Rene Rodriguez

Sitting through Little Fockers is a soul-sucking, dispiriting experience.

The best way to approach Joel and Ethan Coen's eagerly awaited True Grit is to lower your expectations, then lower them a bit more. The problem is not the movie, which is a terrific, no-nonsense, straightforward western. The surprise – or vague disappointment – is the prevailing lack of Coen-ness in the movie.

Curiously, TRON: Legacy makes the same mistake the original did: All the best stuff comes in the first act. The rest of the movie is as exciting as an overnight round of computer coding.

The movie is all surface and trades on fortune-cookie wisdom.

The actors are fine: It's their long, arduous trek that lets the movie down.

Unstoppable is the slowest, talkiest movie you'll ever see about a runaway freight train loaded with toxic chemicals.

Doesn't quite avoid the pitfalls of its genre, but at least the movie has the decency to make you laugh on its way to a foregone conclusion. Also, did I mention the sex?

Tangled packs old-fashioned Disney magic as endless as Rapunzel's locks.

Reminiscent of Showgirls minus the sex, nudity, sleaze, bad acting and horrible dancing, Burlesque is a typical A Star is Born story.

Bold and intrepid film buffs: The gauntlet has been thrown. Here's something you don't see every day - thank goodness.

Some of the creations these chefs produce defy belief (and make you wish you could jump into the screen to have a taste).

The film suffers from a severe lack of urgency and emotional engagement. You can't get involved in a movie in which the characters all seem to be harboring double identities.

A lot of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part One feels like slushy set-up for the climactic all-out battle due in theaters next summer. The movie doesn't even give us the expected cliffhanger ending, although I'd be lying if I said I'm not eager to see how everything turns out.

This is a deeply inspirational movie about the human spirit's refusal to give up, but it is also a portrait of a man too much in love with life to let go without a fight.

The Next Three Days might have fared a lot better if the screenwriters had stuck to "The Next Two Days."

Someone apparently forgot to tell Harrison Ford he was starring in a comedy when he was cast in Morning Glory.

With such a large cast, none of the actors is able to turn her character into a fully realized person.

Starts out feeling formidable in scope and theme but ends up awfully small and precious.

Stone isn't the straightforward thriller it appears to be, but the alternative turns out to be dull and lifeless. At least the title is apt: Like a rock, Stone has no pulse.

Its lingering hangover, however, is decidedly pleasant.

There's too much caution and not enough lust.

Nowhere Boy is great at depicting the birth of Lennon's love for his art.

It's a strange kind of spiritual movie -- one that aims for the gut more often than the heart.

Year One is not really THAT bad and not ENTIRELY without laughs.

The amount of information the viewer is asked to process is voluminous and never stops coming.

Even frothier and more frivolous than the first movie: It's a heist picture so laid-back and unconcerned, even the heist feels like an afterthought.

It's a perfect role for Jolie, whose seductive looks always seem to be concealing something dangerous, even predatory, and she brings out a looseness in Pitt, who fares much better in comedic roles than when playing things straight and stoic (i.e. Troy).

When Ephron gives Ferrell and Kidman a musical number that's supposed to be sweet and uplifting, the movie feels downright creepy.

Overflowing with melancholy and tragedy, Road to Perdition is one of the most somber gangster pictures ever made.

The movie moves at a relentless clip, and the characters react intelligently enough to their situation to make it crackling good entertainment -- with bite. [15 Oct 1993, p.G5]

The movie is sloppy and scattershot, and proud of it. It wears its slipshod, anything-for-a-laugh structure like a badge of honor: Smith is nothing if not self-deprecating.

To lump in this smart, subtle, deviously effective thriller with "The Omen" or "The Good Son" is neither fair nor entirely accurate.

The best stuff in Jumper comes early, while the movie is still busy explaining its scenario. It's only when all the pieces are in place and the story actually kicks in that things start to fall apart, and quickly.

You have never seen a movie quite like this one.

There's no denying the intelligence at work here, or Braff's skill at weaving off-the-wall humor and sight gags into a story that, at heart, is profoundly sad.

Delivers an even bigger sugar rush than the hit Broadway musical.

Seeing the Earth from the point of view these men saw it -- ''like a jewel hung in the blackness'' -- tends to put things in perspective.

Six years after its release, "City of God" is still electrifying and fresh: It hasn't aged a bit. City of Men, though, already feels strangely stale.

