Lisa Alspector

Largely free of generic horror-movie elements, such as exploitative torture and murder scenes. Those it does contain draw attention to the difference between the conventions of psychological drama and those of pulp horror.

The bitterly beautiful black-and-white industrial and residential landscapes reflect the sense of anonymity felt by the characters.

Mostly it's an overearnest examination of emotional and sexual fidelity.

Set in an expressively underlit environment, this rivetingly moody drama is enhanced by the restrained use of incidental music.

Some powerful dialogue.

A painstakingly crafted nonrealist story, which doesn't seem to imply anything beyond what it depicts.

This bleak vision directed by Darren Aronofsky ("Pi") is pointless with good reason.

Subplots are woven stealthily into the story, taking the pressure off the central drama, allowing it to be affecting rather than melodramatic, and heightening the atmosphere of the lush Louisiana setting.

There's charm and insight in the candid depictions of the teenagers' sexual experiences and discussions.

Realist fairy tale.

The lush, emotional scenes are enhanced by the sound track.

The wavering style and tone fragment the movie, undermining both characters' development, though each retains her power as a symbol.

Deftly realist character study.

Drew Barrymore's virtuoso performance smooths over the plot holes.

Movies about the trajectory from outsider to insider in LA social and professional circles--the two always seem inextricably linked--are a dime a dozen, but this one is fresh, thanks to a script by lead actor Jon Favreau that lets us know Mike knows he resembles a character in a movie even if he doesn't know he is one.

The coincidences that bring some characters together and keep others apart in this romantic comedy are plotted with musical grace.

A sparing use of exterior shots during the mesmerizing buildup to the match heightens their impact, while invasively tight close-ups put the actors to the test.

With its persuasive special effects, gentle pace, and more expressionistic than surreal production design, this serious yet far from ponderous drama is something of a marvel.

A hallucination sequence and a scene set in a Vegas nightclub are so engrossing you forget they're animated; even the showiest techniques don't detract from the story.

At first Costner seems to distrust the hokey character he plays, but his performance and the movie's slanted humor, rash melodrama, and ludicrous action soon become riveting.

But Peter Hyams, who's both director and director of photography, forces us to constantly strain to see what isn't there, until ultimately the screen explodes in welcome light, a cathartic finale in broad visceral terms even if the drama hasn't inspired much emotion.

The dialogue reproduces infantile idiom even as it parodies the baby talk of adults, and a touching, didactic scene involving a baby blanket that’s become the object of sibling rivalry may appeal to a broad age range: it’s as strikingly elegant as it is obvious in its use of metaphor.

At a relaxed pace, accompanied by restrained pop music.

Powerful, funny romantic drama.

Persuasive stylized drama.

A black waitress and a white corrections officer in rural Georgia experience more misery in the first hour of this movie than some people do in a lifetime, and to its credit the drama doesn’t collapse under the weight.

As a ditz who's just smart enough to know something isn't right, Lyonne blends hyperbole and sincerity in perfect proportions.

Jas lots of action, drama, comedy, and corn -- and few pauses, which is striking.

The narrative--a complex structure of flashbacks and shifts in perspective that's part inspirational story, part courtroom drama, part character study, part exposé--never makes it seem that history is being oversimplified.

Improves as it unfolds.

Exciting, clever sequences driven by surprisingly little plot and culminating in a climax full of the transmogrification animation was invented for.

Potential irony is everywhere in this movie's subtly surreal situations and candy-colored imagery.

Much of this fractured drama and dark fantasy takes place inside the mind of Charlie (Futterman),

The fluidity with which the story frequently makes the transition between the different characters' perspectives is refreshing, even daring.

A persuasively feminine coming-of-age story.

A graceful, understated sense of period allows the behavior of the characters in this love story to be unusually nuanced, making their experiences seem uncontrived as well as archetypal.

The conventional ghost-appeasement scenario isn't very suspenseful, which may be part of the reason it's so gripping.

With a distinctively middle-aged zest, Carpenter retools even the hopeless cliche requiring action heroes to spout bad puns while dispatching bad guys; his eminently stylish movie proves that new blood can flow from an old vein.

