Roger Ebert

Trekkies talk at length about how the world would be a saner and more peaceful place if the "Star Trek" philosophy ruled our lives. No doubt it would be a lot more entertaining, too, especially during root canals.

Not as inspired as "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" but in the same spirit. It's goofy fun. Or maybe we should make that daffy fun.

The strength of the picture, directed by Eastwood, is that it has three intersecting story arcs: The investigation, the health issues, and the relationship that builds, step by step.

The Fourth Protocol is first-rate because it not only is a thriller, but it also pays attention to its characters and shows how their actions grow out of their personalities. Like Michael Caine's other recent British spy film, "The Whistle Blower," it is effective not simply because it's a thriller but also because for long stretches it simply is a very absorbing drama.

And the movie succeeds in two different ways: It's sweet and good-hearted, and then again it's raucous slapstick and bathroom humor. I liked both parts.

This movie is more sophisticated and complicated than the Westerns of my childhood, and it is certainly better looking and better acted.

We increasingly admire the quality of the acting: Both actors take their characters through a difficult series of changes, without ever seeming to try, or be aware of it.

Lymelife doesn't have the sheer power of "The Ice Storm," but it's not just another recycling of suburban angst. By allowing their characters complexity, the Martinis spill open those tiny model homes as thoroughly as a dropped Monopoly game.

Besson has a natural gift for plunging into drama with a charged-up visual style.

Sit through the entire credits. There's one more shot still to come. Not that you wouldn't be content without it.

The plot is lame, but that doesn't matter, because Dumb and Dumber is essentially pitched at the level of an "Airplane!"-style movie, with rapid-fire sight gags.

This is a hot modern martial art. Not only do the shots look convincing, not only are they held long enough to allow us to see an entire action, but Belle in real life does a version of this stuff.

I am not sure why this isn't very funny, but it's not.

This film is an affront. It is incoherent, maddening, deliberately opaque and heedless of the ways in which people watch movies.

My problem is that I kept seeing Oskar not as a symbol of courage but as an unsavory brat; the film's foreground obscured its larger meaning.

Do these films reflect actual aspects of modern Tokyo? The hikikomori epidemic is apparently real enough, but the other two segments seem more deliberately fantastical. The entertainment value? Medium to high: "Merde." Tokyo? Still standing.

[Nicholson's] performance is key in keeping Chinatown from becoming just a genre crime picture--that, and a Robert Towne screenplay that evokes an older Los Angeles, a small city in a large desert.

Arthur Penn's Little Big Man is an endlessly entertaining attempt to spin an epic in the form of a yarn.

The movie is funny in a warm, fuzzy way, and it has a splendidly satisfactory ending, which is unusual for an Albert Brooks film 

It occurred to me, watching the film, that what Leslie Nielsen and Priscilla Presley do here is not easy, and is done well. It would be fatal to the movie if either one ever betrayed the slightest suggestion that they know funny things are going on. They play everything on a level of seriousness that would be appropriate, say, for a 1960s TV cop drama. Their timing is impeccable. And they provide the sure, strong center around which the madness revolves.

It is a bold, reckless gesture.

The bedrock of the plot is the dogged determination of the Bruce Willis character. Jack may be middle-aged, he may be tired, he may be balding, he may be a drunk, but if he's played by Bruce Willis you don't want to bet against him.

The Shapiros wisely focus on the mystery of this man, who was spectacularly ill-prepared for both of his jungle journeys, and apparently walked away from civilization prepared to rely on the kindness of strangers.

It is the craftsmanship that elevates One True Thing above the level of a soaper.

Perhaps too laden with messages for its own good, but it has many moments of musical beauty, and it's interesting to watch Janet McTeer.

Sex Is Comedy is not sure what it's really about, or how to get there; the director is seen as flighty and impulsive, the situations seem like set-ups, and we never know what the Actor and Actress are really thinking -- or if thinking has anything to do with it.

That's what's intriguing about the film: Instead of pumping up the plot with recycled manufactured thrills, it's content to contemplate two reasonably sane adults who get themselves into an almost insoluble dilemma.

Since Fitzpatrick is an actor (and "no ladies' man," he told Clark), this is a performance and, as such, one of the most effective I've seen. It's amazing how, watching the film, you dislike Telly so much you want to deny Fitzpatrick's accomplishment in creating him.

Monsters holds our attention ever more deeply as we realize it's not a casual exploitation picture.

