Jami Bernard

Gloriously inventive, delightfully nutty comic treasure is unlike anything you've ever seen. It's lunatic.

The faux-documentary format does nothing for the material, but Kaye turns in a chaotic and ultimately moving performance.

Michael Jackson is an alien? Tell me something I don't know.

Like many dreams, you won't remember it when you wake up. The style obliterates any emotional attachment.

No other mainstream movie has so openly tackled the subject of female sexual experience.

There are many delightful movie techniques out there available for making animals appear to speak, so it's too bad The Shaggy Dog doesn't use any of them.

A comedy that successfully plays with stereotypes, both racial and personal.

The movie is set in a gloriously creepy and crumbling Venice. It's the off-season, and every deserted canal and alleyway reeks of bad vibes. Roeg plays masterfully with this menacing atmosphere, jangling the nerves with quick cuts and quixotic possibilities. [16 Oct 1998, p.72]

Rickman and Richardson are excellent actors put to ghastly waste.

High spirits and colorful hissy fits go a long way toward masking the inexperience of this cast of mostly nonprofessionals. It's a charmer.

The story is a mess, some of the images offensive, the acting under par and the dialogue silly.

An impressive portrait of the migraine of teenage girlhood, and also works on the more modest level of teen romance.

Like all blond jokes, Legally Blonde is basically meanspirited, and that's when it's funniest.

The best part of Zatoichi is its fine sense of rhythm, culminating in a galvanizing clog-dance finish.

Don't see The Inheritance if you're already depressed. This airless downer from Danish director Per Fly is about an heir who makes one wrong decision from which even lousier decisions effortlessly flow.

The nasty, violent material has two small beacons of hope - Nielsen as a fair-weather stripper in the manner of old film-noir dames, and Quaid as a scurvy ­mobster who hates being cheated. With his puffy, reddened face, Quaid looks like a bad Santa.

A fascinating whirl of politics and palace intrigue.

Spielberg's direction and Melissa Mathison's script never lose sight of the realistic, low center of gravity world of childhood, in which such marvelous adventures happen every day that an alien knocking around the garage is not really such an unusual occurrence. [2002 re-release]

The result is a bit of a mess: sometimes delightful, sometimes tedious, always creative.

The results are impressive. Maybe, as the U.S. falls abysmally behind other nations in the sciences, it will get kids interested in that field again.

Some of the simplest shots give you the full picture of the price these guys paid for their dreams.

The movie's pleasures are spare, and will appeal mostly to die-hard Rivette fans and viewers with slow pulses.

Has a great deal of empathy for that excruciating limbo that is female adolescence.

It was filmed in and around the World Trade Center, and the subsequent cuts, reshoots and sleights of hand designed to obscure that fact prove devastating.

A charmer with an attractive cast and an excellent soundtrack.

Nothing you haven't already seen elsewhere, except for Vin Diesel looking even then like a box-office champ.

The movie is full of puzzling celebrity cameos, as if Brazilian director Bruno Barreto called in all his chits.

A caustic, funny, low-budget treat, shot on digital video.

The vitality of the hip-hop scene serves as both backdrop and metaphor in a romantic comedy as sweet as its title.

This languorous art movie is somewhat like "Memento," with its narrative fragments and memory mixups. It never explains itself, which means that the audience, like the protagonists, must take a leap of faith.

Yet another film from Iran that has the leisurely pace, sly humor and incontrovertible wisdom of a Sufi parable.

It's a misguided, miscast remake of the 1974 Robert Aldrich classic.

The movie pulls off the trick of blurring the distinctions between romantic and platonic attractions across the generations.

With one exception (hint: Faye Dunaway), the actors seem remarkably at home in their milieu.

Writer-director Danis Tanovic, a Bosnian who spent years documenting his homeland's turmoil, makes a bold feature-film debut with this funny, sobering message movie.

The movie exaggerates a common dynamic between men and women.

Crude and giggly.

Juices up the visuals with fancy camerawork and split screens, but it can't distract enough from the vulgarity of the material.

An unimaginative schoolyard-bully comedy.

Handsome, passionate and fun. It's everything we go to the movies for.

