Peter Brunette

We've seen the clash of cultures and generations before,--- but never quite so humorously. This time, the focus is on the Pakistanis living in England, and it's quite amazingly done, perky and inventive to the core.

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

It's far more loquacious and cerebral than your average run-of-the-mill thriller, but boy, when the relatively infrequent scares do come, they will pull you out of your seat and raise the hair on your arms.

Despite the first-rate acting, the narrative is the star of this show, so much so that you feel yourself occasionally losing interest in the travails of the characters. Instead, you hang on every word and every tiny object, every cut and bruise in the frame, looking for clues that will help you make sense of what's going on.

Tender souls who don't like a lot of noise and violence should probably stay away from this very in-your-face film.

It's a great ride, gorgeous, silly and deeply intellectual by turns, but, for all its inventive fireworks, sad to say, it finally doesn't quite work.

What's best about the film is not the hot romance, but the coldness that lies at its heart.

Don't be misled by claims that you've seen this one already. You haven't, and you should.

Has a charm that keeps you involved throughout.

Love it or hate it -- and I suspect, frankly, most people are going to hate it -- this is like no other film you've ever seen.

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.

The dialogue is sparkingly witty, and Phoenix and Winslet are excellent in what are, after all, meant to be fairly one-dimensional roles.

The landscapes are so gorgeous, the philosophy so richly appealing, the narrative so epically sweeping, and the characters so intense.

It simultaneously wows you with the stark beauty of its images, a beauty that leads to another, related kind of truth that is equally crucial. It's not to be missed.

One of the best pictures I've seen all year. Funny, touching, even inspiring at times.

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

Egoyan's films have always been about the intricacies and basic strangeness of human relationships, rather than about plot or snappy one-liners, but a new moral urgency seems to invigorate this film.

Authentic contemporary heroine.

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.

What makes the film so special is that while tickling your postmodern funnybone, it never forgets to make you care for its characters, in a welcome, and almost traditional way.

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.

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.

A dud. Neither sweet nor low-down enough by half.

Irrespective of whether Pollock, as a movie, is any good -- and it is very, very good -- it's clear that Ed Harris was born to play the lead role.

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.

An occasionally powerful, always heartfelt drama.

Stoppard's luxuriant, richly comic language cascades and washes over you, and, for once, more than keeps pace with the sprightly pictures.

Richard Farnsworth shines as Alvin Straight, a role, one gets the feeling, that he has been preparing for all his life.

If you're interested in heavy-lidded moodiness and lots of attitude, Phillippe and Del Toro can't be beat.

A lovely piece of work.

A quiet film, certainly, but it's filled with small touches that manage to get deeply under your skin by the time the final credits roll.

It's a superb example of the genre of the self-expressive documentary.

You'll feel moved and uplifted after watching this well-written, funny movie.

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

Simplistic and non-controversial, and thus is virtually guaranteed commercial success.

Temple's wonderfully entertaining film brings the era back in all its confused and tentatively revolutionary glory, and bracingly demonstrates that the Pistols still have the power to shock.

It's epic in every sense of the word, and like most of Chen's historical dramas, not easy to follow.

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

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.

Funny and wise, lively and contemplative, intriguingly postmodern and powerfully moving, all at the same time. It's not to be missed.

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

Hilarious, slightly sick, and super-edgy ...the acting of its two principals, Annette Bening and Kevin Spacey, is so sublime that it's worth seeing on that grounds alone.

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

An exceptionally intense movie whose sheer filmmaking power ultimately transcends all its (many) limitations.

A rich and challenging variation on the serial-killer genre.

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

A delight to the eye, ear, and mind

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

Most important, the film is suffused with a light touch and a kind of begrudged humor that feels perfectly natural and unforced and that keeps you involved in the characters' plight.

Never more than a dull, paint-by-numbers, overly literal transcription of the book.

I was so taken by the film's sublime visual poetry, its telling silences, its finely orchestrated editing rhythms.

With the possible exception of the action sequences and the occassionally imaginitive set design, it's awful.

