Kenneth Turan

A sharp brainteaser of a film, a compelling mind game you compulsively play along with.

Myers has a singular talent for skit humor… You can get away with an awful lot of gross, juvenile humor if you've got that to fall back on. [11 June 1999, Calendar, p.F-1]

Shyamalan's great gift is the creation of atmosphere, the conjuring of spooky, unseen menace. When he gets around to doing this in Signs, all is well, but it's a tossup as to whether the film offers enough of a payoff considering how long it takes to get where it's going.

Guilty of squandering resources. Amusing as it goes about setting up its premise, in Witherspoon, the gifted veteran of "Election" and "Pleasantville," it has an actress willing to throw herself completely into the part to excellent effect.

A Perfect Murder begins better than it ends, and the pleasures it offers turn out to be more of a transitory nature.

This warmly sentimental G-rated film about facing new realities and recapturing lost dreams has, despite its relatively adult story line, a beguilingly effortless feeling to it, as if it had nothing to prove.

What's on screen is too honest and from the heart to totally dismiss but too slick and contrived to completely embrace. This is a film that cares about genuine emotion but also wants to tame it, to tidy it up and keep it confined to quarters.

Stone is also a director who has often felt that anything worth doing is worth overdoing, and his weakness for bloody excesses of all sorts undermines much of his good work. You might not think that a motion picture called Savages could be too violent, too savage, but you would be wrong.

Cities engulfed by rolling walls of flame, sinister aquamarine power blasts turning beloved national monuments to toast, even the roiling clouds the spaceships appear out of, they are all disturbing, unsettling and completely convincing.

Does have a large and capable cast and, in James Foley, a director with a taste for visual flourishes. They all so fell in love with the script by Doug Jung they didn't notice how much a derivative retread it is of superior material like "The Grifters" and even "The Sting."

Alphaville is more than quintessential Godard. Despite its age it's that rare science fiction film that doesn't seem to have dated at all.

Despite the best efforts of director Colin Trevorrow, Jurassic World's story of Indominus rex on the loose, while certainly acceptable, doesn't have the same impact as the initial film.

Effective, but despite the trio's fine efforts Junior can't get past lightly amusing, never manages to work up a sustained comic head of steam.

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 the bad guys didn't reappear with welcome regularity, "Money Never Sleeps" would be even more of a snooze than it already is.

A knockout of a sports documentary. Destined against its will to be known as "the LeBron James movie," it is all that, and a good deal more.

Though placing the cheerleading Eckers front and center as key interview subjects gives their film a self-congratulatory, gee-whiz quality, "Outrageous" compensates by giving you a good sense of who Tucker was and how she got where she did.

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.

This is a film bound and determined to do whatever it takes to be your Valentine. If it had trusted itself more, it might even have succeeded.

Though it doesn’t manage to hold its edge all the way to the end--that darn Disney influence finally proves too strong--its comic venom is refreshing for as long as it lasts.

Make no mistake, the high-flying stunts in director Renny Harlin's film are definitely state of the art, and while they're going on, the film works up a serious level of excitement. But as soon as the action stops and the inevitable talking begins, Cliffhanger falls to earth with a considerable thud. [28 May 1993 Pg. F1]

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.

An intriguing entertainment that’s invigorated by smart filmmaking and potent acting by the virtuosic Weisz and her fine costar, Michael Shannon.

Warm without sacrificing integrity, pleasant but not to a fault, Back to Burgundy is satisfying rather than earth-shaking.

This narrowly cast documentary focuses so exclusively on a publicity tour the former president took in the closing months of 2006 that a more accurate title might be "Jimmy Carter How I Sold My Book."

Smart, sweet and playful romantic comedy.

A thoughtful look backward, a summing up that attempts to understand what is ephemeral and what truly lasts, what it is that matters in the final analysis.

No one comes out and says that music is the language of the soul, but no one has to. We see it happening right before our eyes.

Conventional but effectively so, more tense and involving than might be anticipated as obstacles pile on obstacles, this emotionally affecting story knows enough not to push too hard and reaps the benefits from its relative restraint.

The efforts of an international cast including stars Oscar Isaac, Melanie Laurent and Nick Kroll notwithstanding, Operation Finale sounds more involving than it actually plays, ending up earnest and acceptable more than compelling.

Despite the story's melodramatic contrivances the creation of characters we actually care about is beyond this film's capabilities.

A film that is genuinely mind-expanding, an exhilarating intellectual gantlet that tells a remarkable human story.

For with songs like "You Can Close Your Eyes," "You've Got a Friend" and numerous others on the soundtrack, this is finally a film hard not to enjoy.

As much as we intellectually admire Jarhead, it's a cold film that only sporadically makes the kind of emotional connection it's after.

Stays remarkably close to its predecessor in all the ways that count.

Made with a palpable sense of urgency, this tense, propulsive motion picture is a model of what mainstream entertainment can be like when everything goes right.

The idea that sexual harassment is about power, not sex, and that a woman in power can potentially misbehave just like a man may be news to certain segments of the population, but they are not news enough to light a much-needed fire under this production. [9 Dec 1994, p.1]

It is only, frankly, the strength of Winslet's performance that rises above conventional surroundings and makes The Reader the experience it should be.