This has all the ingredients for a top-notch thriller except one - a thrill.

A welcome departure from typical movies about teens, wherein their problems are external (the prom, status). Mean Creek is an adult movie that just happens to star young actors.

A surprisingly genial and affecting comedy about the trials and tribulations of teenage rebellion during the Reagan '80s.

A delicately upbeat, even humorous celebration of love and sacrifice.

Refreshingly offbeat documentary.

Nearly scrapes the bottom of the cracker barrel in search of suspense, now that the humans accept the polite mouse as one of their own.

This extraordinary film refracts truth through the prism of memory, until what you get is a tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions, full of sacrifice and betrayal.

Viard plays one of the most intriguing female characters in recent film from either side of the Atlantic.

A desperately unfunny comedy that wastes a brand-name cast.

Works on several playful levels. Most obviously, it is a horror movie in which life imitates art on a movie set.

Hurt is slumming in an unchallenging role.

Some of the scenarios are funny. But they're uniformly overplayed.

What's subversive about the movie is that it comes off as squeaky-clean, when in fact it's irresponsible. Worse, it's not that interesting.

With more buckling than swash, The Count of Monte Cristo is a good-looking, poorly acted washout.

Borderline brilliant. Tackles the war on drugs from a kaleidoscope of perspectives.

An abysmal comedy that should have been strangled in its crib.

Reefer mildness.

This movie is not just bad, it is breathtakingly, spectacularly, awesomely bad. You might want to see it out of curiosity. [23 Aug 1996, p.40]

This is not for the Merchant-Ivory crowd, but action fans will feel their pulses quicken.

A period romp that tries too hard.

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

Director Charles Herman-Wurmfeld ("Kissing Jessica Stein") misses several opportunities to go all out and be, as Elle would say, "superfun."

Mark Wahlberg could lose some of the good will he generated from his performance in "Boogie Nights" by playing an idiotically gentle killer for hire in The Big Hit. [24 April 1998, p. 53]

A magnificent looking and occasionally very silly Chinese Western.

The screen smokes with sexual heat. But what's really erotic is how much fun the actors seem to be having.

Simple, joyful and downright innocent movie.

Not since Cary Grant offered Joan Fontaine a gleaming glass of milk has a bedtime toddy looked as suspicious as it does in Claude Chabrol's wittily enigmatic Merci pour le chocolat.

A simple story that resonates deeply, largely thanks to the actors' ability to invest it with inner life.

Shrek 2 delivers more fun than there is slime in a green ogre's swamp. Much of that is thanks to Antonio ­Banderas, who runs away with Shrek 2 on little cat feet.

Who knew a drama about numbers could be so thrilling?

Searching for a documentary feel, the camera here is so shaky that you cling to the arms of your chair lest you pitch into the next row.

If there's a soft spot in your heart for the sword-&-sandal epic -- and from the star rating above, I think you can guess where I stand -- then you'll swoon with giddy delight over Gladiator.

This is another brilliant performance by Crowe, who is to body language what Meryl Streep is to accents.

As a boxing movie, Against the Ropes is perfunctory, with a well-muscled Omar Epps diligently enduring predictable montages showing his rise to fame as Jackie's first protégé. As a biopic, it's likewise uninspired stuff.

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

Go for the extraordinary special effects, by all means, but not if you want to feel good about yourself or humanity. And heed the PG-13 rating, because this movie takes no prisoners.

Whatever substance there is of Ocean's Twelve fades faster than invisible ink. But it's not the kind of movie you watch for plot details. It's really about spending two hours on that Lake Como speedboat, relaxing with pals.

Graham is lots of fun to watch, but it's hard to reconcile the split halves of her character.

The movie is so nervous about offending anyone that it's hardly any fun. Hanks delivers a few solemn speeches meant to deflect criticism. Meanwhile, he and Tautou barely hit it off. At least Mr. and Mrs. Smith got hot while doing their jobs.

The wheezy Mighty Wind can't blow out the candle of this group's first musical mockumentary, 1984's "This Is Spinal Tap."

