Kenneth Turan

It's clever, amusing, clever, visually inventive, clever, well-cast .

Bristling but finally surprisingly moving film.

You'll be planning to see Ponyo twice before you've finished seeing it once. Five minutes into this magical film you'll be making lists of the individuals of every age you can expose to the very special mixture of fantasy and folklore, adventure and affection.

A reasonably diverting albeit frequently improbable thriller.

Director Timur Bekmambetov has combined two things that never connected before. He's taken a glossy Hollywood-type fantasy thriller about the battle between supernatural forces of good and evil right here on planet Earth and infused it with a homegrown, distinctively Russian soul.

Though Girls Rock! is nothing if not well meaning, it doesn't always feel like the best possible film on the subject.

Boyle has been nothing if not bold with this film. He's dared to use so many venerable movie elements it's dizzying, dared us to say we won't be moved or involved, dared us to say we're too hip to fall for tricks that are older than we are.

Shanley seems to have lost a certain amount of faith in what he'd written. As a director he's ended up pushing the drama harder than he needs to. He hasn't done anything fatal, but he has tampered with and hampered it.

The latest in Hollywood's almost biblical procession of disaster films, Deep Impact tries with moderate success to be more than just the sum of its special effects.

Has everything a period romance should have, including a score by Michael Nyman and passionate performances by stars Ralph Fiennes and Julianne Moore.

What happened to these men on that ascent is fascinating, though factors like differences in gear between 1924 and today means that definitively answering the question of how far Mallory climbed is not possible. Which seems, somehow, just as it ought to be.

Directed by Jon Favreau from a script by David Berenbaum, Elf returns to the hip but warm-hearted spirit of "Swingers," which Favreau both wrote and starred in. It brings sophisticated glee and a sense of innocent fun to what could have been a moribund traditional family film.

Director Demme has done other potent and meaningful films, but The Agronomist defers to none of them in its effectiveness and its power.

If anything is missing from this inspiring film, it is a deeper examination of why, given how common-sensical these approaches are, so few other schools have been able to accomplish what Providence St. Mel's has.

As unspoiled in its key elements as the day it was made, "On the Waterfront" is indisputably one of the great American films, its power undiminished. Even more today than half a century ago, it demands to be seen.

As pretentious as it is hard-core specific, this fiercely anti-erotic film makes even the chilly "Eyes Wide Shut" play like "The Big Easy."

Even by sequel standards, a minimal amount of creativity has gone into Sister Act 2, and not even the talents of its cast, including several likable young people, can compensate for this thrown-together feeling.

Because a gradually thawing Will plays more to Grant's strengths, the second part of the film, helped as well by Rachel Weisz as a love interest, is much more fun. But it is still hard not to feel that this film is pushing us too hard, slickly trying to seem more honest than it actually is.

The two men collaborate so well, in fact, that the real love match of Appaloosa is between the two of them and no one else.

Powered by an excellent Kurt Russell performance, Miracle treats old-fashioned, emotional material with an intelligence that respects both the story and the audience.

We’re presented with another movie in the “Mississippi Burning” tradition that focuses on a heroic white person getting his eyes opened about the nature of his own and society’s racism.

Though replete with amusing situations and clever lines, its strongest suit is the delicately pitched comic performances of its actors, most especially star Kevin Kline.

Moving and frighteningly real.

There is more to admire in A Beautiful Mind than you might suspect, but less than its creators believe. When the film does succeed, it almost seems to do so despite itself.

Its style is spare, rigorous, almost anti-dramatic, but it deals thoughtfully with some of the most complex elements of the human equation.

It does not have as much invigorating freshness as audiences have come to expect in computer animation.

Not without its funny moments, much of Birdcage seems pro forma and predictable. What felt original in 1978 is no longer half so inspired.

Has a great deal of the unapologetically broad and silly comedy.

While it's understandable that it was thought that Tess needed something more, that it couldn't go on merely being clever and fragile, this solution goes too far in the opposite direction. [11Mar1994 Pg. F9]

the first techno-misfire from Walt Disney Pictures, an over-elaborate film that leaves you feeling harangued, harassed and assaulted.

Kevin Costner very definitely isn't Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, and his noticeable awkwardness in that rebel's role underlines the problems this muddled, fitfully effective version of a most durable English legend has in deciding which face it wants to present to the world at large. While the makers of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves may have set out to bury the poor old duffer of Sherwood Forest in a welter of trendy banter, they have ended up burying themselves as well.

This single cautionary tale of how drug innocence gives way to woeful, hung-over experience proves to be way too predictable to effectively caution or even involve anyone.

Has an intimate, personal quality. Rather than showboating for the camera, the soldiers get to a deeper level, conveying a surprisingly reflective and aware sensibility.

A wholly unexpected film, as heady and surprising in its humor as in its emotional texture.

Above all this is a film for gluttons for punishment, for those who never ever can get enough of Sylvester Stallone. Everyone else, please leave the building.

It's a wonderful piece of filmmaking, but once any mouth is opened the magic is immediately tarnished.

