Leonard Klady

Sweet and sincere, the film is also a remarkably shallow wade, rife with incident and slim on substance.

This chilling look at emergency room politics wrestles contemporary medical ethics to an unsatisfactory draw. Similarly, its mix of real and exaggerated situations doesn't quite jell, making for a commercial diagnosis that's good but not great.

Part homage, part spoof, the deft balancing act is a clever adaptation -- albeit culled from less than pedigreed source material.

Despite fine work from his actors and smooth technical polish, the more provocative elements of the tale arise awkwardly and grate against the early section's almost whimsical nature.

Recalling the animated "Superman" shorts of the 1940s, "Batman: Mask of the Phantasm" is a baroque, melodramatic tale of good and evil that's a tad too sophisticated for its intended youthful audience. The shrill thriller is a throwback to a bygone time more appealing to adults.

An extremely handsome physical production, with breathtaking Venezuelan vistas by Tony Pierce-Roberts, Jungle 2 Jungle is an otherwise modest effort. Simple truths are often the most effective, but in this instance they are only banal and mildly amusing.

It’s an effective, if predictable paranoid fantasy. The film’s social statement may be hopelessly muddy, but its adroit sense of fun and thrills cannot be discounted.

It’s relatively foolproof light entertainment, undone only when it strays too far into the absurd or wears the mantle of Wayans’ comedy persona.

Poetic Justice is a hermetic inner-city love story elevated by resonant social commentary.

Writer-director Kenneth Johnson provides a tinny story and a leaden pace for his tarnished titan. There’s a coziness and simplicity to the production that would be better served on TV. Cinema-size, it comes off as corny, antiquated and slightly cheesy.

Overall, Maddin’s first effort with seasoned performers is extremely promising, and he continues to grow as a visual craftsman. But he’s in need of better material to develop the unique film voice his past films promised.

The film is never boring -- there's no question that filmmaker Hype Williams has the fancy moves -- but the rhythmic, stylistic repetition becomes tedious, and serves to keep the audience removed from the story.

The new outing - which retains the essential twists of the original, a hit overseas that was never released Stateside - has been physically enhanced with American production values and a marquee cast, but much of the earlier film's humanity and mordant humor have been lost in translation

Audiences will be confused by what the picture is not. It’s not really about Cobb or baseball or a bygone era. It’s neither character study nor historic drama. It’s ambitious but oblique and unfocused, and only the most generous of viewers will forgive its numerous lapses and vagaries. The film’s prospects of breaking out of a specialized niche are remote.

It stakes out Our Man in Havana territory in its ironic tone, but it's not nearly as humorous or as successful in delivering up a satisfying soupcon of caustic wit. Commercial prospects are tepid for what's essentially a shaggy dog story.

The script is constructed too much like a novel, which slows the pace of the early, establishing sections. Director Bill Condon works too hard to tie all the plot strands into a neat bow.

Time and adapters have not been kind to the fun-loving series.

Abetted by the piercing images of lenser Christopher Doyle, the picture has a vivid, nightmarish quality that's more inviting than repellent. But the filmmaker mutes the impact by repeatedly cutting away to other settings, as if he lacked confidence in the power of the moment.

While there’s much to admire in the film, both its setting and tone seem out of touch with prevailing tastes.

Though it’s little more than a one-joke premise, director Michael Lehmann gets maximum mileage from the low-octane script by Rich Wilkes. Wisely, there’s minimal interest accorded the narrative, with emphasis on the off-kilter characters and their social milieu.

Run-of-the-mill modern retelling in which a schnooky kid is transported to days of yore to revivify the glory of Camelot. But the juvenilization of the hero turns into an ill-fitting concept that unbalances an already fragile fantasy.

For a rock'em, sock'em action thriller, The Glimmer Man is a hopelessly slow-moving, slow-witted shaggy-dog tale that delivers the jolts but lacks the juice necessary for high-voltage entertainment.

There's demonstrable growth in his visual and narrative skills here but the writer/director isn't likely to expand his audience with the sometimes oblique, unnerving saga of interwoven lives whose paths cross with alternately comic and tragic results.

Bogosian provides some much-needed comic relief to the slogging tale. He turns in solid work, as does Everett McGill as his head strongman, but they and others are saddled with pedestrian dialogue and motivation.

Ultimately, its message is the familiar "there's no place like home." But rather than creating a modern "Wizard of Oz," this noble misfire just barely manages to pull back the curtain and reveal the man manipulating the image.

City Hall comes awfully close to delivering the goods within a fast-paced thriller framework. At its best, the picture conveys the visceral energy of city politics, in which problem-solving is more common than air. The dilemma for the film is that there are no happy endings, just reelection promises that have as much substance as ether.

The screenplay, however, denies the film a solid foundation. Jumanji is diverting in a splashy , eye-catching manner, but is about as substantive and durable as filigree.

The verite of this saga of Generation X is that it is no more fierce than a peck. "Reality Bites" begins as a promising and eccentric tale of contemporary youth but evolves into a banal love story as predictable as any lush Hollywood affair.