Jonathan Foreman

Comes closer to what a Bond movie should be and once was.

A delightful, fresh dark comedy.

It turns into something that is much smarter, and in a gentle, low-key way, tougher and funnier than you expect.

The filmmakers have an pleasurably accurate sense of the embarrassments that darken early adolescence and of the amazing cruelty of teenage girls.

Lighthearted and smart enough to be one of the best Altmanesque ensemble comedies of the last couple of years.

Though Human Stain is sometimes too chaotic and sometimes too neat, it boasts some of the best acting of the year.

Rescues a rarely performed tragedy and makes a brilliant case that it is the Shakespeare play for our time.

Much has, and will, be made of the grisly scenes throughout the film.

It's an original, and a gamble, and one of those movies that works better than it should, despite considerable flaws of conception and execution.

It's hardly a dramatic story. You learn absolutely nothing about her personal life. But there is plenty of drama in that amazing, soulful voice and the songs she sang.

Disappointing and surprisingly crude.

There are affecting scenes, and not all of Cacoyannis' additions to the Chekhov text detract from the effect of its moving brilliance.

Fake-sounding dialogue, some over-deliberate performances and five amazingly trite linked stories.

More impressive than the sight of these acts on an eight-story screen is the excellent six-channel IMAX sound system.

A slow, self-consciously low-key, very dull film that strains for eeriness with long silences and affectless performances.

Energetic, often very funny comedy filled with sharp, vivid performances by a terrific ensemble cast.

What really wrecks Wolfgang Petersen's Troy is some of the worst casting in recent Hollywood history: The lackluster ensemble hired by the director is overwhelmed by the generally impressive sets and crowd scenes, by the task of playing epic heroes and by David Benioff's rambling, tone-deaf screenplay "inspired by Homer's 'Iliad.'"

Honest but also derivative and crude.

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.

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.

A test of endurance, and not just because you need a rather stronger word than "explicit" to describe this long-unreleased, self-consciously provocative film.

Beautifully shot and often moving.

An example of Hollywood schlock from the team of Joel Schumacher (director) and Jerry Bruckheimer (producer) that lacks the faintest trace of imagination or genuine feeling.

By far the best single performance in the film - and it is really, really terrific, utterly believable and moving - is by Emma Thompson. To the extent that there is genuine feeling in the movie that doesn't feel slickly manipulative, it's in the scenes involving her character.

Its abundant laughs are heavily reliant on the chemistry of stars Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson - who show once again that they're as fine a comic team as Hollywood has ever produced.

Despite its treacly sentimentality, predictability and gutless evasiveness about the power of the church in 1950s Ireland, Evelyn manages to be an enjoyable piece of family entertainment.

Vastly superior to the small and independent films that have come out during the last six months.

Although the jokes aren't as consistently funny as those in "Lock, Stock," once again writer-director Ritchie demonstrates a deeply pleasurable combination of verbal flair and visual wit while conveying the genuine, intimidating hardness of the English working class and its love of language.

Eyes Wide Shut is Stanley Kubrick's Hindenberg.

Crippled by lame storytelling.

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

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.

Contains too many weak performances and predictable lines to succeed, but it's probably the best rave movie so far.

Lacks the humor and charm that fills the book and makes it so much more than a catalog of suffering.

Sucker bait for the sort of credulous cinast who'll buy anything ugly and boring that looks like it's avant-garde...rancid stew of cheap shocks, sleaze and phony artiness.

Too often seems like a slightly silly film.

Amateurish in the extreme, the film is a feast of bohemian cliché, bad writing and worse acting.

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.

Easily one of the most enjoyable big-budget Hollywood movies to come along in a while, Rock Star is an unexpected pleasure.

Though it contains some very funny, cleverly written comic sketches, Human Traffic shares with other drug movies the problem that watching other people on drugs is not interesting.

It too often looks and feels like a high-concept home movie, thanks to cinematography that's crude and ugly even by the standards of documentary video. But Group is also a remarkably believable piece of improvised theater.

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

An engaging, bittersweet tale.

Indeed, for all its jokiness, this isn't the film for anyone who suffers from even the mildest fear of ugly, scuttling, jumping creatures with spindly, furry legs that have a habit of hiding in your shoes.

The film's tongue is so firmly in cheek that, without being a spoof like "Dragnet" or "The Brady Bunch Movie," it has more in common with the "Austin Powers" films.