Its series of quiet but moving realizations of the utter ubiquity of the Nazi horror in every single aspect of life, even something as hidden as a sexual sub-culture, is powerful indeed.

Flat and thoroughly predictable piece of filmmaking.

Lots of laughs, lots of fisticuffs, lots of cool toys, lots of stuff getting blown up: Who could ask for anything more from a summer movie?

Altman is just as nastily misogynistic as ever.

This is a film like no other this year, and on that grounds alone you should see it.

A strange and lovely combination of cinematic nostalgia and offbeat (gay) love story.

Not a film for everyone. And though I deeply admire it, it's not a film that even I want to see again in the immediate future.

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.

The fact that this film, so sensitive to woman's plight, was made by a man is perhaps cause for a little hope.

With Before Night Falls, Schnabel has moved to an entirely new plane of cinematic achievement.

It plays lots of cool mind games with the audience -- if in an occasionally incoherent way -- and ends up providing a surprising amount of fun.

Always consistently watchable, but you get the feeling that in the novel --- the treacle is cut with the nasty edge that Irving's writing is capable of.

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.

Wargnier is also a lousy storyteller who seems not to understand how to shape a narrative.

It's witty, entertaining, often funny as hell and even, at times, surprisingly wise about the human condition.

It just doesn't work. Worse, it's downright offensive.

It's a masterpiece, a sublime tone poem that shows what cinema is capable of when it tries to do more than just tell a story.

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

We marvel at the almost perfect realization of a character whom we're not necessarily meant to like.

Sure, the territory is not exactly fresh...but the chemistry between the two leads is so explosive yet assured, and the comic timing so perfect, that the cliches are given new life.

The titillating sense of out-of-controlness provoked by the camera is echoed in the film's narrative situations, and you simply, and deliciously, haven't a clue as to what he's going to throw at you next.

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

The real problem is that it's not a very good Hollywood film, and its flaccid style, cardboard characters, and paint-by-the-numbers plot make watching it a chore.

Far too deliberate for many--I found its generally contemplative spirit, punctuated at regular intervals by some exciting battle sequences, superb.

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 makes us realize, suddenly, and with immense regret, what the rest of contemporary cinema so sorely lacks.

Starts off brilliantly and then gradually -- actually, not so gradually -- peters out.

It's blatantly manipulative pairing of an adorable young boy and a selfish, honesty-challenged older woman [is] so calculating that I could never get emotionally involved.

A Melancholy Delight. Its pacing will undoubtedly seem too deliberate to some, but I found first-time director Deborah Warner's The Last September a delight from beginning to end.

An insistent, insinuating film -- both in terms of its plot and characters, and in its impact on the viewer -- Harry's effects are small-scale but so perfectly pitched that they never seem small.

This kind of film, in its various manifestations recurring through the decades, gives us confidence that cinema can ultimately get to the heart of things.

A deliciously romantic story, in all senses of the word.

The new dud from Miramax's Dimension label.

Hilarious and often moving.

A very small film, as they say in the movie business, but its stylish suspensefulness is nicely leavened by Connell's obvious, and welcome, love for his hapless characters.

One of the most troubling views of the human race I've seen in years. Luckily for us, its depressing, almost pathologically ironic vision is redeemed by the sublimity of Solondz' filmmaking. I first saw the film at Cannes last May and it's haunted me, both for its nastiness and its brilliance, ever since.

Harron's adaptation of Ellis's novel is brilliant, probably better than the book itself.

Breaks no new ground and is tedious in the extreme.

Little Voice is that rarity, a filmed adaptation of a stage play that actually works.

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.

This reprehensible and deeply unfunny film is obviously critic-proof.

Ambitious and perversely fascinating.

A completely different order of cinematic existence than any other film you're likely to see in the near or distant future.

It has its moments.

As the late Stanley Kubrick's swansong, it fills the bill magnificently.

Tries so hard to push all the pre-ordained buttons, and it's so anxious to be liked, nay, adored, that it left me sullen and uninvolved instead.