A deeply felt celebration of the life force, as embodied in Girard's fierce performance as a man who may not have done all he could, but had an enviably great time on the way.

The story is predictable, even bland, but the stellar cast, detailed set design and abundance of good humor elevate it from the typical feel-good movie. It makes for intelligent counterprogramming against some of the season's harder-edged fare.

Apparently Louis Kahn was not much of a father, raconteur or businessman. But he was a genius, and he left his mark on all the people whose lives he touched.

Dispels myths about the "gangsta" aura that clings to rap and shows this poetry of the streets in all its different forms: social protest, entertainment and aggression.

An amazingly self-assured movie, it percolates with themes and ideas, all held together by the gift of the bull's parts.

A prettily photographed yet morbidly gloomy movie.

Silly, perfect fun.

I'd like to believe I could watch ­Cedric the Entertainer all day long. The tedious comedy Johnson Family Vacation puts a strain on that theory.

The sunny, funny, toe-tapping Lagaan is the answer to those who ask why they don't make movies like they used to: They do, but in India.

The girl's blindness may have been meant to symbolize a trusting populace, but she's the one character who clearly sees what's what and who is trustworthy.

In his new concert film, a train wreck of self-regard, self-pity and not-so-humble pie, Martin Lawrence doth protest too much.

Without Crowe and Paul Giamatti, this movie would have little in its corner.

You may not realize just how much it takes to make a great mockumentar like "Waiting for Guffman" until you see Never Been Thawed.

The slapstick is broad to the point of overkill.

The already minimalist filmmaker has gone positively threadbare with Ten, a movie that feels as if there was no director on the set. For the most part, there wasn't.

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

The makers of Seducing Doctor Lewis have a cute idea, but they milk it for all they can, sometimes to the point of embarrassment.

Visually, Robots is fun and imaginative. The wow factor is enhanced in the IMAX version, also opening today.

It's a triumph of the human spirit that so many people in deadly jobs are able, nevertheless, to marry and have a few happy moments despite lives of hellish labor. Glawogger's intrepid camera finds both the shame and the grace in it.

As junky as the movie is, you've gotta love its immersion in the preposterous and its naive hope that street credibility and attitude, along with a need for speed, are all that's really necessary in this big, bad world.

Bai Ling plays a resourceful prostitute from a Malaysian refugee camp who grows harder and more alienated by the day. Nick Nolte, Tim Roth and Temuera Morrison offer strong supporting performances.

The movie delivers the promised ballroom action, but not the charm. And if you think the title is endless, wait till you see Goodman's death scene.

A natural successor to "The Blair Witch Project" in terms of its small suggestions of horror past and future.

The movie does have one very perplexing major flaw. It throws in some minor-character narration toward the end, as if test audiences had lost their ability to concentrate, and this was the filmmaker's only solution for getting us back on track.

Violent, cool and street-smart, Shaft supplies everything you want in a summer movie.

The sepia-tinted palette of Ask the Dust drips, reeks and creaks of the seamy side of a city that takes more often than it gives.

The script provides an excellent payoff, although action fans may not agree, because that payoff is the equivalent of a Cheshire cat's grin.

An unexpected delight.

The direction is still slick, but Matchstick Men gets most of its thrills from the unknowable in human interaction. This could be the biggest "scam" Scott himself has pulled off.

A pleasure, chock full of creatively choreographed fight scenes.

Could easily serve as an instructional video for repressive regimes who have not yet learned you can get more with honey than with vinegar.

"On Deadly Ground," "Out for Justice," "Marked for Death" these are the last times Seagal gave us nothing. With Fire Down Below, he outdoes himself. [6 Sept 1997, p.32]

Brilliant. [24 December 1997, p. 24]

With his haggard good looks and bearish presence, Nolte is the main event in this colorful three-ring circus of a heist picture.

When improv is done well, it sheds a unique light on the human condition. When it is done adequately, as it is in Full Frontal, it simply makes you long for a good script and pricey production values.

Written, acted and directed so intelligently that it stands out from the pack, and is guaranteed to give you the warm glow of holiday movies past -- the kind that celebrated faith in human potential and the value of hard work.