Director Paul Anderson, whose last film was "Mortal Kombat," well knows how to build suspense and increase tension. But counterbalancing all of that is Event Horizon's position as a sci-fi splatter film, intent on drenching the screen in blood and gore whenever possible. [15Aug1997 Pg 16]

A rich, unnerving film, as comic as it is astringent, that in its own quiet way works up a considerable emotional charge. [8 Oct 1993]

Promising as it seems in theory, everything in this new version, like Lena Lamont's image in "Singin' In the Rain," falls apart as soon as the talking starts.

Every holiday season needs a pleasant surprise, and this year it's Drumline. This entertaining and enthusiastically told tale shrewdly energizes its way-familiar plot line by setting it amid one of the greatest and least-known spectacles in American sports.

It's not "Chinatown," Jake, but Mulholland Falls has a brutal power of its own. A Los Angeles-based period thriller strong on amorality and corruption, not to mention sex and violence, Mulholland Falls combines a vivid sense of place with a visceral directorial style that fuses controlled fury onto everything it touches. [26 Apr 1996, p.F1]

A sour romantic comedy, only sporadically amusing.

A vibrant and joyous new documentary.

Avatar's shock and awe demand to be seen. You've never experienced anything like it, and neither has anyone else.

Though Bottle Rocket is wryly amusing from beginning to end, the hard edges of the real world are never too far from its surface. And it is the particular grace of the film that though all its characters end up with something like what they're looking for, its not exactly how they'd imagined it would be.

It's doubtful that records are kept about this sort of thing, but consider the possibility that Clash of the Titans is the first film to actually be made worse by being in 3-D.

And really, who goes to summer action movies for cast-iron logic anyway? Or for plausible characters, for that matter? You go for brisk stunts expertly executed, for well-directed action that doesn't allow you to catch your breath and for one of the preeminent action stars of our time. Yes, that would be Angelina Jolie.

Though it is always pleasant and agreeable, this film has the bland and undemanding texture that characterizes movies made for network TV.

Mendes, in only his second feature (following the Oscar-winning "American Beauty"), has told this surprisingly resonant story with the potent, unrelenting fatalism of a previously unknown Greek myth.

For serenely rising above all the foolishness is Chan himself, a performer whose belief in broad and harmless fun gives his films a clear and present connection to the classic silent comedies to go along with its action fixation. For once a film's ad line has a whiff of truth about it: "No Fear. No Stuntman. No Equal." [23 Feb 1996, p.1]

Though Living in Oblivion may sound like a one-joke movie, the pleasure of the endeavor is that it has no trouble holding your interest without feeling repetitive. Mark it down to the excellence of the acting, including the smallest roles, and the amusing and accurate way the ambience of bargain-basement filmmaking is captured.

Though the film's second half has some good action moments, it never fulfills the promise of its earliest scenes.

This modest film has virtues that come out of nowhere. It takes familiar material and develops it with such tact and skill that we find ourselves moved and sort of amazed at the same time.

Though it is effective in fits and starts, this third version of that sturdy tale (the fourth, if you count Sleepless in Seattle, which it in part inspired) never manages to be more than a reasonable facsimile of its progenitor.

What was impressive 22 years ago seems even more so now; what was problematic seems less important. Changes in us as an audience, changes in filmmaking fashions, changes in the times we live in, they've all combined in making this "Apocalypse" feel more impressive, more of a revelation than it did before.

Charming, disarming and in some ways humbling film.

Say what you like, think what you will, scoff if you have to (and you will definitely have to), but in the final analysis Kevin Knows Westerns.

The Prestige does more than focus on magicians. It is so in love with the romance, wonder and ability to fool of stage illusion that it becomes something of a magic trick in and of itself

One of the real pluses of Up the Yangtze, aside from its empathy with its subjects, is its striking visual quality. Beijing-based cinematographer Wang Shi Qing has an impeccable eye, often coming up with haunting images that show both the beauty and uncertainty of this pivotal time.

Bleak childhoods make for the best cinema, and Ratcatcher stands at the head of the class.

Directed by Harold Ramis and starring Michael Keaton at his most satisfying, "Multiplicity" is the latest film to benefit from the unprecedented visual miracles that special effects can now produce. It is also one more example of a picture where technical inventiveness outstrips the pedestrian story line it's meant to animate. [17 July 1996, p.F1]

It is a remarkable work, quite likely the best documentary on the City of Angels ever made.

The film's plot...is more contrived than creditable, motivations are not always clear, and some characters, for instance Kiefer Sutherland as a praise the lord and pass the ammunition Marine, are not very convincingly acted. [11 Dec 1992]

Like "The Addams Family" before it, this is one of those clever, lively and ultimately wearying pieces of showy Hollywood machinery where a glut of creativity has gone into the visuals with only scraps left over for the plot and the dialogue. [27 May 1994 Pg.F1]

Revenge may be sweet, but this is one "Monte Cristo" that leaves a sour taste.

Despite its weaknesses, Changing Times ("Les Temps Qui Changent" in French) is always watchable and even poignant from time to time. What it is never going to be is the grand passion of anyone's moviegoing life.

While the result is inevitably middle of the road, it still manages to be the funniest picture Murphy has made in quite some time. [04 Dec 1992]

Though the film stars a relaxed and capable Harrison Ford as everyone's favorite intrepid archaeologist and boasts supporting players ranging from Cate Blanchett as a superb villainess to Shia LaBeouf as the inevitable youngster, the real heroes of this film are director Steven Spielberg and the veritable army of superb technicians who turn the film's numerous stunts and special effects into trains that insist on running on time.