Passably interesting, occasionally riveting and largely superfluous. But it's certainly a worthwhile curiosity, and it's not what anyone expected. At the movies these days, that alone is worth something.

It's an unabashedly square picture, and proud of it. It is also a warm, funny, earnest movie, a stand-up exercise in a kind of Hollywood melodrama -- the feel-good weepie -- that has long been out of fashion.

The weirdest movie of the summer. OK, the year.

A worthy and delirious final chapter to this hallowed animation franchise.

It's much easier to linger on his youthful idealism than on how that idealism eventually manifested itself. It certainly makes for a much prettier picture. But when your subject is Ernesto ''Che'' Guevara, it is disingenuous.

It's a shrewd, poignant drama disguised as a comedy.

Take away the art direction, and Johnny Mnemonic is nothing more than a clunky chase flick, done with little skill or subtlety. [27 May 1995, p.6G]

The Hunchback of Notre Dame is an example of Disney animators at the very top of their craft -- and at their most daring. [21 June 1996, p.5G]

Most certainly a personal work -- so personal, in fact, that I can't imagine anyone but Coppola being able to sit through it.

A psychological thriller in serious need of both psychology and thrills, Cassandra's Dream is a wan, exceedingly minor drama by Woody Allen, who has started to recycle himself in London the way he had long been recycling his New York City pictures.

Primer is obviously not for all tastes, but if it connects with you, prepare to be obsessed.

By the end of Breach, we never come to fully understand Hanssen -- who could? -- but Cooper's beguiling performance and his tense cat-and-mouse games with Phillippe help bring an extra layer of entertainment to this otherwise rote thriller.

Glitter, the kind of movie only 11-year-old girls who dot their i's with hearts would find bearable.

Lacks emotional depth and sweep -- but the movie still delivers the type of rousing, large-scale adventure that marked the best films of its kind

This is a beautiful movie.

Although the characters are all cartoons, Ritchie still invests them with enough personality to make them stand out as real people, which is what makes RocknRolla much more involving than your typical Tarantino ripoff.

Cassel, who won a Cesar (France's equivalent to the Oscar) for his performance, invests the character with a grounding of humanity and honor that imply there are certain lines even Mesrine would never cross.

Initially sounds perverted but ends up being just the opposite.

Humpday sells its admittedly far-fetched premise by illustrating how men often can't help but behave like stubborn children in the company of their friends -- even when the stakes are raised to ridiculous levels.

It's a mean, incendiary picture that, below the surface, relies on racial hatred (as in white vs. black) to propel its story. But Trespass does deliver a roller coaster ride of blazing guns, heroic machismo and bullet-riddled bodies. The unsavoriness that propels some of those thrills is simply part of the game. [26 Dec 1992, p.E4]

A soulless, witless, landfill contraption that Smith once would have mocked mercilessly.

Contains all of the hallmarks of classic genre Spielberg: It shows you things you've never seen before, instills an accompanying sense of awestruck wonder, and delivers long stretches of heightened, delirious excitement that remind you why people started going to the movies in the first place.

Never achieves takeoff.

Smashing, supremely engrossing picture.

As light and fluffy as it is, Return to Me still proves surprisingly inviting.

It's an exploitation B-flick with a grade-A cast. [17 Mar 1995, p.5G]

The movie is so cheerfully, furiously relentless, its contagious silliness wears you down.

Turns resoundingly dumb in its last 40 minutes.

A brisk and lively cinematic Cliff's Notes of the 2005 nonfiction bestseller that made the lofty promise to reveal "the hidden side of everything."

This lavish, spectacular reworking of director Desmond Davis' beloved 1981 original is the rare sort of remake that actually makes sense: With all due respect (and copious apologies) to the generation that grew up with the first film, Clash of the Titans just wasn't very good.

Suffers from a fatal lack of purpose. This sleek, visually inventive but frustratingly flat movie is made up entirely of throwaway bits -- occasionally amusing, even ingenious bits. But still, they're just bits.

Certainly pleasant, and occasionally endearing, but it's also strangely empty and unsatisfying, like hearing about someone else's wild dream: You can appreciate the details, but you don't really care how it turns out.

Great actors can do more than carry a movie on the strength of their performances: They can also elevate it to a height it does not necessarily merit, and for much of In the Valley of Elah, Tommy Lee Jones does exactly that.

Like binging on a bottomless box of truffles: Tastes good and sweet at first, but after a while, you start feeling a little green.