While it's futile to pretend that Life Is Beautiful completely triumphs--it's simply too tough a concept to sustain--what is surprising about this unlikely film is that it succeeds as well as it does.

The result is a top-drawer melodrama, a polished example of commercial movie-making that manages to improve on the original while retaining its best-selling spirit. [30 Jun 1993 Pg. F1]

This amiable, old-fashioned film is no world-beater, but it underlines why, appearances with empty chairs excepted, it is always a pleasure to see this man on the screen.

An elegant farce written and directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg. At first, frankly, The Object of Beauty is not as much fun as you might expect it to be, but ends up having more to offer both the audience and Tina and Jake than either we or they suspect. [12 April 1991, p.F1]

Defiance has some genuine strengths but also some weaker elements, and these opposing traits battle it out kind of the way the contentious Bielskis fought not only the Germans but each other.

Both a beautiful film and a disturbing one, and the connection between those two characteristics makes it the most disquieting of documentaries.

Inevitably violent (though a disemboweling still seems excessive), as edited by Jake Roberts Outlaw King now moves along at a satisfyingly brisk pace. While we likely have not seen the end of Robert the Bruce on film, this for sure is a worthy addition to the canon.

Though the feeling sneaks up on you, The Mule has an unexpected emotional kick. That’s because in subject and execution it plays as personal as anything the filmmaker has done.

Beloved is ungainly and hard to follow at times, like the proverbial giant not quite sure how to best use its strength. But that power exists, present and undeniable, and once this film gets its bearings, the unsentimental fierceness of its vision brushes obstacles and quibbles from its path.

All dressed up with no particular place to go, this 22nd Bond film tries hard but ends up an underachiever.

Though the film is completely worth seeing just to experience such a totally realized performance and hear Gilroy's always sharp dialogue, the reality and complexity of the character turns out to clash with plotting that is not as convincing.

Unconventional, imaginative, nothing if not audacious, Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life is a portrait of creativity from the inside, a serious yet playful attempt to find an artistic way to tell an emotional truth.

As far as conspiracy thrillers go, Pioneer is as paranoid as they come.

K-19's determination to push hard for self-congratulatory morals and convenient resolutions undercut the film's strengths and make it more conventional.

Keeps its filmmakers behind the camera and does without the personality-driven "Fahrenheit's" sarcastic sense of humor.

This Oliver Hirschbiegel-directed German drama tells a fascinating but inevitably grim story, both more interesting and more downbeat than one might anticipate.

Erratic but engaging, going in and out of daring, the film’s mixture of black humor and unashamed sentimentality is not always as good as its best parts.

This animated retelling of the familiar Old Testament story is playful, high-spirited and unmistakably amusing. It's nice to see that a sense of humor and a sense of values don't inevitably have to cancel each other out.

Unfortunately for Man on the Moon, Kaufman is definitely a person more interesting to hear about than to experience, an acquired taste few will be tempted to acquire.

The less seriously the genial French comedy Populaire takes itself, the more amusing it is. Fortunately, with small exceptions, this film doesn't take itself very seriously at all.

Hologram for the King is a baffling film, cinema without weight or heft. The problem is not that anything on screen is troubling, it's that nothing there, not even star Tom Hanks, is capable of holding our interest or attention for very long.

It may be unfair to ask a film like this not to be shamelessly manipulative, but wouldn't it be nice if audiences could be trusted to feel things more or less on their own without layers of unnecessary hokum entering the picture?

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.

A handsome and respectful Western that wants to simultaneously echo and modernize the myths of the past, it is an impressive piece of work that, perhaps inevitably, ends up being more than a little cold around the heart. [10 Dec 1993, p.F8]

Slick and forceful, largely unconcerned with character, eager for any opportunity to pump up the volume both literally and metaphorically, The Rock is the kind of efficient entertainment that is hard to take pleasure in.

As a filmmaker, [Johnston] doesn't always trust his audience as much as he should, opting for overly insistent music and voice-over and withholding information in key areas. But he knew a good story when he saw one, and we can all be grateful for that.

Not the place to go look for nuanced, deeply emotional performances. The acting is inevitably on the formal side, suitable for the pageant this film is. But don't let that dissuade you. They won't be making another film like this any time soon, and the chance to see all those elephants is not one you get every day.

The result is a film that is solid and acceptable instead of soaring and exceptional, one unnecessarily hampered in its quest to reach the magical heights of the trilogy.

This tale of nautical derring-do has several things going for it to counteract the inherent obviousness of the material. These include a director who knows his way around this kind of material, special effects work that makes the peril fearfully alive, and a pip of a true story of what is considered as daring a rescue mission as the U.S. Coast Guard ever attempted.

The film's formula of following these four from three weeks before the start of things right through the competition is a tried and true one that can't help but have success.

The non-fighting parts of Kiss of the Dragon are, despite the presence of co-star Bridget Fonda, completely non-compelling. It's a proud convention in films like this for fans to mark time during exposition, waiting patiently for the action to start up again, and Kiss is very much in that tradition.

