Lisa Alspector

There are moments of high hilarity in the slapstick that results when the characters attempt to minimize mucus-membrane contact during sex.

Sex and JFK's assassination are intertwined in this puerile, pseudodark story about a wacky family--an adaptation of Wendy MacLeod's play that uses the medium of cinema mainly to exploit archival footage.

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

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

Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn are too good for this embarrassing remake.

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

It's a pleasing but shallow hodgepodge.

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

Clunky and obvious.

Somewhat depressive anecdote drawn out to feature length.

This earnest yet cynical drama makes the gang-infiltration genre seem exhausted.

Cher generates much of the movie's limited interest with her powerful screen presence, and Maggie Smith's skill as a diplomat's widow who believes she has a special relationship with Mussolini is undeniable. Yet the story, structured by the fragmented perspectives of too many characters, is more often lightweight than funny.

This insidiously complex satire is filled with apparent digressions, and our complete identification with the man occurs so gradually that it's impossible to pinpoint just when our previous disdain becomes a position of relative comfort.

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.

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.

Spheeris, who includes her offscreen questions, evidently sympathizes with her subjects, though this doesn't stop her from pointing out their hypocrisy.

It's not supposed to be a revelation--just a pleasant rendition of a teen-comedy trope

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

Includes extensive performance footage but never drags, and it isn't exposé or self-mockery.

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

This is the scariest movie I've ever seen.

Director Simon West hits just the right note between self-conscious silliness and real dramatic intensity in this 1997 action thriller, which uses typecast actors to make the characters' one-liners and predictable behavior resonate.

Rowan Atkinson's recalcitrant TV character is the hub of this 1997 feature that will disappoint fans and nonfans alike.

Never seems to find its tone.

Doesn't quite support the weight of its allegory.

Ultimately this is a sharp-focus issue movie, decrying intolerance as it explores the effects of labeling, the complexity of fetishizing, and the differences between business and crime.

An ounce of self-awareness about its almost gleeful use of cliches would have improved this dance soap opera.

Writer Kevin Williamson, who's also responsible for the overrated "Scream," sets cleverness above emotional impact in a poorly conceived 1997 thriller with plenty of empty references.

Romantic comedy is set mainly in NYC, where the plight of its ambivalent lovers seems particularly trivial.

Has an adolescent energy and a tempered sexuality.

Even the revelation of what the fifth element is at the end is disingenuous--in fact, the archness of this whole project is repellent.

Trite transformation comedy.

Visually imaginative and even persuasively spiritual.

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.

By the time the manic camera slows down to reveal the back stories of the characters, everyone's motives are either moot or redundant.

Instructive comedy, which is marvelously neutral toward a type of sexual and domestic relationship that's often exploited or overblown.

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

Inspired, elaborately plotted, and unusually satisfying variable-speed chase comedy.

The lesson of this barely stylish crime thriller is that a dull story is not improved by withholding information about characters' motives from the audience as long as possible.

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

The most subtly revolting aspect of the movie is how it manages to exploit violence for cheap thrills, in part by equating submission with love.

The draggy narrative of this 1997 comedy is tough to sit through--there are even several overproduced musical numbers--but it does have an intriguing subversive element that I don't want to give away.

As an undiscovered beauty who frequents open-stage night at the local performance-art club, her rack hidden under paint-spattered overalls, her chiseled face obscured by glasses, Rachael Leigh Cook is charming and sincere, and ultimately so is Prinze, whose character's realization that he's not as shallow as he'd thought is convincing.

A pleasure.

This kind of wheel spinning comes from having the desire to speak but nothing much to say, and Smith, who's made a slight movie about his being a slight filmmaker, seems to know this.

The end justifies the means as long as everything turns out OK for the not-too-obedient American soldier and everyone else who enjoys Coca-Cola.

A hearty style of self-referential filmmaking that only adds to the persuasiveness of Lillard’s stunning performance.

This insufferable romance-adventure includes vague comedy as well as unintentional humor, and its target audience seems to be preadolescents who won't notice the calculated enthusiasm with which it sidesteps sexuality.

Its depiction of teenage behavior appears calculated to seem irreverent while satisfying expectations.

This 'heartwarming' thriller refuses to distinguish realism from stylization, and much of the plot is a twisted mess of repetition and unpersuasive motivation.

It's all corny and contrived and usually sensitive. The filmmakers even dare to show the effects of illness--a subject frequently glamorized to the point of being insulting--in a love scene of rare honesty.

It's hard to tell whether these characters are meant to seem as staunchly symbolic as they do when they deliver some of the back-story-heavy dialogue.

The story--written by Brian Helgeland and directed by Richard Donner--was just dumb.

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.

Many of the gags rely on the incongruity of Grant's nervous, cultured character posing as an Italian-American stereotype, but they're subverted by his earnest relationship with his fiancee, whose affection hardly seems worth the trouble.

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

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

Shakur’s performance get increasingly intriguing as his character becomes disenchanted with his partner’s tactics, but Belushi is in way over his head.

Improves as it unfolds.

The thin story covering her acquisition of one wave after another while narrowly escaping death time and again is strictly for player one.

It's marvelous or unwatchable.

Time and space are condensed by means both elegant and crafty, and rarely are any of the characters made to be more--or less--than allegorical.

A kind of idealist fantasy that seems almost hamstrung by its plot.

A mildly psychological suspense thriller with military trappings.

Too much plot and too much faith in special effects and adolescent humor doom this "Babe" wannabe.

Grossly unimaginative.

Kitschy, clever expressionist sets, subtly marvelous 70s costumes, and an almost monolithic rock sound track enhance the meaty performances of actors who clearly appreciate the opportunity to riff on a classic--and promote vegetarianism.

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

Satisfying in small ways.

If DiCillo had been going anywhere with this, I'd have gladly followed. But setting up petty ironies and pathetic references to Woody Allen seems to be his only goal.

A horror comedy with one shocking scene and one very funny one.

This ambiguously pitched comedy--its idea of sexy humor is a cheerleader farting--shoots for camp without bothering with satire.

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

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.

This asthma-inducing adventure set on K2 starts out seeming as if its corny storytelling and phony-looking settings were designed to show that it's as much about genre-movie conventions as anything else.

Though there's a crime to be solved, a romance to go awry, and lots of trooper-police politics to elaborate on, the strangely drawn out pacing somehow feels fresh rather than oppressive.

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

A consistently light yet derisive tone, modest production values, and masterful comic timing allow writer-director-star Trey Parker to expose cultural hypocrisies with precision. His performance--in both the movie and the movie within the movie--is dramatic and poker-faced, seamless and hilarious.

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.

It's all very impressive without being particularly enthralling.

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

The insultingly trendy post-postmodern tale rationalizes its own product placement by using overkill.

Would have proved the point if it weren't so mechanically scripted.

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

Bruce Willis's marvelous performance as a contract killer only makes everything else about this comedy seem more pathetic.

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.

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

After a slow setup, this charming fable wisely spends most of its time on the golf course.

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.

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

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.

This special-effects animal-action comedy is for heavily identified pet owners.

Nat Mauldin and Larry Levin's screenplay, indifferently directed by Betty Thomas, is simply an excuse for tired scatological jokes involving animal characters with the voices of well-known actors.

The comic timing and Gibson's mugging are skillful, but the movie fulfills expectations of plot twists and ironic atmosphere only after having made clear that it won't be offering much else.

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

Olympia Dukakis and Illeana Douglas come off poorly in silly supporting roles that make Aniston seem to have screen presence by default. Her character's habit of compulsively adjusting her bodice ensures our attention has the proper focus.

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