Lawrence Toppman

You can say nothing of Castle-Hughes except that she's already a movie star: The camera loves her and we do, too.

One of those documentaries about a family train wreck that makes you wonder how people consented to have their tawdry laundry washed so publicly.

It's "Braveheart" without historical significance and "Passion" without spirituality, though it dabbles in both, and it represents as brazen an act of career suicide as I can recall from a star director. If he were a first-timer, he'd never work again.

DiCaprio is up to all but the heaviest emotional lifting; when he enters a maniacal phase, you wish for Martin Sheen, who did the "back to the jungle" thing better in "Apocalypse Now."

For all its flashes of emotional honesty and mordant humor, is nonsense at its core.

Plays out like a sprinter competing in his first distance race: It bursts forth with tremendous energy, sustains itself for quite a while, loses steam near the end but finishes ahead of most of the pack.

Carrera directs with a light touch, letting the screenplay speak for itself.

Asks questions worth pondering. I only wished the writer-director-editor answered more of them.

The film's proudest boast is that nary a frame comes from documentary footage...Every riot, every explosion, every seemingly spontaneous gundown in the streets of Algiers was staged, then shot in black-and-white stock that intentionally echoes newsreel footage.

Kingsley gets the film's one big emotional scene and makes it count.

By the self-contradictory and ludicrous end, I had the mixed satisfaction of being proved right in my disappointment. (Di Pego wrote the equally silly "Instinct" and "Angel Eyes," so I can't say I was surprised.)

Has more psychological complexity than the average suspense drama, and the results prove more satisfying than not.

The best action movie of the month contains chase scenes, fights, a love story, exotic locations - well, one exotic locale, snow-blasted Antarctica - and a battle for survival against long odds amid brutal conditions.

The sunshine in Sunshine comes from women around him (Fiennes).

Writer Guillermo Arriaga earns most of the blame. He played similar games with narrative in the vastly better "Amores Perros" and "21 Grams," jumping back and forth in time to show relationships among subplots and characters. But "Burials" barely has one plot.

It's ploddingly directed, indifferently acted and insufficiently frightening.

It's gay in the old-fashioned sense, a giddy whirl for the senses, from chilly English drawing rooms to lush Neverland jungle. It's innocent in believing love banishes all ills, even physical ones, and inspires unthinkable heroism.

This picture won't attract white audiences. I doubt that blacks would flock to a Jerry Seinfeld concert film. But we'd all get along better if we realized we had the right to laugh at each other's foibles

A miler trying to run a marathon, a fair middleweight idea trying to deliver heavyweight thrills.

It's common in Hollywood to describe a disappointing film this way: "Well, it certainly looks great!"

Supplies the three key elements of the best political thrillers: suspense, credibility and the feeling that you're really sitting in the Oval Office.

The film doesn't lose its way emotionally; it's full of great monologues about loss and responsibility.

When there's no dialogue, this film stays right in the pipeline. When characters open their mouths, it ends up in the tripeline.

Some writer-directors would have squeezed pathos from this story until the corn turned to pone, especially in a post-Christmas release. Writer-director Robert Benton (Places in the Heart) keeps a gentler grip on the proceedings and makes 10 times the impact. [13 Jan 1995, p.1F]

Decent acting forestalls the inevitable collapse for a long time.

In the end, your reaction to "Hour" may depend on your feelings about humanity's collective common sense.

Director Richard Donner finds a few startling images for bloody battle scenes, but awful dialogue prevents the actors from giving performances of any depth.

Has the sex appeal of a Road Runner cartoon, one-tenth the laughs and equal plausibility.

Remains as flat as the Texas plains.

Delivers more of what the original promised, with the crudity index up one notch and the humor index down quite a few.

For a movie that ends in the profoundest depths of sadness, Boys Don't Cry contains one of the year's purest moments of joy.

Logan's so carried away by computerized magic that he forgets to make sense.

The story's sweet, however stale, and many performers have energy. But screenwriters Alonzo Brown and Kim Watson drain the reality out of it.

