Rick Groen

Ghostbusters II is a comfy experience for all concerned - easy bucks for the producers, easier yuks for the consumers; nothing ventured, money gained. [19 Jun 1989, p.D9]

Shtick is what Twins is all about, but there's good shtick and bad shtick, and there's enough good shtick in Twins, the majority of it involving Arnold Schwarzenegger's exposure to modern U.S. mores, to keep the momentum going. [10 Dec 1988, p.C3]

And, in a pointless riffing on the title, there are ginger kitties galore -- this flick has enough cats to launch a Broadway musical.

In Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, the times may be hard but the apocalypse is soft. Welcome to the anti-"Melancholia."

Often funny, always telling, this is the kind of not- quite-successful comedy that is fraught with not-quite-intentional meaning. From the pun in the title to the echoes in the script, Class is a pop sociologist's dream. [22 July 1983]

Here's what's good about The Good German: The look is fantastic; technically, the movie is a retro marvel. Here's what's bad: The script sucks; it keeps promising to be clever, engaging, subtle and completely fails to deliver.

Not even Pacino can save it.

It's all such a throwback, and yet there's something rather sweet about the way this pot boils.

An amiable crowd-pleaser, nothing more, nothing less. [27 Nov 1987]

Too bad. What dreams may come, indeed, when such enticing foreplay ends with a consummation devoutly to be missed.

When the tent folds and the dust settles, the question is not whether the movie is good – sorry, not a chance – but whether it's garish enough, sappy enough, Hollywood enough to rise to the level of being likeably bad. Is it, in short, a guilty pleasure?

Not that The Nutty Professor should ever be confused with a good movie, but it is a perfect vehicle for the redisplay of Murphy's neglected talents, steering him away from the smug persona of his recent disasters and whisking him back to the cozy locale of his Saturday Night Live roots.

Sorry, but the real Grimms did a whole lot more with a great deal less.

These are valid ideas, but they don't always arise organically out of the script, and can seem clumsily expressed.

Crowe is too much the good employee to spin the yarn properly, to give the picture the very integrity it endorses. He might have made a more convincing movie had he first convinced himself.

Gimmickry is death to this sort of artsy endeavour -- it turns a movie with a small budget into a small movie.

Amounts to a complete misreading of Wilde, who used the conventions of artifice to lampoon artificiality. Parker totally misses the point by tacking on such cinematic curlicues -- apparently, in his eagerness to seem movie-friendly, he's too hung up on the importance of not being earnest.

Regresses into a lame action-thriller.

The spaghetti western may be dead, but the noodle eastern looks to be alive and well.

Warning: Cars comes unequipped with two essential options -- charm and a good muffler.

Elf is jolly but could have been jollier, funny but could have been funnier, charming but ... well, point made.

The pop-culture answer to a murder-suicide, the kind of flick that serves itself up as the object of its own satire.

In Hollywood, and perhaps beyond, there's nothing more predictable than a rebel with a cause. XXX pretends otherwise, but isn't really fooling anyone -- ultimately, this is a movie as generic as its title.

Appaloosa wobbles and wanders, promising to take a fresh look at those old myths, only to lapse back into weary convention.

A revisiting of George Pal's 1960 adaptation of the H. G. Wells novel. Pal's take on the book was visually delightful and occasionally clever; this one is always workmanlike and mainly pedestrian.

So that great start turns all clunky and dull and, you know, mediocre. Still, you'll love Emma. Emma is about as cute as a kid can get.

The Woman in the Fifth is an interesting chameleon until it runs out of disguises, and all that was transitory just looks transparent.

The movie makes for quite a hike. It's also, at times, a bit of a slog.

Damned if Parker hasn't done it again. An intermittently good filmmaker but a consistently bad polemicist, he may well sway opinion here -- but, oops, not in the hoped-for direction.

Despite (or maybe because of) its showy cleverness, Full Frontal merely seems full of itself -- it's a small film made by a big ego pretending to a modesty he no longer feels.

The picture is actually watchable. What's more, as romance comedies go, it's something of a novelty.

Not an extraordinary portrait, but it does portray an extraordinary man.

The documentary seeks only to make a joyful noise, and is sometimes laboured in the love it so keenly wants to express. Then again, as Leonard would be the first to concede, there are worse sins than flawed worship.

The result is good gossip, entertainingly delivered, yet with a distinctly musty odour, its expiry date long gone.

With the notable exception of Martin Scorsese's opus, most boxing flicks suffer form a certain amount of raw-boned sentimentality, the sort of easy melodrama that pits naive underdogs against corrupt overlords, or age against youth, or purity against prejudice. Even the recent "Million Dollar Baby" succumbed in the final act. But this one, where "Rocky" meets "The Waltons," has us reeling under its saccharine weight.

