condition. When it is done adequately, as it is in Full Frontal, it simply makes you long for a good script and pricey production values.

The script is so ridiculous that nothing rings true.

Originally intended as a comedy, the snippets of lightheartedness that remain seem awkwardly out of step with the unsurprising drama that replaced it.

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.

A modern-day fable about love and commitment — it's different.

As documentaries go, Watermarks is nothing special. But the women who inhabit it are sensational.

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.

Despite its rare look at the tensions between religious and secular soldiers in a settlement on the occupied West Bank, it's a pretty static, by-the-book drama that would be insufferable without the sullen heat of Tinkerbell and Avni.

The game itself is meaningless, and the movie, much the same way, likes it like that.

This is a movie full of tin-eared humor and situations too contrived to give romance a toehold.

Kingsley seems determined to rescue this old chestnut of a character from Jewish stereotypes, but to what end? Oliver's boyhood has become worse than Dickensian - it's bland.

Leaves the viewer exhausted, jet-lagged from the effort of investing equally in competing story lines.

This spirited documentary shows us the hazards of filming volleyball at nudist camps and the marketing possibilities of women mating with gorillas.

An unerring sign of the awfulness of Malibu's Most Wanted is a series of the least funny outtakes ever appended to a movie's closing credits.

But while this terrific cast gets to strut and preen, it's difficult to make an emotional connection with most of them.

Big, bloated and only intermittently amusing.

A deliberately stupid movie whose crazy charm wins you over in the end.

A safely sanitized comedy with an important message about loyalty and individuality, plays to Lohan's strengths and gives the target audience a chance to live it up vicariously.

Lightweight, inoffensive fare, as bland as a sleepwalker under a hypnotist's spell.

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.

The central relationship here is curious but not engaging, except for the pleasure of watching Deschanel, making All the Real Girls just a filmmaker's exercise in impressionistic style and mood.

But there's no affection in this mean-spirited sendup of "the business" and nothing to mitigate its sour taste.

While their often-unclothed bodies are visible, their faces are replaced with digital "buttons" saying things like "Your ad here."

Even while trying to access my inner giggly, dreamy adolescent, I found the movie as irritating as a chigger under the skin. The cast is pretty and inoffensive, with America Ferrera, using charisma and fierce emotions to stand out from the pack.

With its mystical mumbo jumbo and even a helpful beam of celestial light in one scene, A Rumor of Angels is a kind of cinematic comfort food for an undemanding audience.

The meltingly beautiful Newton gives a solid performance, but she and Wahlberg do not glide like Astaire and Rogers, to put it delicately.

The jolts are mild and too easily anticipated.

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]

The real star of the movie is the background work.

The realistic scenes of oyster farming and the beauty of the Hawkesbury River lend this movie a degree of fascination that its taciturn, beer-swilling characters can't provide.

Bale fails to make Chris a character compelling enough to stand out from that heavy dose of '70s clothes and hair.

Well-acted but otherwise lackluster drama.

A tiresomely madcap story with extremely faint political (and politically incorrect) overtones.

The cinematic equivalent of the mad-scientist experiment gone awry. It seems to be grooving on its own strangeness, at the expense of its connection with a paying audience.

It is not a great ad-vain-cha, and it's a lousy movie. But it underscores Irwin's kitschy popularity as a sideshow entertainer on the Animal Planet channel, where he cheerfully wrestles or rescues all manner of Aussie wildlife while telling the camera what great danger he is in.

Viewers of first-time director Jeong Jae-eun's sober dissection of dismal day-to-day rituals may want to throw themselves into the brackish water long before the movie is over.

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

The screenplay is chock-full of political and social observation tarnished by uneven ­acting and editing. The clumsy humor doesn't translate well.

Paying homage to Sergio Leone, "Mexico" aims too high and, in the process, becomes more like every generic, overplotted drug-cartel-and-revenge flick out there.

When an intensely emotional scene calls for the voice to break, call in Andy Garcia. He does the best voice-breaking, half-choked sob of anguish in the business, and he does it a lot in Lost City, his well-meaning directorial debut.

Too much chaos, not enough heart. Bad for the digestion.

This movie hyperventilates with pessimism to the point of perversity.

The movie covers only the early years of his (Joao Francisco dos Santos) rise to fame and apparently enduring legend, but the camera never pulls back to provide a social or historical context.

The movie adds nothing to the political dialogue, and the love story is mood-killingly sad. The lure of the exotic can be deceptive, it says. The moody, murky atmosphere leaves nothing clear except that mixed intentions will always yield mixed results.

Mismatch of tone and material.

Despite a plethora of "naughty bits," it's a yawn.

The mordant humor and far-reaching observations of the book don't come across in Robert Benton's "Masterpiece Theatre"-style direction.

An uneven story undermines this horror franchise, despite high-quality performances by Naomi Watts and David Dorfman.

A bit of a slog for anyone not thoroughly Olsenized.

Good acting and dull dialogue.