It's a decorous film, conventionally well-made, but don't be fooled. Its emotional impact is considerable.

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

Isn't good and isn't bad, it just isn't. A lethargic would-be entertainment as well as a dispiriting vanity project, it is such a misfire that it makes it hard to remember what was special about its predecessor.

Overall, these brief sections, which feature both authors on camera, come off more like self-congratulatory infomercials than they should.

A self-satisfied film about insecure people, a quirky and episodic comic drama that squanders its genuine assets and ends up not as special as it tries to be.

Low Down is one from the heart. It's a melancholy, evocative, beautifully made memory piece, unblinking and unromanticized, a lovely film that brings great emotion and a dead-on feeling for time, place and recaptured mood to a story that is as universal as it is personal.

Like many of the classic works for children, it is finally about the rough passage to adulthood, and Hal Scardino's ability to convey that change is another reason why even in a year of wonders for children this quiet film still manages to impress.

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.

The Wayne's World concept, which, egged on by a rabid studio audience, works so beautifully in skit format, ends up feeling dragged out and energy-less at feature length. [14 Feb 1992 Pg. F1]

The emphasis of Armstrong is to demonstrate that while its subject was not superhuman, he did have exactly the gifts and character the task demanded.

Certainly acceptable. But no one seeing it is going to feel as spooked as executive producer Roy Lee. To make an audience feel that intensely, you need a different kind of director and a different kind of film.

An emotional experience that is straight-ahead but satisfying.

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]

Thor has its strengths, but it is finally something of a mishmash with designs on being more interesting than it manages to be.

Permanent Midnight's Hollywood segments are clever and amusing, but the more Stahl's life unravels in his demeaning search for drugs, the more the film inevitably goes down along with it. Watching Stahl searching frantically for an unused vein in his neck with a baby fussing next to him (don't ask) may be unnerving, but it is far from irresistible.

Always crisp and watchable. But as the film's episodic story gradually reveals itself, it ends up too unconvincing and conventional to consistently hold our attention.

Smart, ambitious and impressive, Run This Town is the best kind of feature directing debut, a film that entertains and makes you look forward to what will come next.

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]

Screenwriter Tropper has also constructed some solid father and son sparring matches about the value of being a good person versus being a great artist, which Harris and Sudeikis make the most of.

This film turns out to revolve around a whole series of whopper coincidences, even one of which would be difficult to swallow. Not even a film this accomplished can work up enough suspension of disbelief to enable audiences to ingest them all, and just making the attempt is painful. [05 Nov 1993, p.F1]

There's nothing really wrong with all this in theory, but the overall doofiness of the execution is finally too much to overcome. The filmmakers come off like their protagonist, wide-eyed tourists in an exotic realm. If you've been looking for a martial arts film to take granny and the kids to, this might be the one, but a Jackie Chan-Jet Li collaboration deserves better than that.

Southpaw is so logic-defying it takes on a Frankenstein life of its own, especially with as energetic and focused an action maestro as Fuqua ("Training Day," "The Equalizer") in charge.

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

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.

Creepy and grotesque rather than terrifying. It's more distasteful than anything stronger, a sour bottle of a celebrated vintage that a gourmet like Lecter wouldn't hesitate to send back with the sommelier.

Winterbottom, who's never been a director with a gift for warmth, can't make this romance come alive. Morton and Robbins are gifted actors, but they seem straitjacketed here, and the film finds it difficult to avoid tedium as their lugubrious relationship unfolds.

Black Power Mixtape's contemporary audio, though it tries hard to involve us, can't hold a candle to this kind of footage. But if having these current voices on board helped get the luminous glimpses of the past back on the screen, we owe them a vote of thanks.

As sequels go, this one is acceptable, nothing more, nothing less.

The sharpest inside Hollywood comedy in quite a while.

These creations have become like family to Lasseter as well as to each other, and they never fail to make us smile.

The body count goes up, but our interest level doesn’t rise with it.

With performers this engaging, we never want to stop watching, even as events go from grim to grimmer over four long and bitter years.

The kind of tension you would expect is never completely present.

Aside from Gere, First Knight acquits itself honorably enough.

A paint-by-numbers version of an artist's life, Basquiat is amusing for all the wrong reasons, especially at those horrible moments when you realize you're supposed to be taking it seriously.

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.

What results is a film with some bright spots but whose effect is finally as muddled and wearying as the event itself sometimes is.

A Walk Among the Tombstones is the creepiest film I've seen in quite some time, and that's not meant as a compliment.

Rachel McAdams gives the kind of performance we go to the movies for. The rest of the film isn't always up to her level, but it does provide genial entertainment until it runs out of steam.

Viper Club is an attempt at a very difficult balancing act. It doesn’t quite succeed, but it deploys enough persuasive elements to make the attempt involving.

The melodrama of the Maugham original is too simplistic to involve, and the places the film's plot goes are so obvious that even the presence of quality actors can't create sufficient interest.