It's not much, but it isn't awful, either, provided you're interested in this sort of thing to begin with.

Emotes mightily but says precious little.

Control Room may not seem all that compelling 10 years down the road. But right now, at this very moment, it is essential, imperative viewing.

What ensues is a love story ringed by barbed wire and etched in blood with the jagged neck of a broken beer bottle.

Shyamalan takes the beloved Nickelodeon anime series -- the full title was Avatar: The Last Airbender -- and turns it into 103 minutes of overproduced, stilted nonsense.

Openly embraces its noir roots, right down to the femme fatale (Connie Nielsen) who strikes a Lauren Bacall-ish pose in an open doorway and whose eyes are lit by a horizontal slant of light.

Bottle Shock often feels out of place on the big screen, but it would probably play a lot better as a weekly half-hour TV show.

There's something innately distasteful about The Crush. Here's a movie that casts a hopelessly lovestruck -- and mentally disturbed -- teenager as a villain. The camera ogles Silverstone's body every chance it gets, then invites you to hiss at her as she goes about her evil deeds. What's more, the movie -- which is nothing more than the latest take on the increasingly routine female-from-hell genre -- takes itself very seriously, giving the proceedings a realism that only serves to heighten the unsavoriness of the thing. [8 Apr 1993, p.F3]

This long, gorgeous, occasionally maddening movie is the work of a hopeless romantic who knows there is no pain as bittersweet -- or as haunting -- as the pain of a broken heart.

The Brothers Grimm gives you plenty to look at, but it's not much to see.

A thoroughly satisfying and engaging children's picture that never forgets those kids probably didn't get to the theater by themselves.

The movie is an exceedingly slight tale whose entire second half consists primarily of special effects and wonderful set designs.

There's terrific, spontaneous chemistry between Sandra Bullock and Denis Leary. Watching them bounce lines off each other is one of the biggest pleasures of Two If By Sea, a helter-skelter concoction that's part romantic comedy, part heist film and part New England travelogue...But Two If By Sea (which Leary also co-wrote) is a mess in the story department, with so many different elements competing for screen time, its stars' considerable charm ends up too diluted. [15 Jan 1996, p.5C]

An artsy bore.

The Mangler is one of the worst movies we've seen in years, and we've seen a lot of movies. [6 Mar 1995, p.5C]

What Sunshine State lacks in momentum, it makes up for with a Dickensian sprawl of characters -- 50 in all -- who possess the depth and humanity that has become a Sayles trademark.

It takes some exceptionally intelligent and witty people to make a dumb comedy this funny and perceptive: Borat may be offensive (to some), infantile, low-brow or even just a stunt, but you won't hate yourself in the morning for loving it.

There are precious few moments in Elf when Ferrell doesn't manage to at least get a smile out of you. Considering how cloying the movie might have turned out without him, that's a huge gift all its own.

Even by Miyazaki standards, Ponyo makes less narrative sense than it should, and the pat ending is a bit of a letdown.

All about watching Jaa.

If its dark heart had won out to the very end, The Ref could have been a minor classic. But it's a hilarious antidote to heartwarming holiday films -- and has some of the cruelest humor of any comedy in quite some time. [11 Mar 1994, p.G5]

If Annapolis is not the worst movie to date of this still-young year, it is certainly the most hackneyed, as well as the most depressing.

This laborious, talky, fleetingly engaging, ultimately silly picture is about as good a movie as anyone was ever going to wring from Dan Brown's inescapable bestseller.

Dragonheart is a silly, foolhardy epic, a movie so thoroughly misconceived it's as if its creators set out to make a big, expensive film few people would want to see -- and one that would frustrate those who did. [31 May 1996, p.5G]

Leatherheads goes on a good 20 minutes too long, and there's very little in it that makes a lasting impression, but it's easy to watch while it's unspooling -- much like, you know, a lot of Cary Grant comedies.

You can only string an audience along for so long with scary masks and sudden appearances at the window, and after a while, the suspense starts seeping out of The Strangers, because you realize that's all there's going to be to the movie.

The movie is absolutely hilarious, a satire as brisk and fleet as a farce and as profane as a convention of Tony Montana impersonators.

This poignant, wise and subtle picture -- which, yes, happens to be the best movie of the year -- should be approached with humble expectations. Lee's approach to this delicate material is suffused with melancholy, metaphors and small, telling touches that favor subtlety over exclamation points and rough-hewn simplicity over grandiloquence.