It wants to make Stuart Sutcliffe the focus of the film, and it’s never able to convince us there’s a story there.

Southern Comfort is a film of drum-tight professionalism. It is also, unfortunately, so committed to its allegorical vision that it never really comes alive as a story about people.

Quaid is instantly likable, with that goofy smile. Richardson, who almost always plays tougher roles and harder women, this time is astonishing, she's so warm and attractive.

Just babies. Wonderful.

I thought Rumble Fish was offbeat, daring, and utterly original.

This one doesn't go on the list of great recent European thrillers, but it's engrossing, and in the character of Martine/Candice, it touches real poignancy.

The Omen takes all of this terribly seriously, as befits the genre that gave us Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist. What Jesus was to the 1950s movie epic, the devil is to the 1970s, and so all of this material is approached with the greatest solemnity, not only in the performances but also in the photography, the music and the very looks on people's faces.

I liked it in the same way I might like an arcade game: It holds your attention until you run out of quarters, and then you wander away without giving it another thought.

A silly, high-spirited chase picture that takes us, as they say, from the canyons of Manhattan to the steaming jungles of South America. After all the Raiders rip-offs, it's fun to find an adventure film that deserves the comparison, that has the same spirit and sense of humor.

The ending doesn't work, as I've said, but most of the movie works so well I'm almost recommending it, anyway -- maybe not to everybody, but certainly to people with a curiosity about how a movie can go very right, and then step wrong.

Suspension of disbelief, always necessary in a thriller, is required here in wholesale quantities. But in a movie like Out of Time I'm not looking for realism, I'm looking for a sense of style brought to genre material.

Approaches the tricky subject of sadomasochism with a stealthy tread, avoiding the dangers of making it either too offensive, or too funny.

Entertaining for what it does, and admirable for what it doesn't do. It gets us involved in band politics and strategy, gives us a lot of entertaining halftime music, and provides a portrait of a gifted young man who slowly learns to discipline himself and think of others. That's what it does. What it doesn't do is recycle all the tired old cliches.

It is rousing and entertaining, and you get your money's worth.

The plot will require some discussion after the film is over. Is it misleading? Yes. Does it cheat? I think not. It only seems to cheat. That’s part of the effect. All’s fair in love and war, and the plots of thrillers.

One of the pleasures is watching the gears mesh. The screenplay has been written by Corneau and Nathalie Carter with meticulous attention to detail. Like classic mystery authors, they play fair, so that the surprises at the end are consistent with what we've seen - although we didn't realize it at the time.

The movie's big and expensive and filled with stars, but it's not an epic. It's the longest B-grade war movie ever made.

Reilly is required to walk a tightrope; is he suffering or kidding suffering, or kidding suffering about suffering? That we're not sure adds to the appeal.

Brando doesn't so much walk through this movie as coast, in a gassy, self-indulgent performance no one else could have gotten away with.

I like movies about smart guys who are wise asses, and think their way out of tangles with criminals. I like courtroom scenes. I like big old cars. I like The Lincoln Lawyer because it involves all three.

It has greatness in moments, and is denied greatness overall only because it is such a peculiar construction; watching it is like channel-surfing between a teen romance and a dark abysm of loss and grief.

I think this is an important movie. Devastating, violent, hopeless, and important, because it holds a mirror up to a part of the world we live in, and helps us see it more clearly. In particular, it examines the connection between fame and obscurity, between those who have a moment of praise and notoriety, and those who see themselves condemned to stand always at the edge of the spotlight.

Better than "Gladiator" -- deeper, more thoughtful, more about human motivation and less about action.

A movie that filled me with an urgent desire to see Sarah Silverman in a different movie. I liked everything about it except the writing, the direction, the editing and the lack of a parent or adult guardian.

The kind of movie that grabs you while you're watching, even if later you wish it had grabbed a little harder.

The movie was more of a revue than a narrative, more about moments than an organizing purpose, and cute to the point that I yearned for some corrosive wit from its second cousin, the Monty Python universe.

All plausibility is gone, we sit back, detached, to watch stunt men and special effects guys take over a movie that promised to be the kind of story audiences could identify with.

When the mistake is discovered, how do the families react? What disturbs them more: that their son has been raised as an enemy or that he has been raised in another religion? That's where The Other Son gets complicated.

Director Jim Mickle, who co-wrote the film with his star Nick Damici, has crafted a good-looking, well-played and atmospheric apocalyptic vision.

