Jami Bernard

Peregrym's performance as fiery, troubled teen Haley Graham is a triumph of charisma over technique.

The central relationship here is curious but not engaging, except for the pleasure of watching Deschanel, making All the Real Girls just a filmmaker's exercise in impressionistic style and mood.

As filmed by Steven Soderbergh with appropriate visuals for a movie about perceptions, Gray's quest for ocular health leads from an Indian sweat lodge to a Filipino psychic surgeon. [19 March 1997, p.39]

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.

Harris convincingly creates one "Pollock" after another over the course of the movie.

The movie then becomes John's story, making an unbelievable leap of psychodrama to do so.

But there's no affection in this mean-spirited sendup of "the business" and nothing to mitigate its sour taste.

While their often-unclothed bodies are visible, their faces are replaced with digital "buttons" saying things like "Your ad here."

Mostly pitched at a new crop of children who will detect the movie's mildly sarcastic, audience-winking tone with no problem.

There ought to be a law about transporting humor internationally.

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.

With its mystical mumbo jumbo and even a helpful beam of celestial light in one scene, A Rumor of Angels is a kind of cinematic comfort food for an undemanding audience.

An actress' dream.

Hell is sitting through a movie in which you have no respect for the protagonist and the "surprise" ending is as clearly lit as the exit sign.

The meltingly beautiful Newton gives a solid performance, but she and Wahlberg do not glide like Astaire and Rogers, to put it delicately.

An entertaining, post-modern mulling of the nature of truth, and whether truth is ever so fixed that it can be captured on tape.

The audience for this chaste teen romance won't be film lovers, as the movie is sappy and listlessly paced. But it's just the ticket for people who want their movies sanitized.

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]

La Promesse believes that decency is an innate human quality that can surface from any rubble. [16 May 1997, p.47]

The Cockettes epitomized a brief confluence of new possibilities, not so much in theater as in personal style, lending them a certain historical value that greatly exceeds their contribution to theater.

Does the testosterone fly? Not as fast as the potty jokes. Ditto the homophobe jokes zing! zing!

In making such an appealing movie about characters who are usually swept under the Hollywood rug, Binder does us all a service.

The filmmakers caught the kids arguing their cases like adversaries on "Judge Judy," sticking to phrases they've memorized or absorbed only too well.

Behind the inspired wackiness is a story about how our warlike nature needs some changing before we can all live in relative harmony.

The movie isn't a day in the park, but it manages to close on an existentially uplifting note.