Jami Bernard

A movie needs more than a few sexual innuendos and throaty purrs to keep us from taking a catnap. How about a strong story and credible characters?

Slick entertainment.

The French may be guilty of some bad behavior, but that's no reason to punish them with the shapeless, deceptively crass Le Divorce, a Merchant-Ivory production in which all things Gallic are reduced to quirks of snobbery, misogyny and haute selfishness.

Funny gem.

In a hilarious bit of actorly sleight-of-hand, Holm (who is not new to the role of Napoleon, having it played it twice before) slips effortlessly from emperor to impostor.

About two faces of healing.

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

Lane...is as stunning and changeable as that Tuscan countryside. Without her, this movie would be irksome, pandering as it does to stereotypes, including that of the American woman who goes abroad for easy sex with limpid-eyed hunks.

It has incest, sweaty armpits, nipple rings, drool, an amputee, a stroke victim and an engagement ring stuck in a sticky place. And Heather Graham. All that, and it's not very funny.

Smith's gleeful, touching documentary records the agony and the ecstasy of realizing your dream, and intangible ways that such dreams help keep people alive.

Chronicles of Riddick is half cheesy, brawny adventure and half … something else. That something else involves a lot of leather, bondage, studded armor and heavy machinery.

This fictional "what if" scenario is a bit campy and stagey, like a session of Opera 101. But it has one great thing in its favor: Ardant.

Jazz is a good metaphor for Robert Altman's movies they're often improvisational, free-form and full of unexpected dissonance. Unfortunately, his movies also fall prey to the hazards of jazz they can be boring, screechy and endless. Thus, Kansas City. [16 Aug 1996, p.49]

The movie equivalent of a medical experiment gone horribly wrong and kept in a jar of formaldehyde as a warning to others: Comedy can be a deadly weapon in the wrong hands.

The daring, funny and quirkily erotic Secretary examines power exchanges between consenting adults in a way that other movies have not managed without turning off swaths of the squeamish.

Unflinching in its depiction of racism, anti-Semitism, violence and jailhouse politics.

Of them all, only McCartney looks out of place, perhaps mistaking the venue for Vegas. There in a nutshell could be the answer to why the Beatles broke up.

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.

There's plenty to appreciate here but the story is tedious and some of the overacting runs into cultural translation problems.

No picnic to watch -- Leigh's camera is unsentimental and unsparing.

An excellent movie about a real-life nail-biter, forcefully acted, true to its period and directed with clarity.

What could have been a run-of-the- mill story becomes a superb policier in the hands of writerdirector Joe Carnahan.

A ­movie that takes impartiality to new places artistically. The film is infuriating.

If Sacred Planet helps kids appreciate the beauty and wonder of nature and animal life, it will be worth it. But surely civilization can come up with a more generously entertaining delivery system.

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.

Lame children's entertainment.

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

Grueling and bleak, but not unintelligent...although it's hardly groundbreaking just because everyone's face gets pulpy.

A mediocre fright-fest.

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.

Ho-hum, another serial-killer thriller. Even with Angelina Jolie thrown in for forensic sex appeal, this dog won't hunt.

It features an insane amount of violence and a number of visual references to the comic, but it lacks the original's humor and spirit.

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.

Like most Iranian films, it's a shaggy-dog story that builds so slowly you don't see the quietly shattering climax coming.

Needs someone to roll down a window and let in some fresh air.

Forget the awful trailer that makes the movie look like chalk screeching on a blackboard. The Banger Sisters is sheer fun, and a great showcase for Hawn.

All the magic at the disposal of today's filmmakers cannot bring to life this unappealing animated children's movie.

Lean's wonderful 1946 movie are taken down a peg with a tawdry update of Great Expectations set in modern-day Florida and New York. [30 January 1998, p. 44]

The funny thing about this unfunny movie is that the cast is brimming with actors who are usually quite engaging. The Whole Ten Yards must be very potent chloroform, indeed, to make Willis, Perry, Peet and Pollak such zombies.

This is a quieter, more psychologically dense movie, where the payoff is sometimes no payoff at all - for instance, Tim Roth plays a cut-rate divorce lawyer whose own weirdness (he seems to live out of his car) is never explained.

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

The triumph here is the natural, fluid way the characters interact, many of them displaying real-life, quirky senses of humor you don't often find in screenplays.