It seems perverse to say a musical is at its best when nobody is singing, but Nine is a perverse kind of musical.

The Rookie is "Rudy" in a baseball uniform.

Greenwood, whose range has carried him from the lonely widower of "The Sweet Hereafter" to the creepy husband of "Double Jeopardy," gives a star-making performance.

If the longest and beefiest "Spider-Man" movie to date were a baseball player, it would be tested tomorrow for steroids. That won't stop "S-M 3" from hitting a home run at the box-office, where fans will roar.

A picture from an old man working at the top of his game.

Hawn always appears to be acting with a vengeance, but Sarandon just breathes her part.

What starts as a cute premise crashes faster than a skateboard with an oak branch shoved between its wheels.

An endearing, well-acted trifle with lovely intentions.

A clever blend of the high school comedy and the superhero genre.

The film's not really a whodunit or even a whoizzit, so learning his identity matters less than what happens after he reveals it. The film becomes truly French in its attitudes toward thwarted ambition and emotion, right down to an ending that may strike Americans as melodramatic.

It's made with seriousness, intelligence and craft, and filmgoers who aren't put off by the slow pace of life in 1380 should see it.

Without Gibson, this soufflé would fall pancake-flat.

At its best, The Mist just wants to make you jump.

Whatever you think of gay people (or politicians), you may find the movie compelling viewing.

You know the feeling you get when you make a meal of two mildly savory appetizers that don't quite go together, and you leave you wishing you'd eaten one hefty entrée? That's Julie & Julia. Half an hour later, I wanted to watch another movie.

Adults will wish the movie were less simplistic, obvious, clumsily plotted and shallowly characterized. But what are adults doing in the theater at all?

John Hancock must be the best filmmaker working in LaPorte County, Ind.

Polly works best when writer-director John Hamburg gets his mind out of the water closet, and it's in there about two-fifths of the way. The rest of the time, he's assembling a hit-and-miss comedy with reasonable numbers of laughs and lots of personality from its two leads.

The movie should come with the tag line “Don't try this at home,” because the method has near-fatal pitfalls. Yet the characters' clumsy emotional growth shows us there's hope even for a stumbling father and two sons groping toward peace.

The unspoken heroes of the project are cinematographer Peter Biziou, who finds all the beauty in Cornwall's landscapes, and U.S. violinist Joshua Bell, who extracts beauty without schmaltz from every violin solo.

Puts more miles on plot that was worn out long ago.

The "Puppetoonish" characters in Hoodwinked didn't bother me: They're primitive and inexpressive, but their personalities come through. In fact, the problem is that their personalities do come through: They're all wackily sarcastic, unfunny nonentities.

An intermittently preposterous, drawn-out but sometimes entertaining story about an unstoppable ex-Marine.

The outtakes prove Analyze That could have been even worse.

Bits can be extremely funny. I howled at the ranting, mustard-splotched, wiener-waving Michael Moore.

But as cynical as I may have been going in, I came out a believer.

Whatever you feel about Truman Capote, you won't be able to turn away from him here.

The vigorous, unsubtle acting provides consistent pleasure, once you stop expecting it to seem realistic.

Infamous, which mines almost the exact same ground as "Capote," comes up 300 days late and artistically close to bankruptcy.

Ryan Gosling's riveting as a neo-Nazi who was raised in Jewish faith

British director Stephen Walker approached this project with wide-eyed good humor.

In its design, at least, Mindhunters"surpasses all other Christie knockoffs.

Maybe this is a case of too many cooks spoiling a simple broth: The movie had four producers, five executive producers, three writers (credited ones, anyhow) and three editors.

Why on earth didn't Warner Bros. release this movie in time for Oscar consideration? Sure, it's bleak, depressing, sometimes painful to watch. But it would have been one of the best pictures of the year, and Nicholson (who hasn't done work of this caliber since "The Crossing Guard") might have been on the podium again.

Lil' Bow Wow deserves a better-made film than this pleasant, sloppily assembled fairy tale.