Instead of leaving you lamenting the lack of creativity and originality in the film industry, this modest, playful thriller puts you in a forgiving mood.

The best moments in Matchstick Men belong to Cage and Lohman, who, in "Paper Moon" fashion, prove that the family that cons together, laughs together.

The most dangerous evil of all -- the kind fueled by plain human greed -- lurks behind every twist of Red Rock West, proving once again it's often the simplest stories, when told with intelligence and creativity, that work best. [16 Sep 1994, p.G4]

Once you get past its intriguing title, What's Eating Gilbert Grape turns out to be a plain if beautifully photographed slice-of-life drama decked in eccentric garb. Beneath its veneer of oddball characters, it's a rather simple, essentially bloodless tale about life in Endora, Iowa, a tiny dead-end town. [4 March 1994, p.G4]

Unfortunately, Ghobadi doesn't trust his film to convey the message that has already been clearly and entertainingly spelled out, and No One Knows About Persian Cats ends on a sudden note of tragedy that almost ruins the exuberant spirit of everything that has preceded it.

Joy Ride is also surprisingly funny, thanks mostly to Zahn.

Feuerzeig presents an unyieldingly sympathetic but always fascinating portrait of an artist whose mental illness became inseparable from his art, with one often fueling the other.

The movie is not without its pleasures. Chief among them is Sean Connery's robust performance.

Using a semi-documentary approach, Glatzer and Westmoreland circumvent the considerable potential for sentimentality inherent in their story, instead taking a frank and direct approach to kids who, while far from hardened, are nowhere near innocent, either.

The Fountain is probably too muddled and half-baked to even attain cult status -- but you can still see what writer-director Darren Aronofsky was striving for, and even if his reach exceeded his grasp, his intentions were both admirable and worthy of respect.

As this intimate, beautifully observed film unfolds, you realize that the story's themes -- the nature of love, the role of sex in relationships and the ways in which we learn to make peace with our guilty consciences -- are relevant no matter what age you happen to be.

By the halfway mark, even the most devoted Gibson and Foster fans will start wondering when the movie will do something beyond superficially showing off its stars. It's not until the end that you realize that's all Maverick has to offer -- and it's not enough. [20 May 1994, p.G4]

A $100 million production of a 10-cent script, is so clunkily written, so bereft of any engaging ideas or emotions, you'd think De Palma would have sneered at it on first reading and passed

Where the book was preciously and carefully crafted, the movie just feels precious.

After a funny, highly promising start, Don't Come Knocking starts to fall apart, displaying all of Wenders' weaknesses, too.

Cars is certainly watchable, and there's always some amusing bit of business happening at the edges of the frame.

It's the cinematic equivalent of a good page-turner, and even if it's nonsense, its claws dig surprisingly deep.

A high tolerance for syrupy melodrama is required in order to enjoy Together.

The Lion King is everything you'd expect it to be: utterly charming, dazzling, rapturous entertainment. It's one for the ages. [24 June 1994, p.G4]

Style is the main attraction in The Limey -- it's as close to experimental filmmaking as mainstream movies get -- but the film works well when taken simply as a pure revenge drama, too.

The Good Shepherd, for all its noble intentions, manages to make even espionage boring.

We never get much insight into this rather mysterious composer, a difficult task but one the movie seems to promise. [04 Feb 1994, p.G21]

Brilliant, suspenseful, absolutely riveting film.

Unfortunately, there isn't enough of Brando and Kilmer: Too much screen time is eaten up by the monsters, plotting their perfunctory uprising against their creator. Worse, the confusing climax never comes close to fulfilling the promise of the opening credits sequence (the best of any movie this the summer). But The Island of Dr. Moreau has sublimely weird moments in it that are hard to shake, and for starved horror fans, nowadays you take what you can get. [23 Aug 1996, p.5G]

The Hangover remains unrepentantly irresponsible and hilarious throughout, culminating with what could be the funniest montage ever to grace a picture's end credits. The summer's first sleeper hit has arrived.

Written and directed by James Mottern with more attention to character than to plot, Trucker is a simple, unadorned study of a loner forced by circumstance to embrace the world again -- but only on her terms.

The best teen horror flick ever made, an emotionally involving, sublimely acted tale of an archetypal ugly-duckling loner (Sissy Spacek, who earned an Oscar nomination) who wreaks revenge on her tormentors, with apocalyptic results. [24 Aug 2001, p.21G]

The film is not so much suspenseful as intriguing.