The film's drawback, and it is a serious one, is that few of its characters wear very well. The more we see them, the less they involve us and hold our interest, a situation not helped by the bombastic, theatrical style of acting a few of the performers have felt free to employ.

Three Peaks is a dark little family drama, a ticking time bomb of a movie that is well made but never totally satisfies.

Ballard has infused Wind with an old-fashioned romantic sentimentality that is affecting from time to time. But this and everything else that is good about the picture fights an ultimately losing battle against an inept story that feels like it was constructed from bits and pieces of other, presumably more involving films. It's a shame that director Ballard, who has gone many years between features, has had to set out this time in such a leaky and unsound vessel.

A film as atmospheric as its title, Them That Follow is an ambitious and impressive independent production, where the creation of mood and place is so convincing it enables us to buy into a richly melodramatic plot about a taboo romance.

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.

Entertainment like this is too hard to find to second-guess for too long.

Using all his resources, Hedlund has created Mike Burden whole on screen in all his tormented awkwardness. Confused and conflicted, incapable of doing the right thing without recidivism and backsliding, this is hardly a conventional hero. Siding with the angels can seem like a snap in films, but Burden has the grace to show how difficult and wrenching a choice that can be.

In effect, aspects of Gibson's creative makeup -- his career-long interest in martyrdom and the yearning for dramatic conflict that make him an excellent actor, coupled with his belief in the Gospels' literal truth -- have sideswiped this film. What is left is a film so narrowly focused as to be inaccessible for all but the devout.

A tense thriller that also has more on its mind than the familiar genre constraints it operates under.

There is no shaking the feeling that Branagh and his cast are a kind of an espionage film B team, capable of mild diversion but nothing more.

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.

Though “Virus” could have lived without the presence of director Goldberg as an on-camera through-line, it is at its best in presenting strong and vivid examples of anti-Semitic rhetoric and actions.

One of the five most popular films of the year in France, "Wolf" is a cross-cultural hoot that no one should take too seriously.

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.

It’s not that Dogfight doesn’t have any story. In fact it has two, but neither one has anything like the weight of a feature, and the connection between the two is too tenuous for even a director as capable as Nancy Savoca (making her first film since the much-lauded True Love) to bridge.

THE Kingdom has some power but not enough sense. A ripped-from-today's-headlines thriller, it wants us to feel as if we're watching something relevant when what's really going on is a slick excuse for efficient mayhem that's not half as smart as it would like to be.

Cute and light and wafer-thin, this film is pleasantly similar to its successful predecessor, "The Brady Bunch Movie."

Rising Sun has gotten everything backward. Mystifying when it should be clear and clear when it should be mystifying, it is the murkiest, most unsatisfying of thrillers. And the biggest mystery of all is how a project that appeared to have so much going for it could have gone so determinedly astray.

While it doesn't pay to think too hard about the plot, after four of these films, director Collet-Serra, shooting here on a 30-ton set put together from authentic discarded railroad scrap, is an expert, so to speak, at making this kind of train run on time.

If Leaving is a romantic parable, it is a dark and depressing one, emphasizing not the sensuality of attraction but rather the obsessive side of romantic behavior. This is mad love for sure, and that is not usually a pretty picture.

It's an adult look at the teenage years, an examination of how personal emotions inform political action, a noteworthy change of pace for writer-director Sally Potter and, most of all, the showcase for a performance by Elle Fanning as Ginger that is little short of phenomenal.

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."

Unfortunately, "Blood and Honey" has script problems: Its core story is less compelling than its overall atmosphere.

As advertised, A Knight's Tale does try to rock you. The problem is, it doesn't rock you nearly enough.

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.

Falling Down encourages a gloating sense that we the long-suffering victims are finally getting our splendid revenge. The ultimate hollowness of that kind of triumph reflects the shallowness of a film all too eager to serve it up. [26 Feb 1993, p.1]

Though Waterworld has some haunting underwater visual moments, the film's impact is weakened by flat dialogue, an overemphasis on jokeyness and a plot that, despite all those screenwriters, does not satisfactorily hold together at any number of points.

Though the Strick-Robinson script is solid from line to line, the film's plot is finally too implausible for anyone to rescue.

You can see the stuff Million Dollar Arm throws at you from miles away, but that doesn't stop this baseball movie from being genially enjoyable.

Though he claims to be a seeker, someone who "has to find out" why believers believe, Maher sets out not after answers but cheap laughs that preach, so to speak, to the converted.

A film that's at times as ragged and shaggy as its family unit. But as written and directed by Thomas Bezucha, its offbeat mixture of highly choreographed comic crises and the occasional bite of reality make for an unexpectedly enticing blend.

Though he is on less certain ground during the narrative's moments of warmth than when things are grim, director Cretton manages it all successfully. With Woody Harrelson as its dependable lodestar, "The Glass Castle" never loses its sense of direction or its belief in where it’s going.

Not as slick as “Free Willy” or as sophisticated as “Searching for Bobby Fischer,” this is a throwback to the sweet and sentimental Disney family films that Walt himself loved, a live-action fairy tale about a boy, his dogs and a darn tough race.