The power of the arts to transcend cultural differences is presumably what moves the German to spare Szpilman, and, perhaps, is the key to Polanski's salvation as well.

The script is so ridiculous that nothing rings true.

Amazing... There are only a finite number of filmmakers with the devotion, patience and ability to tease out these stories.

Sven Wollter and Viveka Seldahl give superb performances as the couple, a once-vigorous conductor and his orchestra's concertmistress. But soon ... well, you know the drill.

It's a virtual clip reel of grandly comic moments that remind us what a good actress can do when parts are scarce.

Originally intended as a comedy, the snippets of lightheartedness that remain seem awkwardly out of step with the unsurprising drama that replaced it.

With its scenes of full-frontal nudity and its references to the Tiananmen Square protests, Lan Yu may be a breakthrough film for China, but it's well-trod territory for American viewers.

Has that same air of silly innocence, a rarity in today's movies.

A gangsta rapper without fire in the belly isn't terribly interesting, cinematically or musically.

A modern-day fable about love and commitment — it's different.

Accomplishes two great things on what was undoubtedly a minuscule budget. It breathes life into a small story that has larger ramifications. It also shows that America, as represented by Jackson Heights, is still the promised land for people about whom movies are rarely made.

The actors are unknowns, but Ryan does a lot with her little downturned mouth. There are as many shades of anxiety as there are shades of blue in the sea, and Ryan manages to find them all.

As documentaries go, Watermarks is nothing special. But the women who inhabit it are sensational.

While Pfeiffer is a stickier subject, Clooney is so game he could have chemistry with a sandbox. [20 Dec 1996, p.61]

Taking one's pound of flesh and having it, too, leads to a queasy comedy in which Pacino burns a hole in the screen while the frivolity around him sputters.

The wordless six-minute animé shorts - at the end of which our double-jointed heroine would always die - don't lend themselves to a 95-minute action movie where viewers might rightfully expect something to make sense.

This genteel confection skews toward older audiences - those who go for "Calendar Girls," "Ladies in Lavender" and "Mrs. Brown."

Despite its rare look at the tensions between religious and secular soldiers in a settlement on the occupied West Bank, it's a pretty static, by-the-book drama that would be insufferable without the sullen heat of Tinkerbell and Avni.

This is a sophisticated and unsettling documentary marred only by a voice-over taken from the writings of Jamaica Kincaid.

The game itself is meaningless, and the movie, much the same way, likes it like that.

The movie is an actors' paradise, and absolutely no one disappoints.

This is a movie full of tin-eared humor and situations too contrived to give romance a toehold.

Jackie Chan finally has met his match, an opponent so deadly that none of his considerable talent or charm can fight it -- a bad movie

Pacino is masterful as the sharp-witted, seen-it-all detective.

If the Founding Fathers had known National Treasure would be the result of their efforts to forge a new nation, they might have reached for the Wite-Out.

A crowd pleaser, even if it is unremarkable.

That it all seems improvised on the spot (it was not) is testament to the power of a film that trusts its characters, its actors and its ultimate goal.

Delicious, intelligent thriller.

Billy Bob Thornton wrote, directed and stars in this compassionate, occasionally funny, character-driven movie about a mentally unstable man who takes the best interests of children very seriously.

With its agile, clever script and winning characters, Toy Story 2 is that rare thing -- an excellent children's movie with no upper age limit.

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.

One of the reasons the move is so funny is that it is only a few degrees away from real life.

Kingsley seems determined to rescue this old chestnut of a character from Jewish stereotypes, but to what end? Oliver's boyhood has become worse than Dickensian - it's bland.

It tries to be more existential than gumshoe but falls way short.

Leaves the viewer exhausted, jet-lagged from the effort of investing equally in competing story lines.

It's a compassionate story about what makes people tick and what really matters.

Omar Sharif certainly doesn't disappoint in Monsieur Ibrahim. The casting alone promises something extraordinary.

Delightful and moving - although fanciful.

The movie is paint-by-numbers with several numbers skipped.

Earthlings beware: The dialogue and characters have less weight than bodies freed from gravity's grip.

