Paula Nechak

The film is thriller, comedy and rite-of-passage story, but Boyle never loses sight of what's at its core.

There's not an original idea rattling around in the empty-headed but gorgeous-to-behold period film.

A pedestrian movie with a predictable romance at its heart.

Both sophisticated and elemental enough for all ages to grasp the message.

Original, imaginative and stylish.

It's a funny, insightful film whose feminist undertones don't overwhelm the story and characters.

Although budding star Mendes and Washington sparked in "Training Day," there's less chemistry between them this time as she glowers and frets in her role as a big-city cop.

Love. Lust. Recrimination. Jealousy. Resolution. This British female friendship melodrama has them all.

An indie film that was lavishly praised and won the Filmmakers Trophy at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, rolls along in the well-rutted, dusty tire tracks of other mother-and-daughter road trip

It may not exactly be a traditional love letter to his wife but actor-turned-executive producer William H. Macy has given her a plum part as Bree in screenwriter-director Duncan Tucker's offbeat road movie.

There are too few surprises and even less subtlety in the telling. We can only sit and wait for the next bomb to drop on this poor exploited girl.

Occasionally falters in its symbolism and storytelling, but still unnerves because we're never quite sure of our bearings, or whose "reality" we're watching.

Cruz is tough and sexy as the no-nonsense Raimunda and she's being deservedly talked up for an Oscar nomination in a tight best actress year.

There's such a good-natured heart beating beneath the cliches that it's easy to appreciate the film's willingness to poke gentle fun without a whiff of nastiness or judgment.

A hard film to shake and makes us think and think again.

Tries mightily to have the charm of "Bull Durham," but instead fields raunchy sex jokes, predictable story line, dumb dialogue and a lackluster love affair.

A mystery that isn't mysterious, a thriller that's barely thrilling.

Something doesn't quite gel in the end.

It has absolutely nothing to say -- no redeeming commentary about nihilistic, narcissistic society and its appetite for instant gratification -- which would have made it sociologically interesting, or at least sort of Faustian in theme. Instead Sex and Death 101 is as empty-headed as its protagonist.

A genre-twisting surprise.

In the end, it trivializes the psychological complexity of the girl's post-traumatic stress and betrays a game group of actors who struggle to find balance between the alternately dark drama and the silly, over-the-top melodrama.

Tinged with sadness, and despite overstaying its welcome a wee bit, remains an anthem of insurrection, melding its political and humanistic truths into an almost dreamily subversive film tinged with humor and some small hope.

The most fascinating aspect of the film is how the point of view shifts -- each character, as seen through another's eyes, is something else entirely.

If ever a film seemed poised to take over the spot occupied by the surprise indie hit, "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," it's Real Women Have Curves.

Funny for 15 minutes and then fades into mean-spirited cruelty and stupidity.

tTere are two things going for Melinda and Melinda: Woody's not in it and Radha Mitchell is.

A mess of incohesiveness and fragmented storytelling.

The film dwells more on the sensationalistic aspects than the sport itself but it's impossible to deny the tawdry entertainment value in this compelling film tabloid.

Craig's got the stuff but the ending of this cake is soggy for its protagonist and audience.

Meanders as aimlessly as its drugged-out characters.

First-time feature film director Max Farberbock has given a terrific visual style, resonance, sense of hope and power to the material.

Wanders off on story tangents that can't be called anything other than bizarre, but nevertheless oddly engages.

It's a methodical, friendly fairy tale in which everyone is good and the outcome is a given.

There is a ton of psychology and inference in this intriguing first feature by French director Anne-Sophie Birot.

There are some nice ideas floating around this ambitious film, as well as attempts to say them in a unique way.

The film is so well acted -- by Byrne, who makes Harry's internalized agonies and continuously carried torch for his ex-wife touching, and by Watson and Hoult -- that its more cloying moments, including a staged version of the musical "Camelot" (which is too long), are a moot point.

Exquisite and fragile in visuals and tone, yet has some difficulty with a choppy narrative.

Ok, I admit at first I was just laughing at the sheer gutsiness of South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. But after 10 minutes, I was laughing at the script.

Sandler and Watson make something out of their underwritten roles, and that they do is testament to their talents: They make this punchy romantic comedy more engaging than it should be.

Unremarkable sequel to the 1967 hit.

Difficult to weigh and rate precisely because it deals with real life and real people.

Disney seems intent upon overdosing audiences with the little guy proving himself against a seemingly superior force.

Daniels gives a career-best performance.

The lapses in logic make a weak subplot about a serial killer on the loose just plain silly instead of provocative.

Works well as a metaphor for a more innocent time.

Unfortunately, the life has been sucked out of DiCamillo's story about a brave, unusual little mouse.

Shakespeare's comical, all-too-human tale of lust, foreplay and wordplay is buried beneath bad taste.

If you're a fan of Maddin's expressionist style, you'll find the humor within. Everyone else will be scratching their heads, despite Maddin's extraordinary visual imagination.

A harrowing, frustrating view of paranoia and ineptitude that may seem a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time but evolves more into a mystery.

Before the film flails, like a balloon losing air into a terrible finale, it has the audacity to lay siege to just about every xenophobic bias possible. No one -- or country -- is safe in this comedy and for that alone it's admirable.

A perfect example of form without content.

Often unsettlingly funny, though it ultimately recedes into a dark womb of despair.