This is a thriller that embraces stillness and silence where others prefer noise and bombast. It thrives on the hush before the explosion instead of its aftermath, and it's that eerie sense of expectation that gives the film its thick aura of suspense.

Looks exquisite, but don't bother digging deeper.

If The Pianist isn't quite as devastating as "Schindler's List" -- the movie with which all other Holocaust movies must be compared -- it's because Polanski isn't interested in an expansive view of the war.

Even if the movie loses its nerve at the end, that doesn't take anything away from Washington's performance.

A compendium of missed opportunities, uninspired action and clichés so tired, you wish the screenwriters had called 911, too.

But this smart, genuinely creepy movie also feels <I>real</I>, which is why its horrors hit so hard. Fans of the scary stuff, run, don't walk.

Has that formulaic, cookie-cutter feel typical of many Disney toons. The premise is inspired, but the follow-through is merely adequate.

The movie ultimately turns out to be less about sex than it is about the point in a friendship where two people decide they will both be better off if they part ways.

Fascinating in concept but a disaster in execution.

For the farce it so desperately wants to be, the film often feels slack and too reliant on so-so punch lines for laughs.

Deals with themes Eastwood has often explored before, but never so delicately or with as much sad wisdom: The way in which our past haunts our present, the lasting repercussions of violence and the cruel inexorability of fate.

Because Kitano also wrote and directed the movie, Zatoichi also features all kinds of beguiling, if admittedly bizarre, subplots and forays into nonsequitur territory.

If Ray fails to present a genuine portrait of a complex man's essence, it does leave you with an even greater sense of awe for Charles' accomplishments, both in his personal and public lives.

Without a hint of sanctimony, it is a love story as much about soul as heart.

Worth seeing for Dafoe's performance alone, a singular mixture of camp and pathos that echoes the tragic, romantic allure of vampires in literature and film.

The most ingenious thing about the movie is how it plays to diehards and neophytes alike. Every Simpsons character gets at least a fleeting appearance (and occasionally, director David Silverstein uses the widescreen format to cram in as many of them into one shot as he can).

When Mulholland Falls should reverberate with complexity, it simply echoes other movies. It's a glossy tribute to film noir, not a memorable entry in the genre. It's too simple-minded, yet it leaves a heap of questions unanswered. [26 Apr 1996, p.5G]

Whatever faults Avatar may have -- and there are many -- the movie succeeds in immersing you in a photorealistic, painstakingly detailed world more fully than any science fiction movie before.

A searing, heartbreaking metaphor for the futility of war.

Rocky Balboa is far from essential, and there are moments in it bad enough to make you wince. But I dare you not to feel at least a tiny little rush when that opening bell rings, and Rocky starts swinging one final time.

A pastiche so derivative and pointless, it leaves you wishing Allen had not bothered.

The movie takes an excessively long time to cover short narrative ground, and the plot is muddled enough to confuse the target audience. [24 Mar 1993, p.E5]

It's the summer's most avant-garde experiment, and those who hate it (and there will be plenty) will complain the movie doesn't have a point. Then again, neither did Seinfeld, and look how that turned out.

Populated by all kinds of grinning skeletons and decomposing zombies, but in Burton's universe, they aren't the slightest bit threatening. It's the drab, flesh-and-blood living you have to worry about.

Match Point begins to recall Hitchcock as it unfolds, although it wouldn't be right to call it a thriller. This is still very much a Woody Allen movie, populated by upper-class characters who chatter about literature and fine art, frequent museums and designer boutiques and accidentally run into each other on the street with uncanny regularity.

Who writes this stuff, anyway? Does this not sound like utter gibberish? Surely, this film did not actually get made, did it? Yes, it did. I have seen it. But you, oh, fortunate one, don't have to. Consider yourself lucky.

The last 40 minutes test your patience -- and intelligence -- in a way the rest of this big, dumb, crazy movie never does:

It's big, exciting, ambitious, and it makes you cry in all the right places.

And the animation, ultimately, is what makes Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs worth seeing again on the big screen. Aladdin may have grossed more than $200 million, but even its state-of- the-art, computer-assisted animation can't surpass the detail and fluidity, the denser-than-reality feel, the astonishing palette (check out the red on the poisoned apple) of the film. Watching it, you don't forget it's a cartoon: You relish that it is. What bigger compliment is there than that? [2 July 1993, p.G5]

With a steely, unblinking resolve, Downfall stares into the abyss, but does not pretend to comprehend it.

