Robert Horton

I'll be damned if I can figure out how its various ingredients are supposed to blend together.

If it weren't so pushy about selling itself, The Dish might have been a very special movie.

Bulworth shoots along with great vigor, and its non-politically correct jabs are occasionally exhilarating.

A standard morality tale, and looks especially weak in the shadow of "Eyes Wide Shut" and "Fight Club," which it resembles.

The movie gives us episodes from her life, and although some of them are charming and all of them well-played, I occasionally found myself wondering why I should want to be interested in this person.

In this case, I have to say, the sense of boredom.

Not terribly enjoyable to watch.

I still feel pushed around by Darabont's mysticism, and his overbearing sense of grandness; a little bit of the Mile goes a long way.

Part of the appeal of John Irving's writing is its sense of bounty, the way the world is offered up as a horn of plenty. The Cider House Rules movie, by contrast, feels narrowed down to small slices of experience.

Nearly the perfect balance between straight-faced pulp action and amused wonder at the outlandish world of comic books.

Floating this material slightly above the assembly-line level is the energetic cast and the efforts of writer-director Kris Isacsson.

So very general in its characters and story that it actively keeps you from enjoying the simple pleasures of a movie like this.

Julia Roberts owns this sweet-natured film.

A reminder of why Bullock became a movie star in the first place.

An acerbically comic fable.

Works best as a free-flowing essay.

It probably helps to be loaded while you're watching this movie.

A dismal film, a flop as both 21st-century romantic comedy and gay "Kramer vs. Kramer."

One of the least endurable films of 1999.

There isn't a moment of wonder or poetry in its very long 69 minutes.

Takes an easy target and turns it into something naggingly weird.

A gyno-phobic fantasy about the date who won't go away.

The plot is convoluted.

The story of Groove... provides an ingratiating road map to a cultural phenomenon. Just make sure you drink lots of water while you're there.

A piece of fluff that can be enjoyed without guilt.

The Taste of Others takes regular (but not ordinary) people and knocks them out of their usual zones of activity. The resulting collisions leave behind a very pleasing flavor.

While this movie is no great advance in cinema comedy, it is rewardingly silly.

There is something especially irritating about whimsy done badly.

Slouches in as a weightless, instantly forgettable picture.

Something rare: a mess of a movie that is somehow infectious, and infectious not despite the mess, but because of it.

The result is fantasy that wafts away.

Has its dull spots, and is unintentionally laugh-out-loud funny at times -- but isn't that what we expect?

Primary Colors is by turns hugely entertaining and resoundingly square, beginning as a raucous black comedy about political mechanics and ending as a sober-sided morality tale.

Moss -- in her first big role since "The Matrix" -- is the main reason to see Red Planet, a badly written and visually scenic space opus.

Sometimes star power alone can keep you from walking out of a movie, and this is one of those times.

Does have its share of bona fide chuckles, but it falls shy of its possibilities.

(Tyler's) voice is still mall American, and Onegin's rejection of her is nowhere near as puzzling or as tragic as it's supposed to be.

This is basically a movie about one neurotic woman and her neurotic L.A. life. .

It does... apply Kitano's black-comic style to a different setting, and individual scenes sparkle with unexpected jokes, twists, and occasional cruelties.

It's a notch above average, but Whatever It Takes can't get too far above that notch.

Terrific idea, brilliantly worked out on a technical level.

This overdone project dissipates its energy in strange ways (sudden shifts to black-and-white, as though hailing the spirit of Oliver Stone and that other Costner JFK movie), and makes you wish its makers had shown the same restraint the government did during the crisis.

The film looks horrendous, poorly composed and staged, and the rhythm staggers.

Little entertainment value.

Good enough in spots to make you wish it could have sustained its campier inclinations.

Never less than dazzling to look at, and the scorching humor keeps it alive from scene to scene.

The problem is that the motion picture around these individual stunts is patently a committee-made artifact.

Sometimes feels like an acting class gone berserk, with Penn indulging his high-powered cast

The scene doesn't amount to much more than a logical extension of its lightweight premise.

The opening reels here promise something big, but the movie settles for a sour, predetermined funk -- "Lord of the Flies" as imagined by a Nintendo junkie.

The storm is the reason to see the movie.

It may have a good liberal conscience, and genuine sympathy for the rare perspective of a homeless person, but this movie is a fundamentally sentimental exercise.

These are good people, yet the director has them carrying on like community theater actors playing to the balcony. It isn't fair to them, and it isn't fitting for Shakespeare.

More complicated, more outrageous, less controlled in every way. But its owes its power to that earlier, greater film.

This mild but amusing comedy wasn't written by Levinson, and the accents may be different, but the feel is similar.

There's very little here that rises above the level of a competent straight-to-video picture, except that whenever Paul Newman and Linda Fiorentino are onscreen together they create something special.

Carrey is an actor possessed. He's brilliant.

May be Hitchcock on holiday, but that's a perfectly enjoyable vacation.

Feels like a first draft, in need of toning, pruning, and a little old-fashioned discipline. As an outline, the picture is full of possibilities.

I haven't got the slightest idea whether these characters are meant as satirical targets or as a reasonably fair cross-section of Today's Youth.

It all coalesces in a TV-level pleasantness, which isn't quite enough to fill a big screen.

Charlize Theron has charm and skill, but no actress could survive this role, which has the gravity and verisimilitude of a sketch from a late-sixties Nancy Sinatra TV special.

A Mexican film that reaches for a very weird and risky tone, and, I think, fails.

For me, Trixie finds its own peculiar groove, and-buoyed by a compulsively watchable actress-folds neatly into the off-center work of a distinctive American director.

It's only when you see the movie that you discover how completely the film misses opportunities to develop these ideas into anything like movie comedy.

Re-adjust the levels of cinematic hell, because "Porky's" just got bumped up a notch.

It's like one of the baker's cakes, handsomely rendered on the outside but lacking flavor.

Kate Hudson's accent is spot-on, and she brings her megawattage to good use on the Gershwin standard, "The Man I Love."

All I can say is this particular excursion into screwball madness is often heavenly, and frankly leaves critical explication somewhat unnecessary. Go see it and laugh.

You'll treasure this movie.

One wonders if the only original directors left are the obsessives and the freaks. This guy qualifies on both counts.

These film-making provocateurs are divided between sweet and sour, between the romance of classic screwball comedy and Mad magazine on acid.

An unleashed Raimi may be a more exciting moviemaker, but there's something to be said for the virtues of a good story well told, which describes A Simple Plan down to its last shivery snowflake.

Even on its own terms, it stays sluggish.

This movie is a business decision, and about as diverting to watch as someone reading the Universal fiscal report.

Conveys not just a joy in music and The Beatles, but a joy in cinema.

It's Kubrick, for sure, and in often mesmerizing form.

A skim-milk version of a yuppie romance.

Absolutely, see the movie.

Tight and quick-moving, the film scores its points and gets on with it.

Enough pep in this picture to make it rise above teen-movie expectations.

Does a lot of little stuff right, and it sparkles at times.

When it counts, this film is absolutely successful.

Worth a look, even if it doesn't quite find the internal logic it seems to be searching for.

Not a crowd-pleasing, or even audience-oriented, movie; it's a two-hour-plus mood piece.

Destined to be remembered not for its laugh-per-minute ratio, but for breaking a barrier of crudeness in mainstream movies.

Quick and funny, and a refreshing break from period-film stuffiness.