Jonathan Foreman

Elegantly photographed family saga that brims with period detail. Unfortunately, the underlying story is less than compelling,

A witty and quietly charming road comedy.

The gleeful teen-horror spoof that proves that the Farrelly brothers have no monopoly on outrageous, politically incorrect comedy.

Bland, occasionally funny.

Fascinatingly, many of the interviewees disagree vehemently about Holmes' personality: some of his co-stars and colleagues found him repellently abusive and selfish.

It's not to say that the adolescent humor isn't funny; some of it is hilarious. It's just that this movie lacks the overarching comic sensibility that made "Mary" and even Adam Sandler comedies like "Happy Gilmore" and "The Waterboy" so satisfying.

But given the potentially gripping subject matter, the film is fatally underedited: Every scene feels too long.

When it was first performed in theaters a couple of years after the L.A. riots took place, Twilight: Los Angeles must have been very powerful. Unfortunately, director Mark Levin's filmed version lacks that impact.

Unfortunately, you really only hear about prostitution from the side of the pimp.

With its endless takes of characters silently waiting, say, or getting out of bed, this is the kind of film that can be seen only after a full night's sleep. But it is also clever, funny and sometimes moving.

While the film contains some terrific, realistically bloody battle scenes, it has a distinctly Germanic feel, both in its epic heaviness and in the peculiar way it revises the history of the American Revolution.

By far the best thing about Pitch Black is the cool-looking lighting and photography.

Represents a kind of progress. Where once only a few ultra-talented, lucky black filmmakers got to make big studio movies, now we have standard-issue Hollywood schlock that happens to be made by, about and for African-Americans.

It tries to be an update of "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" crossed with "Pygmalion," but while it has some funny and even original moments, it's too predictable to be "all that."

Essentially a feature-length commercial for both the growing sport of competitive cheerleading and ESPN2 .

Not entirely bereft of chuckles, though it misses one comic opportunity after another (the best jokes are in the trailer).

Besson is unable to weave the comic scenes together with the serious gory ones, so both seem increasingly jarring and unbelievable.

It's hard to feel anything but disappointment and boredom by the time the picture grinds to a mystical ending.

A gorgeously shot endurance test that is impossible to get through on anything less than a full night's sleep and a double shot of espresso.

Begins exceptionally well. Indeed, for at least its first half it's an unusually thoughtful, admirably underplayed piece of work of disorienting, rather harsh realism that builds its mysteries in pleasurably oblique and unpredictable ways.

But even that talent (Freeman) isn't enough to distract you from the general predictability of Spider or the absurdity of its elaborate last-minute plot twists.

A rather crude affair that feels like a student film, due to performances that often lack conviction and would-be "street" dialogue that rings false.

Visually flat and uninteresting and too often feels like a (leisurely paced) filmed play.

A hokey, overblown and deeply unsatisfying movie.

A crude, manic and embarrassingly unfunny satire that feels off from beginning to end.

Pumped-up, dumbed-down Bond, with tattoos instead of brains.

It's a lumpy and disorganized film that remains unsatisfying, perhaps because the fundamental oddness of having sex in public for money as a way of life remains just as mysterious at the end of the film as in the beginning.

Not a movie but a live-action agitprop cartoon so shameless and coarse, it's almost funny.

A slack-paced, surprisingly bland affair, filled with jokes that sound like they should be funny but aren't.

Strong cast is defeated by a labored, screenplay in this overlong, clunky love story.

There's not a moment in it that feels fresh or authentic or inspired. But neither is it offensive.

Doesn't press all its obvious lessons, and there are actually a few surprises -- and even a couple of moving and interesting moments -- before an all too predictable resolution.

A predictable tearjerker whose main redeeming feature is that you don't actually see any of the angels in the title.

Although Vatel is trying to say something about freedom and gilded cages, it feels more like a behind-the-scenes look at the high-end catering business.

Feels much more like a very, very long, music video, albeit one made for an audience that gets off on high-tech firepower rather than nearly-naked babes.

It's moody and atmospheric. But with the exception of a few cool moments that remind you of Ferrara at his best, it's dull and written with little attention paid to basic storytelling.

Thereare moving moments in this over-hyped satire by the Israeli-Arab writer-director-actor Elia Suleiman, and it's fascinating to get a picture of daily life in prosperous Palestinian neighborhoods.

Agonizingly slow-moving and talky, it consists primarily of conversations between two men in a truck.

Hardly a deep examination of gender relations or character, but in its unsentimental way it's a tender and charming story of friendship and tolerance.

One of those films that takes up a potentially fascinating subject only to fumble it.

Unoriginal but effective raunchy drag comedy.

It's a film pregnant with comic possibility that ought to be much funnier than it is.

Tendency to pretentiousness.

One of those exercises in romantic whimsy that misses its mark: It's alternately sappy and uncomfortably harsh.

The documentary equivalent of a Southern Gothic novel.

The first half-hour of Jeepers Creepers is so frightening that it's almost a relief when the movie subsequently collapses into silliness.

Its faults -- banal dialogue, ludicrous and uninspired plotting, dull but vicious fight scenes -- make you realize just how much the summer action movie has declined in the last few years.

Hard-core chick shlock, weakened by odd shifts in tone and a slack pace, but elevated by a luminous performance by Natalie Portman.