Salles has lovingly crafted a poetic, sensitive, achingly romantic version of the Kerouac book that captures the evanescence of its characters' existence and the purity of their rebellious hunger for the essence of life.

Although overly self-involved, Penn is surprisingly focused as a director.

Snyder stands revealed here as more of a beginner than a visionary in his uncertain approach to making an on-screen world come alive.

Inspired by actual events, Saints and Soldiers benefits by being a small-scale war movie.

An exquisite performance by Charlotte Rampling, whose work as Lyubov Andreyevna Ranevskaya, the matriarch of the great estate the cherry orchard sits on, is the film's dazzling centerpiece.

An elegant, deliberate film about loneliness and hope, connection and loss.

An extraordinarily intimate, deeply affecting and revelatory documentary on how pain and passion can come together in a creative artist.

Non-Stop is a crisp, efficient thriller that benefits greatly from the intangibles Neeson can be counted on to supply.

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.

Listless, disjointed and disconnected, this meandering two-hour, 32-minute exercise in futility will fascinate no one who doesn't have a blood relation among the cast or crew.

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

All this is good as far as it goes, but the problem is the good parts don't last long enough.

Aside from Paltrow's performance, Sylvia is neither a film so spectacular it shouldn't be missed nor something so tepid you have to stay away.

The problem with Anna and the King is that it's caught halfway between then and now--- the film tries to throw in notions of cultural relativism and big power imperialism, but can't do without corny shtick.

Natural Born Killers is both audacious and astonishing, a vision of a charnel house apocalypse that comes close to defying description. [26 Aug 1994, p.1]

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.

Trapped in a no man's land between seriousness and pulp trash, it plays like a combination of "Death Wish" and "The Hours." If that sounds like an awkward fit, it is.

Minions' all-silliness all-the-time philosophy will put a smile on faces and keep it there, like a fizzy beverage on a hot afternoon.

War Machine is the first of Australian filmmaker Michod's three films...to have a dominant sense of humor. What unites it with its predecessors is Michod's fierce intelligence and formidable directing skill.

A nifty international thriller of the "what if?" variety.

It's the angriest film an unfailingly angry filmmaker has yet made, skewering almost everyone in it, both black and white.

This is quiet but potent filmmaking that believes nothing is more important than the story it has to tell.

Death Becomes Her is a black comedy that is so pleased with its blackness it frequently forgets to be funny. [31 July 1992, p.F1]

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.

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]

Touch is not one of those movies that hurtles toward a slam-bang climax. A bemused gloss on the varieties of religious experience, it knows enough to take its time, making sure we enjoy ourselves along the way.

Against all reason and expectation, the result is a distinctly unfunny film.

A technical amazement that points computer-generated animation toward the brightest of futures, it's also cartoonish in the worst way, the prisoner of pedestrian plot points and childish, too-cute dialogue.

Not funny enough to be a successful comedy and not coherent enough to be taken seriously, the latest film to star the talented Jim Carrey is a baffling combination of Ace Ventura, Pet Detective and Cape Fear, a misguided attempt to extend the actor's range by having him play someone who is demented and dangerous.

Alive does everything it ought to except the one thing you really want with a story like this, and that is transcend its material. A once-in-a-lifetime situation, filled with incidents that almost defy belief, calls for more of a once-in-a-lifetime movie, and that is beyond this film’s powers.

Despite some quite engaging sections, "Joy" is, unlike previous Russell films, dragged down more than it is inspired by its chaotic ambience, a film whose variations in tone can't be overcome.

W. is not a dispassionate biography; it is an interpretation of personality intersecting with history, and as a piece of drama it is persuasive and perfectly creditable.

So meticulous in its craftsmanship and so earnest in its storytelling that it feels both physically and spiritually airbrushed.

Hardwicke has connected so intensely to the Meyer novel that it's hard to imagine anyone else making a better version.

Just because people are objecting to Max for all the wrong reasons doesn't make it a good film, and it's not. It's a bizarre curiosity memorable mainly for the way it fritters away its potentially interesting subject matter via a banal script, unimpressive acting and indifferent direction.

The key problem is that writer-director Peter Landesman has pushed too hard to make this story fit into a dramatic mold, alternating melodrama and romance with those earnest warnings in a way that is more ungainly than effective.

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.

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

Actors gravitate toward passion projects, films they care deeply, even obsessively about, but the end result is hardly ever as convincing as A Tale of Love and Darkness a film of beautiful melancholy.

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.

Instead of pushing for tough answers to difficult questions, this film is content to mythologize Thompson's bad-boy behavior, celebrating things like his willingness to drink a bottle of bourbon a day and go hunting with a submachine gun.

Succeeds as a full-bodied diversion because it takes even its silly elements seriously. If you're in the mood for impressive castles and sumptuous costumes, torch-lit processions and decorative nudity, this is the place to turn.

Getting progressively less involving as it goes along, the strongest feeling Series 7 creates is the passionate desire to change the channel and move on.

While its ambition and scope pull one way, its pinched and unconvincing sense of drama pull the other.