The planets aligned favorably, and this "Music" is sweet without cloying the appetite. It follows the meetcute-kissyface-breakup-reunion pattern of most of its kind, but the behavior seems more genuine and the situations less forced.

The movie may best be appreciated by people who know the references. All five monsters come from low-budget science fiction films of the 1950s.

As in most cheap futuristic movies, everything is dark or illuminated by a drab bluish glow. The buildings look grubbily similar to each other, so every location has to be identified onscreen. Of course, that saves the audience the trouble of paying attention.

By the end, I felt like a beetle going round and round in a toilet bowl that just wouldn't stop flushing.

When I first heard about Wordplay, I assumed I wouldn't have an ort of interest.

Anyhow, I believe you would probably like this movie if you let your mind drift during the slow parts. That is easier for some of us than others, and I was thinking about my next runway project about half of the time.

One thing the movie does well is skewer Bill Clinton. Though Hayes works for him and nominally defends him to detractors, we see old sins rehashed: Gennifer Flowers, Monica Lewinsky, his impeachment.

It combines elements of "Lord of the Rings," "Star Wars" and James Bond flicks with generically satisfying results.

The director is strong on setups, and the hunt for the virus is tense. [10 Mar 1995, p.1F]

It's a smooth journey across familiar territory to a safe emotional harbor, always professional and occasionally delightful.

Raymond Wong, who has become Chow's favorite composer, iced this cake with music that sounds like Beethoven, Henry Mancini's jazz and all the James Bond themes run together in a blender.

Ferrell's ideally suited to man-boy characters, and that's what Phil Weston is in "Kicking."

This movie is made by and for people who don't care about good storytelling.

Ambiguity can enrich a movie, but artists abdicate their responsibilities if they don't take a stance of any kind.

It's a mass of interchangeable moving images, none much more significant than the others, linked to a plot looser than a 2-year-old's shoelaces.

Paul Schrader's movies depict dark nights of the soul, but sometimes you feel like you have to end the dark night with a shower. Auto Focus is such a movie.

Without a philosophical payoff, without characters whose relationships resonate in our hearts, without explanations for situations that beg for explanations, what are we left with? To quote another great writer of battle scenes: "a tale full of sound and fury, told by an idiot, signifying -- nothing."

Crowe gave Kate Hudson one pointer while making Almost Famous: Her character simply had to light up every room as soon as she walked into it.

I admire Cameron Crowe for daring to write and direct a movie as strange as Vanilla Sky. I lament the casting of Tom Cruise and Penelope Cruz in the leads.

Allen's laziness is startling, even in so mechanical a filmmaker. He uses a monotonous narrator to tell us what the characters think and do, though he then shows them performing the actions that have just been described.

Emphasizes the best element of the first one -- the half-kidding, insult-filled conversations around the shop -- and doesn't need to spend time introducing us to the characters.

A well-intentioned but overlong Czech drama that comes apart completely in the last 20 minutes?

Though the movie's a shade shorter than the first two, it feels longer.

Director Peter Berg and first-time writer Matthew Michael Carnahan do a smooth, efficient job of storytelling most of the way.

After concocting one tense crime at the beginning, the writers can't do any better than to imitate it later.

A mixed bag with a huge amount of heart.

The writing is self-consciously literary in a way that probably worked better on the page.

The most violent scene is dreamlike, and more direct killings are often seen at an angle or from a distance. The camera placement is thoughtful and effective, never titillating.

If you wanted this "Snicket" movie (and the presumed flood of sequels) to be faithful to the novels, you have come to the wrong franchise.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, move over: Your dramatic replacement has arrived.

The details of the story, crucial in a picture that's at least partly a mystery, remain a tangled blur.

As close to perfectly unwatchable as it can be.

I can safely say I've never seen anything as ridiculous as Live Free or Die Hard. I'm not saying my 10-year-old self didn't enjoy a lot of it.

Gibney also made the Oscar-nominated "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room," and he gets remarkable access to people you wouldn't expect to talk to him (including U.S. interrogators charged with crimes at Bagram).

It's visually surrealistic, acted with integrity, so brutal in spots that I averted my eyes.

