Rene Rodriguez

The tug of war for Caterina's political soul is left open-ended, and her relationship with her difficult father is resolved with a plot twist that feels completely out of character. Caterina deserved better.

If Close-Up is not much to look at, it certainly enthralls the mind. [09 Feb 1996, p.16G]

Unlike Omri's plastic toys, The Indian in the Cupboard never comes to life. [14 July 1995, p.5G]

But we must admit, if a bit shamefully, that we laughed heartily during big chunks of Tommy Boy, thanks primarily to Farley. The charismatic oaf is at his best on SNL when playing eager-to-please dolts blissfully unaware of their utter incompetence and stupidity, and that's what Farley is here. And he runs with it. [31 Mar 1995, p.4G]

The thoroughly unconvincing drama Resurrecting the Champ might be based on a true story, but that doesn't mean you're going to believe a single frame of it.

This slick, sick remake of the 1977 Wes Craven cult shocker is more of a glum bummer than a horror show.

Like its predecessors, Tokyo Drift suffers from a terminal lack of levity.

For now, The Two Towers feels like the second installment in what next year, when Frodo finally reaches Mount Doom and the story draws to a close, we'll surely be hailing as a masterpiece.

The latest Christmas-tree movie from director Wes Anderson, who makes pictures so carefully appointed and decorated, they sometimes feel like they're made to be looked at instead of watched.

The result is initially exhilarating, ultimately exhausting.

What's missing, really, is a point. Like "Snow Falling on Cedars," Hicks composes every shot in Hearts in Atlantis as if it were his last.

City Hall is a labyrinth of a drama about big-city government that goes through many intricate plot machinations to reach its stunning conclusion: Politics is a very dirty business...It's not much of a revelation, and City Hall is not much of a movie. Sure, its backroom maneuverings and power ploys feel authentic (one of the screenwriters, Ken Lipper, was Ed Koch's deputy mayor), and there's undeniable momentum as the movie reveals, layer by layer, the depth of the corruption at the center of its mystery. But you can see City Hall's big "twist" coming a mile away, and the movie ends limply, without much payoff for patiently sticking with its convoluted storyline. [16 Feb 1996, p.5G]

Essentially a horror movie for kids, but it is also gentle and funny and whimsical, and even in its darkest moments, Selick never forgets who his target audience is. Still, some young children might have a nightmare or two after seeing it.

Although (Untitled) makes a spirited effort to mine comedy from its outre characters and the orbits they inhabit, the picture feels thin and wan, like a joke you've heard 100 times too many.

Jason Statham gives the best performance. Dolph Lundgren gets the best character arc. Terry Crews gets the best gun. Jet Li gets the best kill (you'll know it when you see it).Arnold Schwarzenegger gets the best cameo. And Sylvester Stallone? He gets the blame.

Regardless of its veracity, this portrait of a drug-addled star who just wants to express himself artistically contains implications that exceed the filmmakers' intentions.

The Dark Knight is dark, all right: It's a luxurious nightmare disguised in a superhero costume, and it's proof that popcorn entertainments don't have to talk down to their audiences in order to satisfy them. The bar for comic-book film adaptations has been permanently raised.

Although Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work is unmistakably a fawning love letter to an amazing performer, its subject proves to be her sharpest, bluntest critic.

A mess, but an energetic, convivial mess.

This glitzy, infectious and unusually heartfelt musical doesn't always hang together as a satisfying narrative -- too many characters compete for too little screen time -- but its pleasures are numerous enough to override its flaws.

Feels like it's been pasted together from 51 other movies -- none of them good.

The movie is pure product, and proud of it: There isn't a single surprising moment in all of its 88 minutes, because Domestic Disturbance is designed to stick to tried-and-true formulas, instead of shaking them up a little.

Fast, wacky and bubbling with passion or dark, troubled and doomed. In the unusually titled crazy/beautiful, it's all those things at once.

Tender and sentimental, a little schmaltzy, and ultimately too slight.

Animal Kingdom moves with a brisk efficiency - Michôd trusts the viewer and doesn't waste time with unnecessary back story - and the plot twists and turns at brutal speed.

Tomb is the kind of movie you sit through dreading the expository scenes, because the acting is so bad and the dialogue so pointedly written to make sure the little ones in the audience can keep up with the plot.