Only occasionally does Fresnadillo rise above the mundane, but, to his credit, the exceptions are worth savouring.

To these disappointed eyes, Little Children seems a frustrating mess.

A bland Shaun Evans is woefully miscast as the brash American.

The result, like so many stout travellers from stage to screen, is respectable. Stolidly, bloodlessly, yawningly respectable.

Didn't we just see this movie? Over in Britain, big bad governments may be outsourcing his job and rendering him redundant, but never fear -- the plucky working-class hero has definitely found a steady gig on the silver screen.

Our time is plagued with primitive directors toiling in the name of entertainment, and protected by an industry that rewards competence over excellence. They're the reason why this movie is simply average, and why all the Red Dragons look so uniformly beige.

Great satire (read most anything by Swift) must be capable of doing more than preaching to the converted, and, measured by that lofty standard, Bob Roberts may fall a bit short. [18 Sep 1992]

A contemplative fable, Honeydripper locates the moment but misses the heart-pounding, gut-wrenching explosion -- the history is there, the thrill isn't.

Despite these advantages, North Dallas Forty's descents into farce and into the lone man versus the corrupt system mentality deprive it of real resonance. It's still not the honest portrait of professional athletics that sport buffs have been waiting for. It is, though, a stylish cut above most films of this type. [4 Aug 1979]

My mood kept fluctuating, as did my reaction when the end credits rolled: This is seriously lovely; this is fluff; this is seriously lovely fluff.

So what's the problem? Just that the plot seems a bit too schematic, the characters a little too pat, and the imagery altogether too convenient -- for a tale that means to explore the elusiveness of truth, Lemmons sure likes to sew things up neatly.

Don't abandon Abandon. In the movies' long weekly line-up, it stands apart -- innocent of banality, and guilty of nothing more damning than intelligent effort that falls a tad short.

So what's surprising here isn't Polanski's choice of material but his utter failure to put any distinctive stamp on it.

Even augmented by the priceless commodity of Smith's talent, $25,575 can only be stretched so far. Apparently, it won't buy you a stellar cast - some very strong lines receive some rather flat deliveries. And some distinctly lame scenes survive the chopping block.

Can't spoil the ending, except to say that it spoils itself.

Far more than most action stars getting on in years, Bruce Willis has aged nicely into the role. Maybe it’s that shaved pate of his, a bullet-head that still looks primed for any chamber.

The picture is as tastefully pretty as its girls, and just as motionless.

Down in the Valley is one of those pictures you root for even when it goes badly wrong.

The film is an unremarkable exercise in craft dedicated to a thoroughly remarkable artist – the tale is sublime, the telling only serviceable.

Postcards From The Edge, is long on witty one-liners but woefully short on coherent structure. [13 Sep 1990, p.C5]

Here, Soderbergh's visual additions -- gimmicky lighting, surreal backdrops, all cued to the monologue's changing rhythms -- are more distracting than enhancing. Or maybe not. In a way, the camera's empty gimmickry points to the same tendency in Gray's verbal canters -- diverting enough but, ultimately, isn't it just sleight-of-mouth? [18 April 1997, p.C5]

Constant is the very thing The Constant Gardener is not. Attractive yet fickle, the movie beckons enticingly one moment and wanders off the next.

Not woeful, not wonderful, merely watchable.

It's clear that Burn After Reading is a wannabe cult favourite -- some viewers may embrace it; many more will just want to burn after watching.

No one is likely to mistake Excess Baggage for a great movie, but it is an intriguing piece of pop sociology.

Murphy's brand of crude is studied and sleek, all high-polish and sheer calculation. As a performer, he's stylishly smooth; as a comic, that very smoothness is both his greatest strength and his abiding weakness. [22 Dec 1987]

Some performances carry a picture, this one bench-presses it. Sean Penn's work here is so mesmerizing, so intense, so guaranteed to put him front and centre when Oscar reads out the nominees, as to almost obscure the multiple failings of the misguided movie around it.

Some books just aren't meant to be movies -- what once was confidently distinguished now seems merely average and a tiny bit desperate.

The actors are all better than the material, just as the script's occasionally amusing tangents are far superior to its mundane narrative arc.

The World's Fastest Indian may be the world's slowest movie.

Mainly, though, it's the performers who are having the last laugh.

A laugh a minute? Liar Liar Jim Carrey's forced truthfulness means a lot of mildly funny facial gyrations.

What a sprawling, befuddling, fascinating, frustrating mess of a movie. Usually the tautest of directors, Clint Eastwood has gone all slack here, allowing his subject to get completely away from him.

If physical appearance creates its own class system (in high school and beyond), then Qualls is perfect for this proselytizing role. He has that rarest of movie-star faces -- one that over comes the tyranny of beauty.

