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.

Richard Jeffries' script tosses together bits of plot borrowed from such "bad things happen when you leave the city" classics as "Straw Dogs" and "Deliverance" without any awareness of how or why genre conventions work.

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

There are times when the urban dialect is so thick, you wish the film came with subtitles.

It's only when you're leaving the theater that her spell wears off and you realize just how bad the movie, directed by Andy Tennant, really is.

Self-righteous, economically illiterate and sometimes flatly dishonest.

As a horror movie, even one inspired by the kitschy Hammer horror films of the 1950s, it's disappointing.

A deep disappointment to fans of sci-fi and the once great John Carpenter.

A visually stunning film.

The whole film could use a jolt of caffeine, and a lugubrious woodwind score doesn't help.

Crimson Gold has been likened to an Iranian "Taxi Driver," but it's nothing of the sort, though it is powerful in a quiet, minimalist way.

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

Laughs are few and far between, and the film feels brutally long.

The thing that makes Haneke’s Code Unknown so enjoyable and effective is that that he says it in such a wonderfully restrained and light-handed yet suspenseful way.

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.

Toomuch of the humor in Not Another Teen Movie is either lame (the school in the movie is called "John Hughes High") or lamely disgusting.

A witty, well-acted, visually gorgeous ensemble drama.

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 result is a remarkably beguiling documentary, on a number of levels.

Sweet, often poignant little film.

Bedeviled by labored writing and slack direction.

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.

Culkin is superb - he makes you forget that Igby is a spoiled brat who actually deserves the beating he gets.

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

A poignant, graceful little film.

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.

No "Crouching Tiger." It lacks the richness of theme and performance that made Ang Lee's film so emotionally satisfying. In fact, watching Iron Monkey makes you realize just how Western and literary the sensibility of "Crouching Tiger" was.

So beautifully made (everything in it is understated except the gorgeous good looks of its stars) and turns out to have such real cumulative power that it is worth holding out to the end.

More tedious than affecting.

Magnificent if overlong and oddly structured surfing documentary.

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.

Structurally flawed, occasionally shlocky, but written with unusual intelligence and subtlety.

An engaging, bittersweet tale.

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.

So minimalist in characterization and dialogue that the plot all but evaporates -- and so does any dramatic power.

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.

Slight but affecting triptych.

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

Its bawdy honesty eventually gives way to convention, sentimentality and a frustratingly silly ending.

An uplifting, crowd-pleasing film in the tradition of "The Full Monty" that could easily win Oscar nominations for both its 11-year-old star, Jamie Bell, and first-time director, Stephen Daldry.

An inferior factory product, cranked out with little care and less imagination, that seems all the dumber because it's pretending to be smart and topical.

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.'"

The film is almost worth seeing just for the extraordinary scene in which a stark naked Mortimer has her movie star lover (Dermot Mulroney) deliver an exhaustive critique of her body's flaws.

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.

But it is Thurman who stands out, with a marvelous, full-blooded performance, her best in some time, as tragic Charlotte.

A miracle of badness, a kind of art- house "Showgirls" -- which actually exceeds "Showgirls" in its self-indulgence, shallowness and sheer stupidity.

Embarrassingly bad - the kind of slapdash exercise that gives even Hollywood formula a bad name, while doing little justice to the sport.

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

Calling it pretentious doesn't do justice to the toxic faux-bohemianism and unearned self-regard that bubble and ooze out of every aspect of Chelsea Walls.

Intelligent, moving and often beautifully photographed, Aberdeen boasts superb performances.

Unoriginal but effective raunchy drag comedy.

As lifeless and unfunny as a corpse on a slab.

A sweet, lushly photographed but occasionally slow film.

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

Ed Radtke's film-fest favorite does at least boast some fine acting, excellent photography and an authentic feel for life on the highway.

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

A lazy and uninspired knock-off of the hilarious 2002 movie "Road Trip."

Tendency to pretentiousness.

A real pleasure, a sweet, funny, ensemble comedy...utterly authentic.

