Jonathan Foreman

Unpretentious and often witty, it's emotional punch is weakened by spotty performances, especially from Karin Viard in the lead role.

Longwinded, slow-starting but moving film.

A powerful fable about love and addiction that manages to be darkly humorous when it isn't graphic or harrowing in the extreme.

East Is East is "The Full Monty" of 2000, a fresh, funny and poignant film filled with sparkling performances.

It's often hilarious, and there is lots of the zippy, apparently improvised dialogue that made "Swingers" such a pleasure.

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.

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

There is hardly a moment during this overlong, stunningly smug exercise in moral self-satisfaction when you actually care about a character, real or invented.

But it's more than a crowd-pleaser shot at spectacular Rocky mountain locations -- it's almost revolutionary.

A clever, funny, extended joke about ruthless directors, method actors and the power of the cinema.

No one but a convict guilty of some truly heinous crime should have to sit through The Master of Disguise, an unbearably tedious and unfunny comedy.

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

Before the slightly surreal (self-consciously so) climax, there are some fine set pieces, including a disastrous dinner party that amply showcases Rivette's wonderfully light directorial touch.

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.

Gripping, smart and moving, without falling prey to sentimentality, it shows what can be achieved when mainstream filmmakers like Howard and Goldsman are genuinely inspired and determined to be honest.

Compelling but self-undermining documentary.

Visually accomplished and wonderfully acted.

The film is only 91 minutes long, but it seemed to stretch out for days.

Hilarious, acidic Brit comedy.

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."

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.

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."

It proves once again that it doesn't matter if the camera is dancing a jig on the ceiling if the storytelling is no good.

An exhilarating, sweeping epic that begs to be seen on the largest possible screen.

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

The demands of formula eventually stifle anything that even looks like inspiration or honesty.

A lovely, intelligent film from Spain about recognizable human beings with real-life problems.

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

There are a few chuckles here and there, and there are odd wisps of cleverness in the script by Steve Adams, but for the most part, Envy is a film that doesn't know where it's going.

The film's earthy frankness is refreshing.

Wilde's masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest, may be the best play of the 19th century. It's so good that its relentless, polished wit can withstand not only inept school productions, but even Oliver Parker's movie adaptation.

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

You have never seen a movie like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon because there has never been a movie like it.

It features well-below-par writing, acting, direction, special effects and music, while oozing a nauseating New Age sentimentality that undermines any tension in the underlying story.

It's clever, cool fun and it looks great.

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

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

So tedious it's almost worth watching to see just how bad acting, inadequate direction and most important, a criminally crass and unimaginative screenplay can make so little out of a proven idea.

One of those "Lifetime"-esque horror stories of evil husbands in the suburbs.

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

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

Good-natured but mostly unfunny.

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

They may not have made another "Back to the Future," but to their credit, the makers of Clockstoppers don't patronize or underestimate their pre-teen audience nearly as much as has become customary.

It's no funnier than your average grade-school biology lesson and less pedagogically useful than your typical Farrelly brothers comedy.

A triumph of intelligent adaptation. It shows again how well the great Victorian storyteller translates to film, and makes enjoyable use of a generally first-rate cast.

Large chunks of the film seem like a record played at the wrong speed: The tempo of the dialogue as delivered doesn't match the lines as written, and the filmmakers are too lazy or too inept to make their convoluted premise jibe with any recognizable idea of human nature.

Unwatchably bad.

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

Still worth watching for Dong Jie's performance -- and for the way it documents a culture in the throes of rapid change.

Downbeat and at times strangely slow-moving despite all its beautifully shot high-speed ambulance rides.

Toy Story had a simpler, stronger story and the advantage of being the first of its kind. But it's quickly apparent that TS2 represents a major step forward in computer-animation artistry.

Atriumph on almost every level. It is breathtakingly stylish, wonderfully acted and its three interrelated tales of the "war" on drugs are brilliantly structured to form a cohesive, powerful whole.