Even the melodramatic score can't ruin the essentially serious tenor of this old-style non-self-referential horror story, whose characterizations are unassailable--stereotypical shtick you buy because the performers are working so hard and their faces are so skillfully lit.

At once self-conscious and generic, this smart monster movie about smart monsters -- supersharks cleverer than the scientist who created them -- repeatedly lulls you into thinking it's paint by numbers.

Though the jokey lines seem out of place, the somber tone of this 1998 action movie makes the political subtext -- nearly obscured by the expected double crosses, extravagant destruction, and incongruous-buddies shtick -- more sincere and less grandiose than usual.

Though its startling shifts in tone sometimes seem unmotivated, this dark yet syrupy 1998 romance has an adolescent charm.

It's all very clever but not really provocative - though a layer of political subtext may make the scenario seem funnier and more meaningful.

It’s not the convoluted yet obvious plot of this 1998 drama about the domestic lives and criminal careers of two childhood friends (DMX and Nas) that draws you in—it’s the splendid visuals. Set mainly in New York City and Omaha, where these drug dealers do business according to their different ambitions, the movie is an image opera that deftly turns visual gimmicks into potent symbols.

Kempner's lighthearted yet not apolitical collage conveys how Greenberg's success as an athlete in the 30s and 40s contradicted an ethnic stereotype.

The behind-the-scenes revelations are thoroughly convincing.

Intending to study the degree to which social class would determine the subjects' destinies, the series actually documents something more filmable--the degree to which the subjects believed social class would determine their destinies and the degree to which they believe it has.

A wizard at manipulating time, Kitano introduces staccato elements that interrupt the meditative pace even as they help set it.

Challenges us to reconcile its snapshots of earnest entrepreneurs, colleagues, and fans with its long takes of her disillusionment.

The characters--their motives at once obvious and obscure--are almost painfully fascinating.

This friendly, briefly exciting story (1998), inspired by John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany, achieves a nice balance between caricature and nuanced characterization and even manages not to be cloying.

By the time the fighting between clones and their originals turned to fraternal bonding, I was quite moved, even blissed out.

At once a light comedy and a reasonably serious meditation on the perils of fame.

Divided into sections bracketed by the arrival of each new DJ and is enlivened by the edgy yet trendy environment.

[Farrellys'] great achievement is forcing those of us addicted to eye candy to see we have a problem.

The movie manages to push buttons without seeming formulaic.

Scenes that should have been uproarious are weaker than many of the movie's smaller moments.

Many of the plot points seem belabored because they're introduced in the voice-over, then ploddingly dramatized, then analyzed by the family over meals.

This is a sensitive and at times gently humorous love-and-war story; the flight scenes are exciting and exquisitely crafted, the characters lovingly drawn.

The treatment of this touchy material is impressive, neither gratuitous nor mincing, but this satirical comedy doesn't really go anywhere.

The music's great, but frequent tight shots of actors ostensibly blowing their horns look phony enough to be distracting.

Though hypocritical in the way it sensationalizes sexuality, this serious and funny 1998 movie about a 15-year-old coming to terms with her body and her family in 1976 is, refreshingly, never coy or ironic.

This gorgeous expressionist drama makes the comparisons so effectively at the outset that by the end they seem belabored.

For the sake of more irony--the movie is lousy with it--the precocious characters have an infantile response to the discovery that their parents are missing: all want their mommies after a night of junk-food excess.

Entrancingly lurid live-action fantasy.

Stylistic excess, comedy, and romance often help make extremes of cruelty and horror function as cathartic metaphor, and all three figure, not always successfully, in this sequel.

The social criticism is as unforced as the humor (and the references to "The Conversation") in this 1998 conspiracy thriller, whose spirited action is balanced by an almost contemplative attitude toward surveillance phobias and the movie cliches they've spawned.

A judicious mix of the lightly gory, the generously cartoonish, and the unexpectedly atmospheric makes for action that's scary yet unintimidating.

Mildly exciting sports-in-prison movie.