The fact that I didn't understand a film, that its ending can be interpreted at least two ways and maybe three – all likely to be "true" – usually sends me growling in disgust from the theater. But The Life Before Her Eyes has grown on me in memory.

A Frankenstein's monster of a movie: clumsy, patched together from parts that don't align properly, desperate to be loved, destined to be chased by mobs with pitchforks - those will be the critics - until it stumbles into its grave.

What makes the film watchable all the way through (and it is watchable, though never remarkable) is mostly the stunning scenery and the performance of Hopkins. [26 Sep 1997, p.9E]

Solace is especially frustrating when it moves down interesting paths, then stops.

The book's emotional passages have the power to move us on film, while the one ridiculous coincidence near the end is still ridiculous.

Statham fans weaned on the adrenaline flowing through "The Transporter" and "Crank" may feel short-changed, but the rest of us can appreciate the unassuming, old-fashioned craftsmanship of The Bank Job, which is based on a true-life heist.

The Hulk has a split personality: Two-thirds come from director Ang Lee, one-third from '60s comic book creator Stan Lee.

Characterizations are rudimentary, performances dull.

Foster and Yun-Fat each show about three-quarters of their characters.

I was not disappointed by Dreamer, the most dishonest movie I've seen in a while. Nobody gets a fatal disease before the end credits, but every other clich? is exploited in this fabric of impossibilities, nonsense, stereotypes and shameless tear-jerking.

The new Dawn of the Dead moves along with speed and slick visual style, but it's soulless and anonymous as -- well, a shopping mall.

It took four years to come up with this? Someone needed that long to assemble this patchy, recycled collection of gags about stinky butts, superfreaks, finger-wide blunts and racial cliches?

Everything here has been done better in other books, other movies. The lone remarkable thing is the level of violence, which exposes the cowardice and hypocrisy of the Motion Picture Association of America's ratings system.

Last week, the American Film Institute named "It's a Wonderful Life" the most inspiring movie in the history of the English language. The film was initially a flop, but it's now considered so perfect that nobody would dare remake it - under that title. Folks who see Click will have no trouble connecting the dots.

Seeing Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers is like having a second date with the woman who made you fall in love at first sight.

Spade, who almost invariably plays smug or smarmy characters, proves he really can act.

It's marginally possible that Nancy Drew is spoofing high school adventure movies, and I almost hope so. Otherwise, it's unwatchable on every level.

Any story from the "Patch Adams" team of director Tom Shadyac and writer Steve Oedekerk is bound to end up floating in a soup of moral homilies, and "Bruce" does.

The best way to sit through Max Payne is by using minimal brain.

If they decided not to give us Camelot, did they have to leave us with so Camelittle?

Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe attempt light romantic comedy in A Good Year, and the results are as grindingly discordant as a punk band writing a suite of waltzes.

Flat as a Moravian cookie, flat as a sailor's wallet after a month in port, flat as the average European's impression of the Earth in A.D. 800.

Though it starts slowly, it lumbers toward greatness in the last third and restores him [Lucas] briefly to the top of his class.

Atmosphere goes only so far in a story where the major characters fade from memory.

I once said I'd watch Chiwetel Ejiofor act in any piece of disposable fluff, and now I have.

There's nothing outstandingly good or bad about the film.

The movie is based on the life of California high school teacher Erin Gruwell, played with captivating honesty by Hilary Swank, yet it feels like the usual Hollywood exaggerations.

The film goes from stylish to ghoulish to foolish.

Let me say, in my desire always to be positive, that Serving Sara is the funniest film I know where a man sticks his arm up a bull's rectum to massage its prostate.

Eastwood thrusts us into the period with an understated piano score (which he composed) and authentic production design by Henry Bumstead, who died last May after working on the film at 90. (He collaborated with Eastwood on 11 films, including the Oscar-winning "Unforgiven" and "Million Dollar Baby," and he's a dedicatee of "Flags.")

Movies can certainly be worse than bad sitcoms, and this is one of them.