The screenplay is packed with so many hilariously bad lines (it's hard to believe that writer-director Helgeland won an Oscar for co-writing "L.A. Confidential") that the movie would be perfect material for a resurrected version of the TV spoof "Mystery Science Theater."

It ranks among Robert Altman's best work ever, and that its many satisfactions derive in large part from a superbly written screenplay by Julian Fellowes that has no equal this year.

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

Essential viewing for anyone who cares about American popular music and its roots.

Meanders along in a confused, confusing way for what feels like hours.

The documentary equivalent of a Southern Gothic novel.

A laughably bad B-thriller.

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.

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

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.

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

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

This is a lazy, careless film that feels strangely unfinished.

This oddly cheerful, decreasingly dark comedy actually works and can boast some of the most enjoyable performances of the year.

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.

Slight but entertaining and occasionally touching.

This bizarre, original and brilliantly crafted documentary about the Sex Pistols is funny and at times moving -- despite all the ugliness and stupidity it depicts.

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

Part of the problem is that the Finbar character is both underdeveloped and unattractive - you don't get a sense of why anyone would miss him, let alone go searching for him in the snow. [17 Mar 2000]

If you're starved for on-screen nudity and sex garnished with art-film trappings -- The price you'll pay is putting up with the director's relentless Euro-pretension, manifested in a tediously contrived plot crammed with absurd coincidences, clunky symbolism and soap-operatic melodrama.

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

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.

About three-quarters of the way through, Havana Nights suddenly becomes laugh-out-loud awful, with dreadful, lame lines delivered painfully badly - as if a different screenwriter and director had taken over for the movie's final act.

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.

The result is an intermittently instructive and amusing jumble that might have been seen as daring and "transgressive" in both form and content if it had been released, say, three decades ago.

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.

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

Isn't Allen's finest work by a long shot, but an undeniable part of its fascination is trying to figure out what -- if anything, even unconsciously -- he's trying to say about how he treated Farrow.

It's fascinating and moving all the same, both in its depiction of Iranian daily life and in its powerful portrait of female oppression.

Partly a schmaltzy, by-the-numbers romantic comedy, partly a shallow rumination on the emptiness of success -- and entirely soulless.

Despite the high quality of the acting, Spring Forward is for the most part sleepy, long-winded stuff.

Never much more than hagiography that lets the context of its hero's death remain confused.

This inferior sequel is doomed by a lousy - and extremely vulgar - script.

Poetic but tedious and all but plotless.

Pretentious and trite.

An extraordinary experience: an original and brilliant combination of comedy, action and sophisticated political comment -- the best American movie of the year thus far.

It's a slow, exhaustive and exhausting process that takes a toll on the viewer, despite the intrinsic power of the underlying material.

Refreshing and surprising, the way independent movies are supposed to be.

May well be the first film ever to show people having sex while wearing gas masks.

Fitfully funny at best, it's a sophomoric, facetious road comedy.

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

That it is such a powerful and indeed beautiful film is simply extraordinary.

This crude, deeply dishonest documentary does no such thing. David Russell's fictional "Three Kings" does a much better job.

May be the creepiest and most original horror film since John Carpenter's classic "Halloween."

Summer Catch is the sludge at the bottom of the barrel.

Surprisingly charming and even witty match for the best of Hollywood's comic-book adaptations.

The problem with Gigli is that it is an inept attempt to do Elmore Leonard by Martin Brest, a filmmaker whose coarse sensibility makes him catastrophically unqualified to the task.

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.

Despite its talented and/or attractive cast, Heartbreakers is an ugly movie: The kind that makes you feel slightly soiled afterwards.

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

It's a shame that, on top of everything else, the second movie version of The Quiet American -- Graham Greene's brilliant 1955 novel about the French Indochina war -- should be so visually disappointing.

The smartest movie to come out this year, and it could hardly be better cast.

Relentlessly stupid.

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

It lurches ineptly from lame comedy to hokey melodrama.

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

For some reason, the people who make modern musicals don't like to let you watch dancers dance -- there are still too few moments when you get to enjoy choreography from a dancer's hands to her feet.

