Lisa Alspector

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.

Director Bruce Beresford -- not intending to be funny but succeeding wildly.

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

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

Sappy.

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

The elaborate climax set in a Paris bakery is the least boring part of this trained-animal movie.

Intriguing but poorly executed ideas are the basis of this not entirely unappealing romantic comedy.

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

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

The consistency with which the plot turns on characterization instead of contrivance makes this movie better than many of its supposedly grown-up competitors.

Nearly toothless 1998 existential drama.

The shticky dialogue undercuts the solid genre plotting, which undercuts the humor.

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

This grasping comedy targets kids of all ages but will please no one as it exploits exhausted ideas about adolescence.

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

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

Ludicrous revenge thriller.

Unlike the many youth movies that can't overcome their makers' hindsight, this one may actually put you in an adolescent frame of mind.

Not particularly sensitive or funny comedy-drama.

Neither good nor terrible.

As the characters behave with symbolic excess in situations designed to provoke their bigotry and self-interest, superficial black comedy periodically gives way to painful drama.

Ultimately the movie is alluring and respectful--its sadness may be what saves it from becoming sensationalist or trite.

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

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

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

Beautiful story of doomed love.

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.

Pretty funny caper comedy.

The message must have got lost somewhere in the plot twists of this would-be topical thriller about the power of hearsay on a college campus.

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

The filmmakers seem to think they can also manipulate us by combining the erotic with the disgusting. And they can--it's a foolproof tactic.

Viewers have almost two hours to become thoroughly disgusted.

Their splashy gore is more convincing than this incompetent horror-comedy's attempt to mock bourgeois high school dissoluteness without appearing judgmental.

Stylish but insubstantial thriller .

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

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.

This programmatic male-bonding comedy doesn't even borrow well.

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

The characters seem both reduced and idealized, and the plot has turns a dispassionate dramatist would avoid.

People frequently cover the camera lens with their hands or refer to the "documentary" being filmed, as if to assure us that what we're seeing is real.

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

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

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.

It's tempting to accuse director and star Kevin Costner of taking the idea of vanity production to a new level in this frontier adventure based on a book by David Brin.

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

It’s a heart-tugging scenario undermined by a striking hypocrisy: obscuring a hot-button issue in casting, some actors with Down's syndrome have minor roles, while Penn plays the lead -- and chews the scenery.

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

Tiresome, blood-filled comedy.

The feature has some lovely effects.

More of the abundant sight gags and slips of the tongue originate in bathrooms and bedrooms than are actually set there.

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

It makes me sick all over again just describing this--the most affecting scene in a sluggish would-be comedy that reflects the dubious state of the art of fat male comedians exploiting themselves in 1997, the year its star died.

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.

This culinary fantasy is mildly inspired.

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.

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.

All the movie's free-form horror phenomena might have been more interesting if the plot didn't keep insisting on a systematic explanation for them.

An intriguing noir whose conceptual sophistication is partly undermined by naive execution.

Neither the love nor the loss in this tear-jerking romance contains much drama.

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

Poorly paced action comedy.

The inevitable isn't worth the wait.

The movie's repeated attempts to combine seriousness and humor as in a blender give it a dysfunctionally earnest tone.

Initially tolerable but increasingly stupid thriller.

It's almost always night and almost always raining.

This derivative concept movie is tiresomely slick as well as shamefully sloppy, and someone should issue a restraining order requiring writer-director Darren Stein to stay at least 100 yards away from irony.

The pranks are as bland as Macdonald’s demeanor, which is supposed to subvert expectations about the role of the straight man in a comedy duo; the subjects of running gags range from anal rape to anal rape.

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

All of this comedy's jokes are old.

All I saw were unimpressive digital effects; artless, quick-cut abstracted gore; and a last-ditch attempt to evoke a visceral response by heaping the climactic scene with bat shit.

This gross-out action comedy gets good mileage from its high-energy music and World Championship Wrestling characters, and leads David Arquette and Scott Caan are expertly pathetic.

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

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.

It's doubtful that the haste with which two actors of the same sex break away from a kiss in this comedy was in the script, but otherwise everybody stays in character, which is impressive given the manic range of some of the roles and the comic monotony of others.

As if to justify a serious discussion of this comedy before dissing it, some reviewers have pointed out that it evokes Casablanca. Maybe that's why the plot seems imposed on the characters.

This thriller largely succeeds in putting quotation marks around its use of genre conventions, mixing subtlety and overkill to create a pensive mood that transcends the plot.

This 1998 sequel seems almost deliberately designed to disappoint--our enjoyment is supposed to lie in making fun of the obvious red herrings, contrived opportunities to show cleavage, melodramatic dialogue, gullible characters, and inevitable to-be-continued ending.

Sweetly mediocre.

Awful light drama.

Excruciatingly earnest yet convictionless movie.

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.

Disingenuously naive romantic comedy.

This underdog comedy and its title character have considerable charm.

Corky never becomes sympathetic, and without this fundamental irony the movie doesn't have a leg to stand on.

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

Until the diverting special effects take center stage, this story, about an alien intelligence that builds an army out of flesh and metal, pathetically exploits genre conventions without generating self-reference, camp, or thrills.

The plot keeps switching tracks.

Schmaltzy comedy.

This mildly moody SF thriller belabors standard dramatic conceits involving jealousy and sexual betrayal.

Lightweight slasher.

Pesci proves he can act his way through anything.