This spirited documentary shows us the hazards of filming volleyball at nudist camps and the marketing possibilities of women mating with gorillas.

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.

It took the German restorers four years to ready this print using dupe negatives and old prints found in archives around the world. Their work speaks for itself. Each frame of this classic is drop-dead stunning, the more so now that the movie no longer hiccups its way across the screen.

Boorman doesn't shy from showing Cahill as a complicated man who, in one famous incident, nearly crucified one of his own men for a minor infraction. But the portrait is a loving one, full of empathy for an oddly principled man who, in another line of work, could have made a difference and lived to enjoy it. [18 Dec 1998, p.72]

An unerring sign of the awfulness of Malibu's Most Wanted is a series of the least funny outtakes ever appended to a movie's closing credits.

But while this terrific cast gets to strut and preen, it's difficult to make an emotional connection with most of them.

Big, bloated and only intermittently amusing.

A bouquet of snappy one-liners and disarming nuttiness.

A deliberately stupid movie whose crazy charm wins you over in the end.

A safely sanitized comedy with an important message about loyalty and individuality, plays to Lohan's strengths and gives the target audience a chance to live it up vicariously.

Lightweight, inoffensive fare, as bland as a sleepwalker under a hypnotist's spell.

It is a sweet, wonderfully acted cameo of a movie about the lengths to which a lioness will go to protect her cub.

Profoundly depressing.

It's too bad there's so little of LL Cool J as the secret object of Georgia's fantasies. He'd make a funny, nimble, sexy romantic lead with just a bit more screen time.

The result is a back-lot studio tour that's not exactly good-natured, but terrific fun and it gives the ensemble cast plenty of clowning opportunities.

It's a humiliating comedown for Ford, and he looks creaky and grumpy, obviously aware that he is miscast and dreading every scene.

Dano is a real find in this daunting role about a teenager's identity crisis. The subject of the movie is dicey but ultimately deeply rewarding.

It is not the worst movie ever made, as some critics claim, but it does a passing imitation.

The love and attention Oshii poured into animating Batou's pet basset hound proves that the human instinct dominates even in a movie dependent on technology.

Nicolas Cage does such a persuasive job of portraying Chicago TV weatherman Dave Spritz as a train wreck of a guy that you wonder whether this might actually be a training film for a psychoanalytic convention on hopeless cases.

Inordinately clever, sprightly romantic comedy.

It's hard to care what really happened on Wonderland Ave. when the audience hates the neighborhood.

Cedric is certainly the bright spot in this movie - personable, silly and lovable, with just enough of Gleason's girth, timing and humanity to make you wish he'd driven Ralph Kramden's bus onto the lot of a different movie.

Unfocused and shrill.

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.

Poignant, eccentric comedy.

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

The jolts are mild and too easily anticipated.

Another excellent example of how Iranian cinema uses deceptively simple techniques to decode devastating truths about human nature.

With destitute and disillusioned Mexican laborers much in the news lately, Star Maps is timely, and Spain is effective and affecting in the lead role. The movie's efforts at realism, however, are undermined by a cast of scenery chewers starved for attention. [23 July 1997, p.45]

The real star of the movie is the background work.

The realistic scenes of oyster farming and the beauty of the Hawkesbury River lend this movie a degree of fascination that its taciturn, beer-swilling characters can't provide.

It's a romantic weepie.

It's an uplifting movie about the rewards of perseverance and community.

This is a serious and well-acted drama, not a jokey ripoff, whose relevance (however distant) to Columbine is a plus.

See it only if potty-training is still the most vivid life experience in your book of memories.

Bale fails to make Chris a character compelling enough to stand out from that heavy dose of '70s clothes and hair.

A darkly brilliant sci-fi movie about emotions so deep, the story could be taking place within the chambers of the heart instead of an arid space station. At the same time, it is a coldly theoretical piece that could leave viewers unengaged.

Crudup gives it his best, but his character is so economically drawn, there's hardly anything there -- certainly nothing likable.

Well-acted but otherwise lackluster drama.

A tiresomely madcap story with extremely faint political (and politically incorrect) overtones.

