Lisa Alspector

It's marvelous or unwatchable.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Would be sweeter if the fair maiden weren't such a pill and more exciting if the villain weren't quite so nasty.

Images about imagery can be diverting, even insightful, but this painterly 1999 feature piles up studies in elaborately choreographed motion that are their own reason for being.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The force of the social criticism is diminished by contrivance and the inclusion of peripheral material.

The coincidences that make the destined lovers' paths cross aren't contrived with much finesse, but the characters get in some decidedly clever lines.

This spiritual thriller is too wooden to be taken as seriously as was clearly intended.

Tiresome, blood-filled comedy.

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.