Paula Nechak

Gorgeously evocative visually.

Its only constant is that it's strangely eloquent and quite original.

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.

Never offers much enlightenment through its message.

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.

Instead of making fun of the series' fans and their lifestyle, Galaxy Quest targets actors and how an onscreen image can forever lock a performer in a particular role. And that proves to be its saving grace.

A genre-twisting surprise.

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]

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.

The actors navigate tough characters through emotional mayhem with such intense determination it's a shame they're undercut by the intrusive voice-over.

Doesn't offer much texture or depth of character.

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

Though Signs & Wonders loses its bubbles and runs flat in its anticlimactic final moments, it's far more inventive and demanding than any movie of recent memory.

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.

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.

Sticks in the mind and simply won't go away.

Director Marcelo Pineyro imbues the film with mood and style and yet the violent climax holds little thrall as a lack of character development makes it had to care about the robbers' fate.

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

An insufferably insipid comedy with a cruel subtext.

Compassionate, potent documentary.

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.

While most of the film is well-written and acted, there are some difficulties. Aniston's Olivia is hard to figure.

[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.

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.

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

An enigmatic but gorgeous film.

While most movies would sink under the weight of such eccentricity, pretentiousness and earnestness, Garden State is so full of wit and the genuine heart of characters that you can't help but care about what happens to them.

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

It assaults us with violence, brutality, sexual confusion and anarchy and has enough bruising, punishing humor to keep us laughing with relief.

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

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.

What it lacks is the wit or even the cynicism to lighten the emotional load.

Rich with insight and cinematic style and beauty, the film tells a uniquely moving and inspiring story. Unfortunately, it takes some stamina to distill its message from its overly long, overindulgent love affair with itself.

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.

Much of the monologue feels more self-deprecating and politically intoned than laugh-out-loud hilarious, yet that's pretty much what segregates Cho from less personal stand-up comics like Ellen Degeneres.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

A frothy and deliriously enjoyable souffle.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

A fresh, well-written comedy that doesn't lag, casts its actors against type and has a real love for its characters.

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

Outside of a smart performance by Shawn Hatosy as Tim Dunphy, there just isn't much that's enlightening or new in this intimate recollection.

Takes itself awfully seriously. It feels a bit like a grudge piece, laboring to grasp at large themes, but it is as trivialized as the capricious world it explores.

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.

More chic and movie-savvy than its predecessor.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Gorgeous re-creation of another time.

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

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.

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.

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

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

There's something flat and obscure about this well-acted stalker movie.

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.

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

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

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

There's something essential and emotional missing in this character-driven piece. It's more an admirably performed and observed study -- of a time, place and three very different people -- than it is the heartbreaking and engrossing story it could have been.

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.

While adults may feel out of their league, there are a few jokes that will appeal to them.

(Fiennes's) Onegin is clueless to anything other than the sensual world, and is finally more repellent than sympathetic.

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

Pape Sidy Niang is terrific as the cop, Z, who is viewing America through a new immigrant's eyes.

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.

Though Wood is the star, it's Hutz who is the indelible presence.

While Gainsbourg and Stamp are charming, Attal's husband is difficult to like, to say the least. Must a woman as gracious and intelligent as Charlotte really settle for domesticity with such a near-abusive boor?

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

An edgy comedy with heart.

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

This sci-fi film noir craves a passionate center, an intoxicating core or some pulse that makes us want to keep taking that first step into dark waters, but it leaves us drowning in its quiet tedium instead.

In some ways it suffers from the same unredemptive afflictions as Elwood and his gang: It's a bit flaccid and flabby and lumbers gracelessly along without self awareness or humanity.

If you can forgive some plot artifice and gloss, there's a seductively intuitive and resonant theme resting at the core of Jeremy Podeswa's haunting new film.

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

The film ultimately has no contrast and we can't figure out whom to like or dislike.

While Hunt's directing debut is promising, if understated, it's her performance as schoolteacher April Epner that impresses the audience.

A foreign film feel despite its strong American cast.

Starts slowly, takes a turn for the better for a couple of reels and then, not having much to say or anywhere to go, flatlines into something akin to "American Idol."

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

It's not the direction that feels flaccid in this film. Surprisingly, it's the stories themselves, which provide a bit of a giggle but little else.