A painfully honest film, yet it's also painfully slow, drawn-out and simplistic in too many spots.

Abbott, Petroni and director Michael Rymer do exploit the visual and aural cliches of vampire movies from the last 20 years: The creatures wear tattoos, shave their heads, listen to blistering rock and dress in black leather. For a band of societal outsiders, they're pathetically conformist.

The result is one of the twistiest thrillers in recent memory.

We can all share frustration with a process that frees the Doobs of the world, but this heavy-handed movie won't provide catharsis. The filmmakers treat subtlety as a sin - unless Schlesinger thinks he's being subtle by showing us O.J. prosecutor Marcia Clark for only a couple of seconds on a TV screen. [12 Jan 1996, p.4E]

Watching this is like sitting by a pinsetter at a bowling alley. That's too bad, because the picture had potential.

Bullock good, but King reigns in movie sequel.

It is a gimmick, rather than an idea worth exploring.

The movie is not credible, even in an inner-city setting. At the same time, it's touching.

Christian Bale loves to suffer on-screen. Werner Herzog loves to make people suffer on-screen. Rescue Dawn is proof they were made for each other.

Comedy comes from an exaggeration of reality, not reality itself -- and on that score, Diablo Cody's first screenplay gets high marks.

On the scale of summer action films, this is to the “Transformers” sequel what an Andy Warhol print is to a first-grader’s refrigerator painting.

Weitz has done one remarkable thing in "Company" that doesn't strike you until later: He's given us a functional family that overcomes difficulties with patience and effort.

Can there be higher praise for a motion picture designed to capture a beloved book with fidelity, thoroughness and affection? Only this: They made it better.

sSo pleasingly forgettable that I spent most of the movie mentally casting American actors for the inevitable remake.

I'm afraid it just stinks.

Heavy-handed symbolism permeates the picture, down to the leading lady's name.

Impassioned concert sequences with Ben Harper, Chaka Khan, Gerald Levert and especially Joan Osborne prove the Brothers' balanced approach still works on Motown chestnuts.

The results require immense patience but also reward it immensely.

Whenever the music subsides and the characters speak the Coens' lines, the film turns back into mush.

A richly satisfying adaptation of Louis Sachar's novel.

Perelman and Otto make auspicious, nearly flawless debuts.

Cowardice and cliché - not a tasty combination.

The middle 90 minutes, which put Hanks alone on an island without voice-over narration or even a musical background, is as risky as anything Hollywood did this year.

For the first time in memory, the film ends not just with the promise of more Bonds but without a firm conclusion.

It's different from the usual fare in one obvious way -- most of the cast are African Americans -- and, more importantly, in its willingness to leave some problems unsolved and volatile or unhappy people unchanged.

As a film, it's flabby and utterly predictable.

Don't be misled by the chopsticks and cherry blossoms: Memoirs of a Geisha, for all its exotic casting and locale, is our friend "Cinderella" in a kimono.

Speed Racer is chaotic as a six-ring circus, gaudy as a transvestites convention and soullessly cute as a robot puppy.

Embodies all that's wrong with the sellout culture of Hollywood.

Diary rather sloppily blends melodrama and spiritual uplift with crass comedy, sometimes in the same scene.

It draws you into its grim and mysterious world through the first half of the movie, then falls apart like a house of cards in a hurricane.

This giddy summer extravaganza does deliver aerial thrills with eye-dazzling visuals and ear-smacking (though beautifully designed) sound.

The coolest film in town offers industrial espionage, power struggles, thwarted romance, betrayal and suspense - and best of all, it's true.

Know how to tell if a war movie is mediocre? An outspoken bigot, usually a Southerner, abuses a patient member of an oppressed minority -- the Asian recruit, the African American or, in the case of Windtalkers, a pair of Navajo men from Arizona in his platoon.

If this new film doesn't quite go to 11, it's a healthy 8½.

As lame as a three-legged mule.

Wanda Sykes and John Michael Higgins have energy as Evan's aides, and Jonah Hill (hot off "Knocked Up") gets laughs as a sycophantic researcher, but Graham has no chance to show what she can do.

