Jonathan Foreman

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.