The result is the kind of picture you can sit through quite contentedly, the cinematic equivalent of an innocuous seatmate on an airplane trip -- it neither bores nor insults you, and, when the ride's over, is promptly gone and forgotten.

Win Win is a paragon of truth at a slow jog, but that upbeat sprint to the finish feels like a big cheat.

It's a mini-masterwork of acting. Stahl is definitely one to watch closely -- he's the real deal. But the emerging plot isn't.

That last wrong turn completely undoes a picture that had been steering a very impressive course.

Inevitably, the one ingredient that does remain constant are the performances -- once again, there aren't any (the lone exception is Gloria Foster's mommy Oracle, although, even here, the shine is off the joke). Of course, for the hyperactive principals, this gig isn't about acting -- it's about athleticism, which suits Keanu Reeves's talents just fine.

Uneven and erratic and far too busy, its flashes of brilliance dimmed by overambitious meanderings.

So I didn't Huckabees, nor did I entirely not it. Rather, when the end draws nigh and judgment beckons, I'm doomed again to dither in the tepid netherworld, that vast limbo where movies are only half-decent and movie-going is merely half-ed.

Adapting a great short story, like Carver's "So Much Water So Close to Home," into a movie poses a dilemma: How to flesh it out to feature length without destroying what made it great in the first place?

Perversely enough, the comedy is what keeps the picture rolling; it's the so-called action that persists in bringing the thing to a screeching halt.

Love & Other Drugs is quite the little cocktail of mood-brighteners, a movie narcotic easy to take and, since the effects wear off quickly, even easier to forget.

The novels remain a witty portrait of life; this flick is just a study in preciousness.

The overstuffed farce remains, but the caustic leanness and meanness of the original are gone with the Mississippi wind. That leaves us to settle for occasionally funny moments in an otherwise uneven picture.

Ultimately, the viewing experience is like watching a snake swallow its own tail -- that once-menacing serpent is now a clown act, all yuks and no venom.

The result is a rarity on the modern screen -- a film with more brains than heart.

A nice little dream, too, hardly epic but weirdly satisfying, the kind you wake up from and dearly want to re-enter, just for another drowsy moment or two. [3 March 1989]

Director Cameron Crowe who, not having made a dramatic feature since his 2005 stinker "Elizabethtown," seems bound and determined to crank out a crowd-pleaser here.

As for true-love Charles, he would ascend to the Prime Minister's office, and then rise again to even greater heights: They named the tea after him. Indeed, that may be the smartest way to see this flick, curled up on your sofa with a cup of Earl Grey -- just make sure it's as decaffeinated as what you're watching.

Rarely has a star's look-at-me turn so completely torpedoed a project. Whenever the picture threatens to gain some momentum, up pops Jack to stop it dead in its tracks. The loyal few may be laughing with him, but the rest of us are definitely laughing at him.

This picture is to comedy what carpet bombing is to aerial warfare: The onslaught is so relentless that occasional direct hits on the funny bone are a statistical guarantee.

Huston's performance has a keen edge to it, as do those of the other actors, yet everyone suffers from the same problem -- they're not playing knowable characters so much as thematic points on the broad spectrum of violence.

For a novel written nearly 300 years ago by a dour Irish cleric with a mad-on about the material world and a satiric mindset dark enough to flirt with misanthropy, it's amazing how well Gulliver's Travels travels. Even Jack Black can't ruin the thing, although not for lack of trying.

Respectable by the tube's standards, even a cut above dumbed-down Hollywood, but hardly the stuff of creative renewal.

Like most kiddies games, this one starts out fun and then gets tired. Inevitably, that's when Slade tries to revive our interest by upping the gore quotient.

And the climax, where fake tears suddenly become real, doesn't ring true. By then, nothing does, leaving the film's successful deception to double as its eventual failure -- cast adrift in this fog of appearances, we appear not to care.

Gilliam himself is a joy to behold. His wit stays sharp even as his fortunes dull, and the conditions that conspire against him only prove the mettle in our man of La Mancha.

This is a frustrating film that takes its cutesy title way too literally.

So no one would argue that Thumbsucker sucks. But the thing does seem just so indie-movie familiar.

This sort of flick can be fun, and there are moments here when it is, when a suddenly shifting perspective tosses us for a dizzying loop. Then again, there's such a thing as too much fun and too many moments -- at over two hours, this particular game meanders on way past its welcome.

Ultimately, Detachment invites us to feel precisely what it warns against – detached.

As the end credits are rolling: What happened? Suddenly, the film stalls, and everything that looked great -- the mechanics of the caper, the grafted-on wit and wisdom -- starts to feel repetitious and a tad gimmicky.

