Jami Bernard

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

Strangely unengaging.

With We Don't Live Here Anymore, it's the audience that may want to leave and start a new life.

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]

This drama offers a chuckle at every turn.

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.

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

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

A delightful and endearing romantic comedy with the shape and resonance of a Jane Austen novel.

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

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.

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

Garcia's somber narration is a turnoff, but this plucky little diatribe gets you thinking about the larger implications facing future generations.

Old-fashioned comedy-drama.

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.

It's a fanciful tale, but the message is sweet - that the higher arts speak a universal language that transcends politics and ignorance.

If the movie doesn't ultimately transport us to places The Wizard of Oz once took us, that may be partly because "The Sorcerer's Stone" is just the first chapter, with more magic waiting to be parceled out in the coming years.

Perhaps not since Truffaut's "The Story of Adele H" has thwarted love been rendered so compassionately on the screen, its psychology laid bare.

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

(Rourke's) nearly unrecognizable presence is characteristic of the odd pockets of talent (and, sometimes, lint) in Steve Buscemi's film.

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

Disturbing, visually stunning thriller.

May actually appeal more to women than men because of the steely heroine, the pitting of love of family against love of filthy lucre -- and the mom-fights-back plot.

The strong script (with updated flourishes by "Bad Santa" writers Glenn Ficarra and John Requa) and some of the vibrant child characters pull it through, with the comically reptilian Thornton egging them on with one inappropriate shocker after another.

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.

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

A fascinating, somewhat frightening documentary.

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