Lisa Alspector

The violence is suggested in a way that's neither overwhelming nor insulting to a child's intelligence as this crafty fairy tale ultimately finds a way for human and vampire characters to live and let live.

An effects vehicle disguised as a metaphysical meditation (or a metaphysical meditation disguised as an effects vehicle?), this strikingly unimaginative 1998 movie contains visuals that can barely assert their niftiness amid the vacuous themes.

Though the climax of the story is a little forced and sloppy, with both lovers behaving way out of character, this movie is aware enough of the conventions it's using that it's more moving than cloying.

Poor execution sometimes points up the difference between the telling of a story and the story itself--in this case, without diminishing the power of the latter.

It's hard to be diverted by a tale whose emblematic romances and terminal cuteness serve an agenda that seems particularly dated today.

All the comedy, tragedy, and various obstacles to romance seem to have been contrived to divert the story from its tendency toward pulp erotica.

This culinary fantasy is mildly inspired.

Though the questionable motives and bad planning of offscreen characters who far outrank Gibson make it difficult to take at face value one soldier's last words -- "I'm glad I could die for my country" -- some viewers will, which may be as the filmmakers intended.

The unusually thoughtful dialogue and soul-searching performances make this romantic drama seem deeper than it is.

The earnestness of some of the drama in the only deceptively unsophisticated narrative may be more shocking than any of the gross-outs.

But the bland plot involves nested crimes gone awry and a bad car chase or two, and its bulky, styleless exposition is hard to wait out.

Pretty funny caper comedy.

Demands that we see as coincidental if not ironic the ease with which Fraser cuts a rug at a swing club when he's hopelessly naive about everything else that's being revived in the 90s when he emerges.

This atmosphere-heavy drama, with its comfortably quirky characters, elegant performances, and ever shifting tone, is so innocuous it's not worth panning.

Mined for comedy and milked for drama, though what results is diminished by the very framing device contrived to punch it up.

The final image, a minimalist evocation--perhaps a compromise for an unmarketable ending--puts an intriguing spin on everything that's come before it.

May persuade you to identify not with race-car drivers but with race cars.

Too dry to be very funny and too contrived to be outrageous, this movie has a tone so unusual it almost seems to have none at all.

This brash shocker by John Sayles—who wrote, directed, and edited—is bound to annoy as many people as it intrigues.

Writer-director James Toback must believe his audience is hopelessly prudish if he thinks this pedantic story, which takes place over several hours in a Manhattan loft, is provocative.

Labyrinthine yet oversimple, the story seems to hide a more provocative one. But perhaps this is the nature of the beast.

Strives for comprehensive coverage of its theme of forbidden love.

This limp 1998 comedy tries hard to be both irreverent and ethical by suggesting that deceit motivated by self-interest is OK as long as no one gets hurt.

Time-travel cliches, female characters who exert authority only so we'll laugh at the pussy-whipped males, dialogue that's neither self-mocking nor serious, and an ostentatious though not particularly exciting production design keep the movie from taking off.

The filmmakers have created a pretentious extended "Twilight Zone" episode with obscenely high production values.

This concept comedy-drama would be even better if the intercutting among households had been timed to add dramatic content rather than simply advance the subplots.

This desperately all-ages movie just emphasizes its banality by throwing money and effort into effects and production design at the expense of pacing.

The filmmakers show habitual thriller viewers some respect by condensing the background story into iconic sound and image bites during the opening-credits sequence, suggesting they know we get the drill; this and the other stylish elements make it all the more disappointing that the movie's mediocre.

Denzel Washington is admirable in the role of a dauntless detective investigating murders and metaphysics, but his sincerity can’t carry the outlandish plot—you just wonder what a guy like him is doing in a movie like this.

Insights about romance are enhanced by the novel production design, which includes puppetry, but the story's reflexivity is smug and cloying.

This action comedy transforms LAPD detective Chris Tucker from an intolerably annoying egotist into a practically lovable intolerably annoying egotist.

Nicely toned.

Nothing's wrong with this movie--the hockey footage is exciting, the characters quirky, the subplots idiosyncratic--but nothing's special about it either.

Lightweight slasher.

The idiosyncratic instrumentation and melodies in the score by Angelo Badalamenti ("Blue Velvet") and a masterful opening scene are wasted on this pathetic thriller.

The shtick based on whether other people understand him is subtle enough for 79 minutes.

The movie's strength is in its comedy; a tragic subplot feels merely manipulative.

Unfortunately the allegory tends to overpower the characterizations even as it deepens them.

Big laughs are few and far between in this 1998 movie, which is more successful as motivational anecdote than as comedy.

The new sexism -- the old sexism plus the idea that everything is ironic -- is getting old.

With minimalist and universal fantasies as their points of departure, the superheroic deeds evolve only incrementally beyond the realistic -- a deeply satisfying process.

Doesn't quite support the weight of its allegory.

For all the high-tech allusions and middle-tech illusions, the movie--the 23rd in an immortal series--draws its power from its grittiness and unresolved allegory.

Mild gross-out comedy integrates a non sequitur -- a running joke made by a sidekick -- into the plot, providing some payoff.

All this is accompanied by a too-emphatic pop sound track that turns almost every scene into a bad music video.

It's a pleasing but shallow hodgepodge.

Shows her transition to sobriety as many ensemble stories do--mainly through the development of other characters, the quirkier the better.