Despite the best efforts of the cast (Cage is especially evocative in a literally confined role), Stone can't disguise the fact that his movie, like his heroes, has come to a kinetic halt, stuck between a narrative rock and an emotional hard place.

Thanks to him, The Quick and the Dead is more than moribund. How much more? Let's just say that there's motion in the picture. Indeed, speaking of accomplishments, Sharon Stone appears clad throughout an entire feature - gee, give a gal a gun and there's no telling what she can achieve.m [10 Feb 1995, p.C1]

The movie unreels like a depressive in a manic phase, a frenzy of lightning-fast cuts, cuts, cuts.

Well-acted, nicely shot, slick and certainly sexy, Swimming Pool may be all foreplay and no climax, but what the heck -- there are worse ways to be teased.

We've got the trademark elements but not their magical bonding, and the result is a selection of scenes in search of a movie.

It's a rom-com, it's a road movie, it's "Cars" without the animation, it's "A History of Violence" played for yuks. It's all that and less because, really, Hit & Run is awfully hit & miss.

As a writer-director, he's (Kim Ki-Duk) a wizard with the camera but a plebe with a pen. His latest, 3-Iron, continues the frustrating trend.

It's your standard coming-of-age tune set to a top-40 beat. [24 Oct 1997]

Semi-wonderful at best.

So why does the thing play like a mediocre sitcom stripped of its laugh-track?

This latest entry in the White House genre is polished, but formulaic suspense.

Ultimately, the result is identical to Mills's debut effort in "Thumbsucker." Once again, clever insight vies with misty-eyed sentimentality, honesty with artifice, real humour with bogus gravity, the genuinely affecting with the merely quirky. But "Thumbsucker" was at least a promising start; Beginners is just a frustrating continuation.

Varying the pace, altering the tone, Ruben definitely keeps us off balance. Not as good as it could be, a far sight better than it might have been, this is a movie that puts the lie to the computer's stern dictum: garbage in, passable entertainment out. [08 Feb 1991]

Black Rain is really an extended exercise in pure style, a pretty picture in constant motion painted by a very commercial artist. In fact, the style is so uncontaminated by substance that everything here - plot, character, theme - gets subordinated to the glitzy sights and ambient sounds. [22 Sep 1989]

So the questions arises: Why bother watching the contrived fiction when the eye-popping fact is readily available? Answer: Why, indeed.

Always stylish and occasionally thrilling and never thoughtful.

Are these enlightened critics or dark nutcases themselves?

Separate Lies is deceptive in more ways than it intends. Because the acting is so uniformly superb, we're almost fooled into believing that the movie is as good as the cast. It isn't, not by half.

Yes, a Terence Malick film remains an event, but he appears awfully disoriented in The New World -- less a seasoned traveller than a perplexed tourist, content to mask his confusion by reaching for a camera and snapping relentless pretty pictures.

In the deck of clichés that is the typical sports movie, it at least does us the courtesy of shuffling the cards a little.

That's not to say Terminator 3 is terminally awful -- just banal, merely humdrum, more conventional horror flick than science-fiction myth, and a whole lot less than what came before.

Ultimately, the movie is a perfect mirror of its star -- looks great, seems empty.

Director Dan Algrant’s conceit here is to take an actual event – a tribute concert for Tim held at a Brooklyn church in 1991, the concert that sparked Jeff’s own career – and wrap a fictionalized drama around it.

It's not so much a movie in three acts as three movies stuffed into a single casing, and often showing the strain.

The promise is dangled yet never developed. Rather, the narrative slips into a backstory that alternates between confusing and contradictory.

There's as much to draw us in, but far less to put us off. [13 Jun 1997]

More humdrum than horrible. It isn't futuristic film noir; it's just everyday film beige.

The laughs in Working Girl are the laughs of near-recognition - just good enough to make us wish they were much better.

The wonder is that the cast -- a terrific ensemble with talents honed on such hallowed stages as the Abbey Theatre -- brings it off with far more verve than the slight tale deserves.

Most British actors are awfully good at underplaying the overwritten, and this group, headed by Matthew Macfadyen, Rupert Graves and Daisy Donovan, is no exception -- where others would mug, they demitasse.

Initially, the quick dialogue and strong cast obscure, at least partly, the fact that the plot is itself a dirty trick, a bit of a con game. Once the deception is seen through, the movie ends up inadvertently mimicking its subject matter: Like politics, it too leaves you disillusioned.

I'm not saying that a date with this picture is all pleasure; but it's not all guilt either.

All the kids here are terrific, significantly better than the actual movie that surrounds them. Although ostensibly fashioned by Abrams, it's really a summer-weight Spielberg yarn.

