Paula Nechak

Outside of its star power, it reeks of indie film and doesn't hold much mainstream steam.

Sometimes so intimate it's embarrassing, and the messiness at falling in love at any age is disquieting.

It's an unashamedly old-fashioned and richly visualized evocation of a time when values were key, trust in your neighbor complete, and a way of life that should be simple is made unfathomably complex because of economic hardship.

Here's yet another take on "Pride and Prejudice,"...but all spiced up as colorfully as a dish of curry.

This collision of popular Emmy-winning TV shows is strangely uninspired and, well, a bit dull.

While there is a faithful following of kids, it just never seems as exciting or sad or emotional -- or as ablaze with personalities -- as what has gone before.

It's an unenlightening film that proves youthful anarchy is just as dull as a midlife crisis, and sadly, as predictable, too.

What remains is a sumptuous-looking film that sniffs at but ignores deeper Freudian implications.

Writer and first-time director Thomas Bezucha certainly knows how to create warmth, ambience and situation.

Daring, gorgeous.

The film is a hopeful, rollicking, rocking, humorous, heartbreaking journey.

Truly raunchy but it's more sweetly stupid and silly than anything.

Call it "E.T." for a new generation.

Racing Stripes is oddly torn in tone: is it an old-fashioned family drama, a coming-of-age story or a crass comedy? Live action or animation? Unlike "Babe," it fails to integrate its conflicting personalities.

What Jeffs -- and Paltrow -- do capture is the shroud of tragedy that hovered over Plath.

There are a lot of terrific creative energies at play in Robots and they overcome an overreliance on amusement park sensibilities in the animated adventure.

Hunt and Johansson, two usually good actresses, are vapidly awful, teetering out of their elements in this shakily drawn period piece.

The film leaves an acrid taste with the viewer who sits through its long and winding tale of tortured courtship.

The restless, selfish, unfriendly people created by Lachow as protagonists only make the movie hard to warm up to. It's more akin to fingernails scraping a blackboard than an updated morality play.

It's compelling, poetic, rebellious, funny and one of the few movies that feels like it's been culled from another time and place yet broodingly bends modern societal taboos.

The film is dominated by computer-generated effects and they're most of its problem -- they don't give us anything to emotionally attach to or invest in.

The real humor comes, once again from Murphy, whose Donkey is so genuinely funny and clever that he very nearly steals the film. Except that it's stolen by Banderas as a rogue Puss In Boots.

A film that takes you by surprise, refusing to relinquish its grim, fascinating hold. Better yet, it has crept up on us without much advance promotional fanfare. The less known about its twists, the better.

Though the pop idol recently said that movies are his ultimate goal, the best thing about On the Line is its music.

So poorly constructed and so elementally banal that it's a shock the script was written by the same guy (Nicholas Kazan) who wrote such taut thrillers as "At Close Range" and "Reversal of Fortune."

Breathtaking visual accomplishment.

The film manages to make the ordinary extraordinary. It takes visual risks, tells its story subjectively through images and moves confidently to a stunning, imaginative climax.

A foreign film feel despite its strong American cast.

Who was Bettie Page? You won't find out in Mary Harron's chirpily cheery chronicle.

Strikes a universal chord, no matter what rung of the popularity ladder we were on in high school.

This bloodless, nuanced little thriller carries small weight save for Huppert's enigmatic, thrifty performance.

Certainly kept the toddlers (including mine) at an advance screening engrossed, but for parents and reviewers, it was more of a struggle.

This journey is clunkily rendered, clouded by an avalanche of murky symbolism.

Mullan is a great choice as Frank, playing the silent guy with all kinds of baggage perfectly.

If you can forgive some woeful casting and a plot that is as creakingly thin as an old staircase, you can enjoy director Christopher Nolan's The Prestige.

Brokedown Palace does have some plot implausibilities but Kaplan, manages to turn some hashed story lines into something substantial and emotionally affecting.

Feels the scratches of too much time and tinkling and is as disjointed as a dislocated shoulder.

Isn't so emotionally powerful as the Oscar-winning "When We Were Kings" but which -- in its more intimate way -- still packs a punch.

[Jarmusch] seems...to introduce gratuitous bloodshed that is out of sync with the engaging, offbeat tempo and dark, comedic moral fable that has come before.

Lawrence uses the stand-up forum less as a weapon to blast us with his incisive, razor sharp insights into life, sex and ethnicity than as a pulpit or confessional to chronicle his rehabilitation and reformation.

Flies coach instead of first class, despite a charismatic cast.

Not only did it not engage the adults, its lackluster story line didn't spread much illusion or magic over the kids in the audience either.

Like a family visit during the holidays. Tensions run high, not everyone is likable but being there's an uneasy comfort because everything is so familiar.

A comic, loving, affectionate glimpse of the '80s, its music and fashions, and most of all at that hard-to-find thing called true friendship.

Although the start of the movie is a little fragmented, and the last quarter turns predictably rote, the middle is heartfelt, wonderfully diverse and empowering.

Brooks has made a movie that is about separation from convenience and having to deal one-on-one with a stranger in a strange land. The result is a profound and moving movie.

An original, well-crafted plea that uses restraint instead of titillation to make a cautionary tale that aches with pathos and power.

The two young actors -- Hutcherson and Robb -- are terrific and unpretentious.

The joy is in watching a talented cast make something crisp and fresh out of material that -- though perfectly adequate and enjoyable -- trespasses little into territory that's new or out of the traditionally plotted points of the genre.