The movie lacks the cleanedged economy of the screenplay for The Player, and it could have benefitted from less talkiness and fewer characters, but as a portrait of a particular Hollywood strata it is bittersweet and knowledgeable.

The movie's thriller elements are given an additional gloss by the skill of the technical credits, and the wicked wit of the dialogue.

Seeps with melancholy, old wounds, repressed anger, lust. That it is also caustically funny and heartwarming is miraculous.

The bold long shot near the end of Dear Frankie allows the film to move straight as an arrow toward its emotional truth, without a single word or plot manipulation to distract us.

This is a sumptuous film - extravagantly staged and photographed, perhaps too much so for its own good. There are times when it is not quite clear if we are looking at characters in a story or players on a stage. Productions can sometimes upstage a story, but when the story is as considerable as Anna Karenina, that can be a miscalculation.

Like many thrillers that begin with an intriguing premise, Bad Influence is more fun in the setup than in the payoff. For at least the first hour, we are not quite sure what game Lowe is playing, and the full horror of his plan is only gradually revealed.

Everything that "Sex and the City" wanted to be. It follows the lives of four women, their career adventures, their romantic disasters and triumphs, their joys and sadness. These women are all in their early 20s, which means they are learning life’s lessons; "SATC" is about forgetting them.

The success of Stephen Frears’ film Chéri begins with its casting. Michelle Pfeiffer, as Lea de Lonval, is still a great beauty.

The news about this movie is that it makes it clear that both Timberlake and Kunis are the real thing when it comes to light comedy.

The first lighthearted, laugh-oriented family Western in a long time, and one of the nice things about it is, it doesn't feel the need to justify its existence. It acts like it's the most natural thing in the world to be a Western.

And the casting of minor characters (including Muriel's sister with the naughty-naughty smirk) is flawless.

The special effects are all there, nicely in place, and the production values are sound, but the movie is dead in the water. It tells an amazing and preposterous story, and it seems bored by it.

A satire with the reckless courage to take on both sides in the abortion debate.

There must be more. We will not discover it here.

The Piersons went, they showed movies, they returned. Taveuni is more or less the same. But by living and coping together for a year, the family is probably stronger and richer.

One of the qualities I like about this film is that the writer-directors, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, are aware of the time when Beat scene was new.

Succeeds beyond any expectations suggested by the title and extends John Cusack's remarkable run: Since 1983, in 55 films, he's never made a bad one.

It is not a bad movie, mind you; it's clever and shows great control of craft, but it doesn't care, and so it's hard for us to care about. To see it once is to plumb to the bottom of its mysteries, and beyond.

Most of the time, though, Anchorman works, and a lot of the time it's very funny.

The result is a reassuring fairy tale that will fascinate children and has moments of natural beauty for their parents, but makes the tigers approximately as realistic as the animals in "The Lion King."

Jolie, Malkovich and Geoff Pierson, as a lawyer who takes Collins' case before the Police Board, are very good at what they do very well. The film's most riveting performance is by Jason Butler Harner as the murderous Gordon Northcott.

The movie version of Garp, however, left me entertained but unmoved, and perhaps the movie's basic failing is that it did not inspire me to walk out on it. Something has to be wrong with a film that can take material as intractable as Garp and make it palatable.

It's a good thing that Geoffrey Rush and Johnny Depp are on hand to jack up the acting department. Their characters, two world-class goofballs, keep us interested even during entirely pointless swordfights.

Compulsively watchable and endlessly inventive as it transforms Broomfield's limited materials into a compelling argument.

The movie makes its point early and often: That its characters are hung up on food, and eat for unhealthy and obsessive reasons. It's true. We know it's true. We wait in vain for additional insights.

The plot loses its way in some of the later moments, as when Caan suddenly turns from a smoothie into a sinister, uptight threat (maybe it would have been funnier if he had simply continued to be a nice guy, to Cage's mounting frustration). But by then the movie has already inspired enough laughter to pay its way, and that's with the skydiving Elvis impersonators still to come.

It is a thriller, not a documentary. It's my belief that the nature of the neocon evildoing has by now become pretty clear. Others will disagree. The bottom line is: This is one hell of a thriller.

Does the film have a message? I don't think it wants one. It is about the journey of a man going mad. A film can simply be a character study, as this one is.

