Lisa Alspector

A musical number or two might have balanced the overdetermined politics and spectacle in this version.

Isn't absurd enough to be funny.

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

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.

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 result is an exploitation movie that seems like it's about something -- though what exactly I couldn't say.

Chillingly beautiful cinematography makes the state's landscapes appear timeless as it sets the stage for a grim history told with archival portraits.

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.

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.

This underdog comedy and its title character have considerable charm.

Whedon and director Jean-Pierre Jeunet ("Delicatessen") bend over so far backward to make Weaver's and Ryder's roles beefy that they end up mocking the characters' bravura.

The slick satire cleverly equates materialism, narcissism, misogyny, and classism with homicide, but you may laugh so loud at the protagonist that you won't be able to hear yourself laughing with him.

Plotted densely enough to make the lulls forgivable, this movie concerns a contract killer (Bruce Willis) who employs several small-business owners to craft his super-high-tech weapons and the many accessories that enable him to assume multiple identities.

The kind of ugly-duckling role that's long been ironic for her (Bullock).

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.

Arch yet earnest.

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

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

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

This corny and manipulative movie taxes your ability to suspend disbelief and predictably punishes characters for their hubris--earmarks of a great disaster flick, if the tone is just right.

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

The simple premise of one scene of table-turning voyeurism is brilliant.

Smug, uninsightful light drama.

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.

Many of the elements in this story about a woman who's nearly eclipsed by her overbearing mother are all too familiar, yet the combination is utterly charming.

Mildly exciting sports-in-prison movie.

Jamal (Martin Lawrence), starts trying to make the best of a bad situation, which becomes our job too.

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.

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

There are enough plot points to fill an entire soap-opera season, but writer-director Chi Muoi Lo, who also plays the son, somehow manages to juggle them all, turning seemingly superfluous elements into workable drama and metaphor.

This eerily dry drama bravely attempts to show, without resorting to the literal staging of contradictory scenarios, how much perceptions of the same situation can vary.

Excruciatingly earnest yet convictionless movie.

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

Writer-director Mark Brown ruptures and restores the realism in this romantic comedy with ease, dispensing earnest wisdom with a little tongue in cheek instead of undermining it with a lot of irony.

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

Grisman presents, with a sense of humor, the apparent contradictions of a complex personality.

Audaciously combining conviction and childish humor, this SF thriller reminds us that the distinction between the tangible and the intangible may be frighteningly arbitrary--an idea that's made too scary ever to seem trivial, no matter how silly things get.

Must have been slapped together fast: live-action stunts created by uninspired editing lead up to computer-generated imagery that's just as lame.

A better disaster movie than it is a thriller.

For every jab at hypocrisy in law enforcement or in the media's crime coverage...there's a scene's worth of uninflected scatology or misogyny.

Scary and exciting.

Funny? This one is. It's also sweet and thoughtful.

This 1998 romantic comedy mostly bores with its cumbersome exposition and close-ups of trivial objects scattered throughout lackluster montage sequences.

Without becoming manipulative, sensational, or trite, the movie lets us know what became of the animals -- many dogs and one stowaway cat -- on the ill-fated ship.

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

Ugly Americans in Paris have run-ins with the native werewolf culture in this horror-for-laughs story, in which the characters' stupidity and the deadpan acting are out of sync--instead of being campy or clever, the plot and performances are just unconvincing.

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.

Until the story diverges from a similar agenda, the gags about the daily grind and what happens when a drone forgets how to be submissive make for beautifully low-key satire, and the caricatures of office types seem clever.

The stylized physiques and movements of the characters in this exciting animated musical-romance-adventure are at once realist and fantastic.

Gutsy romance-drama that breaks a cardinal rule of storytelling and pop psychology: its iconic lovers aren't forced by a tragedy to learn that they shouldn't depend on each other to feel whole.

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

After loosening us up with some irresistible shtick that rigorously fulfills genre expectations, the movie subtly, systematically begins to break down familiar tropes in the depiction of attractiveness, attraction, and heterosexual courtship.

Poorly paced action comedy.

Slower, more earnest, and not as gory.

Trite transformation comedy.

Stylish but insubstantial thriller .

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

The ultimately uncomplicated view of sexual and emotional violence in a family is only tragic, not insightful.

A cute send-up of preadolescent stereotypes.

The labored storytelling in this movie about displaced ambition diminishes the impact of the powerful performances.

Deep and textured drama.

Becomes blandly idealistic.

The filmmakers uphold an unfortunate tradition in movies based on TV shows by busily adding superfluous plot elements.

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.

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

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.

Mitchell, who also directed and wrote the screenplay, originally created this glorious rock opera for the stage with composer-lyricist Stephen Trask.

The writers must have racked their brains for the formula: two parts other movies to one part childhood revenge fantasies

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.