It's fun to wonder what Romero's realistic, no-frills cinematic style and jolting shocks would have brought to good King novels like Pet Sematary or The Stand. With The Dark Half, he tries hard -- it's his best directorial work in years -- but his reverence for the mediocre novel produces merely a serviceable thriller. [23 Apr 1993, p.G5]

All the right elements for a rollicking farce, except one: The movie isn't funny.

A feather-light musical rushed into production to capitalize on American Idol-frenzy, is nothing more than an excuse to give the two leads several musical numbers, a la those Frankie Avalon-Annette Funicello "Beach Blanket Bingo" movies, and with just about the same amount of substance, too.

The movie earns its tension and suspense the old-fashioned way: By making you care about its characters.

What makes Master and Commander so bracing and transporting -- what makes the movie feel unlike any adventure film you've seen before -- is the precise detail and care with which Weir places us aboard the HMS Surprise.

Even though The Business of Strangers loses its nerve in the third act -- you'll wish Stettner had dared to push things further.

The stupendously stupid The Program purports to detail one season in the life of the football team of Eastern State University as it struggles for a college bowl berth, but the players must overcome such inflated melodramatic claptrap it's a miracle they ever make it onto the field at all. [27 Sept 1993, p.C6]

Despite its all-around good performances (Pomeranc in particular is a marvel), Searching for Bobby Fischer can't quite shake its overly familiar feel. We've seen this all before, many times. It's a diverting, undemanding piece of work though, and you don't have to know a single thing about chess to enjoy it. [11 Aug 1993, p.E3]

The result is one of the most visually astonishing martial-arts fantasies ever made.

It's a punchy, straight-up genre picture, a crime drama that might have once starred Charles Bronson or Steven Seagal.

By the time its open-ended conclusion rolls around, you've forgotten you're watching a "comedy." All you can see in front of you are complicated, impetuous real people -- and that's about the biggest compliment any filmmaker could hope for. [06 Feb 1997, p.5F]

Such a dull, clunky, joyless mess, it's hard to believe the people who made it understand much about movies.

Fiendishly tricky contraption.

By film's end, you realize you've sat through an effective rip-off of "Meet the Parents."

Ebullient, joyous film.

Although it deals with some monumental themes, Mademoiselle Chambon also feels wispy and inconsequential.

The movie ultimately plays as a dead-on snapshot of the much-maligned post-Baby Boomer generation. In 10 years, Reality Bites might seem dated and irrelevant. Right now, it feels remarkably astute. [18 Feb 1994, p.G5]

Proves there are some things cartoons can't do better than live action after all.

The script is riddled with so many clichés, you count on the battle scenes to wake you from your stupor.

Hollow and pointless.

Even when sketched in broad terms, Rogowski's downward spiral makes for compelling viewing, and to her credit, director Stickler never romanticizes her subject.

Has the sort of richness and dimension that are the hallmarks of master storytellers at work.

It's whenever the music stops that the movie runs into trouble.

It's a generic, clunky title. The movie isn't quite as disposable, but it's not exactly memorable, either.

Attention all geeks (and geeks at heart): Get ready for two hours of serious awesome.

War may set the stage for Strayed, but the film's real focus is something much quieter and internal: People caught in the throes of a transformation that is not of their making and struggling to adapt.

Coulter wants to explore the act of mourning as a theme, and how death sometimes reminds us that every minute of life should be savored. On that level, Remember Me certainly succeeds.

Big and fast and silly, but it's never dumb, and it's certainly never boring, either. The summer movie onslaught has begun on a high note.

A funny thing happened to The History Boys on the way to the screen. The players are the same, the dialogue is pretty much identical, but the vibrancy of the play -- its exhilarating immediacy -- has been muted.

What Bloody Sunday lacks in clarity, it makes up for with a great, fiery passion.

This is the most impressive directorial debut since"Reservoir Dogs." Being John Malkovich is weird, all right-- the best kind of weird, the kind you haven't seen before.

What The Long Day Closes lacks is a narrative thread, however slim, to match the perfectly realized setting and wonderful visuals Davies has crafted. The whole thing feels like a chapter of a much larger work, one that, if finished, would doubtless prove more intriguing than what we get here. [7 Aug 1993, p.G5]

The movie's faults aside, this is the kind of show where half the fun is watching it in the company of a large group of people.

