Jami Bernard

Too bad Heaven creeps into town when it deserved more fanfare. Consider it buried treasure, a thriller for the art- house crowd.

Life-affirming story of love, kinship and sacrifice.

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

The humor is supposed to stem from the clash of kids who have been raised so differently and of partners with opposing views of child care. But there are just so many jokes you can make about who gets to use the bathroom when.

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.

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.

Once in a great while there's a movie that's so funny, infectious and welcoming - a movie that makes you feel so good about America and the people in it - you just want to climb inside the screen and live there. That's the case with Dave Chappelle's Block Party - part comedy, part concert film, part avant-garde experiment, and all of it a joy.

Payne achieves an impressive control over the look and tone, so that, melancholy as the movie is, it comes off as both comedy and comment on the human condition.

Explores the comparatively enlightened Berlin culture that had allowed homosexuality to flourish in intellectual and social circles before the Nazis forcibly changed the national mind-set.

This Asian-flavored Hitchcock is a complicated tale with no easy answers.

If you think you're tough enough, go ahead and sit through the endurance test that is Bad Boys 2, a brutal, 2 1/2-hour display of production overkill.

Aside from conspiracy theories, Kasparov's undoing inspires a fascinating discourse on genius, competition, humanity and the ghost in the machine.

Would be better if it weren't so preachy.

Oughtta be much bettor.

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

There's a thin line between smart-stupid and just plain stupid, and Super Troopers walks it with ease.

The co-stars genuinely like each other, and their pleasure is infectious.

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.

While this is not exactly a hopeful movie, it's a polished exercise in the kind of social commentary that can wake people up.

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.

Haneke has made a masterly, disturbing movie.

Little internal logic and too many signposts. It's easy to see who in the neighborhood knows more than they're letting on, even without X-ray vision or ESP.

The screenwriters claim they got the idea for this dreary thing by glimpsing a besieged Chelsea Clinton in the stands at a basketball game.

As a love story, Wimbledon is a washout. As a meditation on sports psychology, it might help improve your game.

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.

The fog also does something genuinely eerie: It causes everyone in the cast to deliver dreadful performances and display inappropriate reactions when their friends are drowned, burned, stabbed or thrown into glass display cases.

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