The problem with Revolver is that it is Ritchie's first attempt at a ''serious'' look at the underworld, but the result is so pretentious and muddled it's almost a little embarrassing.

So needlessly convoluted, so crammed with subplots within subplots, it simply forgets about its gangland "Romeo & Juliet" premise.

Suffers from an episodic script and an overly long running time plagued by too many dull, laugh-free patches.

The screenplay by W.D. Richter (The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai) turns Needful Things into a pitch-black comedy -- a rather lifeless one, unfortunately. There are more laughs than scares, though the movie still carries a creepy undercurrent of nastiness that pops up periodically, to great effect. [27 Aug 1993, p.G5]

My Cousin Vinny is not without its flaws: The movie is overlong, the middle section sags, and there are a couple of running gags that simply aren't very funny. And while the film's courtroom climax is preposterous, the last half hour is definitely worth sticking around for: Pesci makes it a hoot. [13 Mar 1992, p.8]

Here, finally, is a superhero movie your AP English teacher can enjoy.

By focusing on his two young protagonists, Chang is able to explore the cultural differences between China and the rest of the world, resulting in sequences that are alternately humorous and eye-opening

This is a small, intimate movie bound to get lost in the holiday shuffle, but its pleasures are worth seeking out.

There's a fine little western lurking inside Open Range: Too bad it gets drowned out by director Kevin Costner's pretentiousness. Almost everything in the movie feels inflated, overblown, drawn out.

An uncommonly playful fright machine -- a fun house factory of scares.

That song (Jefferson Airplane's Somebody to Love), which becomes a sort of mantra to the movie, is the key to understanding what the Coens are after: When the truth is found to be lies, and all the joy within you dies, you better find somebody to love.

Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker are supposed to pass for a married couple, but they have all the chemistry of two actors who just met and shook hands moments before the cameras rolled. They don't even seem to like each other much.

A sparkling exercise in movie cool.

Love makes us do all kinds of crazy things, but in Crazy Love, crazy seems too mild a word.

If nothing else, the movie proves even the rich and famous make boring home videos.

The result is earnest, admirable and more than a little dull -- a pedestrian movie about a remarkable subject.

A shockingly, unbelievably bad movie.

A facile treatment of a complicated subject.

Shaped just like the murder-mystery its title promises, the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? introduces us to the victim, then rounds up the suspects most likely responsible for its demise.

One frenetic movie that doesn't know when to quit -- and leaves you wishing it could go on forever.

A funny and constantly surprising exercise in comic tension.

It's not that Fear of a Black Hat isn't funny: It is, on occasion. It's just that much of this rap music spoof, done in the style of a mock Spinal Tap documentary, feels woefully out of date. Two years ago, it might have been a hip, must-see comedy: Today, it plays like a warmed-over rerun. [24 Jun 1994, p.G6]

Most of Wells' details are there, and so is the basic premise, but the soul of the thing -- the point -- is missing.

Lands with a thud right from its painfully unfunny prologue and maintains its plodding, exasperating course straight through to its car-chase-and-shootout finale.

A joyful romp, devoid of the tiresome pop-culture references.

What makes Whatever Works so enjoyable, aside from the unusually high number of effective one-liners the script contains (this is Allen's funniest movie since Mighty Aphrodite), are its supporting characters.

The more Shrink tries to get you invested in the emotional turmoil of its characters, the more you want to reach into the screen and shake them and tell them to get over themselves.

Unlike "Jaws," Open Water isn't much for traditional popcorn-movie scares. Instead, the movie is more interested in depicting the gradual deterioration of its protagonists' sanity, and how that affects their relationship.

As a director, Talkington has a good sense of pacing: The movie rarely stands still. But too much of Love and a .45 is simply poorly executed rehash. [18 Nov 1994, p.G19]

Certainly pleasant, but it's also a bit safe.

Black Book takes a brave, if odd, approach to a WWII historical drama, but one thing is certain: No one in the theater will be bored.

Boiler Room's behind-the-scenes veracity makes it highly compelling.

The overriding tone of A Mighty Heart is neither indignant nor sentimental: The film is consistently cool, almost to a fault.

Often grim, but never nihilistic: Even at its darkest, Dizdar gives the movie an optimistic bounce. The movie is often shockingly funny, too.

After a while, hearing Martin say ''Zee area eez zecure!'' doesn't cut it any longer, and that's pretty much all The Pink Panther has to offer.