Nathaniel Kahn is very much a presence in this film, at times too much so. The title is properly read with the emphasis on the "my," and the work itself is a plea, understandable but disconcerting at times in its nakedness, to be linked irrevocably to his father.

The best possible face that can be put on things is that Big and Little Edie (the mother died two years after the film was released, the daughter is still living) made an unconscious, unsavory, mutually advantageous bargain with the filmmakers: Make us famous and we'll return the favor. In retrospect it's clear that both parties lived up to their parts; only the audience got shortchanged. [14 Aug 1998, p.F20]

Ray may be too by the numbers, but with Jamie Foxx out front, this is one film that knows how to make it all add up.

A motion picture with one foot in artistic expression and one in pulp fiction and commercialized violence. It wants the respect that goes with a quality production, but it can't resist providing the brutality and exploitation the film's core audience expects.

It convincingly demonstrates that when done right, moral and political quandaries can be the most intensely dramatic dilemmas of all.

Toy Story 2 may not have the most original title, but everything else about it is, well, mint in the box.

Chan is still able to project the boyishness and insecurity of the new kid on the block. But even those aren't enough to make Tuxedo a black-tie affair.

A perfectly acceptable motion picture. The only thing that keeps it from even greater accomplishments may be inherent in the story itself.

Watching it is like being in a room with a couple locked in a torrid embrace. It might be fun for them, but what's in it for everyone else?

Moore's scattershot is a lot more interesting than some filmmakers' focus, and many of those individual parts are classic.

The best kind of labor of love. A documentary made with affection and intelligence, it looks at a brief episode in the life of a cultural icon and uses it to illuminate what turns out to be a telling moment in time and in the process shed some light on the man himself.

Nominally about the life and career of landmark Southern California architectural photographer Julius Shulman, but it's more about the buildings he photographed than it is about him. Which is probably the way he'd like it.

A disappointment. A good-faith attempt has been made to duplicate the original elements, but the mix is wrong, bearings have been lost, the balance is off. It was attitude that made "Men in Black" special, a particular kind of cool insouciance that has proved as impossible to duplicate as it was irresistible to experience.

Outside of a hyper-energetic, irresistibly evil portrayal by Tim Roth as General Thade, the baddest ape in town, the sad truth about Planet of the Apes is that, disappointingly, it's just not very much fun to watch.

Has it's share of downtime.

One of the most successful, provocative and intensely contemporary of Israeli films, so much so that to watch it is to feel the country having a passionate argument with itself.

A painfully contrived and artificial exercise in futility.

A film whose reach exceeds its grasp. Hugely ambitious and not without moments of success, this indulgent 2 hour and 40 minute epic ends up as unwieldy as its elongated title. It's a movie in love with itself, and few things are more fatal than that.

From Here to Eternity remains, half a century later, a singular cinematic experience, one of the landmarks of American film.

Audacious, bracing, uncommonly timely, Bob Roberts would seem almost impossible to pull off. So it is very much to Robbins' credit as a filmmaker that he manages to do so while rarely getting preachy and never neglecting the importance of movement and excitement in keeping an audience involved. [04 Sep 1992, p.F1]

The kind of shrewd, genial comedy it provides doesn't intend to break new ground, but its traditional satisfactions are so effectively done and so long in coming our way that to see it is to realize just how hungry we've been for this kind of old-fashioned treat.

Police, Adjective may not be the film you're expecting, but it's one that will stay on your mind.

Blends great cinematic energy with an awkwardly mixed multinational cast and aggressively over-modernized dialogue.

Unusual in its ability to mix bodily functions humor with a sincere and unlooked-for sense of decency.

Crouching Tiger's blend of the magical, the mythical and the romantic fills a need in us we might not even realize we had.

The Wrestler doesn't add up. It's constructed with great care around a lead performance that is everything it could possibly be, but the picture itself is off-putting and disappointing.

When the melodrama does get strong, and it does, when bad things happen on a dark and stormy night, we go with it rather than resisting. The film has won our trust, given some heft to its characters and involved us in their lives, come what may.

Though enlivened by occasional touches, "Smilla's" is like the food at Taco Bell: exotic only to someone who hasn't experienced the real thing.

Soon becomes a sadistic experience in its own right. Experiencing this pretentious wallow -- overwritten, under-thought and overdone -- is a very sophisticated form of torture.

A savage comedy about the war in the former Yugoslavia that artfully mixes comic absurdism with a passion for what's right and a concern for the individuality of all concerned.

Well-crafted, disturbing Texas gothic thriller, a completely spooky piece of business that gets under your skin and, some plot blips aside, stays there for the duration.

A sleek, accomplished piece of work, meticulously controlled and completely involving. The dark end of the street doesn't get much more inviting than this.

Exactly written, directed with a surgeon's precision and transcendently acted, Sideways brings emotional reality to a consistently amusing character comedy, making it something to be cherished like the delicate Santa Ynez Valley wines that are the story's vivid backdrop.

In its examination of what is fleeting and what remains, "After Life" is not only perceptive, it leavens everything it touches with a surprisingly sly sense of humor. Few films about death, or about life for that matter, leave you feeling so affirmative about existence.

