Lisa Alspector

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.