Familiar and predictable enough, especially if you have seen Hollywood serial-killer thrillers like "Se7en."

Recycles the teen romantic comedies of the last few years...and it's easily the worst of the lot.

Under the direction of Allan Moyle ("Pump up the Volume"), Nairn, McCarthy and Balaban give confident, believable performances but overacting plagues the rest of the cast.

Uneven but occasionally hilarious teen comedy.

Better Than Chocolate is well-filmed and for the most part well-acted. But its technical professionalism only serves to make the amateurishly crude patches of Maggie Thompson's script more obvious. [13 Aug 1999, p.062]

In general, it's a confusing, rather shapeless disappointment.

Pretentious and trite.

Turns out to be an exercise in flatulent pretension, puffed up with a bogus, empty "spirituality" and dependent on a plot filled with implausibilities.

There isn't a line you haven't heard or a stock character you haven't encountered before.

The whole thing is shot in an irritating, self-conscious way.

Despite a script that occasionally calls for some embarrassingly awkward lines, Kollek's cast generally acquits itself well.

Could hardly be more predictable.

Engaging in a soap operatic, rather glib way.

If it weren't for a terrific central performance by the Icelandic pop singer Bjork, Dancer in the Dark would be all but unwatchable.

It's a wretchedly dumb, lazy and incoherent movie that's magically rendered watchable by Eddie Murphy's charm and Robert De Niro's presence.

A genuinely clever plot.

Slow and predictable, and the characters are so poorly written that its hard to react to them in any way.

It's perfectly entertaining (and well-executed) in its cute, undemanding way.

The best thing about Equilibrium is its impressive look. Along with its generally fine cast and some well-choreographed fights, that goes a long way to making the movie watchable -- despite its underlying stupidity.

Overall, this sci-fi/martial arts hybrid has the stale aura of a product assembled out of bits of other action movies.

A cold, emptily stylish exercise -- and one that sorely lacks the speed and vigor that made "Lola" run.

Disappointing and surprisingly crude.

Simply not up to the task.

Plays to none of Rock's strengths (even though he co-wrote the film with members of his HBO team) and intensifies his tendency to mug and shout.

There are some decent jokes along the way. And none of the performances is bad. But they are limited by the script, which allows each character only one comic note.

Generic memoir of lower-middle-class "white ethnic" life in the '50s.

Boasts some genuinely intelligent and funny sequences and some nicely painful scenes of domestic tension - as well as surprisingly strong performances from actors like Neve Campbell and Donald Sutherland.

Though it sometimes feels as if it's four hours long, Underworld has going for it an intriguing fantasy premise, an eventful plot and a look that is diverting, if finally a bit monotonous.

Could have been written by a computer programmed to cannibalize previous sci-fi films.

Although Scary Movie 3 boasts the same relaxed attitude to racial and sexual humor, some of the same eye for movieland ridiculousness, along with the usual cameos (Pamela Anderson and Simon Cowell), it lacks a single explosive, roll-on-the-floor gag, and too often repeats and belabors jokes that are merely OK.

Staggers between flaccid satire and what is supposed to be madcap farce.

Amateurishly written and directed, and so predictable that it hurts.

The Rock deserves better than The Rundown, a brisk, good- hearted but predictable and uninspired - not to mention bone-crunchingly violent - action comedy.

Isn't boring, but it is sanctimonious, relentlessly predictable and willfully ignorant of the period it's set in.

What makes Final Fantasy a final failure is a predictable, nonsensical plot, laughably lame dialogue and a surfeit of cloying environmentalist piety.

Isn't quite up to the comic standard of Rob Schneider's 1999 hit "Deuce Bigalow, Male Gigolo."

Woo has never been particularly good at human stuff, and to the extent that Paycheck is, or should be, a love story, it feels forced.

There are some charming moments and some funny scenes along the way. But you end up feeling sorry for the likes of Ron Howard, Karen Black, Fred Williamson and Peter Bogdanovich, who agreed to play themselves in cameo.

Predictable, rarely scary.

Some wonderful films have come out of Iran in the past few years, but A Moment of Innocence, by highly regarded director Mohsen Makhmalbaf, is too smug and too self-indulgent to count as one of them.

Two things make this film slightly more interesting than its American B-movie equivalents. There's the artless way it shows the French state exercising its power and the charisma of French stars.

This second installment of Lucas Belvaux's acclaimed "Trilogy" is decidedly inferior to the first: a farce that simply isn't funny.

If Schwarzberg had chosen to concentrate on eccentrics, rural artists or people like his New York bike messenger, female aerobatic champion and California cliff dancer, "Heart and Soul" would have been a much more interesting film.

Resolves the romantic dilemma in the most artificial and unsatisfying way. A blaring swing score and some obvious dubbing do little to ease the pain.

Unfortunately, Impostor doesn't do much with its template, despite a remarkably strong cast.

A messy, woefully uneven chick flick.

It makes not just the "Thief of Baghdad" and the junky Ray Harryhausen movies of the '60s and '70s but even Disney's recent "Aladdin" seem positively multicultural by comparison.

Without a real story to go with the notion of Farm Belt "wiggas," the humor wears thinner and thinner until it disappears.

Slick but painfully precious, it strains to be darkly romantic but is bereft of genuine feeling.

An ultra-stylized, empty mess.