Feels more planned than passionate, scary at points but unconvincing overall.

When it comes to unflinching, riveting looks at a compulsive artist who can't be other than who he is, nothing comes close to Crumb.

Striptease isn't in the kind of shape Demi Moore is. While her role as exotic dancer Erin Grant has the actress buffed and toned enough for the cover of Muscle & Fitness, the film itself could use a lot more definition. [28 Jun 1996, p.F1]

If Asian martial arts movies interest you even a little bit, you're going to want to see Iron Monkey. Not only that, you're going to want to see it more than once.

As far as the new disaster film 2012 is concerned, the world will end with both a bang and a whimper, the bang of undeniably impressive special effects and the whimper of inept writing and characterization. You pays your money, you takes your chances.

With its capacity to surprise, the film comes to life when you don't expect it to, in tiny but wonderfully off-center moments.

Affleck and Paltrow, who've been excellent elsewhere, display less chemistry than they've shown in magazine photo shoots. Even Woody and Bo Peep had more going on between them in "Toy Story" than these two manage here.

A persuasive thriller for most of its length, it stumbles in its attempt to become an upscale version of "Death Wish" and other vigilante dramas and ends up derailing with a soft thud.

Just as there will always be an England, there will always be a certain kind of English film: the highly polished entertainment, well-acted, genteelly amusing and impeccably turned out. Mrs. Henderson Presents is the latest example of the trend and an especially satisfying one.

A warm and feisty documentary that is as much inquiry as it is tribute.

Dances on the edge of flat-lining just like the DOAs that are Frank's stock-in-trade.

Fireworks is bracing and original, an indefinable film made from familiar elements. "Hana-Bi," its title in Japanese, is a combination of the words for "flower" and "fire," and filmmaker Takeshi Kitano has, in the same way, adroitly fused genres, creating a film in which almost every moment pops out in unexpected ways. [20 Mar 1998, p.F4]

Being blissed out may be an enviable state for a human being, but it is not necessary the best one for a film. [25 May 1994, p.F1]

A film that grips us dramatically, intellectually and emotionally.

A compelling piece of work that turns out to have unexpected relevance to the current world situation.

As directed by Rachid Bouchareb, himself born in France to Algerian immigrants, "Days of Glory" is a kind of a North African "Saving Private Ryan," a taut, involving film that delivers all the things we look for in war movies and does so with intelligence and integrity.

The forced hybrid of a preposterous potboiler plot with genuine questions of medical ethics, Extreme Measures is weakened, not strengthened, by its strange bedfellows shenanigans. And the fact that director Michael Apted is able to put considerable realism and skill into his filmmaking merely emphasizes how out to lunch this picture’s story is.

Though some of the choicest talent in Hollywood is involved, including stars Harrison Ford and Julia Ormond and director Sydney Pollack, "Sabrina" plays like a standard brand. A mild romantic comedy, undemanding and unobjectionable, it fits the definition of product, a film made not for love but because it was a package that could be sold.

Built of action-sport stunts, has adrenaline to spare. But, c'mon. Where is its sense of fun?

Though its plot frequently falls back on coincidence, so much so that the characters joke about it, Career Girls has the almost magical ability to involve us emotionally with these women even though there are points when we would've sworn that wouldn't be possible.

By focusing on the personal side of the city game, Hoop Dreams tells us more about what works and what doesn't in our society than the proverbial shelf of sociological studies. And it is thoroughly entertaining in the bargain.

An audacious, brilliantly twisted movie, infused with touches of genius and of madness. A disturbing meditation on the interconnected nature of love and obsession disguised as a penny dreadful shocker. [13 Oct 1996, p.C5]

Although he works his hardest at the part and doesn't embarrass himself, even with the help of Stan Winston's vampire makeup Tom Cruise is plainly miscast as Lestat. [11Nov1994 Pg. F1]

The young American actor (Derek Luke) gives such an intense, passionate performance as South African Patrick Chamusso that he just about dares you not to be involved with the tale he is telling.

Ultimately satisfying and successful version of the opening volume of the celebrated "His Dark Materials" trilogy.

It would be nice to say that One Fine Day lives happily ever after, but it's difficult to take as much pleasure in the finished product as the casting anticipates. Directed by Michael Hoffman, this film does not care to be original, falling back on cookie-cutter plot elements that give the finished product an unbecoming mechanical sheen. [20 Dec 1996, p.F1]

An acceptable star vehicle, no better or worse than it should be, a well-worn standard diversion that gets the job done without eliciting either howls of fury or paroxysms of delight.

Leisurely yet intense (Sayles does the editing himself), Lone Star reveals a director whose mastery does nothing but increase. Perhaps now his audience will as well.

While films are admired for making fantasy real, some manage a reverse, unwanted kind of alchemy, turning involving reality into meaningless piffle.

Even fairy tales could use a bit more substance than this.

Insomnia shows an equally welcome ability: a gift of creating intelligent, engrossing popular entertainment.

It's a bawdy farce done with real delicacy, a charming adult comedy that ends up with unlooked-for emotional heft. If that doesn't cover all the bases, it certainly comes close.

It may be by-the-numbers, but it knows that under the right circumstances those numbers can lead to a fair amount of fun.

A bit of a mess, but it is a genial mess, and one that will make you laugh. Which is the whole idea.