A movie as annoying as its oddly punctuated title, After.Life is a misguided and empty-headed attempt at psychological horror that succeeds only at talking the viewer to death.

It leaves you feeling exhilarated at the invigorating power a well-told story, no matter its subject, can have. If you like Harry Potter, you will love this movie. If you don't like Harry Potter, you will still love this movie.

This remarkable, continually surprising documentary turns out to be something far richer and more complex, closer in spirit to "Crumb," another devastating film about a family's gradual self-destruction.

You have to overlook a whole lot of guff in order to enjoy the slight but pleasurable entertainment of The Switch.

Freddy simply isn't as scary as he used to be, even though Jackie Earle Haley, taking over from Robert Englund in the role, plays Krueger essentially straight, keeping the one-liners to a minimum.

Too much of this lame comedy feels like it was written to satisfy a contract, with gags (like the business with the perpetually horny dog or the toddler who knows sign language) that are way beneath the talents of this cast.

Part chopsocky action, part romance, part hokey fantasy, Dragon will please anyone open to a well-made, if superficial, Hollywood biography, a "biopic-lite." [8 May 1993, p.G5]

But the movie itself, despite a pretty funny scene early on in which Mitchell, a dyed-in-the-wool California surfer, tries to ingratiate himself to a class full of urban Cincinnati kids, is dull and conventional. Nice stunts, though. [21 Sept 1993, p.E6]

Pfeiffer is the antithesis of the girl next door: You just have to look at her to know that she was born to be bad.

Kline salvages the picture with his dynamic, utterly unpredictable performance -- the work of a highly skilled comedian thrilled by the opportunity to go nuts once again.

Although a happy ending is preordained, at least Joe Forte's script takes the less-obvious route there.

There's nothing "big" about Trees Lounge : Its comedy, as well as its drama, is purposely understated, culminating in a long shot that uses an actor's face to speak volumes. It has the spirit of Cassavetes in it, only it's not nearly so self-indulgent, and its emotions are so real they hurt. [25 Oct 1996, p.5G]

As pathetic and unfunny as comedies get. In fine bait-and-switch fashion, you find out -- too late, of course -- that the movie revealed all its best gags in the TV ads and trailers. [12 July 1993, p.C5]

As the character grows soft and sentimental, so does La Soga, and the film's edge is terminally dulled by an avalanche of cliches and schmaltz.

Even for a sport already filled with horrific accidents and tales of unlikely survival, the mountain-climbing nightmare told in Touching the Void is astonishing.

The movie's power sneaks up on you, reminiscent of something screenwriter I.A.L. Diamond once famously described as "the Billy Wilder touch": A combination of the sweet and the sour, because even funny people, like you and I, aren't always being funny.

A shrill and gaudy comedy about the quest for celebrity.

In I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, the night grows long while your eyelids grow heavy.

A fairly tedious, stupid picture.

Like the best coming-of-age stories, I'm Not Scared (Io Non Ho Paura) is, in part, a work of horror.

A lazy, self-satisfied piece of work -- a comedy made by people who think so highly of themselves, they assume they'll get a laugh just by showing up in front of the camera.

Streep is simply amazing to behold, an actress who invests every fiber of her being -- every gesture, every inflection, every strand of hair -- into her performance.

The summer movie season has barely begun, and already we have its first big surprise.

Where Traffic stumbles is in its inability to engage the heart with the same fervor it engages the intellect.

Cynics may roll their eyes at Hardball's earnestness, but the movie proves even the most conventional stories can move and engage you, provided they're told well.

How can a movie as overstuffed with funny people as The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard be so listless and leaden?

Vaughn and Favreau are a dynamite pair, and there's enough give-and-take between them to satisfy any diehard "Swingers" fan.

Considering the seedy nature of the adult film industry and the sad fates of many of its stars, Inside Deep Throat is surprisingly light on tragedy.

But for all the duplicitous minds playing games with each other on the screen, Nine Queens' best con artist turns out to be Bielinsky himself -- and his target is the audience.

Excels at bringing on the high-power pyrotechnics.

As slight as the picture is, though, its hero is an indelible creation.

A masterpiece of pop filmmaking -- a fantastic, exuberant entertainment that manages to be both sleek and substantial without being patronizing.