Jonathan Foreman

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.