The cast is proficient, with Balk especially adroit at giving her demonic gifts a gleeful twist. And director Andrew Fleming keeps the special effects on a low boil, effective yet not ostentatious, while taking allusive advantage of the competing (and sometimes complementing) tension between the school's Catholic imagery and the girl's pagan icons. But as our heroines lose their grip, so does he. [03 May 1996]

Turns a blind eye to the very history it pretends to teach.

Hollywood's big-screen answer to France's 1983 charming film Les Comperes is a wacky star vehicle wildly out of control. [9 May 1997, p.D1]

Fabulous idea/faulty execution is the review.

It does the job just fine. That job, as director George Lucas freely admits, is quite simply to thrill the beating hearts and the inquiring minds of 12-year-old boys.

Seen from any chronological vantage, this isn't a superior flick - think of it more as great radio with average pictures. [16 Nov 1990]

Jane Campion makes a beeline for the repressed sexuality, and loses the nuance. [17 Jan 1997]

Very few movies end so much better than they begin. For that reason, and only that reason, this is an exceptional picture.

McCarthy delivers the moment of pathos in a totally different voice, tears staining her puffy face, as feelings awfully real and tainted in tragedy bubble up from deep within the comic persona. It’s startling, it’s wholly incongruous, yet it’s undeniably moving. God, how this woman can act and, within the brief frames of that different film, how we long to see the rest of it.

A feel-good flick that doesn't make you feel too bad -- in this genre, that almost qualifies as a ringing endorsement.

In this tale of two lives, Being Flynn gets the emphasis wrong. The success that has many fathers is altogether predictable; it's the despicable orphan of failure who has us in his thrall.

In an era when the words "President" and "penis" can occupy the same sentence and prompt nothing but yawns, this picture actually manages to surprise, to startle, yes, to administer a series of small but genuine shocks.

As an esthetic work, the movie is dismissable. As a social artifact, however, it's intriguing. Textually and sub-textually, intentionally or inadvertently, just what is being said here? [14 Aug 1992]

The sounds are fine and, thanks to technology's ever-progressive march, the sights are even better. But that third S -- the story -- remains the sticking point, and ain't it always the way.

Offers you the ostensible bargain of two movies in one -- a character study at the outset and the crime caper that follows. The first picture is intriguing, the second stinks.

Despite his flair for trenchant dialogue, nicely complemented by Mark Isham's bluesy jazz score, Rudolph whets our appetite but then fails to deliver. The picture limps to its ending and leaves us with nothing to hold onto.

This is well-crafted retro horror, too familiar to be really scary but smart enough to be fun. And funny too, with the kind of pure laughs that grow organically from the script, untainted by the chemical spray of irony.

The setting is unique, the cast is terrific, the dialogue crackles and, if only there were a plot worth believing, In Bruges might have been a fine film.

It's a downbeat flick forged by an upbeat talent - despite the angst in the frames, you can feel the joy of the framer. [23 June 1995]

Chaplin is a mediocre movie that you can't take your eyes off. Your wandering mind is telling you one thing: This is a standard check-list biography, the kind of glossy whitewash that treats a man's accomplishments like so many vegetables from the produce aisle - toss 'em in, tick 'em off, and move on. But those riveted eyes are saying something else entirely - they're watching Robert Downey, Jr. with rapt attention, marvelling at his every move, pondering his every gesture.

Well acted and crisply directed, this latest version can at least make a claim to competence.

Along the way there are definitely some pleasing distractions, just not enough to obscure the growing realization that a much better picture could have been made, and wasn't. Many films never have a chance, but this one did – it's an opportunity wasted.

The impact should be visceral and gut-wrenching; instead, it's cool and cerebral – after all, we're being lectured in a lecture hall.

By stripping the genre down to its essentials, long on the serial disasters but thankfully light on the stupid dialogue, [Petersen] not only maintains an acceptable modicum of suspense but -- here's the major bonus -- also manages to set a blissful speed record in the process, bringing his pricey blockbuster home to port in under 100 minutes.

V for very, very ordinary.

Minghella is a smart guy with splendid intentions but, ultimately, he's a victim here of his own liberal contrivances.

The whole caper loses its rhythm and its direction around the two-thirds mark. By the finish, the punch has left the lines, and the once-purposeful energy goes mindlessly manic - gone are both the point and the parody.

It's a treat because, making no apologies for the source material, director Guillermo del Toro lets his picture gorge on power bars of pop energy, sugared with sprinkles of playful humour, and, at least twice, laced with a visual style so piercingly keen that horror morphs into beauty. Not bad for a pulpy outing.

The film is sometimes funny and occasionally smart yet never quite what it wants to be – funny and smart at the same time.

In the hallowed frames of 42, the legend is front and centre and still inspiring. Too bad the more interesting man is nowhere to be seen.

Black comedies don't get much darker than this.