Would be totally unexceptional if not for its visual telling of the Apollo 11 flight and the fact that the movie is impressively shot - the first animated feature film in 3-D.

The Village goes up in smoke (and mirrors). It wants to find a profoundness that hints at something deep and dimensional, but it hasn't the courage of conviction to stay on course as an unabashed ode to innocence.

The film strains to achieve the comedic gait of "Wag the Dog" or the improvised, overlapping style that so defined Robert Altman's Hollywood movie, "The Player."

Jordan unites his favorite actors -- Liam Neeson, Stephen Rea, Ian Hart and Brendan Gleeson -- with the swoony presence of the talented 29-year-old Cillian Murphy.

It works because it never tries to be more than the very personal memory piece it is.

Lacks the cohesive flow of "Fantasia" and suffers from an attention deficit that seems to mark and flaw our current fast-paced technological era.

A delight and a surprise.

At times, the self-congratulatory tone makes for smug viewing and slow going. In spots, the pace is so all-exclusive that not every viewer will be able to get up and dance to it.

It's epic, sweeping, and genuinely engrossing for awhile, but then it stumbles. [07 Nov 1998]

Gorgeous in its gore and, for all its destruction, despair and death, concludes on an optimistic and vibrantly alive note.

There are two reasons Ramsay succeeds with a story that might at best be called morbid: She visually transforms the dreary expanse of dead-end distaste the characters inhabit into a poem of art, music and metaphor -- and she has the perfect actress to embody Morvern.

The actors are all well-cast, thoughtful and sometimes funny. Tabu was apparently not Nair's first choice, but after watching her in the role it's hard to imagine anyone else -- she's heartbreakingly good.

An edgy comedy with heart.

It's a taut, unexpected study that asks many questions about retribution and redemption.

While there are maybe two moments of genuinely clever humor, Storytelling is the work of a previously promising filmmaker who, having no new ideas, has morphed into a sniggering schoolboy intent upon being mean.

Fascinating, visually gorgeous cinematic study that will frustrate some viewers by its ambiguity.

A low-maintenance crowd-pleaser, but we've seen the entire film, in thematic snippets, before.

It's the chemistry between Vardalos and Collette that gives the film its magical dazzle. Despite Vardalos' ingratiating, big and breathy presence, Collette, as the pulse and conscience of these two dreamers, very nearly steals the film.

We leave hungry for more of the film's substantial, if less physically perfect, subjects.

Witherspoon is terrific.

Tainted by cliches, painful improbability and murky points.

The film, despite the occasional gross-out joke, can't disguise the fact that it's a sweet old sappy -- even dated -- love story. Only Molly Ringwald is missing.

Belongs to its trio of "bovine" voice talent -- Roseanne Barr, Dame Judi Dench and Jennifer Tilly -- who play with such tongue-in-cheek delight upon their public personas that it's hard to separate cow character from the celebrities.

This is simply another in a long line of utterly unnecessary remakes that, having nothing new to say, clutch at crassness and dumbness.

A sloppily scripted film that contains a silly and superfluous subplot about a crooked cop.

(Arteta's) yanked an eerily accomplished performance out of his lead actor.

Never offers much enlightenment through its message.

Ullmann has honed a too-long and sometimes relentless film that delves into the selfishness of passion but also captures the elusiveness and unpredictability of love.

It's the script -- by director Mark Fergus (who also wrote the adapted script for "Children of Men") and Hawk Ostby -- that lets everyone down.

A decidedly mixed bag.

Chereau's film is disjointed and abrupt and it rages when is should be deft. We're given too little too late and, despite the lessons that lie within the affair, the lines between enlightenment and nihilism blur.

An awful, misanthropic, deadly unfunny and badly acted war-of-the-sexes travesty.

An almost too-sophisticated comedy, pitting the New World mentality and brash pugnaciousness of America against the staid arrogance of custom that defines the French bourgeoisie.

While the film shuns the glamour or glitz that an American movie might demand, Scherfig tosses us a romantic scenario that is just as simplistic as a Hollywood production.

The jokes run dry, the situation is redundant, the cast becomes tiresome and the running time is interminable.

Assails with its in-your-face, repulsively compelling (like a train wreck) brutality.

Wenham and Porter make the film better than it should be.

Darkly funny.

For all its moodiness, despair and disconnect, I've Loved You So Long is all about acknowledging human error and embracing ties -- to family and life -- that can't be undone.

The film is inherently calculated and cold, so smugly satisfied with itself and its surprise final trick that it seems to be running its own con to convince us the script's house of cards is actually substantial, original and slick.

The performances by Davidtz, Weston, Wilson and especially Adams stand out as Morrison paints his character study with raw, true bits continually tested by the absurdities of pain life dishes up.

An odd charmer with a whisper of autobiography (Blitz makes his film's protagonist a stutterer, just as the director was in school) and it's made even better by young lead actor Reece Thompson.

What it doesn't have is a script that has anything original, cohesive, or, gasp -- funny -- to say.

The two women -- as well as the always marvelous Bill Nighy as Blanchett's "older" husband -- run roughshod over its third act flaws and, with their exquisitely detailed performances, make it better than it is. It's an actor's triumph.

Much ado about very little because it takes no stand and gives little insight into the Chopper's psyche.

Doesn't offer much texture or depth of character.