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

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

It's actually the surprisingly compelling plot and the often hilarious dialogue that keep you watching this tale of passion and murder in a Samurai militia unit - not the beautiful scenery or the elegant color palette.

A unique, priceless portrait of the now legendary leader, and of his beautiful country when it was in the grip of a disastrous civil war.

A beautifully shot, well-acted movie that manages to make a complicated, real-life story without much drama feel like a thriller.

Uneven, self-conscious but often hilarious spoof.

Could hardly be more predictable.

It isn't entirely clear if Games People Play is a spot-on but longwinded and excessively campy spoof of those TV "reality" game shows... or just a particularly ingenious and sleazy example of the genre.

Engaging in a soap operatic, rather glib way.

Formulaic but surprisingly charming.

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

Stinks even by the standards of late summer movie garbage.

May well be the dullest and most pointless version ever filmed, thanks to a stunningly bad lead performance by Ethan Hawke.

A deeply pleasurable, old-fashioned blood-'n'-guts adventure film.

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

Thanks to a superb performance by Isabelle Huppert, it's compulsively, gruesomely watchable.

Darkness Falls was formerly known as "Tooth Fairy," but could just as well have been titled "Dumb Then Dumber" for the way its plot makes decreasing sense even by the low standards of B horror flicks.

It's all so insincere, you can almost imagine the filmmakers rubbing their hands together at the prospect of ripping off the public.

Too often seems like a slightly silly film.

A noisy, amateurish mess that doesn't work on any level - an extended, clich-ridden MTV video set to anachronistic bad music.

It's a film noir spoof, replete with hard-boiled narration, lounge-music soundtrack and dramatic black-and-white photography.

Sometimes hilarious but mostly sitcom-esque geezer comedy.

Hollywood movies are rarely as contemptuous of the audience as Dragonfly, with its half-witted, treacly New Age sappiness and its mechanical borrowings from other, better supernatural thrillers.

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.

Works unexpectedly well for its first three quarters.

Occasionally amusing, extremely gross, but mostly tedious.

It's only because the performances are so vividly entertaining -- Mandvi and Puri are particularly good -- and the painstakingly reconstructed locations so lovely that the saggier sequences are tolerable.

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.

An ideal antidote to the big-budget bores that studios put out in late summer, The Tao of Steve is a charming, funny and refreshingly smart Gen-X romantic comedy in the tradition of "When Harry Met Sally" - with the bonus of an engagingly laid-back Southwestern flavor.

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.

Francois Ozon, perhaps France's hottest director of the moment, is often better creating stylish visuals than dramatically credible situations, but Criminal Lovers is never boring.

The screenplay by Zekri (based on Jorge Amado novel) is crude stuff, and director Ossama Fawzi gets such cartoonish performances from his cast, it's hard to care about the characters.

This film is fighting the good fight, albeit in a rather heavy-handed way.

A genuinely clever plot.

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

Unfortunately, the mind and motivation of Otomo -- remain a mystery.

Transcends ironic grunge-glamour and achieves a beguiling combination of dark comedy and genuine sweetness.

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

The movie that deserved to win the Oscar for foreign-language film, and one of the best movies ever made about life behind the Iron Curtain.

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

The latest episode of this ongoing masterpiece of reality TV -- which every seven years revisits a group of English people first interviewed as 7-year-olds in 1964 -- is every bit as enthralling as the earlier ones.

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

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

A strong, early candidate for the worst movie of the year.

Its superb performances, music, photography, dialogue, its rhythms of tone and theme all complement each perfectly.

An elegant, quietly comical but slightly constricted period piece whose stately pace is all but offset by several impressive performances.

A sometimes glorious, sometimes disastrous folly.

A formulaic and predictable movie that combines minimal characterization with some irritating implausibility.

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.

Surprisingly enjoyable, as adaptations of cult comic books go, thanks to a sense of humor all too rare in the genre, winning performances by Ron Perlman and Selma Blair, and a sweet romance of the kind that made "Spider-Man" a richer experience than its competitors.