Unusual in that it spotlights a common but largely unsung variety of teenage female angst.

The acting runs the gamut, with Daly and Redgrave at the top and a few characters looking as if they wandered onto the wrong movie set.

The book has been altered in mostly reasonable ways to suit the needs of the screen, but what it loses in the translation is invaluable in comprehending what led someone to pick up an ax and wipe out two-thirds of an island's population.

Director and co-writer Gurinder Chadha continues in the vein of her previous movies, "What's Cooking?" and "Bhaji on the Beach," exploring with humor and compassion how cultures adapt in foreign climes.

It is a mash note from first-time filmmaker Pola Rapaport to Aury, but its attempts to dramatize passages of the book are at odds with Aury's advice that "Story of O" was a piece of writing "not meant to be spoken."

Introduces American audiences to Luo Yan, a charismatic Chinese-born actress now living in Los Angeles. She single-handedly nurtured this project to fruition, serving as producer, co-writer and star.

The sensuous visuals, shot in high-definition video, complement the waking-dream quality of a sometimes confusing story.

It's just like Paul McCartney's first solo album after the Beatles broke up; he played all the instruments himself -- because he could.

The film medium allows us to witness a most ravishing cherry orchard. But the grand cast is given to emoting as if they were playing to the peasants in the cheap seats.

Freewheeling and mindless.

A collage without context.

More chemistry between the leads would have helped. But Laws of Attraction still would have had a tough case making a jury believe these two unlikable characters belong together, except as a way to take them out of circulation.

Like a good horror movie, the images, jolts and artistically directed disorientation will keep your stomach clenched...Like a bad one, it doesn't make a lick of sense.

Not worth the rocket fuel.

The acting and stories are uneven, but Erick Avari, as a man who wakes up to his humanitarian obligations, provides the movie's affecting center, and Peter Falk gives a harrowing performance as a hopeless drunk trying to manipulate his grown son.

An odd little movie with artistic aspirations and a bare touch of comedy that offers sights you never expected (nor hoped) you'd see - like Will Ferrell playing it straight (more or less) and Zooey Deschanel drowning an innocent kitten.

Goes down easily only because Judd and Jackman are eye candy, and because Kinnear and Tomei provide solid comic support.

A strange, somewhat icky romantic comedy. [25 November 1998, p. 45]

Maintains a light, dainty tone despite the heavy-handed metaphor, but in crossing the Pacific to the U.S., it is bound to leave most viewers dry.

The visuals might be undistinguished, but the voices are excellent.

Phantoms is fear-less.

But with her penchant for frilly romance and sentimentality, the focus is often, cloyingly, on Conn as the heroine of the story, the mother who (sob!) wouldn't give up.

It's the same old, same old - except with some really snappy one-liners.

This updated version has the good sense to star Brendan Fraser, who is shaping up as one of our finest romantic-comedy stars.

D'Onofrio is a natural for the role of a romantic who just may be a freak. A highly physical actor, he ranges between sweetly awkward and a candidate for the kind of mental hospital shown in "Session 9."

Flails about desperately for a genre to call home.

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

Even without much in the way of hard facts, Yu makes intuitive leaps, using animated segments to bring to life Darger's work, and therefore the man - or as much of him as it is possible to fathom.

Old monster movies were thrilling in a way that mingled terror, sexuality and a real preference for the monsters over their tormentors. Van Helsing is a kiddie adventure on an endless, meaningless loop.

Aa bit too familiar an American tail. [19 December 1997, p. 82]

Children may get a kick out of Flubber's lowest-common-denominator antics. They may not recognize that Williams' prodigious talent has been reduced to something sub-blobular. [26Nov1997 Pg 38]

Aside from its relentless exploitation of a child, this minor thriller features an intriguing beginning, a middling middle and an increasingly silly end, with a multitude of red herrings going squoosh underfoot.

The deliberate simplicity that works so well at the Sullivan Street Theater seems flat, anachronistic and almost spooky on the big screen.

A sharply comic critique of corporate greed might have added to the national dialogue, but this is a series of hit-&-miss sketches.

The Substitute is just engaging enough that you won't wonder until after the movie why Mr. Smith is apparently the only teacher in the entire school. [19 Apr 1996, p.65]

It's sweet but not the least bit plausible that any kid in the mid-'80s would be surprised that along with rock 'n' roll come sex and drugs.

It's a bit of an oddball story, but surely there was a less plodding way to elaborate on it.

Hart's War has its priorities clear, but delivers them with insulting simplicity.

A prime reason to see this, if you don't mind some really screechy acting by some of the supporting players and insipid metaphors for love and commitment, is its parade of fine flesh, both male and female.

Would be better if it weren't so preachy.

A climbing thriller whose plot may be on thin ice but whose action sequences are stunning.

A sexy crime story. The double-crossing complications don't make much sense, but it's fun to watch Wilson turn the hard-boiled dialogue into a series of ironic one-liners under the hot Oahu sun.

