John Patterson

Equal parts big-house B-feature, hammer-down road movie, post-feminist consciousness-raiser and rock & roll pipe dream.

Genially moronic, Road Trip will tide you over until the next slice of "American Pie" comes along.

Overall Sheridan keeps both "Oirishry" and sentimentality in check. He captures the book's evenhanded sense.

It's a rare pleasure to see these senior citizens given so much screen time, droopy butts and all.

Helgeland strips the material back to its pulp origins and overlays it with a patina of glib motifs familiar to devotees of Hollywood’s 1970s renaissance.

Without a well-delineated political or social framework, Union Square offers little that we didn't already know.

A coercive script by James Kearns, and some middling direction by Nick Cassavetes, can't rob the movie of an undeniable, headlong crowd-pleasing power.

Inspirational...unfolds gently with an evenness and rural patience.

Oscillating gracelessly between the coarse and the merely saccharine, 50 First Dates, directed with zero visual or comedic flair by Peter Segal (Anger Management, Tommy Boy), showcases Sandler's cuddlier side as it reprises the tepid chemistry that he and Barrymore road-tested in "The Wedding Singer."

Inspirational stuff, and often hysterical to boot.

An accomplished miniaturist's documentary -- 80 finely wrought minutes in alternating increments of wonder and loss.

Noyce has made a good-looking, intelligent stab at the novel, mildly undermined by a tendency to seek contemporary relevance.

Although its lushness and penchant for melodrama are the cinematic equivalent of Billy Sherrill's syrupy string arrangements for George Jones, Tammy Wynette and Charlie Rich circa 1973, the movie deftly manages to remain sweet without becoming saccharine.

The film's sheer likability and very impressive gag-to-giggle ratio derive more from sweetness and sharpness than from shit jokes.

It sure comes through on the belly-laugh front, from its animated in-flight, safety-manual credits through to the very last blooper ('ooligan Vinnie Jones' breathtaking, obscenity-filled rant against the "fahkin' Eye-ties").

Babenco's kindly, concerned eye seeks out the humanity in even the worst of his characters, and by the time he re-creates the massacre, with shocking power and force, one has been equally captivated and appalled at the world he shows. The result is one of the richest prison movies in years.

Gormless, gutless little home movie.

Occasionally the Woo-inflected action sequences - particularly a horse stampede through town on hanging day, and an escape from a moving train - rouse the film from its anti-historic, even mythophobic torpor.

Crowe's undeniable gifts -- his well-crafted individual scenes and his love for his characters -- are more evident here than his flaws.

Gossip is trash, but it's well-written, slickly directed trash.

A schizophrenic outing from habitually hysterical director Tony Scott (True Romance, The Fan), Man on Fire is a movie of two unreconcilable halves.

The result is an intelligent, moving and invigorating film, just the thing for adults bored with the shock-horror posturing to be found in the work of so many young European directors.

Jolie hogs the spotlight as usual, leaving romantic interest Ed Burns struggling to register and only Shaloub -- fetid, dirty, soulful -- with his dignity intact.

It goes straight to the top of the class. O can there be such a thing as too keen a guilty pleasure, particularly when the whole genre is knowingly pitched to audiences as a trashophile's delight? No, there cannot.

Any movie offering a Muzak version of the Ramones' "Blitzkrieg Bop"warrants an immediate and unqualified recommendation.

Jackson and Levy strike only damp sparks off each other, and they seem to have been introduced to each other --without benefit of rehearsal -- mere moments before the director cried "Action!"

Into the Blue is a likable bimbo of a movie, all surface and -- despite breathtaking underwater photography and a marked resemblance to Peter Yates' "The Deep" -- zero depth.

While the film has the feel of an illustrated radio play, it teems nonetheless with pleasing ambiguities and subtle doubts, and its elusive qualities force the viewer into active and rewarding participation rather than simple passive spectatorship.