Boasts exceptionally attractive locations, but its painfully amateurish plotting, dialogue and acting -- combined with slack pacing -- make this Beijing-set indie romance something of a trial.

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.

But even if The Cat's Meow is unsubtle and overlong, in its jaundiced way it convincingly captures a fascinating period in Hollywood history.

Graham is funny and adorable in this endearing little romantic comedy.

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.

An inept, tedious spoof of '70s kung fu pictures, it contains almost enough chuckles for a three-minute sketch, and no more.

Less an updated version of the Dostoevsky novel than an unusually somber Hollywood teen love story.

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.

At first, it seems stagy and slow and even to verge on the pretentious, but the film steadily accumulates dramatic power as its carefully sketched characters reveal their internal lives. By its end, After Life has developed into one of those haunting movies whose scenes can pop back into your consciousness hours or days after you have seen it. [12 May 1999, p.56]

Bowfinger's terrific set-pieces... more than make up for the odd weak moment or thin performance.

It feels less predictable and derivative than it is, thanks to Gus Van Sant's deft direction and two fine central performances.

Quirky and good-natured, it makes the most of an unknown but able and refreshingly international cast. And for a low-budget indie, it looks remarkably good and moves along with real snap.

A languid but refreshingly real depiction of female adolescence.

If you've never seen a "masala" musical, you may find Lagaan hilariously bad. Cartoony acting, dreadful dialogue, obvious dubbing, and meandering but ultrapredictable plots are simply part of the Bollywood package, along with six musical numbers and a bizarre mixture of romance, comedy and melodrama.

Resembles a period version of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" - played dead straight.

You won't see any film this year as beautiful, and plain thrilling as Apocalypse Now Redux. Watching it after sitting through this summer's record number of dumb, dreadful movies is almost a painfully good experience. [3 Aug 2001, p.30]

It's frightening enough, to be sure, but too often it feels like a well-executed but rote exercise.

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.

You can tell this is a smart take on Hamlet from the first wordless opening shots.

Honest but also derivative and crude.

Initially amusing but finally sour sex comedy.

Powerful, important and refreshingly straightforward documentary.

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

It's a shame that the book "We Were Soldiers Once . . . And Young" fell into the hands of writer-director Randall Wallace ("Braveheart"), a filmmaker who wouldn't recognize subtlety and understatement if they were to attack him in the street.

Boring and irritating, and also mildly offensive in its ignorant depiction of both Judaism and Catholicism.

A crass, mechanical attempt at a thriller that should have gone straight to video.

A hokey, overblown and deeply unsatisfying movie.

A strange Gallic imitation of a Woody Allen comedy, replete with a neurotic older hero.

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

This oddly scrambled new version eventually falls apart so badly you feel embarrassed for the people who made it.

The most effective moments in Taymor's gorgeous, surprisingly romantic Frida are those that evoke the visual world from which Kahlo's work was formed or the paintings themselves, often using clever animation and other special effects.

So filled with amusing, idiosyncratic touches and unexpectedly charming characters that you mostly don't mind its excesses.

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

The final result, shaped by the brilliantly nimble, pitch-perfect direction of Spike Jonze, and blessed by superb acting, is an extraordinarily clever comedy that falters only in the last 20 minutes.

One of the more entertaining documentaries to come along in some time.

Ghobadi (himself an Iranian Kurd) takes some gorgeous shots against the snow, but his storytelling is uneven and often slow.

There are a few ingenious zig zags in its otherwise by-the-numbers plot...but what keeps you interested... is the sheer movie-star presence of the actors in the lead roles.

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

An unusually well-written and satisfying multilayered drama that conveys the feel of urban India with more vivid accuracy than anything made in the subcontinent in recent years.

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.

James' character is a charmless, boring lump and it's very hard to care if he gets the girl or not.

An almost chuckle-free mess, so amateurish and lame that the cast often has that embarrassed look you see on dogs given ridiculous haircuts.

Vulgar and lewd and raunchy like you wouldn't believe, and absolutely hilarious from beginning to end.

Inside Beautiful People, . . . there's a terrific film trying to get out.

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