A weakly comic splatter movie oversupplied with jokey, cartoonish violence.

The Eye of the Storm is an ambitious stab at what might be called the Great Australian Film. The results are off-and-on impressive, but the project's ambitions turn out to be greater than its ability to achieve them.

Unfortunately, attempts to be original are not enough, they have to succeed, and this film's solutions tend to present themselves as alternately gimmicky and banal.

Hitchcock puts major league star power at the service of its peek-behind-closed-doors premise. But whatever that relationship was like in real life, this is one cinematic portrait of a marriage we could have lived without.

Though he has competition, especially from the folks playing the visiting royals, Murray is very much the reason to see "Hyde Park."

This film has much more to do with what goes on inside director Tim Burton's head than with any TV show, no matter how beloved. In fact, Dark Shadows is as good an example as any of what might be called the Way of Tim, a style of making films that, like the drinking of blood, is very much an acquired taste and, unless you're a vampire, not worth the effort.

So professionally done you rarely have the luxury of taking your eyes off the screen.

Has a good deal of the appeal, and the drawbacks, of a high school play. It can be pokey and overly earnest and its dramatics are not always polished, but, on the other hand, would you want them to be?

Life's a Breeze is a small film with a considerable amount of charm. Comic and idiosyncratic, it takes a warmhearted view toward its protagonists while still seeing them for exactly who they are.

Money Monster is all over the map, mixing earnest contemporary relevance, black comedy, bogus emotion and tragedy with its nominal thriller plot, all to frankly bewildering effect.

In the mythology of personal growth, liberating yourself leads invariably to increased happiness. Yet what characterizes the seekers in the powerful One of Us is nothing that straightforward.

Though Pitt is as attractive as ever, "Seven Years" offers other things to look at and in fact functions better as a travelogue than as a drama.

The result is solid and efficient, if unadventurous, illustrating both the lure and the limitations of comic book extravaganzas.

What unnecessary imprisonment does to families is often written about in abstract terms, but to see what it did to one specific family runs an emotional gamut that the patience of this heroically committed filmmaker does full justice to.

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.

What's especially disheartening is the large gap between what's on the screen and the significant, meaningful work its creators sincerely believe they've made.

Though individual set pieces are well done, the film inevitably leaves an empty taste behind it once it's done.

In the end, star charisma and Liman's style win us over and we relax into a sophisticated summertime diversion that is noticeably intended for adults.

Notwithstanding the inevitable formulaic dialogue and a superabundance of boilerplate superhero action sequences, Aquaman turns out to be, almost despite itself, an engaging undersea extravaganza.

Genially preposterous and pleasantly diverting, it balances calculation against humanity and generally comes out on top.

Though it would be dishonest to call this an unqualified success, it would be churlish not to tip the hat to Love Actually's genuine charm.

It's that rare film that captures and conveys the romance of the theatrical experience.

Suffers from being neither here nor there. In its rush to modernize its story and attract a young audience with stars like Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow, the film ends up problematic both in relation to the original and on its own terms.

There is often not enough space for all these personalities to truly play out. They tend to become types rather than people, representatives of classes and points of view more than individual human beings.

It's got a strong cast and an intriguing premise that has the added bonus of real-world relevance. But, good intentions and good work aside, the film flounders before it reaches its conclusion.

Working with cinematographer Karl Walter Lindenlaub, director Caton-Jones has givenRob Roy a beautiful wide-screen look, filled with gorgeous vistas. But this film is like a color Xerox copy of the real thing: hard to tell from an original until you look closely at the details.

La Sagrada is always going to be a spectacular building, but cinematographer Patrick Lindenmaier does an especially fine job of showing us the play of light in the cathedral's enveloping interiors.

A lively, clever, fast-moving film that isn't overly reverential about its subject.

Aside from the singing and dancing, it is the color and pageantry of India as filtered through the work of cinematographer Santosh Sivan that captivates us.

Going boldly where no one has gone before is not what it used to be. Contentedly settled into a prosperous middle age, the "Star Trek" series now seems more comfortable retracing its own footsteps, carefully offering its horde of fans interludes that aspire to do no more than fit snugly into the patterns of the past.

The resolution and strength of Wright's unimpeachable performance makes the whole story seem flesh-and-blood real in a way that it would not otherwise be.

But though the new ground it breaks is visual rather than dramatic or emotional, this is a polished, satisfying entertainment that just about dares you to look a gift lion in the mouth.

In an odd way Pretty Horses has been too faithful to the spirit of this somber, fatalistic, melancholy romance, too much a stubborn ode to stoicism, to light any emotional fires.

Its heart is so much in the right place it is difficult to get really peeved at it.

Assisted by a well-crafted script by the veteran William Goldman and a masterful performance by Anthony Hopkins, Hicks has turned two King short stories into a somber meditation on the dreams and frustrations of childhood and the ways the adult world makes its darker qualities known.

Even if it's not quite as lighter than air as its predecessor, Snatch remains a lethal diversion.

This is finally a film that is better at mood than substance, that has its strongest hold on you when it’s making the least amount of sense.