The superior animation we've seen over the last few years has raised the bar for family entertainment like Hoodwinked, which features lackluster character design, so-so animation and only fitful bursts of cleverness.

Powerfully uplifting precisely because it's so horrifying.

Pai is resourceful and in harmony with the natural world in a way that will charm and enthrall young viewers.

This movie is not as intricately rewarding as Zhang's others. But because it is so Westernized, it could do even better at the box office. [21 Dec 1995, p.60]

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]

Without excusing Stevie's behavior, the film makes a compelling case for how a child molester can grow from the bitter seeds of neglect and abuse.

The movie doesn't stoop to cheap psychoanalysis and must be commended for a bravely ambiguous ending. But most of the credit goes to Lane, who is simply extraordinary as a woman whose body is at war with her conscience.

Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson has perfectly wedded form to function by filming Boogie Nights in a style suggesting the grainy texture of porn and the ambivalence of the era.

The overly broad martial-arts comedy Kung Fu Hustle was obviously made with skill and affection for its many cinematic sources, yet I found the tone, timing and emotional involvement off by just enough to irritate rather than enchant.

Deliriously inventive.

A delightful comedic twist on Martin Scorsese's "King of Comedy."

A hellacious stew of romance and tragedy that gives the words "screwball" and "pathos" a bad name.

Attempts a coolness quotient it can't pull off.

After 45 minutes of incomparable boredom, the movie gets slightly better when it stops reaching for cheap yuks and lets the actors do what they do well.

The main theme is the loneliness of the social outcast. That, plus a soundtrack to wake the undead, and the morbidly entombed presence of Aaliyah, will attract an audience despite the movie's intrinsic cheesiness.

A fine example of how a character-based story can be so compelling you don't miss the frills.

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.

It wastes no time getting to the punching, kicking, stomping and zapping that passes for a cinematic event. [22Nov1997 Pg. 35]

The whole nutty crew finds it rollicking good fun to see themselves lampooned. But there is an unmistakable sorrow behind the humor.

This movie is for select tastes. It's not the fusillade of porn that wears you down, but the melancholy of watching an unremarkable man glide down the tubes as if on a water slide.

There's no drug potent enough to make Grandma's Boy worth 87 minutes of your life.

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.

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

There are so many balls in the air in the cheerfully violent Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, you'll want to wear a helmet for fear they'll all come crashing down.

Moll clearly has looked to Hitchcock and Clouzot for inspiration. There are sexual undercurrents between characters, psychological quirks and a murky veneer like the surface of the pool in "Diabolique."

Enjoyable, intelligent little heist movie.

Family gatherings in the movies are shorthand for brutal trips down mine-strewn memory lanes. The Sisters doesn't disappoint in that regard.

Fun and frivolous, packed wave to wave with gorgeous young creatures reveling in their physical prowess.

Everything to treasure about that magical, slightly malevolent feline of childhood verse is obliterated in the coarse, charmless Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat.

If you like your burger well-done, you're in for a disappointment.

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.

The movie may be set in prewar Japan, but it's pure 1940s Hollywood. There's costume, pageantry, melodrama, the feeling of a sweeping epic without the bother of too much accuracy, equal doses of heartbreak and uplift.

The real highlight is when Bateman and his co-workers compare custom business cards in a grueling, ego-shattering game of one-upmanship that is so linked to their sense of self it might as well be Russian roulette.

Director David Kane handles the sprawling cast with aplomb as his characters learn some new steps in this life-and love-affirming movie.

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.

A guilty pleasure, right up there with "The Water Boy."

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.

Serving Sara is D.O.A., with nary a laugh to be found.

A brilliant example of the genre -- with romantic subplots to boot.

It's a sad, rich story, full of misunderstandings, bad bargains, odd parallels.

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.

Petersen's speculative reenactment makes for gripping summer entertainment -- if you don't mind a little corn floating in your brine.

The movie walks a tightrope between playing this misunderstood malady for laughs and sentiment.

It's a Master "Plan."

There are two movies vying to occupy the same space here: a teen comedy about artistic pretension and academic double standards, and a darker, nastier movie about a serial killer. They share Zwigoff's trademark misanthropy, but it doesn't delight as it did in the perversely sweet "Bad Santa." Now it just feels mean.

Has something going for it that you wouldn't expect from the tired mechanics of the story — and that is the star-making appearance of 15-year-old rapper Shad Moss, who goes by the name Lil' Bow Wow.

