Lisa Alspector

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

With very little modification, this archly innocuous children's musical could have been marketed as a sequel to Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

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

Ritchie may be skilled at generating controlled chaos, but his surprise-a-minute strategy ultimately holds no surprises; Snatch is even more frenetically boring than his 1999 "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels."

An unprecedented friendship between a monster and a child leads to an amazing chase scene.

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.

It's not a sex movie but a parody, and the loose feel is part of its genius.

The tectonic shifts in this camp-horror extravaganza are unsettling.

This movie restores genre elements to a level of potency that's disturbing, satisfying, and rare as hell.

Goldblum and Murphy outdo each other in their odd roles, each minimizing his tendency toward shtick and giving a convincing dramatic performance.

Director George Tillman Jr.'s screenplay covers an array of events in the characters' lives so replete with drama it could easily be too much, but the movie's humor is vibrant, the sorrow unexploitive, the sexuality character enhancing, and the love heartfelt--and Tillman is tremendously skilled at bridging the vast shifts in tone.

Dark fantasy triumphs in this gorgeously animated surrealist adventure.

The movie manages to push buttons without seeming formulaic.

Though passionate, doesn't pity or flatter the rank and file.

Exploits all the cliches about shrewish women and pussy-whipped men without achieving satire.

Overlong, neither funny nor scary movie about a big lizard.

Horrendous dialogue and horrific directing dominate this thriller.

Cliched narrative, which isn't funny as often as seems intended.

Clunky and obvious.

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.

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

Elegant flamenco tragedy.

Tedious mockumentary.

A standard mix of performances, interviews, and gimmickry -- the image and sound sometimes loop or jump in a tiresomely literal attempt to translate the techniques of scratching and "beat juggling" into cinema.

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

This comedy-thriller that has no particular motive for changing tones.

The movie occasionally makes an unexpectereference -- though with more desperation than wit.

The premise of this neither dark nor funny movie--which wants to be both--is that it's somehow ironic when wealthy characters are motivated by greed.

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

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.

A scene set inside the chicken-pie-making machinery proves that the Rube Goldberg formula is infallible.

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

Beautifully regenerates the Jay Ward TV show its characters were based on.

Writer-director Peter Greenaway never uses narrative lightly...references to the act of filmmaking exhaust their impact pretty quickly.

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 plot somehow manages to be both hackneyed and convoluted.

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

Conveys little sense of a connection, as if di Florio had made it mainly because she had access to a celebrity.

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

Director John Madden calmly dissects the emotions of a woman whose personal life is effectively nonexistent.

The movie illuminates how the moral, economic, and spiritual concerns of its characters converge in situations that defy ethical platitudes. In less capable hands the brasher metaphors might have come across as trite, but director F. Gary Gray (Friday) generally manages to ensure that the line where technique meets meaning is marvelously blurred.

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.

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 gently satirical farce is atmospheric when dabbling in religion--the chef turns to spiritual magic to defuse her passion for her husband--and moving during her heart-to-hearts with her friend.

Lee performs magic. He's preserved and expanded the experience of an adrenaline-pumping, uproarious night of racism-, classism-, and sexism-subverting humor.

This hopelessly redundant action gross-out aspires to a form of hip vacuousness--and may achieve it.

Often coming across as simultaneously out of control and self-possessed, Borchardt can't have been an easy target, but the filmmakers seem to have nailed him.

The fundamental problems with David Cronenberg's disastrous 1993 adaptation, written by Hwang himself, are twofold: the unsuitability of such a premise for film, where the actors and audience no longer share the same space, and the miscasting of Jeremy Irons as the accountant and John Lone as the diva.

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.

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.

All of this comedy's jokes are old.

The connection between his boasting about killing and killing so he can boast about it -- is made beautifully insidious.

The feature has some lovely effects.

The plot is largely a series of excuses for one-liners expertly delivered by Maguire, making all the hatred, maiming, and killing seem like digressions.

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

A narrative that tries to juggle thriller elements, tons of pop culture imagery, and way too much philosophical baggage.

Its ponderous explanations about why there are vampires in Arizona in the new millennium (blah, blah, blah).

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.

All the macho men who let down their guard for Blaustein can be proud of the loving deconstruction of violence-as-entertainment that resulted.

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

It goes beyond sympathy and authenticity to insight as it examines the plight of a man who loves a man but feels he must love a woman.

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.

Some delicately interwoven and unresolved subplots help make the young character's rite of passage wholly, disturbingly compelling.

An admirable if frequently soporific 1992 adaptation of Norman Maclean's account of life in Missoula, Montana.

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.

The story is painfully slow.

It's marvelous or unwatchable.

The buildup to social criticism in what at first appears to be pointless and partly misogynist exploitation is subtly impressive.

A wonderfully complex examination of sexual and material politics that's full of bravely provocative, gently funny, and warmly human encounters.

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.

Writer Barry McEvoy and director Barry Levinson might want to brush up on the use of metaphor.

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

The majesty of the landscape and the sweetness of a plot strand about the horse learning survival skills from a 12-year-old girl might have been more intriguing without the cloying voice-over.

Disingenuously naive romantic comedy.

Isn't terribly frightening or gory, and at times it's even atmospheric. It also has a sense of humor, and the digs at the prequels hit pay dirt.

Partly because the seducer's technique is methodical--as a former conquest explains to the naive heroine--the movie's answers are too easy.

Viewers have almost two hours to become thoroughly disgusted.

Few things are more enthralling than unrequited love, as demonstrated by this drama.

Has the enthusiasm and naivete of a first feature.

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

Though it suggests intriguing ideas about the nature of performance, humor, ambition, and the consumption of spectacle, the movie only superficially explores them.

A promotional tool that establishes its superfluousness simply by existing, this clumsy, smirking movie has a bitter soul.

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

Not particularly sensitive or funny comedy-drama.

But the most stimulating, satisfying aspect of this action fantasy is the theme music.

Ill conceived or badly handled.

The moody images and Michael Nyman's score aren't enough to salvage this banal 1997 science fiction story.

It's always at least a little disingenuous to attack the medium that's your bread and butter; this media-bashing movie tries to get around the problem by restricting its critique to television, specifically the news.

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

Using archly staged interviews and reconstructions that draw attention to the components of the documentary form, Morris does justice to the complexity of hot-button issues by suggesting several layers of subtext at once, portraying the articulate Leuchter as both rational and prone to rationalize.

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.

Makes for a tiresome antidrama populated mainly by unambiguously good characters who might as well be invulnerable.

Blends extremes of violence and humor to create an irreverent tone that nullifies everything; the plot is so clever it crushes the characterization, making all the action seem perfunctory.

The received notion that kids want their movies fast and furious is barely in evidence in this 1997 comedy, a laboriously slow suburban adventure.

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.