A picture with pop's delicious energy yet none of its attendant risk, a flick that no one will love but everyone will like.

Individually, Dawson and Cassel each generate plenty of screen heat, but, together in that one bedroom scene, their chemistry is downright explosive, so much so that it seems we have strayed into a whole different movie, and dearly want to stay there.

Actor-turned-director Tony Goldwyn elicits solid performances from the cast, then undercuts them by resorting to a trite montage or a clunky set-piece, inevitably scored with an obtrusive rock tune telling us what to feel and when to feel it.

For a stylish thriller that hinges on the titillating theme of voyeurism, this movie is surprisingly innocuos. [22 May 1993]

To his credit, Beatty has designed Bulworth along the classic lines of Shakespeare's Fool -- the antic truth-speaker who has the ear of the court.

While the initial sequence is glorious, the last is a shambles.

No matter how strange it gets, or how distorted for political gain or refined for religious purposes, its essence is hard to pin down, even after a 2 1/2 -hour search.

Once again, Cianfrance handles the individual scenes with menacing aplomb but, once again, the whole is much less than the sum of its parts.

As a motion picture, Fever Pitch is merely competent.

The bloody narrative has an oddly bloodless effect. But that's not surprising – not when a film is so eager to double as a lecture.

Oblivion is an okay blockbuster, a multimillion-dollar exercise in competence.

The humour may not be wickedly black, but once in a while it’s amusingly beige.

In a virtuoso turn, Tommy Lee Jones delivers an over-the-top performance, but it works for the obvious reason that everything about Cobb is oversized. Except for one commodity - there's not an ounce of sentimentality on the guy (nor in this film - it too is unlikely to please the crowd). [23 Dec 1994]

First things first: As one of my wise editors noted, no person who can flash as many teeth as Julia Roberts should ever star in a movie called Mona Lisa Smile.

The plot is bare-bones stuff, weak in story line and bereft of motivation.

What benefits the picture early on, giving it a casual air, becomes cloying in the later going, making it feel like a smug exercise in mutual admiration.

Nevertheless, in mid-reverie, there's no denying the pleasure in falling under its little spell -- till human voices wake us, and we frown.

Political thrillers with flawed heroes demand a different potion, one that mixes the grit of reality with the seeds of excitement until they reach a critical mass and explode. In that sense, for all its strengths and good intentions, The Debt owes a debt to the wrong genre – Birkenau wasn't fantasy; too often, this movie is.

Of course, bad writing can undo the best actor. If you doubt that, check out De Niro's soliloquy at the film's climax. He's acting the heck out of the words, but they're still dragging him down with them.

Yet these are precisely the sort of pictures that divide audiences over a central question: Are those strings being honestly played or just shamefully pulled? Of course, the answer determines whether you feel moved or merely manipulated.

There's a continuing delicacy to [Singer's] direction that gives the audience room to breathe and reason to linger. This may not be a grownup movie but -- unlike the Star Wars franchise or the Batman sequels -- it is a movie that grownups can watch minus the requisite bottle of Excedrin.

Yet, for all that's wrong here, one thing is wonderfully, blissfully right, and his name is Tom Hanks.

An amiable action-comedy, amiable enough that the laughs come in a steady drizzle if not a torrent, and that the action is something blissfully less than the usual full-out assault on our battered senses.

An overdose of sympathy makes for a wispy picture, likeable certainly but lacking in crispness and clarity.

One Hour Photo is two-thirds of a movie -- the last act is a bit of a shambles.

It's the sort of big thought that makes a small point, which is precisely the problem with Life in a Day. A documentary that looks to give this notion visual form, it strives awfully hard for depth but, more often than not, comes off too shallow.

An hallucinatory mix of the imagined and the real, all revolving around the mystery at the cold heart of the tale.

Hitchcock unspools at that deliciously silly juncture where biography meets fallacy. Translation: Any director who could crank out Psycho must be a crackpot himself.

Festival in Cannes is definitely Jaglomesque, but can't get that tricky balance right -- the result is a picture as charmingly insubstantial as the world it invokes.

Popped in the oven and marked with a predictable P, The Family Stone is the Christmas cookie of Christmas movies -- this thing is so pat it should come with the recipe attached.

All this is engrossing. Stylistically and visually, Villeneuve flashes his talent to draw us in. However, narratively and thematically, he seems to be cheating. [18 Dec 1998, p.D10]

Speaking of that deadly finale, it's easily the best part of the picture. Beautifully edited, shot in fluid slow-motion, scored to a traditional Irish ballad crooned in a child's tremulous voice, the violence of the climax is anthemic. The whole sequence is undeniably moving.

This is a movie that works well when it works, and lazes around the rest of the time.

Women deserve better women's pictures -- men too.

