Lisa Alspector

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

It's all very impressive without being particularly enthralling.

[Farrellys'] great achievement is forcing those of us addicted to eye candy to see we have a problem.

All this is accompanied by a too-emphatic pop sound track that turns almost every scene into a bad music video.

Slow, arty thriller.

Beautiful story of doomed love.

Possibly the most daring and honest drama about sexuality I've ever seen.

After a slow setup, this charming fable wisely spends most of its time on the golf course.

It's a pleasing but shallow hodgepodge.

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.

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.