Beowulf appears so cartoony, in fact, that the academy just put it on the short list of films to be considered for the Oscar in feature animation.

As is always the case with Leigh's protagonists, Poppy does not fit into a schematic log line, she simply is. She exists with an intensity that few other filmmakers' characters can manage because of the singular way Leigh creates his people.

It's deftly done with an off-the-wall sense of humor joined to a real insider's sense of how the business operates.

An odd, one-of-a-kind little film that features an involving plot by Anthony Shaffer and a performance by Christopher Lee that the iconic actor declares is his best. It also features paganism. Lots and lots of paganism.

Ferrara hasn't merely remade Body Snatchers; he has reimagined and reinvigorated it, using the best of special-effects talent and cool directorial skill to turn out a splendidly creepy and unsettling piece of genre filmmaking that knows how to scare you and isn't afraid to try. [04 Feb 1994, p.F1]

An easygoing and amusing romantic confection.

It's strong as can be in terms of production values and panoramic photography (as befits its $70-million budget) and weak as watery tea when it comes to little things like dialogue and character development. [22 May 1992]

A Walk to Beautiful will leave you speechless two times over -- first with despair, then with joy. Neither unmentionable subject matter nor nonexistent commercial prospects can keep this documentary from having a power over your heart that is unparalleled.

It's a welcome throwback to the days when the world didn't have to end or tanker trucks explode to get an action audience's attention.

Instead of a thriller, war movie or western, the director has turned out a stirring drama about South African leader Nelson Mandela, blending entertainment, social message and history lesson.

What French writer-director Mia Hansen-Love has created is an extraordinarily empathetic humanistic drama, a film of love, joy, sadness and hope that understands how complex our emotions are and does beautiful justice to them.

With its gift for infusing uneasiness into every frame, Kurosawa's moody, unnerving film continues to spook us even after the lights have gone on.

Adventurous, ambitious and ingeniously futuristic, Sleep Dealer is a welcome surprise. It combines visually arresting science fiction done on a budget with a strong sense of social commentary in a way that few films attempt, let alone achieve.

There's a mystery at the heart of Sherlock Holmes, and it's not the one the great master of detection has been called on to solve. It's how a film that has so many good things going for it has turned out to be solid but not spectacular.

It would be dishonest to deny that Jade Scorpion has amusing moments, but it never gets better than that and often settles for less.

With warm humor and perceptive writing, director Kenneth Lonergan displays a gift for creating realistic characters and a compelling story.

As enjoyable as this film is in parts, it's not nearly as successful as a whole. Enormously engaging in its opening segments, it's unable to sustain that good feeling over the long haul.

Faultlessly acted by top Australian talent, including Guy Pearce, Ben Mendelsohn and Jacki Weaver, Animal Kingdom marries heightened emotionality with cool contemporary style.

It's a portrayal so unconvincing it makes it close to impossible for the rest of the film to function as intended.

As meditative and beautiful as its title would indicate. What is a surprise is the extent to which it manages to be involving if you can put yourself on its wavelength.

As unusual and idiosyncratic as its one-of-a-kind title. You'd expect no less from Terry Gilliam, and admirers of this singular filmmaker will be pleased to know that "Imaginarium" is one of his most original and accessible works.

Its successful moments (and they are only moments) remind us that this is a squandered opportunity.

Scott and company have gotten so accomplished at re-creating history that the results have a welcome offhanded quality, making them spectacular without seeming to be showing off.

This is an extremely cinematic, beautifully made David Lean-type epic, helped by fluid and involving camera work by two-time Oscar-winning ("The Killing Fields," "The Mission") cinematographer Chris Menges.

If Welles was unhappy at the prospect of the human race splitting in two, he probably wouldn't be too crazy with his great-grandson's movie splitting up in pretty much the same way.

Zaillian (an Oscar winner for his "Schindler's List" screenplay) has given us an intricate, subtly rewarding narrative whose uncompromising nature and undeniable moral seriousness make it far from business as usual, even in the ever-decreasing world of quality Hollywood filmmaking.

Where most movies lie, Lorenzo's Oil tells the truth and pays the price. In a genre rife with romantic sentimentality, this film won't trifle with its integrity and ends up not artificially uplifting but heart-rending and exhausting. Based on a true story, it shows how dreadfully hard you have to fight to make a difference, and how grueling it can be to save even a single human life.

If you want to see old-fashioned nonstop mayhem with stars so venerable that "The Leathernecks" (and I don't mean Marines) might be an alternative title, reviews are going to be superfluous. If you don't want to go, no review can change your mind.

Decadence has rarely looked so pathetic, lethargic and dispiriting as it does in this listless film.

Misunderstandings and hilarity ensue, as does a largeness of spirit that typifies Leisen's approach. [15 Nov 2012, p.D3]

Starring an ideally cast Patton Oswalt in the title role, Big Fan is a poignant, dead-on character study, an examination of a crisis in the life of the most die-hard of die-hard New York Giants football fans.

The film throws so much ersatz cleverness and overdone emotion at the audience that we end up more worn out than entertained.

When a set of pre-shooting guidelines a director came up with for his actors turns out to be cleverer, better written and of considerable more interest than the finished film, that's a bad sign. A very bad sign.

Meanders, dawdles, doubles back on itself but finally gets us somewhere fascinating and worthwhile.