Its leisurely pace and surreal poetry won't break box-office records, but will surely serve to introduce Mendelsohn as a major new talent.

An amusing and unusually compassionate look at today's corporate culture.

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.

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.

An "American Pie" wanna-be that, in trying to be as tasteless as possible, sometimes succeeds.

Under different direction, Orange County might have drawn a savvy cult audience that would appreciate the black-comedy possibilities of Shaun's idolatry of a certain writing professor (Kline), the homoerotic overtones inherent in best-buddydom and pyromania as a sexual turn-on.

The only intriguing character is the manager of the diner (and de facto fairy godmother), played by Regina King.

Hasn't a single original idea in its bird brain. But it clowns around just enough while sitting in the dunce chair that after a while it's mildly amusing.

The movie elevated the basic gangster picture into what became known as the niche genre of poetic realism. And, aside from Garbo, never have key lights on a star's face caused so much swooning among fans.

Matt Damon's performance isn't bad, but it pales in comparison with Law's.

Stiller and Aniston have zero sexual chemistry. But they have impeccable comic chemistry in a movie that features some stellar bits of business.

Features an absurdist sensibility that ultimately melts your heart. It's certainly one of the stranger movies you'll see.

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.

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

A grade better than the made-for-cable market whence it came.

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.

It's impossible to imagine how the action genre would have developed without Akira Kurosawa's watershed 1954 movie Seven Samurai.

You can't look away, not only because the carnage is so masterfully photographed, but because the director sucks you into his bleak, poetic, even sensible vision of cosmic brutality. Not for the faint-hearted!

An immensely uplifting movie whose final, unforgettable frames come as close as anything to answering the big questions about why we bother in a dog-eat-dog world.

Along with "The Others," -- represents a welcome diversion from loud, senseless Hollywood extravaganzas.

The movie awkwardly tries to present Bullock and King as an interracial odd couple. But the overall result is charmless, even insulting.

Gorgeous, fascinating and surprisingly suspenseful.

Shot on digital video, made on the run whenever Watts was available between gigs, the movie is a pointless, tedious eyesore.

You can't go wrong with an uplifting, anti-war story like this, but director Christian Carion trowels on the schmaltz, and the movie's emphasis on Christian values actually seems to spell doom for solving today's conflicts with the Middle East.

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

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

This sob story is a tough sell.

Time of the Wolf is grounded so deeply in the reality of society gone awry that the anxiety faced by Isabelle Huppert's character as she struggles to keep her family together transfers onto the audience and never leaves.

Unless you live and breathe exhaust fumes, there isn't much to sustain a viewer through a lame story and dialogue so pathetic.

This movie's attempt to reinvent Mizer as a First Amendment hero isn't as effective as its triumphant display of beefcake, which is, after all, the movie's raison d'etre.

A merry romantic comedy in the screwball tradition.

The film would be totally unwatchable without the very real charisma of Diesel.

The far too whimsical God Is Great, I'm Not leans heavily on the charms of Audrey Tautou -- As adorable as Tautou is, miracles are beyond her.

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.

The gimmick is that the script is based on the real-life experiences of actress Stephanie Bennett, who plays Samantha.

It revives an innocently pleasurable genre - shades of Burt Lancaster and Errol Flynn - that combines lusty adventure, humor, the great outdoors and satisfying storytelling without having to concoct it in a special-effects lab.

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.

Even the hardest heart must melt in the face of The Story of the Weeping Camel.

Santa Claus and the Snowman stage a scaled-down "Star Wars"-type battle for the rights to Santa's sleigh on Christmas Eve in the pleasantly goofy, irreverent Santa vs. the Snowman.

The most gorgeous movie of the year. This smashing martial-arts romance from Chinese director Zhang Yimou is stunning in other ways, too, like the eroticism that ripples just beneath the surface.

Manages to look very good for its limitations, and features solid actors doing their best with a very sketchy script.

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.

So lacking in insight and gravity that it makes Dahmer seem like a pesky, pasty-faced loser who just wasn't popular enough.

The result is an undeniable and effective authenticity.

Talk about waste products; think of the time, effort and money that went into this movie.

What sets Bootmen apart from the vast competition is its exuberant, sexy tap-dancing, but that's mostly relegated to the grand finale.

Most of the movie's rewards are in watching Morton.

If you're seeking transcendent love this season, skip the morose "End of the Affair" and go with Anna and the King.