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 draggy shaggy-dog story about a poor Jewish girl's painfully slow emotional awakening. The movie is 145 minutes long, so by the time Esther's awake, the audience may not be as lucky.

We've seen this story before, and the thrill is gone.

As Ryan, Evans attempts to graduate from "Not Another Teen Movie"-type fare to more adult stuff. He holds his own, but he has no edge.

The idea that every animated feature from Disney is an instant classic officially springs a leak with the noisily disappointing Atlantis: The Lost Empire.

A lame buddy-cop movie that squanders stars De Niro and Eddie Murphy as it races from one cliche to the next, blithely unconcerned with whether anything parses.

Thanks to director Wayne Wang ("The Joy Luck Club"), there are also artistic touches that keep this movie from sticking to the roof of the mouth the way peanut butter does to Opal's pet.

The crime isn't that the movie's message is amoral, but that it goes totally unexamined, as if the recess bell rang too early.

Mostly plays like a routine thriller with a classy cast.

Very Bad Things only getes worse. [25 November 1998, p. 44]

It strains to hard for laughs, with stale jokes about unweildy corpses.

It makes sly sense to link female hormonal bursts with the lunar cycle of the werewolf, but the movie's final act is the usual matted-fur chase.

Cross-dressing and the Irish Troubles don't mix well in Neil Jordan's cloying, fanciful Breakfast on Pluto.

The actors are emotional, but the presentation is theoretical to the point of absurdity.

Not even Rupert Everett is able to breathe life into soapy Thing.

Carrie is back and she's all the rage.

Not so much a movie as a self-contained world for like-minded people who wear their outsider status on their sleeves.

Egoyan's uncharacteristic bid for the mainstream flames out on many levels, but it's hard not to stare with fascination at the dying embers.

Old-fashioned comedy-drama.

The movie comes alive in bursts such as a train-top fight hampered by gale-force winds. Cruise's star wattage may hog the show, but it insures that Mission: Impossible won't self-destruct easily.

The tone moves from gently jocular (Irons appears in drag) to mystically morose (a female shaman tries to ululate up a cure), and that creates a jarring effect from which the movie does not recover.

The movie is mostly a series of frenetic clashes, dubious near misses and car chases. It lacks the human interest and snowy splendor of the first movie, directed by Doug Liman.

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

The dialogue is nothing to speak of, but the movie has a dynamite opening sequence in which the corporation turns on its workers, leaving them, if not dead, then with "virtually no intelligence," like office workers everywhere.

The 2,400 Americans who lost their lives at Pearl Harbor deserve a nobler memorial than this sentimental hogwash that reduces heroism to "Top Gun" antics and pretty cinematography.

As a meditation on love and loss, the award-winning script is perhaps too blunt.

Big Momma's got game, but she doesn't have much else.

An unsubtle allegory about a way of life withering on the vine.

Truth is, it' not very good.

A movie about a maverick ought to be a little daring as well, and Mona Lisa Smile is as safe and predictable as chintz.

All three leads grow on you.

The resulting movie is a mixed bag, not quite a documentary and yet as "true" to Weber's fascinations as a dog named True can be to his master.

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

The only thing to do, then, is settle back and appreciate Hudson's no-nonsense performance, an appealingly mature turn that makes you hope she has turned her back on second-rate romantic fluff. (Whether second-rate horror represents actual improvement is another matter.)

Nia Vardalos carved herself a niche with "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" in 2002, and she's still furiously digging away at it with the screechy, unpleasant comedy Connie and Carla.

There is undeniable pleasure in watching these pros at work, but the murky depths of the soul can make for a dreary two hours.

It's about as routine a movie as they come, but it features plenty of endorphin-releasing hip-hop choreography as Derek teaches Sara to get jiggy with it.

Has hell frozen over? Not only is Jack Nicholson starring in a buddy movie alongside Adam Sandler, but of the two, Sandler's low-key approach is preferable.

The weak story and bland hero are no match for the increasingly exciting visuals, while the score by Steve Jablonsky should be on exhibit in the Hall of Lead.

It's a big snooze because we can't take the main characters seriously.

Manages to entertain, and yet, like so many flat-footed attempts at waving the flag, it feels disingenuous and dogmatic.

A screechy chick-flick relationship comedy with a lot of things working for and against it - mostly against it.

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.

As Shakespeare adaptations go, Scotland, PA. is just a McNugget, but the actors help sustain the satiric tone right up until McBeth's lady finally gets that stain out the old-fashioned way, with a cleaver.

Should have sold its soul for a little help in the script department.

The best of the lot are Greta Scacchi, as an actress trying to peddle her first screenplay (with herself attached as director), and Ron Silver.

Interestingly, though, the actor who plays Yanis is a dead ringer (despite the scowl) for Adam Sandler. That's surely an effect director Manuel Boursinhac didn't intend.

It's hard to take this movie seriously. It's the cinematic equivalent of dotting your i's with a big heart, a very youngish view of life and death in which everything is too neatly wrapped up with a bow.

A tepid amalgam of other, similarly themed movies.