The plots of animated features are often excuses for visual showboating, but here the lilting story line, based on west African folktales, complements the alternately sumptuous and austere images.

Depp conveys his character's ambivalence and ambiguity with utter conviction, and though the annoying score tries to throw Pacino's monologues over the top, his persuasive, low-key performance puts the violins in their place.

Disarming-misfit story, which combines elements of a road movie, romance, small-town idyll, and police procedural.

Their blossoming love is thwarted at every opportunity by wicked stepmother Anjelica Huston, whose practical motive -- she wants her own daughter to become queen -- is part of an unusually nuanced characterization.

Political incorrectness, gross-out humor, references for their own sake, and some real wit are distributed over the 85 minutes with an unusually consistent sense of timing and proportion, and the tone is just right.

Favreau, who also plays the long-suffering Bobby, mixes elements of drama into this appropriately annoying comedy.

The humor is often predictable--minor characters are stereotyped only to be demeaned for easy laughs--but the movie impressively fulfills its larger purpose of making you look at your culture's conventions as such.

This 1968 Beatles musical gets somewhat plot heavy near the end, but it's a marvel of innocence and free association, blending several animation techniques in a loose narrative full of gentle bad puns and flowing visual segues.

Whether the story's bald ironies are historical cliches or just dramatic ones, they convey only platitudes about gender, sexuality, and power.

Vigilant viewers may spend many of the 101 minutes fixating on tiny holes in the plot, but I was busy being moved by the premise and the filmmakers' confidence in the power of their metaphor: a little boy who's disappointed in the man he grew up to be.

I kind of liked this slow, stoner comedy.

A pleasure.

Even though I appreciate this movie's craft, I wish I hadn't seen it. It's a heady, progressive -- or perhaps elaborately conservative? -- romance, but it's also a tale of terrible suffering.

A realist mode that strains credibility; it's tenuous and inflexible -- and easily ruptured by the contrived irony in Jimmy McGovern's screenplay.

There's little rapport between Duchovny and Driver after their initial meeting. More exciting and suspenseful is the relationship between Driver's confidant (Hunt) and her husband (James Belushi), who can't seem to get all their kids to go to sleep at the same time.

As the driven competitor who learns to make hubris work for him, Jared Leto gives a complex performance that suggests a deep, intriguing interior to the character even as he maintains a convincing one-dimensional facade.

The hinted romance, featuring Aaliyah, makes for some decent drama and some fine comedy.

The material is powerful--one boxer has been accused of a crime and the trial conflicts with a crucial competition--but much of it feels predigested, the themes inadvertently one-dimensional.

As personal and political agendas mix, with deadly results, director Jim Sheridan parallels the moderated violence of boxing with the unchecked violence of terrorism.

Despite the practical nature of the costars' bond, I spent most of the lukewarm actioner wondering when the hell they were going to start kissing.

Luc Besson--and Andrew Birkin wrote the pandering, adolescent screenplay for this pseudosubversive hagiography, and nearly every scene screams out its sensationalist intent, though few actually achieve the status of spectacle.

This fairly serious meditation on conventionality and monogamy blames his ennui on external forces, remaining adolescent even when it suggests its hero has grown up.

Though I hate to ruin the complex experience of following a rather calm story about a lonely widower as it becomes something else, I feel obliged to point out that the hard-core gore and soft-core surrealism of this baroque morality play may not support any theme.

Writer-director Aiyana Elliott gives her father his due in this evenhanded yet impassioned documentary.

This realist fairy tale of impossible love has a fair amount of nuance and charm.

This early-1900s costume drama surely differs from Henry James's source novel.

This engrossing animated thriller (2000) somehow displays realist gore, nudity, and sexual violence in a tone not too far from that of a children’s adventure; its innocence stems in part from the convincing naivete of the heroine.

Though it isn't so much funny as clever, the parody will hopefully discourage some aspiring teen-movie makers from doing the same old thing.

The vicarious catharsis offered by this adaptation of Anna Quindlen's novel is as efficient as that of any family-affected-by-illness drama.