It's an amazing slice-of-life story that will make you want to rush home and hug the kids.

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."

It stands apart when it comes to its extravagant humor and non-judgmental '70s-era reality (smoking dope, hitching rides, playing Frisbee, hanging out).

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.

Scary, all right, but not for the reasons the Dallas church had in mind.

Sappy and improbable.

This dismally strained comedy defies laughs and doesn't contain an ounce of internal logic.

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.

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

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

Stoked supplies a unique perspective on the hazards of rock-star fame that went with the sport's explosion for a band of rebels who didn't see it coming -- or going.

Knowing that the director is Robert Altman gives you a good idea of what to expect: a demimonde of locker-room chatter, catty sniping, backstage politics, high art and low self-esteem. Altman constructs the movie with the same cross-currents of his other ensemble movies.

It turns out that puppets can tell us more about who we are as a nation than the most meticulous documentary. In Team America: World Police, the potty-mouthed, crazily brilliant musical from Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the result is hilarious, shocking and bound to offend nearly everyone.

Offers only the smallest glimmer of hope that the two sides can work things out through ingenuity and compromise.

A marvelous cross between "Secretary" and "Lost in Translation."

Don't let the slow, deliberate pace fool you. A lot is going on in David Cronenberg's masterful A History of Violence, and you'll miss it if you blink.

The startling documentary Daughter From Danang cautions once again to be careful what you wish for.

Prepubescent girls might get a few safe giggles while others around them are yawning.

There was no burning need for a remake, but this one is respectful of its predecessor. It incorporates the technology and acquisitiveness of the intervening quarter century since Romero's vision. It even features a metrosexual, something unheard of in 1978.

Feels like any number of forgettable American teen comedies in which the nerd gets the girl and/or the money.

There are absolutely no psychological insights into sick minds in The Minus Man, a poky, opaque drama with a good cast and not much going on upstairs.

This stripped-down premise made the first "Transporter" fun: It's all about driving skills and choreographed fights, not logic. Even with so few requirements, Transporter 2 runs on empty.

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.

Even a soccer-savvy audience has better things to do - like instilling unsportsmanlike behavior in their kids or sabotaging rival teams.

The combination of the ancient tinted footage and Butler's crisp, sweeping vistas of the same areas provides a breathtaking recap of one of history's most stirring rescues.

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

With its cheerful hailstorm of anachronisms and classic-rock soundtrack, there's nothing medieval about it.

An adequate but none-too-thrilling star vehicle for Jennifer Garner in flame-colored bustier and low-riding pants.

It has a distinctive look but a few too many recycled ideas; better luck on the next crash-landing.

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.

Nachtwey's pictures tell a tale of grief and suffering, and Frei's you-are-there approach gives those photos startling immediacy.

A psychosexual thriller that treads a thin line between art and exploitation. The mere fact that it manages this queasy high-wire act is what sets debut director David Slade's slick mind game apart from the drooling pack.

With its intriguing relationships and sacrificial acts, Alice is a good alternative to happily-ever-after fluff.

This needlessly vulgar exercise in overuse of the n-word bills itself as a comedy. Even the outtakes over the closing credits don't live up to that.

What a treasure - a funny, tart, romantic comedy about tweens suffering the pangs of first love. It makes the cityscape an essential part of the romance, like a junior, vintage Woody Allen.

Never gets at what makes Quek tick.

The plot is formula all the way, but Lawrence has found a way to incorporate the physical techniques of the great silent stars with his standup comic's arsenal, and it's a pleasure to watch him at work.

Irritating wish-fulfillment movie.

Structure overwhelms everything, but it's not as if Wicker Park has nothing to say. It's full of ugly truths about emotional frailty, and implies that stalking is a bad thing only when you're not charming enough about it.

May be the biggest gathering of high-decibel performers in one movie. But they work well together and some are truly excellent.

It's strictly amateur hour.

A remarkable second feature from writer-director Yesim Ustaoglu.

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.

A plague of child kidnappings in Italy during the '70s provides the background for this chilling, deceptively simple tale of a rural boy who unearths terrible family secrets and rises to the moral challenge they present.

O'Connor plays Fanny with an appealingly direct, unflinching gaze.

The production is fantastically funny, high-energy camp, punctuated by Trask's infectious score and by Mitchell, dressing in a succession of wigs twice the size of his body.

If only there were a surefire way to describe Guy Maddin's films without scaring off viewers. The quirky Canadian is a genius who produces haunting, exquisitely droll movies that defy explanation.