Drunk and disorderly on the pure joy of making movies. A frantic, flawed, fascinating film that is both impressive and a bit out of control, often at the same time.

A poetic attempt to re-create a bygone culture as not only a role model for the present but also a positive mythology for the future, the movie's strong visual qualities and epic emotions make it a bracing remedy to swallow.

What makes Seraphine, directed and co-written by Martin Provost, so exceptional is that it neither condescends to nor romanticizes its subject.

Tainted or not, Hughes' life was a remarkable one, and, flawed or not, Scorsese's film version deserves the same accolade.

A mature, accomplished piece of work, both funny and deeply felt, personal cinema of the best kind...Levinson has made the memory film we always hoped he would.

Confident of its emotional effects, Swingers knows how to breathe life into its people, and hooking audiences is its reward.

One of those entertaining confections that's so pleasing to the eye and ear you'd have to be a genuine Scrooge to struggle against it.

Exquisitely made with a mesmerizing sense of style, it shows the wonderful things that can happen when traditional material is both handled with care and adroitly updated.

Essential to the success it manages is Hartnett's low-key, charismatic performance -- cool, withholding, compelling. The triumph of his insinuating Hugo/Iago is how plausible he is, how he manages to convincingly inject poison in so many minds without seeming to be trying.

Egoyan understands how potent a deliberate pace can be, how effective it is in making already powerful material strong enough to tear at your heart.

A raunchy doodle, a leisurely and easygoing diversion that goes down easy enough but is far from compelling.

The Road is a road you'll wish hadn't been taken. Not because anything's been badly done, but because there's a serious imbalance in the complicated equation between what the film forces us to endure and what we end up receiving in return.

Manages to evoke a complex series of reactions. It both frustrates with its unrelenting sentimentality and impresses with the overwhelming physicality of its combat sequences. These in turn are so powerful they take on a life of their own, sending a message that is probably quite opposite to the one the filmmakers intended.

To see this overly schematic movie, is to be made to feel -- inaccurately as it turns out -- that the whole thing is a hopelessly exaggerated fabrication. The taint of the melodramatic techniques used in key segments infects the entire movie and makes us question the truth of a significant historical reality.

Poetic and ambiguous, it manages to be magical in both the beautiful and terrifying senses of the word.

The triumph of aesthetics, of artistic filmmaking of a high order, is the victory to be celebrated here, and it is something you are not going to see every day. [13 Mar 2015, p.E7]

This comprehensive and charming film not only recalls those days exactly, it also manages the wonderful trick of taking us back there along with it.

Though Honeymoon in Vegas has one of his most accessible premises, Andrew Bergman has never been to everyone's taste and probably never will. He is something of a spritzer in the Mel Brooks mode, someone who spews out such a torrent of manic material that by definition not all of it is going to work. But in an age where screen comedy tends to fit snugly in a handful of pre-set synthetic molds, his all-natural craziness comes as a special treat. Especially if you like to laugh. [28 Aug 1992, p.F2]

Thunderheart, directed by Michael Apted, is a kind of spiritual thriller, a moderately diverting programmer in which a predictable shoot-'em-up plot is slickly intertwined with American Indian religious customs and beliefs. Though the film has a tendency to take itself too seriously, it is enlivened by some appealing acting and vivid camerawork that save it from the abyss.

Both sweet-natured and sharply pointed, a film whose poignant, emotional effects and subtle acting sneak up on you.

It's typical of the nerve, the bravado, the sheer giddy playfulness and sense of fun that characterize what has to be the boldest and most imaginative studio film of the year.

An impeccably made bleak comedy with an exactly calibrated, almost musical sense of timing, Nói is singular enough to have swept the Eddas, the Icelandic Academy Awards.

This beguiling Belgian fable, very much its own droll and delicate little film, has some touching things to say about what is important in life and why.

Madagascar is a classical gas. It's a good-humored, pleasant confection that has all kinds of relaxed fun bringing computer-animated savvy to the old-fashioned world of Looney Tunes cartoons.

Promises takes a simple idea and just about breaks your heart with it.

Though the politically incorrect language is tough enough to have earned Clerks an initial NC-17 rating (re-rated R on appeal), its exuberance gives it an alive and kicking feeling that is welcome and rare. [19 Oct 1994]

Director Wes Anderson, who also co-wrote the "Royal" script with actor Owen Wilson, unquestionably has one of America's most distinctive filmmaking sensibilities, but that is part of the problem. As my mother used to say, too good is no good.

What Spy Game turns out to be is the old reliable family car spruced up around the edges in an attempt to convince a new generation of buyers that it's a hot number.

Coppola decided that he really wasn't making a horror film after all, but rather a love story, a comic burlesque, a costume drama, a piece of erotica, whatever. But no matter what else you do with it, a Dracula that cannot manage to be more scary than silly is as pitilessly doomed as that elegant old Transylvanian himself. [13 Nov 1992]

By choosing to bludgeon the audience with ever-worsening tales of woe, Once Were Warriors paradoxically blunts its power, though the truth is that people may be too shell-shocked to notice. [03 Mar 1995, p.F1]

A bombshell in its home country, Herod's Law is made with the kind of flair that ensures a following everywhere politicians are venal and voters hope against hope for deliverance.