Willis, who'll turn 50 a week from Saturday, has this kind of hero down pat. He may never again get or demand the complicated dramatic roles I think he could handle, but he's well-cast.

I just saw The Transporter 2 on the way home from the lobotomy clinic, and boy, is it enjoyable. What a difference a simple operation makes!

A feature film as odd, personal and sometimes mundane as his (Pekar) comics.

Button has a wide-eyed innocence that almost never palls. It strays far from the mind of F. Scott Fitzgerald, but often enough it came near to my heart.

As a vegetarian, I'm grateful that Around the Bend -- an extended commercial for KFC passing itself off as a heartwarming family drama -- is a loser.

A rarely honest, funny movie.

The film soars in the right places, especially when powerful newcomer Jennifer Hudson sings, and the charismatic supporting cast keeps it chugging forward.

Letters covers less emotional ground than its predecessor, because Eastwood and first-time writer Iris Yamashita (who shares a story credit with Paul Haggis) allow Japanese soldiers only three modes of behavior.

(Cusack) has never been more effective onscreen.

Selick's fantastical adaptation of Neil Gaiman's novel will be too dazzlingly rich for many; it'll be like "caviare to the general," as Hamlet said of a complex play enacted for a public with lazy minds.

This isn't nitpicking. Every bit of the tale is as full of holes as a wool sweater at a moth convention, and Shyamalan telegraphs each potential surprise.

It's packed with such passion, humor, fine acting in small roles - there are no big ones - and vitality in the storytelling that the lesson comes across entertainingly.

The overwrought White Oleander may be middling drama, but if it bears any resemblance to truth (which I doubt), it's a brutal indictment of the L.A. County Department of Social Services.

About a guy who stood on the brink of greatness but, because of one flaw he could never overcome, had to settle for being pretty good before he faded away. Strange, then, that the movie works exactly the same way.

His height didn't stop independent writer-director Thomas McCarthy from casting his friend in The Station Agent, scoring a triumph for both.

They've made a thrilling traditional nautical picture from untraditional books.

Gothika was supposed to provide proof that she (Berry) could carry a film as a leading lady, but it doesn't. That's not entirely her fault, since nobody can fetch a drink of water in a sieve.

The rest of us can pass this by, unless we're such fans of the actors - Mark Ruffalo, Naomi Watts, Laura Dern and Peter Krause - that we'd watch them in anything.

It's not the dark comedy it wants to be - that would be "M*A*S*H" with a more modern setting and more gruesome consequences - but it's worth a look.

I knew blues music can make you feel you're not alone when your woman has gone, and rock your soul when you're on top of the world. But until I saw Black Snake Moan, I didn't know it could also cure nymphomania.

It relies on short bursts of Lawrence's zaniness, punctuated by an occasional joke about stinking feet or vile breath. For his admirers, that will be plenty.

The honesty outweighs the hokiness by a fair margin.

It's mostly a disturbingly believable portrait of a psychopath whose true depths of rage are buried where none but he can see. The ironically named Plainview does not come into plain view until the last scene, and the lupine, scowling Day-Lewis is mesmerizing in the role.

It's wise, funny, honest right up to its last sadly dishonest scene, doesn't mock us more than we deserve and offers attractive women in various stages of undress.

Another of Charlotte native Ross McElwee's musings about his family, history (this time the tobacco industry) and life. It may be his best.

Watching Wedding Crashers is like stuffing yourself with raw cookie dough. It's a guilty pleasure that goes down easily, but you can't help wondering what it would've tasted like if someone had finished the job.

If we had a story we could believe, we'd be in stitches.

A wicked comedy with just the mildest amount of pathos to season the blend.

The stars have chemistry, which may be all that we can hope for in factory-line fluff. But why stack the deck so clumsily?

If you liked "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," you're on safe ground here -- Next time, I'd like to see Gedeck serve up a hearty meal instead of a tasty but unfilling appetizer.

Penn, one of Hollywood's most famous iconoclasts, must have felt instinctive sympathy with someone who told the whole world in general to leave him alone.