The only thing the movie lacks is a pulse.

Bergman can't bring individual scenes together into a collective whole, and the ending (which was reshot at the last minute) closes things on a disappointingly limp note. [28 Jun 1996, p.5G]

Guaranteed to beguile anyone who can remember the joy -- and agony -- of anticipating the first time.

Exhausting at times, frustrating in others, Magnolia is mostly just exhilarating, the product of a raw, vibrant talent finding his footing in an adult world -- and unafraid to make mistakes.

On Deadly Ground has all the thrills and suspense of a rerun of Barney and Friends. [22 Feb 1994, p.D5]

There are a few surprises lurking in Cloverfield, and director Matt Reeves has an uncanny ability to time his jolts and scare when you least expect it.

A soaring, exhilarating fantasy grounded in earthy emotion, Crouching Tiger more than lives up to the hype.

Notorious excels at showcasing Wallace's music and his magnetism as a performer: It fares less well at giving that music a proper context.

The whole thing feels at least three summers too stale.

Nowhere near as insightful as Boyz N the Hood, nor as uncompromisingly truthful as Colors, South Central still has some worthy things to say. But the film continually resorts to stock situations to express them. [22 Oct 1992, p.F8]

For anyone interested in the art of comedy, it's a veritable primer on the vagaries of humor.

The script, which Harron co-wrote with Guinevere Turner, presents a disappointingly superficial portrait of Page as a person.

The movie asks tough, unflinching questions about America's responsibility to maintain world peace -- and the price we are willing to pay in order to accomplish that. Timely stuff, indeed.

Hana-Bi is a film by an artist too creative -- and too talented -- to set limits for himself. He is a rarity among filmmakers nowadays: A genuine original. [17 Apr 1998]

For all its charms, sometimes feels as self-obsessed as the characters it slyly mocks.

The most amazing magic yet for the wildly popular franchise: It is genuinely engrossing.

Easily the most searing movie-going experience of the year.

Doesn't sugarcoat the painful realities of Alzheimer's or the difficult decisions faced by relatives of its victims, but by film's end, its clear-eyed melancholy winds up feeling strangely uplifting.

The movie is funny and scary and touching in all the ways the best children's pictures are, but it is also fast and compact, running a perfectly paced 93 minutes (including credits).

In a larger sense, Adaptation is a movie about the simple act of enjoying life -- of really embracing it -- without constantly worrying about what others think.

The script was kept under unusually tight wraps during filming, but the biggest surprise in the picture is how talky the whole enterprise is. Particularly deadly is a long stretch in mid-film where the heroes walk through caves, talk about what they're seeing, get captured and talk with their captors, escape and talk some more.

For a B-movie, Split Second contains a surprising amount of talk -- dull talk. The film could use more action sequences; even those it does have are badly handled and unexciting. [7 May 1992, p.F8]

Eclipse, like its two predecessors, is ham-fisted and obvious, a mass-market entertainment with a frustrating lack of imagination.

This playful, immensely entertaining movie knows that art is in the eye of the beholder.

A relentless descent into a psychedelic hell, a rambunctious feel-bad epic.

This might have been OK for cable, but as a night out at the movies, it feels like a bit of a cheat.

Beowulf is many things, but boring isn't one of them.

A terrific yarn, one so engrossing and surprising that the nature of the story's structure -- each question Jamal gets asked on the show corresponds with a traumatic or momentous moment from his childhood -- never feels like a contrived framing device.

For all its cross-cultural hijinks, Japanese Story winds up as a tale about the fragility of human beings and the lasting strength of the bonds we form during times of crisis.

The filmmakers capture enough of the book's essence -- and the power of its knockout, transcendent ending -- to more than justify the movie's existence.

Baadasssss! is best taken as an examination of filmmaking itself.

The Runaways ultimately feels too lethargic and conventional for the wild story it tells.

Although it is structured like a thriller, and its plot dominated by Benjamin's detective work, The Secret in Their Eyes is really a cautionary tale about the consequences of a life of too much apprehension and propriety.

Few expected Basic Instinct 2 to be very good, but no one expected it to be this boring.

Slowly loses its grip, becoming just another story about infidelity, albeit an exceptionally polished, well-acted one.

Nolan, who has become an assured, stylish filmmaker in the span of only a few films, keeps the complicated plot spinning.