Sensitively directed by Ron Shelton and helped by what just might be the best performance of Kurt Russell's career, Dark Blue is as interesting and successful as it can be within its limits, but those limits make this a more generic film than its makers intended.

Becomes unfocused as it stumbles over all the points it wants to make.

A stunningly beautiful object offered in tribute to a holy man, a gorgeous film that is nevertheless burdened by the defects of its virtues. Careful and respectful, it is everything a movie about the Dalai Lama should be except dramatically involving.

It has the awkwardness that characterizes many first features and, as befits a culture that does not always prize refinement, some of its performances and situations are not as subtle as they should be.

Its twisty film noir world of down-on-their-luck men and unfathomable women is vintage B-picture material, but, in the grand B tradition, the games it plays are more ambitious than successful.

What results is a captivating portrait of the most gorgeously fractious dysfunctional family.

Perhaps the best thing about Schenk's script is that it enticed Eastwood to end his self-imposed acting hiatus and bring his one-of-a-kind aura back to the screen.

You may never have expected to see the words heavy metal, endearing and warmhearted in the same sentence, but you just did.

Beautifully made but emotionally empty, it exists only for the sensation of its provocative moments.

Writer-director Steers has chosen to overload "Igby" with phony archness and forced black humor, making it not the place to look for satisfying acting.

It is the gift of Terror's Advocate, Barbet Schroeder's riveting new documentary, to simply present Vergès as is, to say "here is the man" and let things speak for themselves. Do they ever.

Undeniably clever and inventive, Babe: Pig in the City has nevertheless sacrificed part of the freshness and buoyancy that made the original "Babe" so luminous. This sequel is more elaborate, more calculated and more self-consciously dark than its deservedly beloved predecessor.

A recklessly emotional film that is so committed to feelings it occasionally overflows its banks. Which may be a little messy, but it's a lot more welcome than the drought-stricken alternatives.

Stella may be frothy and paper-thin, but it's also another great success for star Angela Bassett, who transforms the film into an infomercial for her considerable abilities.

More successfully silly than non-Brady fans will expect.

There is a sense of sadness around Earth Days, a sense that opportunities were not capitalized on, that not enough was done.

It's not the story that's the story here, it' the film' bravura visual look.

Butterworth guides us through the world of chaos and romantic confusion he's created as if it's the most natural place in the world. After a while, we actually believe it is.

Made with care and respect, American Rhapsody manages to skirt the edge of excessive sentiment without falling victim to it.

It has a tendency to run ragged and spends an unhealthy amount of time idling pointlessly at intersections.

It finally can't transcend the limitations inherent in being no more than a way station in an epic journey, a journey whose cinematic conclusion is several years away.

Looser and less obviously formulaic in its fresh approach to our hearts, the brash Lilo & Stitch has an unleashed, subversive sense of humor that's less corporate and more uninhibited than any non-Pixar Disney film.

Robert Redford, who for the first time stars in a movie he's also directed, has taken this soap opera material and treated it like something inscribed on yak vellum by the Dalai Lama.

Given everything, it's no surprise that the verdict on the film has to be a split decision. Troy is a movie you believe in physically...Believing in Troy emotionally, however, presents a greater challenge.

The conflicts involved are intense and absorbing, proving that compelling moral dilemmas make for the most dramatic cinema.

Eraser does have a few big-ticket stunts that hold the attention, but director Charles Russell, fresh from "The Mask," isn't able to infuse them with the intensity and believability that James Cameron brought to comparable sequences in "True Lies."

A fearless movie about a fearful subject, an unusually empathetic and quite funny film that deals with death and dying in the most offbeat and casually life-affirming way. Exceptionally smart, playful and perceptive, Look Both Ways confronts things that people would rather avoid.

Stands out among creative bio-pics for an ability to show art being made in a way that's as realistic and exciting as it's ever been on screen.

Tiresome, inept farce that's not even a fraction as clever or entertaining as it likes to imagine it is -- a complete waste of time.

That rare movie that completely fulfills its admittedly modest aims.

If you believe that bringing the questionable virtues of "American Idol" to Afghanistan would do that beleaguered nation no favors, the remarkable documentary Afghan Star will change your mind in an instant.

Lebanon is not just the name of an excellent new Israeli film, it signifies a continuing national obsession that shows no signs of going away.

Made with intelligence, imagination, passion and skill, propulsively paced and shot through with an aged-in-oak sense of wonder, the trilogy's first film so thrillingly catches us up in its sweeping story that nothing matters but the vivid and compelling events unfolding on the screen.

"I am epic, hear me roar" is what the lion-centered The Ghost and the Darkness would have you believe. The reality is more like an acceptably loud noise than a true roar, but so few films venture into the old-fashioned world of historical action adventures that even a loud noise is a welcome sound. [11 Oct 1996, p.F16]

Self-conscious about its heroism with portrayals that lean toward the glib and the professionally uplifting, the film milks our sympathies too readily to be emotionally convincing.

As the perfectionist creator of bravura set pieces, Cameron is still the leader of the pack. [14 Jul 1994 Pg. F1]

It is an acceptable enough thriller, neither the worst you've seen nor the opposite.