The combined intensity of these two performances (Jones and Blanchett) obliterates objections and raises the stakes in what might otherwise have been a standard western.

Perhaps the biggest bit of fakery involved is that for all its twistiness, The Good Liar’s plot, which can be more than a little frustrating, is as much of a liability as a benefit in a production where the characters turn out to be more involving than their story.

At once too neat and too messy, but films like this are too rare to leave it at that. Ragged but ambitious, it retains a core of genuine emotion -- this picture is doing the best it can, and although that may not be everything, it ought to count for something.

Surviving Picasso is quite well made and easy enough to watch, but it's not noticeably challenging or involving.

A fascinating hybrid. A Hollywood fantasy at its most fantastic, the film is equal parts true innocence and shameless calculation. Deciding whether the glass is half empty or half full depends on which part you are willing to embrace.

Still worth watching because it provides a showcase for a group of actors who really appreciate this kind of farcical comedy.

Despite a weakness for trying to tie things up with melodramatic violence, Singleton remains a fluid filmmaker who works well with actors. He may not be there yet, but he is on the road.

The result inevitably pushes too hard at times and can't help but stray into melodrama, yet the film does an admirable job of transplanting the novel's thoughtful concerns into a fast-moving suspense context.

But a great sense of pace is a wonderful thing, and director Jackson and his crew (who made good use of hand-held and Steadicam shots and reportedly averaged an impressive 30 to 40 camera setups a day) move so quickly from shot to shot and location to location that viewers have a limited time to dwell on the film's predictable implausibilities.

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

An example of how expert action filmmaking and up-to-the-minute visual effects can transcend a workmanlike script and bring excitement to conventional genre material.

Stiller's sensibility creates a movie that's smarter than you think it will be.

With the help of clear direction and some excellent acting, especially from Flora Cross in a memorable debut as Eliza, Bee Season is affecting in ways that movies have all but given up trying to be.

With its indefinable, almost indescribable combination of whimsy, sentiment and strangeness, "Mood Indigo" (co-written by Gondry and Luc Bossi) will not be to all tastes at all times. But frame for frame, the amount of invention going on here can't be believed unless it's seen.

Life is efficiently constructed to unsettle audiences. It demonstrates both the pleasures and the limitations of doing a skillful job with familiar genre material.

If this beautifully made if flawed film sends people back to his book, it will have done good work for sure.

Only a teenage boy could find this kind of stuff continually diverting, and only a teenage boy would not notice flimsy emotions and underdeveloped acting. It seems George Lucas, like Peter Pan, has never really grown up.

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.

While the film glistens a bit now and again, a closer look reveals you've been diverted not by a diamond but by a genuine synthetic zircon.

Eastwood, as always, has simply done things his own way, and the result is a leisurely old-school entertainment with a bit more edge than you may be expecting.

Effie Gray is fortunate to have enough strong performances by Fanning, Thompson and top-flight costars (including cameos by James Fox, Robbie Coltrane, Derek Jacobi and even Claudia Cardinale) to eventually overcome the doldrums of decorum and create the feeling we've been needing.

Hokey though it is, with a horse-hugger ending thrown in to boot, Hidalgo has a sweet-natured appeal that welcomes sentiment without overdoing it.

It once again confuses a kind of juvenile titillation with insight and treats the ability to make audiences squirm as a pinnacle of film art.

Working as much like a circus ringmaster as a director, Joel Schumacher has brought several critical qualities to the mix, starting with much more of a pop culture sensibility and a sense of fun than Tim Burton, who directed the first two pictures, and he has a stylish visual sensibility as well.

More successfully silly than non-Brady fans will expect.

Ricki and the Flash is a sour movie masquerading as something more cheerful. In that attempted deception the film is both helped and hindered by an indispensable performance by star Meryl Streep.

Frustrating yet deeply watchable melodrama that makes you think it's a tougher picture than it is.

It's an unhinged, off-the-wall comedy that will try anything once, an uneven film in which the hits are so dead-on that the misses don't seem to matter.

Get Smart neglects the laughs and amps up the action, resulting in a not very funny comedy joined at the hip to a not very exciting spy movie. Talk about killing two birds with one stone.

It is deeply unpleasant to see women abducted, tortured and eviscerated by a methodical and meticulous butcher.

If you're in the mood for seeing a Lothario humbled by true love, you're in luck. You may wish, however, that Made of Honor had given its stars something more of interest to occupy their time. And ours.

The whole thing is as satisfying as a meal at a slow food restaurant, and when Gianni's mother gratefully tells her son, "you mellow these hours," we wholeheartedly agree.

The Optimists is filled with first-person testimony from Jews who were saved and non-Jews who saved them, people like Rubin Dimitrov, a baker who hid Jews in his ovens and says simply, "a true human being is obliged to help." As a rescued Jew says with emotion at the film's conclusion, "to be a Bulgarian is to be a mensch."

The latest in an unending series of bleakly comic, nihilistic neo-noirs to reach the screen, U-Turn's story of a bad day in an Arizona hell invests a lot of skill and style in a trifling tale. So it manages to sporadically amuse even while it's wasting your time.

