Lisa Alspector

Sandler is disarming and compelling as Sonny.

As a ditz who's just smart enough to know something isn't right, Lyonne blends hyperbole and sincerity in perfect proportions.

Initially tolerable but increasingly stupid thriller.

The deliberately obvious equating of knife throwing with sex would be funnier if it weren't so serious, and the undercut eroticism is part of what makes the movie themeless, merely a conceptual exercise.

This brash shocker by John Sayles—who wrote, directed, and edited—is bound to annoy as many people as it intrigues.

Instead of a credible main character this 1999 button pusher has lots of showy cinematography and generic dread.

It may not be “The Bridges of Madison County,” but the latest Kevin Costner romance is nearly as good as they get.

The comic timing and Gibson's mugging are skillful, but the movie fulfills expectations of plot twists and ironic atmosphere only after having made clear that it won't be offering much else.

Writer-director James Toback must believe his audience is hopelessly prudish if he thinks this pedantic story, which takes place over several hours in a Manhattan loft, is provocative.

The movie, which leans too heavily on the metaphorical value of the two historic events, dives from heady romance into heavy moralizing.

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.

Almost cagily creating understated drama from high-stakes reality.

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

Wolfgang Petersen and writer Andrew Marlowe, apparently afraid to really make fun of any American icons, challenge us to take the story straight no matter what, but the only thing this ponderous movie has going for it is its unintentional humor.

The narrative--a complex structure of flashbacks and shifts in perspective that's part inspirational story, part courtroom drama, part character study, part exposé--never makes it seem that history is being oversimplified.

Improves as it unfolds.

The blend of animation techniques somehow demonstrates mastery modestly, while the special effects are nothing short of magnificent.

Labyrinthine yet oversimple, the story seems to hide a more provocative one. But perhaps this is the nature of the beast.

Big, schmaltzy melodrama with mini melodramas.

Exciting, clever sequences driven by surprisingly little plot and culminating in a climax full of the transmogrification animation was invented for.

Awful light drama.

Maya Angelou?s very deliberate blocking of the actors charges each movement and line of dialogue with emotion, and the expressive combinations of colors and textures in the settings convey a palpable sense of the environments in which the characters undergo big but believable changes.

Even the revelation of what the fifth element is at the end is disingenuous--in fact, the archness of this whole project is repellent.

Bruce Willis's marvelous performance as a contract killer only makes everything else about this comedy seem more pathetic.

With the devout collaboration of the cast, Williams blurs the boundary between experience and storytelling as if the distinction were not only irrelevant but presumptuous.

The humor is often predictable--minor characters are stereotyped only to be demeaned for easy laughs--but the movie impressively fulfills its larger purpose of making you look at your culture's conventions as such.

One problem leads to another, but because the children's points of view are so powerfully rendered, the plot of this elegant and lightly magical-realist 1997 drama never seems merely coincidental.

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