The Lover is easy to watch and even easier to forget. A pleasant enough piece of commercial sensuality from French director Jean-Jacques Annaud, its selling point is its very pretty, clothing-optional sex scenes. Their effectiveness, however, is undercut by an air of self-congratulatory pomposity that the film is way too insubstantial to support.

As frigid as its name. Burdened with a story of some of the world's least interesting people going through a holiday crisis, director Ang Lee and screenwriter James Schamus get as close as any creative team could to making matters involving, but the task is finally too much for them.

Though Butcher is appealing, Saint Ralph is anchored by Scott's persuasive work as a model of intelligent decency.

Oblivious to niceties like subtlety, plausibility and discretion, it rushes heedlessly toward its destination of audience arousal. Like a flood, the impact is undeniable but it's not something everyone will want to get in the way of. [24Jul1996 Pg. F.01]

The Crossing Guard, Penn's second film behind the camera, is a troubling, troublesome movie whose makeshift structure cannot contain the powerful flood of passions that he and his cast have poured into it.

Gathering its forces slowly, this careful, thoughtful film, quietly but deeply moving, is dramatic without seeming to be.

Neither the script nor the direction nor the acting has been able to make these characters into ones we want to invest ourselves in. The Truth About Charlie is one very busy film, but it's really not going anywhere.

With performances that will raise the hairs on the back of your head, it's a film that knows the private geography of love, grief and obsession.

LaBute can't avoid a fatal mistake in the modern era: He's changed the male academic from a lower-class Brit to an American, a choice that upsets the novel's exquisite balance and shreds the fabric of the film, corrupting all of LaBute's good work and robbing it of the impact it would otherwise have.

Amore satisfying use of the medium would be difficult to imagine.

Townsend's sincerity, his admiration for the idealism of the people behind the anti-WTO protests, is never in doubt, but combining drama with historical re-creation is frankly a challenge his filmmaking skills are not up to.

The reality of François' classroom is so intense that it holds our interest even while the film's dramatic focus is building so quietly under the surface that we don't notice it at first.

If there is one moment in The Language of Music that will thrill old rock fans, it's watching Dowd, his fluid hands moving with a surgeon's grace, remix for the film's benefit the 24-track sub-master of "Layla."

It has its successful moments but it's surprisingly inert overall, more like a Burton derivative than something he actually did himself.

Helping to make these pleasantries funny is their spur-of-the-moment quality, the same quick spontaneity that characterizes chance remarks overheard at raucous movie houses. Capturing that bright and unexpected quality is what the MST3K crew does best. Too bad that's not all they do.

Fried Green Tomatoes is a folksy enigma, an ordinary film blessed with a number of out-of-the-ordinary performances. Not only does its plot deal in part with women stuck in unhappy circumstances, its very existence makes you wonder how its trapped actresses managed to make the best of a dramatically disheartening situation. [27 Dec 1991, p.F1]

It's a sad love story that's insightful at its core and indulgent around the edges, a film whose instincts are impeccable when focusing on that romance but less than compelling when it wanders elsewhere.

A look at the intertwined lives of a father and his three live-at-home daughters, this is more than anything a personal-scaled film, funny, emotional and compassionate toward the human comedy, Taiwan-style.

Numbing but not boring, it's finally more dispiriting than exhilarating, like a wild night of debauchery that leaves only a fearsome hangover for a souvenir.

Sometimes a film about nothing can be a film about everything; a film without overwhelmingly dramatic events can delight you more than an outsized epic. The sly and disarming Duck Season is such a film.

May make you weep, but not in the way anyone intended. Handsomely made, well-meaning but finally frustrating and unsatisfying, this perplexing film is an example of a previously unseen hybrid, the socially conscious, humanitarian action movie. It doesn't appear to be a genre with much of a future.

More creepy and flesh-crawling than overwhelmingly gory, it nevertheless takes pride in characters who get splattered with blood as often as take-out fries get doused with catsup.

Zoo is a cool sensibility married to a hot topic, a poetic film about a forbidden, unsettling subject. Elegantly made and eerily lyrical, it deals with what director Robinson Devor has accurately called "the last taboo, the boundary of something comprehensible."

Does have its pleasures, but the feeling is inescapable that the person most pleased is Bertolucci himself. In essence he is the dreamer of the title, as eager to retreat into this hermetic world of his own creation as his characters are into theirs. Fair enough, but why does he have to drag us along with him?

The script is muddled and unsatisfying, as ponderous on its feet as its protagonists are in their heavy diving suits.

The mellow, serendipitous The Parrots of Telegraph Hill is here to show you just how magical happenstance can be.

One of those movies that makes you want to throw up your hands in despair, disgust, or maybe both.

A pleasant enough entertainment raised above its station by the quality of its acting.

A gently humorous fable about the power of faith and the possibility of change, Ushpizin not only takes place in Jerusalem's ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, it was filmed with that media-shy group's cooperation and followed religious law at all times.

An amusing tale of larceny triumphant, Bandits is an entertainment with a rogue's imagination.

Good-humored and just about reeking of innocence, That Thing You Do! is what a character has in mind when he asks for "something happy, peppy, up-tempo." Leaving audiences feeling good is very much, and very successfully, on its mind. [04 Oct 1996, Pg.F1]

This is not a typical Iranian production. Simultaneously deeply allegorical and concretely physical, this striking film is not a typical production, period.