Jami Bernard

A crowd pleaser, even if it is unremarkable.

Unleashed serves two masters, each one disappointingly: It's a brutal series of over-amped fights, and it's a touching story of human nature at war with itself.

What Possession reminds us more than anything is that love is more exotic at the safe remove of history. The irony is that LaBute is more at home chronicling the present, yet that's where this movie falls apart.

Funny, yet appalling.

The requisite set piece, which will remind you of the treetop sequence in "Crouching Tiger," involves a fight atop a forest of burning poles, exactly the kind of thing you want in a movie like this.

A lush, panoramic, dizzyingly portrait of the many-tentacled entrepreneur Howard Hughes. Unfortunately, though it may finally gain an Oscar for director Martin Scorsese, it is not his best work. The movie is disappointingly flat.

Best of all is newcomer Justine Clarke playing a dour illustrator. Clarke's fascinating features register emotions at war, but always governed by a sense of self-deprecating humor.

The movie mostly sustains its excitement of the hunt. But the real star is the panoramic, beautifully composed cinematography of Vilmos Zsigmond. Whether he truly loved the African locations or is cursed with "a gift" doesn't matter; the dynamics of the story often flag, but the visuals lend a palpable excitement. [11 Oct 1996, p.49]

Sophisticated in that European way and predictable in that Hollywood way.

After a few movies in which Paltrow was in danger of becoming a caricature of herself, she's back in rare form.

Alnoy's unnerving mood piece is spare and atmospheric, even funny. The movie is accomplished, but gets hung up on arty composition.

There's magic afoot, even if the movie is more serviceable than magical.

Wood is compelling, but Charlie Hunnam ("Nicholas Nickleby") is the one to watch.

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.

Horror fans will still find it worthwhile. The ending is also a nice twist on the slasher genre.

Phenomenal acting, plus intelligent direction and themes, put The Ballad of Jack and Rose above other indie films about loss of innocence. At the same time, there is something garish about watching a father and daughter struggle with the snake of incest in their ill-advised Garden of Eden.

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

The title-character's redemption comes very slowly. But if you have patience, this is a stately, beautifully composed story.

Varda injects her sprightly personality into the film, a seasoning that sometimes overwhelms the stew.

Belongs to an intellectually stimulating subgenre that examines the thin line between documentary maker and subject.

One of the small pleasures of the movie is likely to escape American audiences. The bank robber is played by Johnny Hallyday, a pop icon of great magnitude in France, and the old man is played by Jean Rochefort, an acting staple of that country's cinema. The mere juxtaposition of these two personalities forms a comic set of expectations.

Smart, fun and mildly subversive, but it rides the wave of its joke a little too long.

In its unleashing of relentless, cosmic retribution, The Operator is not unlike the recent "Joy Ride."

Turns out to be less than the sum of its wonderfully silly and bizarre parts.

It's a poignant, realistic depiction of the ­elderly, far from the typical view of them as quaint and useless.

It's hard not to feel empowered by Nathalie Baye.

A charming runt of a movie. It's not all it could be, but it's the best the pound had to offer this week.

A daring feminist movie that, while straightforward to a fault, is a rare opportunity to sample a female point of view from Iran, where such a thing is usually a veiled subject.