Ultimately, Sliding Doors becomes a victim of its own cleverness, shutting down all that early promise.

Fables should be succinct, and Konchalovsky lets his run on too long.

Shows promise, but needs more effort, and definitely doesn't play well with others. [7 Jun 1996, p.C2]

Disappointingly unique.

Not everything works that well. Despite a uniformly solid cast - the likes of Eli Wallach, Danny Aiello, Christopher Walken, even Robert De Niro (a co-producer) all appear - the script gets away from Primus in the last act, when the satire does a slow dissolve into farce. [13 Nov 1992]

Just a guffaw here, a chuckle there, ho-hum, and that's all, folks. [27 Jan 1989]

A well-crafted, well-acted anomaly: a film good enough to raise its aim and our expectations but not to score a direct hit. So one leaves simultaneously pleased and disappointed, asking the right question - "What if?" - but for all the wrong reasons. [25 July 1981]

Oh, it's The Return, all right. To any masochist who's been pining for all those clichéd tropes associated with Russian cinema -- ponderous pacing and arcane symbolism shot through a lens darkly -- this will seem a welcome blast from the past.

In the slow coast down Notting Hill, we approach the blessed land of Nodding Off.

Like its predecessor, this is a basic bungalow of a flick, where low-maintenance superheroes take their ease and you can pay your (dis)respects painlessly enough. In short, okay to visit, wouldn't want to live there.

Aesthetically, this isn't a great documentary, although, during the first half, there are great moments in it. But the latter part is scattered and frenzied, rather like an excited dog tearing off after too many rabbits at once -- a thematic hunt that's all chase and scant context.

So is the result just a case of life imitating pop art, or has the director shaped the footage to enhance the imitation?

Most of the cast (along with director Joe Mantello) have been recruited from the stage play, and they all do a fine job of trimming their performances for the screen.

The makers of Shattered Glass ignore this obvious give-and-take reality, and substitute the hoary myth that, save for the odd lying devil, the free press is a bastion of the gospel truth. Even here, then, the facts get shaped to fit the theme. Ironically, had they not, it would have made for a helluva better story.

He gets much of what he wants, but not all of it, and not all of the time - the film is just too eclectic on occasion, a bit jumpy in its tone and its pacing.

Despite Auteuil's performance, it's a rather listless amble down the middle of the road, where the thematic ironies are too obvious and the sexual politics too smug.

A poet is not a pirate (except in his dreams), and, minus the gold in his teeth and kohl over his eyes and trinkets in his tresses, Depp is handicapped here -- for all his deft brushwork, he can only do so much with a flat character on a small canvas.

From my doddering perspective - rheumy with a view - Volume 3 puts plenty of cinema into the picture but leeches all the charm out of the tale.

Great pictures are seamless; in this one, you can not only see the seams but count the stitches.

Don't Move comes to seem as static as its title -- we just don't learn enough to compensate for feeling so little.

Normally, such saccharine inspiration only manages to clog the heart, not warm it. But there's a true original in this den of clichés and her name is Keke Palmer.

It's mainly a hunt for ironies, usually playful but occasionally poignant, and the search is definitely successful enough to merit our attention -- although maybe not the two-hour running time.

When the bloody climax comes, we look on apathetically, as desensitized to the violence as a pornographer is to sex.

What we have here is a piece of comic fluff that, in the hands of these actors, gets turned into an occasionally charming piece of comic fluff. [29 May 1992]

Ultimately, the movie suffers from the same fate as its characters. That first explosive scene creates a state of shock, leaving everyone and everything to drift about in a numbing vacuum.

I love the City of Light as much as any starry-eyed provincial, but Paris, je t'aime tries even my considerable patience.

The result is a war picture that, trying to pass off fidelity to the book as objectivity, sacrifices any voice of its own, and ends up not knowing what to think.

Americans is unimpeachable fun. Peter Segal doesn't aim high in this lampoon of U.S. presidents, but hits the target. [20 Dec 1996, p.C8]

As a movie, Blue Chips is more journeyman than star, but, once in a while, it hops off the bench and shows a surprising flash of talent.[22 Feb 1994]

At his best, Spike Lee is too brave to be subtle.

Despite an impressive array of acting talent, nothing quite rings true -- all those sharp pieces fit beautifully together without adding up to much. [22 Jan 1999, p.D6]

As manipulative as a charmer with a snake, and twice as much fun... Shameless, yes, but open your eyes, close your mind, sit back and enjoy - 'cause it feels so good.

We're left with the weakest part of the novel -- the lurching and often melodramatic plot -- plus the chance to see two splendid actors, Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett, do the best they can with what they're given (sadly, in Blanchett's case, not much). Okay, no one would call that trade-off a scandal, but it sure ain't much of a bargain.