If this story has a moral -- though unlike many horror films, it doesn't seem to -- it's that humans are likelier to destroy themselves than help each other.

You'll be disappointed if you expect famed leftist Oliver Stone to apply a coup de grace to this man.

Brooks gives himself the last word, appearing onscreen for the first time amid chorus girls oozing PG-13 pulchritude. "Go home!" he says. "It's over!" Could he be referring to his career?

About 45 minutes into Swordfish, the picture degenerates permanently from drivel to sleaze (only a short drop).

The movie is the usual kind of film biography of a respected figure from the distant past - honorable, oversimplified, handsome.

Chaplin's pathos was (at its best) touched with irony. Lane's isn't. [19 Jan 1990, p.68]

Melissa Leo is one of America's most underrated character actresses, and Frozen River confirms that opinion.

Emotionally stultifying and brain-dead.

Deep as a Canadian lake: Below the placid surface, menacing creatures swim around unseen.

It takes its plot from the 2001 German film about a workaholic chef, dumbing down the original slightly and inserting a couple of phony crises. You're spared not only subtitles but subtlety.

Spike Lee's films have been provocative, blunt, thoughtful, misguided, daring, sentimental, funny, honest and silly. But 25th Hour earns the director two new adjectives: irrelevant and tedious.

When Elle Woods watches "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" for inspiration in the middle of Legally Blonde 2, you have to admire the nerve of the people who made this comedy: "Smith" is to LB2 what jumbo jets are to ultralight gliders. But nerve is all they've got.

Few actors can match Carrey's ability to change his features and body language.

Directed by William "When's the next chase scene?" Friedkin, acted by comatose David Caruso and monotonous Linda Fiorentino and Chazz Palminteri, Jade is more like "Jaded." [13 Oct 1995, p.11F]

An almost perfect example of mainstream Hollywood filmmaking at its most expensive, well-calculated and safe: opulent production values, solid acting from its name star, distinguished performances from people surrounding him, Big Themes concerning sacrifice and honor, and a ridiculous finale full of superhuman achievements.

South African director Neill Blomkamp set and shot the film around his native Johannesburg, so parallels to apartheid leap to mind. Yet the script he wrote with Terri Tatchell applies to any culture that bluntly excludes another.

A peaceful, unforced film, and it inspires a feeling of relief and joy that's hard to describe.

All are watchable, attractive people who haven't worn out their welcomes. But if they continue to go round and round like this, they may. Aren't more African -American actors waiting in the wings to play romantic leads?

Rarely connects with reality.

The supporting cast is almost uniformly good, from Conchata Ferrell as a sympathetic waitress to Erick Avari as a corporate type with a surprisingly big heart and a hidden silly streak. Turturro relishes his quiet overplaying and steals the bulk of his scenes.

The three leads all played these characters over multiple seasons on the TV show; they're comfortable in these skins, and they show that. (Confusingly, all three appeared in "City of God" under other characters' names.)

Director Doug Liman and a trio of writers eventually forget the rules they set up and hurl combatants to places they could never have seen or even known about: Who'd willingly project himself into the middle of a Chechnyan war zone?

A potent environmental message wrapped up in an irresistibly cute romance between robots.

The movie feels operatic at times. Tempestuous arias play on the soundtrack, and Puccini figures directly.

A mediocrity at any time, because of its implausible script and bland characters.

A loosely woven crazy quilt of other, better movies.

The most difficult task in Pixar's 20-year history: to make an un-Mickey-like rodent appealing enough to admire.

The romance seems tacked on as a way to humanize this character; there's no reason the nurse would take up with a brash, secretive American.

A summer action movie that has a brain and doesn't let it atrophy? Fan me, I'm fainting!

He's (Yimou) like a painter combining bloody reds, sunshine yellows and pale blues in the harmony of a masterpiece.

Examines Muslim family's religious warfare.

This is his (Kutcher) most relaxed and sensitive work on film.

I think this camp classic is an accident along the lines of "Showgirls": howlingly funny, filled with gratingly earnest performances, riddled with dialogue that will be quoted at parties.