Unfortunately can't transcend its theatrical roots and the actors, good as they are, seem like they're grandstanding.

In its austere visual understatement rests a ton of emotional power.

Dizdar humorously compares and contrasts extremes in economics and lifestyles and looks at the west through the eyes of an outsider.

A real dud, with few laughs, no characterization, little story, a cluster of stereotypes and clichés and just plain nothing for Foxx to do.

A big dud.

The film is many things: dark fable, gritty thriller, satirical social commentary, horror film and a love story that's blessed with a marvelous, near slapstick physicality.

Lurches toward an offbeat honesty but it also very nearly crashes in its quirkiness.

Scores high on nastiness, but it has as many surprisingly funny moments as offensive ones.

The film's only misstep is its again-used theme (especially when it comes to a woman's rite of passage) of exacting some punishing loss when our heroine pushes to transcend her limitations by seeking a better life.

While Shrek may trek into that dark territory and has some questionable values simmering beneath the surface, its characters are delightful enough and the film is just sweet-natured and visually sophiscated enough to avoid sinking into the swamp.

The film tugs at us. And we forgive it its faults because it never loses sight of what it's supposed to be even though the story has a manipulative edge and maneuvers our feelings.

The script, written 20 years ago by the late, great director John Cassavetes, still packs an emotional wallop. [21 Mar 1998]

There is a certain poignancy to a film that metaphorically examines the stages of a woman's life through each character.

It has a frenetic, unsettled edginess that chafes against its serene, woodsy, upscale private school setting.

Gorgeously evocative visually.

It's more strangely and elementally touching than its predecessors.

Works best when it devotes itself to the small group of main characters featured on the show.

The Cockettes is a fascinating poke into the soul of the '60s and it moves past a simple chronology of a counterculture phenomenon to examine how this predecessor to glitter rock and camp movies, such as "The Rocky Horror Show," could ever have ascended to such heights.

An empowering film for children, showing them at their most capable, working through problems and finding innovative solutions to overcome what seems like an insurmountable obstacle.

What results is, for a film purporting to reflect the nobility of a beloved book, the propensity to slip occasionally into the fart and belch slapstick that passes for humor in just about every present-day animated movie. It's a misstep that pulls us out of our awe for the carefully studied world the filmmakers have lovingly labored to create.

In the end, dark comedy drives the film, but it's overwhelmed by a desire to be liked, really liked.

Attempts to do for "The Big Sleep"-type detective movie and film-noir genre what "Blair Witch" did for horror films.

Quite long and violent enough to have made several critics squirm in their seats during a recent press screening.

The movie is reminiscent of the films of Claude Sautet but it has a grittier, more youthful appeal. Still, it's just as nuanced and rich in all its messy revelation. [21 May 1999]

Isn't very pretty despite its extraordinary look. In fact, the film is downright queasy and unsettling.

Has enough simmering beneath its sweaty, grimy and disconsolate surface to be more than just another rite-of-passage missive set in the '70s.

Though the cast is talented, the script is a mess. It's essentially a collision of missed opportunities.

Jindabyne is uniquely Australian, dealing with Australian issues, and it boasts a wickedly wry conclusion that -- for everything that has come before -- is karmically just.

A difficult movie. Its obvious, heavy symbolism, glaring soundtrack and top-heavy themes threaten to make it implode, but it's saved by its performances.

Swicord has enough savvy to conjure up a terrific cast that compensates for her rote direction.

A shapeless comedy that is enjoyable to watch and often clever with its barbs -- and doesn't have very much to say.

Often as stillborn in pace as it is conceptually compelling.

For all its somber heaviness and reverential gravity, it never quite pulls all the elements and themes together.

The result is a movie that washes down without much thinking or introspection, provides some laughs and a tear or two, and dishes up a little something to mull over with its messages about friendship and loyalty in the face of naked ambition.

Since we never see Thomas, we can't care for him. And he's hardly a sympathetic "hero" in his treatment of women and his insistence that other characters honor his personal boundaries while he ignores theirs.

In the end, this is a film about retribution and justice within unjust circumstances. Each character has a personal code of honor -- Arthur, Charlie and Capt. Stanley are all given their dignity -- and it's that code that sets the film apart.

Terrifically fun entertainment; wonderfully shot and acted, instilled with spirit and life and able to woo us with its exhuberant freshness.

This nifty little addition to the Winnie the Pooh franchise boasts some nice touches.

A darkly funny journey about life ticking by and the change to make wrongs right.

Not only feels real, but it avoids preciousness and cute eccentricity and, in its lean, almost grave, cut-and-dried delivery makes more of an emotional impact because we're able to imprint our own memories of adolescence upon it.

Noyce's movie is a testament to endurance -- the camera caresses the landscape -- instilling us with a respect and reverence for it, its harsh ways and the attachment to it that Australia's indigenous people hold.

Provided you don't take it seriously, it makes for an addictively entertaining diversion that's as hard to stop watching as the books are to stop reading.

A terrific movie about middle-age malaise and a comedy of unusual wit and drollness.

More intelligent and thought-provoking than the usual dumb and dull-witted fare for children.

As dark as a Greek tragedy yet it has a vibrance and joie de vivre that can't be contained by grief.

Funny, eccentric and touchingly just, combining a unique interpretation of the time with an offbeat sense of humor.

Beautifully acted and conceived -- even if the final vision is not always totally satisfying.

The music is truly the thing in Songcatcher and it's awesome, haunting stuff.

So badly plotted and written that it rarely makes much sense, even with the elementary story line.