IN THE BEGINNING, Ivan Reitman begat Animal House and Animal House begat Meatballs and Meatballs begat Stripes. In the end, the box-office deity surveyed this handiwork and pronounced it good. Good and stale. For you can tamper with the setting, you can fiddle with the cast but, by all that's holy in the land of the cash flow, don't ever mess with a lucrative premise. [27 June 1981]

Judi Dench is much more of a challenge. Drenched in powder and pomp, the grand old Dame pops up in a London carriage. She's there in a flash and then, as quickly, gone, and her fleeting presence is exactly like the fleeting merit of this fourth galleon in the portly franchise: It prompts stirrings, not quite all the way to feelings.

The thing is just a clunky and tasteless and dumb scare picture, isn't it? Clunky, yes. Tasteless, for sure. But not so dumb I fear.

Don't expect a Caravaggio, but if your taste turns to Hallmark, this is a good bet -- a straight-up Nativity story as safe as death and taxes.

Cerebral without being dry, delicate without being dull, Mr. And Mrs. Bridge is a rarity: a drama of manners that breathes esthetic life into airless parlours, without either sentimentalizing the occupants or hyping the atmosphere. [21 Dec 1980]

My advice is to choose the first half, where things are really funny until they aren't.

The pat inspirational formula is followed to a sweaty T, although it comes here with an inadvertent side effect -- more than a few nagging questions never get answered.

Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle is a bunch of bon mots in search of a larger theme. Happily, the mots are so very bon that the two hours breeze by quickly enough.

A comedy boasting a gimmick worth a peek. For, into this remembrance of time past and youth altruistic, the script injects a heavy dose of up-to-the-minute pragmatism. [16 Aug 1985]

A lotta woe to sit through, with not much to think about and only one matter to address. After the two hours-plus have sped by with brutal alacrity, all that's left is for the survivors of the bloodbath to hose down and suss out a "new beginning." I'm still searching for mine, but you might have better luck.

In the moments at his disposal, Smith almost steals the flick. He's so wittily government-phobic that I found myself hoping for a climax that would blow Bruce Willis away and promote Kevin Smith to saviour-of-the-free-world. Now that might be a sequel worth rooting for.

Cadillac Man starts slowly, makes a sharp right turn, accelerates hard, then coasts to a limp finish. The verdict: not a bad run. Stacked up against the typical field of Hollywood comedies, this one places a respectable second - definitely short of the top rank, but a mile ahead of the mirthless pack. [18 May 1990]

Green may be right to avoid the melodramatic waves of the conventional thriller. But, if so, he needs to dive a lot deeper than this -- there's just not enough under in Undertow.

Designer babies rule dystopia in stylish SF thriller filled with recycled plot devices.

Thrills are in short supply, but so are annoyances. This is a maintenance-free ride.

There's a good movie buried inside The Nanny Diaries, and a good cast trying hard to dig it out. Too bad they don't get much help.

Techine has long been a cerebral director (counting Roland Barthes among his admirers), and Thieves certainly steals your complete attention. It's just that, when the picture is over, our involved mind can't resist a concluding thought: Somehow, the theft is more impressive than the compensation. [31 Jan 1997, p.C5]

If you like your skiing extreme but your documentaries safe, then carve a sharp turn over to Steep.

In The Company You Keep, old radicals never die – they just turn into old actors.

The main flaw is an over-abundance of villains, a bout of narrative greediness that sees them marching out of their lairs like so many evil-doers-on-parade.

Really wanting to get into our heads, 1408 tries awfully hard to play both sides of logic's boundary line -- tries and fails, and then succeeds, only to ultimately fail again. On the whole, the frights are frighteningly erratic.

When [Jackcson]'s not on camera, Coach Carter feels like the two-hour opus it is — too long, too banal, a bit ridiculous. But when he is, nothing else seems to matter, and how sublime is that.

The strangely hybrid result, half Herzog and half Hollywood, plays like its own battleground. Sometimes, the tension is fascinatingly productive; other times, all we get is the worst of both worlds.

Ultimately a disappointment – this is a movie easy to watch and even easier to forget.

Without its star, this picture would float off forgettably into the ether.

Too often, Levin confuses passion with focus, intensity with clarity, and deflating lies with discovering truths.

Somewhere along the way, Respiro just seems to run out of breath.

Since life's infidelities have a way of ending on a messy note, it becomes art's responsibility to impose order upon the mess, to give it an aesthetically convincing shape. And that's exactly where Lyne falls short.

Flashy, fun, shallow, easy-going and without a hope of brilliance.

From its title on down, An Officer and a Gentleman (at the Plaza) is both a thoroughly rousing crowd-pleaser and a shamelessly manipulative banner-waver, a homage to the never-practiced ethics of a non-existent era. [28 Jul 1982]