The film's an irresistible time capsule of that Camelot summer, blending girrrrrl power, social consciousness and faux-'60s pop with the fizz of a soda jerk whipping up a root beer float.

A painful bore.

It's a disconnected, implausible story that aims for a tone of magic realism and falls short on both counts.

The most catastrophic misfire in a dreadful movie season.

Certainly satisfies our hunger for a light, bright dessert, yet it may leave you hungry for more.

A love story more involved than I can easily explain.

It's overwrought and overplotted, but it's plenty of fun.

When "Hedge" clicks on all cylinders, Chuck Jones smiles down from heaven.

Harsh Times contains exactly 30 seconds of novelty.

Though all but two students look too old, their interpretations are unanimously fine.

I don't know if the new movie is Smith's weakest. It's certainly his most disposable, a warmed-over hash of jokes that will have Mewes fans rolling with laughter and the rest of us rolling our eyes in disbelief.

Its sensibility stays true to Gaiman's style: heroic, wryly funny, but bloodthirsty as great fairy tales can often be.

What makes this film appealingly honest are its details, not its grand events.

Has more twists than the Pacific Coast Highway and more layers than a stack of silver-dollar pancakes. If you can wrap your mind around one unlikely condition, the picture provides unalloyed pleasure for connoisseurs of cinematic con artists.

The warm performances give the film momentum, but writer Audrey Wells and director Peter Chelsom (who chops dance sequences clumsily) often stumble.

Most crucially, we don't learn what brought the four women together; Olivia's so much younger than the others that there's no reason to think they'd ever have befriended her.

The film was reputedly inspired by Japanese teens who trolled chat rooms to find predators, made assignments, then ganged up to beat offending adults.

The songs are pure joy, for them and for us.

All of Barnyard is odd. Oddly funny much of the way, oddly serious when it makes room for the early death of a beloved character or the hushed birth of another, oddly musical with its melange of hip-hop and reggae and hard rock and bluegrass.

Just as moving, uplifting and funny as ever in its slightly modified form. [2002 re-release]

Reflective, touching, intimate portrait of a samurai facing action in his waning years.

Its crass good humor makes it an enjoyable, reasonably faithful but over-the-top successor to the original.

The filmmakers' ineptitude is staggering.

If the brothers Weitzes) don't yet have a defined style, they do seem at ease with this more sophisticated material.

City Hall is more Cusack's movie than Pacino's, and he gives a more interesting performance. Cusack never reveals himself right away: With his watchful eyes and tight lips, he seems to be deciding whether he can trust the audience with his deepest thoughts. He warms up thoroughly in this Jimmy Stewart-like role, though he never gets a handle on a Louisiana accent. (Calhoun couldn't have come from Chicago, like Cusack?)[16 Feb 1996, p.1E]

Weak, obligatory stabs at humor make it more generic than it might've been.

The movie briefly suggests Viola is an incestuous psychotic.

Auteuil does an excellent job. He's like Marcello Mastroianni, whose naturalness also deluded people into thinking for a while that he wasn't a versatile actor.

And what of Roger Avary, the writer who shared the Academy Award for writing with Tarantino? He continues to plummet toward oblivion with The Rules of Attraction, which ranks with the Great Pyramid of Khufu as a monument to self-indulgence.

Might have been funnier if it had been put together with more care.

The best movie I've seen about the Revolutionary War.

The film seems almost intentionally bad in most ways, as if Gilliam were expressing a suicide wish for his directing career.

Brilliantly interweaves stories that take place decades apart, and features stellar work by three of the best English-speaking actresses: Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore and Meryl Streep.

A taut, consistently surprising political thriller with a sting in its tail.

We don't find out until the last scene how reality and fantasy intersect, when the meaning of the first shot of the film gets driven home. How many movies have you seen with a payoff like that?

In the end, Leatherheads recalls the gloriously dated sentiments of Grantland Rice, one of that era's beloved sportswriters, expressed 17 years earlier in the poem "Alumnus Football."