This powerful, compact trilogy speaks volumes about women in Iran.

A gripping thriller whose terror -- unfortunately -- comes from real life.

The cinematic equivalent of the mad-scientist experiment gone awry. It seems to be grooving on its own strangeness, at the expense of its connection with a paying audience.

Movies about the dawning of female sexuality and its links to mother-daughter competition are tough to pull off, but Rain is a splendid example of how to get it right.

A dreary comedy in the same mold (as "The Bad News Bears," only moldier.

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

Lacks the charismatic presence of Vin Diesel, who has priced himself right out of the franchise. Without Diesel, there's not much gas, at least not from the nonvehicular elements.

A droll gem that celebrates movie love with feeling and deadpan humor.

The movie is quite off its rocker: Jerry Springer, Chrisopher Walken, Tom Waits as a roadside prophet, a miscast, nervous Lucy Liu as an FBI agent -- it's a feverish, violent jumble that's shot as if high on mescaline -- the drug, not the salad.

It is not a great ad-vain-cha, and it's a lousy movie. But it underscores Irwin's kitschy popularity as a sideshow entertainer on the Animal Planet channel, where he cheerfully wrestles or rescues all manner of Aussie wildlife while telling the camera what great danger he is in.

This is no simplistic vigilante movie. Like Park Chan-wook's "Vengeance" trilogy, it explores the nature of the beast of revenge, leaving the audience in a sweat of dread.

A journey that goes from prosaic to existential. Director Hans Petter Moland's raw drama of father-daughter reconciliation features an excellent cast.

Exhaustingly manic but curiously unfunny movie.

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

Viewers of first-time director Jeong Jae-eun's sober dissection of dismal day-to-day rituals may want to throw themselves into the brackish water long before the movie is over.

The sniper's life is a lonely one, full of shallow breathing and delayed gratification. Solitary as it is, Jude Law manages to get a little action in the bunkers of wartime Stalingrad in the ambitious but sometimes inadvertently silly Enemy at the Gates.

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

The cinematic equivalent of comfort food it soothed when you were younger and, in its familiarity, it soothes again.

That the actors can work under such scrutiny is amazing, and they are superb. The standout is Brad Renfro as Marty, the kid most under the thumb of the neighborhood bully.

There's definitely room for a female Woody Allen, an accolade garnered by a previous film. However, Amy's Orgasm is chirpy, shrill and coarse, more in the vein of one of Allen's more depressed periods.

Streep is perfect, as per usual, but the showy orchid role goes to Cage in an Oscar-worthy tour de force. He pours his body into Charlie's slumped frame of mind and creates a character churning with endearing contradictions -- the unforgettable nebbish.

It's like a walking tour inside the head of a deeply troubled, deeply talented young man, where most of the systems have already shut down.

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

It's about the kind of kids who could never sit still enough, unfortunately, for a movie that perfectly captures the frustrations, longings, obsessions and torments of the awkward years before manhood.

Excuse me, but didn't Bette Midler already play this role?

Tough going for most audiences and should be considered more of a rough draft full of lofty ideas unevenly executed.

It's an excellent fusion of subject and style.

The screenplay is chock-full of political and social observation tarnished by uneven ­acting and editing. The clumsy humor doesn't translate well.

The results are amazing, though bittersweet, and demonstrate how complicated and expensive it is (though not impossible) to break the cycle of poverty, crime and lack of education.

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.

The comparison to Woody Allen is obvious, not only in the New York setting and the characters' comic approach-avoidance to sex, but in Burns' casting of his real girlfriend to play his screen girlfriend. Uh, Eddie big mistake there. [23 Aug 1996, p.41]

An eye-pleasing French action-slasher film that is cheerfully unencumbered by the usual conventions of stuffy costume drama.

An adorable, infectious work of true sophistication.

Paying homage to Sergio Leone, "Mexico" aims too high and, in the process, becomes more like every generic, overplotted drug-cartel-and-revenge flick out there.

The movie is fun, fun, fun.

A remedial comedy for idiots.

A preposterous action movie in which a Navy SEAL makes the world safe for democracy one continent at a time.