Peter Brunette

Much more mythic and risk-taking than the usual Hollywood product.

The filmmaker has given us two films for the price of one. Unfortunately, the second film, a gripping thriller which occupies the last 45 minutes of Space Cowboys, is much better and more involving than the first film.

It goes without saying that the film is worth seeing simply for Bill Murray's Polonius.

An often affecting, if standard-issue, Hollywood biopic.

While most reviewers will accuse it of sentimentality (a charge that is justified), audiences, who don't feel the need to appear rigorous and tough-minded all the time, will flock to it in droves.

One of the weirdest, hardest-to-place studio films I've seen in years.

Gorris has beefed up the role of Natalia (Watson), with the end result that the film's emphasis is appropriately divided between the two characters in an emotionally satisfying way.

It's solid, if ultimately uninspired, July entertainment.

Far from perfect, and at 122 minutes it's way too long, but after surviving an overly schematic and even hectoring first half, finally delivers the emotional goods.

One Day in September does "being there" very well -- I just wish director Macdonald had spent a little more time explaining why we should want to be there in the first place.

It's all overblown: too much music, too much cutting, too much zooming, too much computerized special effects, too much clanky symbolism that never works.

An occasionally powerful, always heartfelt drama.

If you want to see an object lesson in how brilliant acting can transcend high concept, this movie's for you.

Consistently runs the danger of substituting cool but ultra-hyper, modern special effects for boring old human sentiment.

Altman is just as nastily misogynistic as ever.

As a primer on the arcana surrounding the profession of personal injury lawyer (more familiarly known as ambulance chaser), A Civil Action is deeply, and even passionately, informative. As a drama and character study, though, it mostly misses the mark.

Compulsively watchable and its occasional lapses into that familiar Polanskian overkill are almost charming.

Fancher seems uninterested in developing real suspense, or incapable of it, at least until the end, when there's plenty of it, but artificially imposed.

What makes the film ultimately successful, though, is the outstanding comic talents that inhabit it, especially Zahn and Macy.

Thoroughly artificial and overly schematic, to the point of caricature even, but often lively and witty nonetheless.

The first half of The Third Miracle is very good...but the second half of the film, alas, turns into deep TV-mode.

Its evocation of the politics and Zeitgeist of the late '60s is so right on, as we used to say, that it left me stunned.

While the film's mood is dreamy, dark, and gentle, it's also very slow and seldom leads to much of a intellectual or emotional payoff.

An excellent coming-of-age story that is, for once, and very happily, focussed on a teenage girl.

The human interest story that occupies fully two-thirds of this three hour plus epic is so flat and unconvincing that, for once, you find yourself longing for the disaster footage to start.

While it has its scary moments, and while its central conceit is refreshingly imaginative, there's ultimately not much there there.

By no means a bad film, but rather a way too over-eager one.

Ambitious and perversely fascinating.