There's something oddly endearing about the Barenaked Ladies. And by the end of the movie, you begin to see just what it is that inspires such intense fan loyalty.

As the plot loses steam, director Mark Pellington (whose paranoid thriller "Arlington Road" was one of the worst movies of 1999) tends to rely on cheap tricks to maintain suspense, although the final catastrophe is very nicely done.

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.

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

A campy docu-drama about the secretly gay world of 1950's muscle magazines.

The dramatic history of the Soviet space program deserves a far more competent documentary than this amateurish Dutch production.

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

An embarrassing misfire...feels like a long, slow TV pilot about L.A. twentysomethings, only it lacks the polish and wit of your average sitcom.

Tendency to pretentiousness.

Sweet, often poignant little film.

Even if this film may irritate some people who remember "the movement" differently, it's nevertheless a fascinating and often moving document of recent history.

Amazingly amateurish, the film lands wide of satirical targets that should be impossible to miss.

A non-thrilling occult thrillersolame and unoriginal that it would be an embarrassment for any director, much less a talent like Roman Polanski.

It's an odd mixture of an unsentimental, darkly humorous take on mental illness with the usual Hollywood loony-bin cliches.

Though not as witty or accomplished as you'd expect from its pedigree, "Le Divorce" provides welcome relief from the lame-brained trash Hollywood has foisted on the public this summer.

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."

After a dreadfully clunky start, Left Luggage picks up and becomes quite moving.

A surprisingly nasty fable about a particularly silly, very English brand of animal-rights extremism.

The originality and intelligence that made Smith's "Clerks" and "Chasing Amy" such refreshing pleasures are all but absent.

Turns out to be a choppily written, unevenly acted exercise, no less shlocky and predictable than any of Hollywood's average second-string heterosexual comedies.

While Star Trek: Nemesis isn't nearly as good as the best Nicholas Meyer-written movies like "The Undiscovered Country," it is far from the worst, thanks to the topical issues it raises, the performances of Stewart and Hardy, and that essential feature -- a decent full-on space battle.

It reeks of contempt for the audience. This is not just a "B-movie" -- it's a B-movie that fails to entertain on any level.

The girl you see stabbing and shooting prisoners and fellow trainees makes the killer from "La Femme Nikita" look like a wuss.

Despite some genuinely funny scenes, American Desi turns out to be inferior to the as yet unreleased "ABCD" and even last year's "Chutney Popcorn."

Shaft is what summer action flicks should be... thanks to superior writing, acting and direction.

The marvelous Burtonic gothic/nightmare production design -- scenery, weaponry, costumes, etc. constantly pleases the eye without ever distracting you from the plot.

Looks and feels like a bad imitation of "Trainspotting" without any of that film's wit or charm.

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.

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

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.

This otherwise undistinguished thriller about cloning is the most entertaining movie from the aging action star for some time.

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

Cheerful, slightly cheesy entertainment that uses the latest special-effects techniques to breathe life into a venerable film tradition.

Undeniably powerful, grimly fascinating.

Quickly morphs into a messy double message movie with motifs and clichés lifted from military courtroom films like "A Soldier's Story" and "A Few Good Men."

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

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.

Despite many flaws...Romance is unquestionably an important film.

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

In the end, it is inadequate, juiceless storytelling that deprives Titan A.E. of any dramatic force.

For the most part, it's both sitcomishly predictable and cloying in its attempts to be poignant.

The characters are tired stereotypes, the sentimentality nauseating and the situation comedy way below the standards of the very worst WB or UPN shows.

Greengrass' direction is uninspired, but there is powerful chemistry between a workmanlike Branagh and (real-life girlfriend) Bonham Carter. And her original, seductive and always believable turn as the difficult-but-lovable Jane raises the movie above all its flaws. [23 Dec. 1998, p.44]

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.

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

The contrast between Chan's charm and physical prowess and Tucker's lack of same is even more dramatic in this tiresome, leaden sequel.

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

A shame that this indie's willingness to trade in stereotype leaves a sour taste in your mouth.

One of the most thrilling - and authentic - mountain-climbing films in recent memory. Unfortunately, it's also burdened by one of those every-line-a-wretched-cliché Hollywood screenplays.

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

In any case, the presence of O'Hara, Kline, Ramis, Black, Tomlin and John Lithgow (who plays Shaun's father) serve mainly to underline the feebleness of the screenplay and the slackness of the direction.

Perfectly enjoyable swashbuckling, eye-catching entertainment.

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