Jonathan Foreman

Almost too creepy to be poignant, and generally funny only in an uncomfortable, squirm-in-your seat way.

During an endless, maudlin last act, it becomes more and more difficult not to laugh -- or barf -- as the protagonists tearfully come to terms with their issues.

You have to sit through 90 minutes that feel like three hours.

Boisterously amusing.

One of those French films whose makers won't lower themselves to tell a story in a way that is entertaining or compelling.

Kevin Smith's attempt to combine sketchy low comedy with long-winded theological speculation results in a mostly unfunny and occasionally tedious mess.

A smarmy, smirky but ultimately boring film.

It's muddled and shallow and obvious. Worse, it fails as entertainment, being so ineptly directed and written it often has the feel of a high school production by kids with more money and ambition than talent.

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.

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.

Egoyan treats the Armenian genocide and its aftermath as a metaphor for cruelty and denial -- an exercise in either pretension or timidity that exploits this tragedy.

Has the cheesy, deadened feel of a straight-to-cable film.

An extraordinary documentary about an extraordinary man that brings to urgent life potentially dry questions of American foreign policy in the 1960s.

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

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

Anyone interested in this remarkably prolific author would be better off visiting a library or bookshop.

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

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

Smug, often tedious, and comically crude.

Every possible film student visual cliché (plus quite a few from the world of music video) gets a thorough workout.

Revels in the sensual pleasure of music while capturing brilliantly the tension that grips any theater company before the curtain goes up.

A sophisticated, stylish, fast-moving piece of work.

Though shamelessly derivative and amoral, The Girl Next Door is nevertheless funnier and smarter than most of the pathetic dreck aimed at the nation's teens.

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.

An example of lazy, dumb and couldn't-care-less hack movie making.

Isn't as bad as the year's first abysmal Martian movie, "Mission to Mars," but it's pretty close.

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.

Long stretches of Mike Figgis' film are jaw-droppingly pretentious or painfully dull... Nevertheless, there are clever, funny, erotic and visually beautiful moments scattered throughout the film.

An ugly, failed attempt to pull off a "Heathers"-style, teen-oriented black comedy.

The film is clearly an unfinished work and one that feels like a ragged assemblage of parts from at least two entirely different movies all with the same cast.

A haunting, superbly made film. But it's also an unrelentingly sad and depressing experience.

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

Boasts several fine performances and some elegant, eerie black-and- white photography.

A messy, woefully uneven chick flick.

A gorgeously photographed, sun-baked fable.

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.

Visually stunning.

The pace slackens a little after the first hour, but the photography by Remi Adefarasin and music by Magnus Fiennes keep the emotion stoked.

An affectionate, often clever and unflaggingly funny satire.

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

Often darkly funny and very well acted, it's a pleasingly subtle, Hitchockian thriller with dark comic overtones.

Fascinating, beautifully photographed portrait of a vanished community.

It is not only an amazing technical accomplishment, it's also the wittiest and best-voiced animated movie to come along in years.

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

Doesn't have the emotional heft of his "Children of Paradise," but it's still moving.

An ultra-stylized, empty mess.

Alas, the laughs - courtesy of screenwriters J. Mackye Gruber and Eric Bress and director David R. Ellis - are unintentional.

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 very effectiveness of After the Life's depiction of its main characters makes its immediate predecessor seem that much more of a waste.

A wonderfully acted, strangely low-key prison movie.

In fact, for long stretches, especially during the first hour, it's as soporific as watching a bank of security cameras.

Very, very funny, albeit inferior in a number of ways to the original.

The "Jurassic Park" movie franchise does not evolve. Quite the opposite: It degenerates at great speed.

A quietly compelling documentary that is refreshing in both form and content.

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

Like "Beneath the Veil," it gives a human face to those who have suffered from the Taliban's tremendous cruelty, and those who have been maimed in the war to end their rule.

Oddly undramatic.

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.

Fluffy, inconsistent, but enjoyable.

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.

Thanks to the amateurish, spectacularly talent-free quality of its cinematography, direction, writing and acting, Emerald Cowboy is simply impossible to sit through.

Bleak, demanding stuff, and its hand-held documentary-style photography is harder on the stomach than "The Blair Witch Project."

It is often as powerful as it is elegantly shot. Unfortunately, Szabo tends to tell this rather predictable tale in an obvious yet uneven way.

Bereft of inspiration, the agonizingly witless screenplay - blamed by the credits on George Gallo - resorts to pathetic cheap jokes about flatulence and impotence, lame slapstick and that juvenile gag about the horror of two men waking up naked in the same bed.

Travolta is terrific as a bad guy, making Saint almost sympathetic. His co-stars however, flounder in a sea of bad lines, with poor Romijn-Stamos getting stuck with the worst.

A lame, glossy and disastrously misconceived film about three ditsy sisters dealing with the death of their horrible father.

Unashamedly vulgar and exuberantly politically incorrect.

Audiences may find that the deliberate, Kubrickesque pacing -- without his intellectual rigor -- causes them to tune out.

A cute, often very funny romantic comedy and an effective vehicle for Matthew Perry.

By far the best and cutest thing about How the Grinch Stole Christmas is the dog Max.

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

A gleefully cunning comedy.

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.

This film of mistaken identity, murder, class envy and (bi)sexual tension doesn't live up to its own promise.

Has its heart in the right place -- and in a season filled with somber or goopy Oscar contenders, it makes a perfectly decent date movie.

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

Moves at a leisurely pace, and it cries out for a narrator or even just an organizing principle.

Cinematographer Darius Khonji does a superb job of conveying both the sensual beauty (there's a spectacular moonlight-on-the-water sex scene with Leo and the lovely Ledoyen), and the darkness of Richard's paradise lost.

Generally delightful, and reminiscent of two vanished ages: when men were men, and when movies were movies.

Branagh's attempt to meld Shakespeare's densely verbal early comedy with Broadway show tunes fails, thanks to stunt casting, poor singing and dancing, and the incompatibility of the two art forms.

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

Surprisingly smart and satisfying.

Lacks even a trace of imagination. Its by-the-numbers plot is depressingly familiar, and each line of dialogue is so predictable that the script... could have been generated by a computer.

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

There's some lumpy writing and uneasy acting, but it's easy to see why this charming, inventive film won prizes at festivals in Berlin, San Francisco and Newport, R.I.

Has moments that are eerily beautiful and genuinely moving -- and some that are surprisingly vulgar.

Recycles gags from various, more successful gross-out and romantic comedies, but without any zest or imagination.

Unfortunately, this version of the familiar formula lacks the inspiration, genuine wit and raunchy charm of 1998's outrageous "There's Something About Mary."

Much of Tomcats is actually boisterously, crudely entertaining.

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

An awkward hybrid of genres that just doesn't work.

Better than any automobile flick put out by Hollywood in a while and, thanks to some genuinely exciting moments, it is easily the most entertaining so far of this summer's big, brainless action movies.

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]

Much of the resulting material is very funny, though there are a few times when the filmmakers patronize or mock their subjects in a way that makes you uncomfortable.

It's hard to imagine how Shyer and script writer John Sweet could have brought this tale to the screen in a cruder, cornier or less interesting way.

Peter Farrelly is angry at Miramax for marketing his and his brother Bobby's new film as a follow-up to their surprise smash hit, "There's Something About Mary."

I was pleased by the forthright defense in Friendly Persuasion of Iranian cinema's use of children.

Beautifully shot and often moving.