A mature, insightful and extremely well-acted study of a boy at a crossroads in his life, and a doomed, tortured man who, consciously or not, longs for some kind of redemption, before it's too late.

Ratner is canny enough to close the movie with a devilish tease that will send the Lambs faithful out with a delirious smile. What Red Dragon won't do is haunt your nightmares. Who could have guessed Hannibal Lecter would ever become such a crack-up?

If I hadn't seen the original, I might have gone ga-ga over Reeves' version. But even with the shock of novelty gone, the film still draws you into its chilly, demonic heart.

You may not remember The Crazies in a month, but you'll have a grand time watching it.

It's almost startling to see a film that believes in itself and its characters so deeply.

Jarmusch has never seemed quite this baffling -- or quite this dull.

Too much of this well-acted but dangerously slow thriller feels like a preamble to a bigger, more complicated story, one that never materializes.

Think of The Truth About Charlie as a Parisian getaway that happens to have a movie percolating in the background.

Those rigorously moral and humanistic underpinnings give 28 Weeks Later a kind of power that 100 Saws and Texas Chainsaw Massacre remakes could never achieve.

A failure on every conceivable level -- from its trite, pedestrian dialogue to its static, torturous pacing.

But if the film disappoints on an intellectual level, at least it doesn't skimp on pageantry. This is, without question, one of the most beautifully crafted, visually thrilling war pictures ever made -- a painterly spectacle that leaves you looking for Caravaggio's name in the end credits.

Like a lot of the elder Cassavetes' work, She's So Lovely contains moments of truly fine acting, its characters are all sharply drawn, and its story never seems to go anywhere. [29 Aug 1997, p.5G]

The Golden Compass comes close, and its originality cannot be denied, but it never quite crosses over into your heart. It stops at your eyes.

The picture may feel more than a little familiar, but Ayer knows how to cook up intense setpieces, and Reeves keeps getting better at the weary hero role he continually gravitates toward.

But Romeo Is Bleeding ultimately belongs to Olin. When she and Oldman finally begin to go at it, no holds barred, in the last 20 minutes, the film becomes an audacious free-for-all, a bloody battle of the sexes that reaches a frantic fever pitch that will leave you giddy. It is film noir at its funniest -- and darkest. [4 Feb 1994, p.5]

Swinton single-handedly carries The Deep End past its nagging ambiguities.

Precious without ever being cloying, All the Real Girls is a wise, delicate and immensely touching romance.

Has a made-for-TV smallness (it will probably be a big hit on cable), and it never quite vanquishes the nagging suspicion that you could be spending your time better elsewhere.

A high-wire act of storytelling, tone and old-fashioned chutzpah.

A coming-of-age film you've seen before. [20 Oct 1995, p.8G]

May be the grandest looking film ever made on the subject, but it lacks the most essential element of all: passion.

What O lacks is a sense of spontaneity: Despite its contemporary dialogue and manner, the movie can't overcome a nagging aura of artifice.

Jackson's dazzling vision turns the story into a real movie-movie -- one that, unlike too many fantasy films today, is genuinely transporting.

An unsatisfying, overly restrained bore, capped off by an ending so strange and inconclusive, it feels like something you'd find on the ''deleted scenes'' portion of a DVD.

Not even Sherlock Holmes could make much sense out of the overplotted, murky mess that is "Sherlock Holmes," although Arthur Conan Doyle's legendarily brainy detective would probably never buy a ticket to a movie as elephant-footed as this one.

Often feels like a cartoon that wishes it were live action.

Although the movie never so much as flirts with melodrama, there is still a bittersweet undercurrent.

These two fine, talented actors share a fatal lack of chemistry together, and it's a flaw this grandly ambitious movie cannot overcome.

Washes over you with an enjoyable gloss, and it might even make you cry a little, but it evaporates in memory like fairy dust.

La Promesse (The Promise) makes filmmaking look easy. The movie is deceptively simple, a tight little drama about guilt and conscience in which the creators' strings are completely invisible. It's fine storytelling in its purest form. [31 Jan. 1997, p.27G]

Unless you're the sort who has a Che Guevara T-shirt tucked away somewhere in your closet, the needlessly long The Edukators wears out its welcome.

So thunderously unfunny...There is no reason for an 82-minute movie to feel so very, very long.

This lively, infuriating and occasionally moving film certainly leaves you thinking, and there isn't a dead spot in it. That's the mark of a real filmmaker, not just a muckraker.

Cleaner, cuter animal antics.