The perfect sci-fi movie for a post-9/11 world, in that it tells us we're afraid of threats hiding in plain sight.

Kinsella, in his feature debut, milks cliches, caricatures and an unlikely set of coincidences to tie things up in a neat bundle.

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

It's a diary, collage, meditation, elegy. But, unless you're going for a Ph.D. in code-breaking, it's also a bore.

Dismal time-travel comedy that makes "Big Momma's House" look like "Citizen Kane."

Christensen is a bold actress with chilly frosting. For much of the movie, her character seems determined, sophisticated and bemused, rather than just plain nuts.

The remarkable footage includes damning evidence of how the media, the people and the army were manipulated. Which leads to that eternal question - if it's not on TV, did it really happen?

Sometimes veers off into preciosity. But it offers something rare in the bond between Andrew and Sam.

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.

Brutal but somewhat endearing.

The white-knuckle center of the movie is Sean Penn, who gives an utterly raw performance as Jimmy, father of the dead girl. It's one of the few times that a parent's grief has felt real on the screen through all its ugly permutations.

A perfect blend of summer action, a big movie with a deeply personal story.

A farce nearly as cracked as his previous "The Dinner Game."

With its colorful embroidery, Monsoon Wedding feels pleasurably grounded in a reality about which most Westerners haven't a clue. This may be their only engraved invitation.

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

A fascinating, somewhat frightening documentary.

The jokes are wild, raunchy, surreal and dead-on.

Flimsy and forgettable, but it does have a few worthy action and special-effects sequences.

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

A formula movie that is way beneath Murphy's talents.[17 Jan 1997, p.45]

Seems like a genteel "Psycho."

Gentle, funny and full of the lessons one expects from the scions of the late Jim Henson.

There's humor and expected back-story pathos.

A satisfying chick flick that follows all the usual rules of the modern romantic comedy except one - it's not stupid.

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]

A comedy hit, but its secret is that it delves deeper than the usual summer fare.

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.

You don't mess with perfection. That is the main reason why The Singing Detective, a virtual remake of the ­brilliant BBC-TV series of the 80s, falls flat on its psoriatic face.

Mildly pleasant movie.

The teen actors grin twitchily as if tickled by sudden growth spurts, but apparently nothing can hurt their chances with the females in this libidinous zip code.

What fans want are good movies. This one isn't particularly funny or romantic, but it's gripping and tragic. It asks some nasty, yet profound, questions about human desire and behavior.

When director Stephen Frears worked with (Jack Black), he must have yelled "Let 'er rip!" instead of "Action!"

Jacques Audiard's amusingly stinging A Self-Made Hero toys with the subjectivity of historical truth by presenting one Albert Dehousse (Mathieu Kassovitz), loser, cipher, liar. But a brilliant liar. [12 Sept 1997, p.44]

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.

Forces the audience to rethink the riots in new and difficult ways, to find empathy and revulsion where it might not have known they existed.

The drama never gets too deep or the comedy too funny in this L.A.-centric story that feels more like a pilot for a "Friends"-style series.

The movie raises questions that are on plenty of minds right now, including whether and how much the rules should be bent to wage a war (in this case, on drugs) that cannot be won conventionally.

As gorgeous and gripping as it is faithful to the spirit of Patrick O'Brian's celebrated series of historical novels.

A sluggish sequel.

Strangely unengaging.

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

Is it possible to have too much Anthony Hopkins? Believe it or not, the answer is yes. Hopkins' quiet power and perfectly formed vowels overwhelm the rickety, falsely sentimental Hearts in Atlantis.

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

Winterbottom uses effective imagery to establish the horror and absurdity of war. [26Nov1997 Pg.39]

Handsomely mounted but disappointingly slight.

Work was never funnier.

What the movie cannot take from the book is its dreamily descriptive prose and interior monologue. Perhaps because of that, the movie changes the focus from Ingrid, the more fascinating creature, to Astrid, whose clay is more malleable for the big screen.

This movie is not of a style that will speak to general audiences. It is nearly wordless, spare to a fare-thee-well.

Gently unfolds into an epic, heartbreaking love story that's far greater than the sum of its parts.

Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ is the most virulently anti-Semitic movie made since the German propaganda films of World War II. It is sickening.

You can reexperience the humor and magic -- and the essence of Streisand -- in this William Wyler classic.