Demands to be treated with conviction as parody if not as science fiction.

This mild thriller's consistently dark atmosphere makes the scene-of-the-crime tableaux...transcend exploitation and even suggest a kind of feminist odyssey.

The twists and revelations of this rigorous noir reduce it to canned psychodrama.

An open-mindedness in the plotting of this romantic comedy set on Ireland's Donegal coast adds a couple of mild surprises to the story.

Disturbing--if less sophisticated than the best SF (science fiction)-horror TV.

The script, which infantilizes one of the older siblings as much as the father does, undermines its own admonitions against parents and adult children meddling in one another's lives.

The lawyer is marvelously played by Evelina Fernandez, who wrote the screenplay based on her play.

Because so many female characters spend so much time trying to seduce Harrelson (usually successfully), the notion that multiplicity enhances intrigue is pretty worn out by the time any duplicity is revealed.

I never thought I'd see a slapstick animal action movie about the beauty of interracial relationships and nonmarital sex, but that's what this is, and kids seem to love it.

Takes too long to get its themes and characters out on the field.

Has the enthusiasm and naivete of a first feature.

The Griswolds, headed by Chevy Chase, are taking what could be one of their last family vacations.

Not unlike "Eyes Wide Shut," this is an eerily earnest contemplation of fidelity, and it's pitched as farce.

DeVito's low-key midlife crisis is consistently moving, but Spacey, saddled with the role of provocateur, is demonically boring.

It's a bitter story played for humor, in which a callous character is never quite allowed to see herself as such.

The feminist veneer is the most deeply disturbing part of this callow thriller, whose fetishizing of a dead woman's body (and a live woman's sexual behavior) is far more questionable than anything even "The Silence of the Lambs" has been accused of.

Antonio Banderas signs up for charisma lessons from Anthony Hopkins -- but they just don't take.

The makers of this eclectically animated adventure, a follow-up to "The Rugrats Movie," know their audience, though all the "Godfather" references will be thoroughly puzzling to at least half of it.

This underdog comedy and its title character have considerable charm.

Arch yet earnest.

A series of stunts with bears and lots of stage fighting involving characters who are unambiguously good or evil.

Its charm and humor will be overshadowed for some by the exploitation of gay stereotypes--which is ironic, since their arch usage ultimately allows the movie to be progressive, if only slightly.

The narrative emphasizes coincidences, but they're nicely understated. If it didn't seem gimmicky and self-indulgent...the movie might be more affecting.

Stylishly realized, but its striking cinematography, nontraditional editing, and consistently reflexive use of genre conceits add up as methodically as a math problem.

Slower, more earnest, and not as gory.

The ingenious if erratic slickness is disorienting and makes the movie more like drama than journalism.

Pales in comparison to the controversial "Life Is Beautiful"--a more provocative fiction, if only because it's even less realist.

This watchable 1998 psychothriller deflects its cliches with canted angles, metonymic cropping, and a creeping pace, making it as much a parsing of "Twilight Zone"-brand irony as an example of it.

Self-congratulatory feature, which artificially exalts the character--a classic saint with clay feet--by casting a grande dame and by reducing her motives to facile psychodrama

The gangster-movie plot, themes, and allusions aren't nearly as intriguing as the earnestly kitschy black-and-white wide-screen images or the mesmerizing, minimalist sound effects.

Has an adolescent energy and a tempered sexuality.

Elmo's obsessive reaction is never examined, compromising the ability of this rambling minor spectacle to put across its obvious lesson about sharing.

The filmmakers realize that playing baseball isn't nearly enough to fix what's wrong in these kids' lives, which might have made a more provocative ending than what follows.

If spelling out stereotypes were inherently funny the movie would be a hoot.

The childish humor and sensationalistic effects undercut the movie's philosophical agenda.

Leaking platitudes and cutesy ambience, this comedy folds a smarmy, social-issue subplot into a Saturday-morning-kids'-show sensibility; it's full of geeky gadgetry, and must've been a lot more fun to make than it is to watch.

Sometimes come together exquisitely.

Nobody ever shuts up in this schmaltzy, mannered drama.

Two obnoxious, swaggering brothers -- whose sexual naivete is supposed to make them endearing as well as pathetic -- find happiness in this more schmaltzy than funny Saturday Night Live spin-off.

Director Ron Howard makes too much of camera and editing tricks, as if momentarily confusing us about where a character is or which character's point of view the movie is taking will somehow deepen the narrative.

The perfectly acceptable shtick executed by Williams--whose I-know-you-better-than-you-know-yourself seduction techniques ought to make him a hotter leading man--occasionally justifies the relentlessly light tone of this preachy 1998 comedy-drama.

The plot keeps switching tracks.

Not even supercool Robert De Niro can enliven this boring tale about a team of mercenary operatives.

Told from too many perspectives, the narrative puts suspense above substance, and its social consciousness seems contrived.

Writer Philip Stark ("That '70s Show") and director Danny Leiner ("Freaks and Geeks") apply mature comic instincts to an adolescent genre.

The best short on this program of five is Bradley Rust Gray's 18-minute "Hitch."

Sweetly mediocre.

Sappy.

Its blurring of the line between parody and exploitation only makes it totally innocuous.

This serious if assaultively stylish meditation on faith uses traditional elements of religion-based horror in a way that's more innocent than calculating.

Instead of a credible main character this 1999 button pusher has lots of showy cinematography and generic dread.