Oblivion has the ability to haunt you visually and, with an unanticipated love story, even emotionally.

Aviva Kempner's warm and intelligent mash note to a man who clearly deserved it.

This is an earnest and way-contrived endeavor that manages, due largely to Costner's efforts, to be genially diverting in a gee-whiz kind of way.

A rambling, mildly entertaining performance film.

A sense of lethargy hangs uneasily over the lumbering new version of The Magnificent Seven. Despite its sturdy plot, seasoned director and capable cast toplined by Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt and Ethan Hawke, it arrives in a comatose state, a film unlikely to arouse passions one way or another.

A genial look at what happens when a wannabe becomes a headliner, Rock Star only stumbles when it decides it has to deliver a lesson about What's Really Important.

Anyone looking for the kind of comic brio that Dustin Hoffman and company brought to "Tootsie" will not find it here. [24 Nov 1993 Pg. F1]

By having Sigourney Weaver and Holly Hunter play the maniacs' feisty antagonists, the filmmakers seem to believe that they've made a significant feminist statement, the movie's two hours-plus of almost continual sadistic abuse of women notwithstanding. Even in an industry known for self-delusion, that is quite a feat.

It's not often that you see talented, well-meaning people joined together like cultists in the snare of a group delusion, but that's what makes this film fascinating, the proverbial accident you can't take your eyes off.

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]

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

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.

Sporadically playful, it ends up wearing as thin as any film geared to a preteen sense of humor is bound to do.

If you’re in the mood for a movie like “Alita,” “Alita” is the movie you’re in the mood for.

A political thriller with more plausibility -- and yes, more thrills -- than most.

The only thing that keeps Knight of Cups from terminal artistic overreach as it follows Rick around town is the knockout cinematography of three-time Oscar winner Emmanuel Lubezki, who does superb work showing us contemporary Los Angeles in a most magical way.

A warm and enthusiastic documentary.

Filmmaker Herbig and his team prove to be especially adept at contriving situations where anything anyone does causes fear, anxiety, stress and worry, leaving everyone, very much including the audience, existing on the knife’s edge of unremitting tension.

Like Malkovich's out of control Russian accent, Rounders ends up reaching a place too hard to understand and even harder to believe in.

It's a cautionary tale of sorts, but the story is so strange it is often not clear exactly what it's cautioning us against.

Carrying Shooter through its difficulties is, finally, not its crisp action sequences and definitely not the torture. It's Wahlberg's performance, which is the film's most old-fashioned element, and its best.

If you know the name Rezso Kasztner, you won't need any encouragement to see Killing Kasztner: The Jew Who Dealt With Nazis. If you don't, that is even more reason to see this documentary on the strange and compelling life and death of one of the most morally complex figures to come out of the Holocaust.

Still, there are some things to savor. Blanchett is an actress who's always involving, and Crowe is very much in his element as an intrepid, laconic archer who lets his arrows do the talking.

The filmmaking here is so glacially paced (the final script was only 62 pages for a 100-minute film) and enervating that boredom is the most frequent result.

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]

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

Everything about The Phantom is pleasantly old-fashioned, the opposite of avant-garde and cutting edge. Not intended for those who yearn for greatness, this unassuming adventure film is so cheerful and sweet-natured it's difficult to resist warming up to its modest charms. [7 June 1996, p.CF]

But the magic has deserted him with She's the One, which turns out to be one of those remixes that creates nostalgia for the original.

If The Hudsucker Proxy is a triumph, it is a zombie one. Too cold, too elegant, too perfect, more an exhibit in a cinema museum than a flesh-and-blood film, "Proxy's" highly polished surface leaves barely any space for an audience's emotional connection. [11 Mar 1994, p.1]

Has little to occupy us once its battle scenes recede. One of those goofy movies where devil-may-care Russian soldiers unwind by playing the balalaika far into the night, it takes itself far more seriously than anyone else will be able to manage.

The film is well intentioned and mildly diverting, but in attempting to modernize its story it has lost many of the things that make the original so memorable and not gained much in return.

A decorative Italian soap opera with an asterisk for earnest aspirations. Its beautiful people say painful things to each other in gorgeous clothes, and though the film expects us to take their problems seriously, it's awfully hard to do so.

This gently amusing, genuinely sweet animated film makes you smile from start to finish?

With power, intensity, remarkable range and an ability to disturb that is both unnerving and electric, it is more than Washington's most impressive part.

The gift of Unsettled is that it enables us to feel that we were right there, experiencing the sound and fury for ourselves.

If you are willing to take the plunge and view things through Luhrmann's prism, "Australia" does deliver the classic dramatic and romantic satisfactions its ambitious advertising campaign promises.

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.

Not good enough to be remembered past next week, not bad enough to get worked up about, “Point” is a factory product pure and simple, something to throw onto the screen until the next something comes along.

With her unblinking but nonjudgmental eye, Spheeris doesn't shy away from the horrifying, at times violent messes these kids make of their lives, but she is always sensitive to the pain behind everything, to the unhappy futility of squandered potential.