Jami Bernard

Gloriously inventive, delightfully nutty comic treasure is unlike anything you've ever seen. It's lunatic.

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

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

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

No other mainstream movie has so openly tackled the subject of female sexual experience.

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.

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

The movie is set in a gloriously creepy and crumbling Venice. It's the off-season, and every deserted canal and alleyway reeks of bad vibes. Roeg plays masterfully with this menacing atmosphere, jangling the nerves with quick cuts and quixotic possibilities. [16 Oct 1998, p.72]

Rickman and Richardson are excellent actors put to ghastly waste.

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

The story is a mess, some of the images offensive, the acting under par and the dialogue silly.

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

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

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

Don't see The Inheritance if you're already depressed. This airless downer from Danish director Per Fly is about an heir who makes one wrong decision from which even lousier decisions effortlessly flow.

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.

A fascinating whirl of politics and palace intrigue.

Spielberg's direction and Melissa Mathison's script never lose sight of the realistic, low center of gravity world of childhood, in which such marvelous adventures happen every day that an alien knocking around the garage is not really such an unusual occurrence. [2002 re-release]

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

The results are impressive. Maybe, as the U.S. falls abysmally behind other nations in the sciences, it will get kids interested in that field again.

Some of the simplest shots give you the full picture of the price these guys paid for their dreams.

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

Has a great deal of empathy for that excruciating limbo that is female adolescence.

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.

A charmer with an attractive cast and an excellent soundtrack.

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

The movie is full of puzzling celebrity cameos, as if Brazilian director Bruno Barreto called in all his chits.

A caustic, funny, low-budget treat, shot on digital video.

The vitality of the hip-hop scene serves as both backdrop and metaphor in a romantic comedy as sweet as its title.

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.

Yet another film from Iran that has the leisurely pace, sly humor and incontrovertible wisdom of a Sufi parable.

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

The movie pulls off the trick of blurring the distinctions between romantic and platonic attractions across the generations.

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

Writer-director Danis Tanovic, a Bosnian who spent years documenting his homeland's turmoil, makes a bold feature-film debut with this funny, sobering message movie.

The movie exaggerates a common dynamic between men and women.

Crude and giggly.

Juices up the visuals with fancy camerawork and split screens, but it can't distract enough from the vulgarity of the material.

An unimaginative schoolyard-bully comedy.

Handsome, passionate and fun. It's everything we go to the movies for.

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

A welcome departure from typical movies about teens, wherein their problems are external (the prom, status). Mean Creek is an adult movie that just happens to star young actors.

A surprisingly genial and affecting comedy about the trials and tribulations of teenage rebellion during the Reagan '80s.

A delicately upbeat, even humorous celebration of love and sacrifice.

Refreshingly offbeat documentary.

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.

This extraordinary film refracts truth through the prism of memory, until what you get is a tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions, full of sacrifice and betrayal.

Viard plays one of the most intriguing female characters in recent film from either side of the Atlantic.

A desperately unfunny comedy that wastes a brand-name cast.

Works on several playful levels. Most obviously, it is a horror movie in which life imitates art on a movie set.

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.

Borderline brilliant. Tackles the war on drugs from a kaleidoscope of perspectives.

An abysmal comedy that should have been strangled in its crib.

Reefer mildness.

This movie is not just bad, it is breathtakingly, spectacularly, awesomely bad. You might want to see it out of curiosity. [23 Aug 1996, p.40]

This is not for the Merchant-Ivory crowd, but action fans will feel their pulses quicken.

A period romp that tries too hard.

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

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]

A magnificent looking and occasionally very silly Chinese Western.

The screen smokes with sexual heat. But what's really erotic is how much fun the actors seem to be having.

Simple, joyful and downright innocent movie.

Not since Cary Grant offered Joan Fontaine a gleaming glass of milk has a bedtime toddy looked as suspicious as it does in Claude Chabrol's wittily enigmatic Merci pour le chocolat.

A simple story that resonates deeply, largely thanks to the actors' ability to invest it with inner life.

Shrek 2 delivers more fun than there is slime in a green ogre's swamp. Much of that is thanks to Antonio ­Banderas, who runs away with Shrek 2 on little cat feet.

Who knew a drama about numbers could be so thrilling?

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.

If there's a soft spot in your heart for the sword-&-sandal epic -- and from the star rating above, I think you can guess where I stand -- then you'll swoon with giddy delight over Gladiator.

This is another brilliant performance by Crowe, who is to body language what Meryl Streep is to accents.

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.

The production is as gaily colored as the margaritas, but the overall result is wan.

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.

Whatever substance there is of Ocean's Twelve fades faster than invisible ink. But it's not the kind of movie you watch for plot details. It's really about spending two hours on that Lake Como speedboat, relaxing with pals.

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

The movie is so nervous about offending anyone that it's hardly any fun. Hanks delivers a few solemn speeches meant to deflect criticism. Meanwhile, he and Tautou barely hit it off. At least Mr. and Mrs. Smith got hot while doing their jobs.

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

A deeply felt celebration of the life force, as embodied in Girard's fierce performance as a man who may not have done all he could, but had an enviably great time on the way.

The story is predictable, even bland, but the stellar cast, detailed set design and abundance of good humor elevate it from the typical feel-good movie. It makes for intelligent counterprogramming against some of the season's harder-edged fare.

Apparently Louis Kahn was not much of a father, raconteur or businessman. But he was a genius, and he left his mark on all the people whose lives he touched.

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.

An amazingly self-assured movie, it percolates with themes and ideas, all held together by the gift of the bull's parts.

A prettily photographed yet morbidly gloomy movie.

Silly, perfect fun.

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.

The sunny, funny, toe-tapping Lagaan is the answer to those who ask why they don't make movies like they used to: They do, but in India.

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.

In his new concert film, a train wreck of self-regard, self-pity and not-so-humble pie, Martin Lawrence doth protest too much.

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

You may not realize just how much it takes to make a great mockumentar like "Waiting for Guffman" until you see Never Been Thawed.

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.

A non-sappy and genuinely adorable confection. It wiped away the Scrooge in me for 90 enchanting minutes.

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

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