When you stand back a step from the movie, you admire Douglas and Wood for starting with potentially unplayable characters, and playing them so well we actually care about a quest that, in a way, seems more designed for Abbott and Costello.

The movie itself isn't as interesting as the conversations you can have about it. It duplicates Thomas' miserable world so well we want to escape it as urgently as Thomas does.

Brimming with invention and new ideas, and its Hogwarts School seems to expand and deepen before our very eyes into a world large enough to conceal unguessable secrets -- What a glorious movie.

Schrader doesn't speak to the deeper and more human themes he's introduced. Too bad. But Hardcore, flawed and uneven, contains moments of pure revelation.

This movie, for all its noble intentions, is a bore.

The River Wild is one of the movies you want to play along with, you really do, but it gets so many details subtly wrong that finally you lose patience and turn on it.

Green takes us to that place where we keep feelings that we treasure, but are a little afraid of.

The special effects are convincing, the performances are forthright, and the direction, by Stephen Sommers, recalls his energetic, lighthearted The Adventures of Huck Finn.

This is a story which, in other hands, could have simply been an all-female slasher movie, but Barbet Schroeder, who produced and directed it, has a mordant humor that pushes the material over the top. It is a slasher movie, and a little more.

The Brood is an el sleazo exploitation film, camouflaged by the presence of several well-known stars but guaranteed to nauseate you all the same.

A well-made thriller, tense and involving, and the scary thing, in these months after Watergate, is that it's all too believable.

The film is darkly atmospheric, with Herrmann quietly suggesting the sadness and obsession beneath Hearst's forced avuncular chortles. Dunst is as good, in her way, as Dorothy Comingore in "Citizen Kane" in showing a woman who is more loyal and affectionate than her lover deserves.

If I found it creepy beyond all reason, that is no doubt because I have been hopelessly corrupted by the decadent society I inhabit.

Rarely, but sometimes, a movie can have an actual physical effect on you. It gets under your defenses and sidesteps the "it's only a movie" reflex and creates a visceral feeling that might as well be real. Open Water had that effect on me.

I firmly believe such illusions are never the result of psychic powers, but I am fascinated by them, anyway. The wisdom of this film, directed and written by Sean McGinly, is to never say.

So Paine's 2006 doc has a happy sequel. His film is just as polished and good-looking as his first one, gives us a good look at automakers we like, and is entertaining. But the first film was charged with drama. "Revenge" is somewhat anticlimactically charged with a wall plug.

To be sure, Scorsese was occasionally too obvious, and the film has serious structural flaws, but nobody who loves movies believes a perfect one will ever be made. What we hope for instead are small gains on the fronts of hope, love, comedy and tragedy. It is possible that with more experience and maturity Scorsese will direct more polished, finished films--but this work, completed when he was 25, contains a frankness he may have diluted by then.

The movie is an engrossing melodrama, and it has its heart in the right place.

It is only now that I am in a condition to appreciate the 1950s.

Children should not be allowed within a mile of this film, but it will appeal to "Jackass" fans and other devotees of the joyously ignorant.

The movie itself, unfortunately, is not as compelling as the tempest that went into its making.

We like these people, which is important, and we are amused by them, which is helpful, but most of all we envy them, because they negotiate their romantic perplexities with such dash and style.

The movie is ribald, funny and sometimes sweet, and well acted by Murphy, Lawrence and a strong supporting cast.

I liked these characters precisely because they were not designed to be likable -- or, more precisely, because they were likable in spite of being exasperating, unorganized, self-destructive and impervious to good advice.

The film is extraordinarily beautiful. Bertolucci is one of the great painters of the screen.

Just about perfect for its target audience, and more than that. It has a great look, engaging performances, real substance and even a few whispers of political ideas, all surrounding the freshness and charm of Abigail Breslin, who was 11 when it was filmed.

What's surprising is how well Whitmore, the director, manages to direct traffic. He's got one crisis cooling, another problem exploding, a third dilemma gathering steam and people exchanging significant looks about secrets still not introduced. It's sort of a screwball-comedy effect, but with a heart.

The speeches reel on and on, talky and redundant, like an essay in a polemical magazine. Eventually we’ve had enough. The movie has everything it needs to be a successful satire on advertising, and more.

If Eureka is not completely successful if, indeed, it is sometimes merely silly and often confusing, maybe that's the price we pay for Roeg's intensity. At least it is never boring.

The director, James Cameron, is a master of action (he worked with Schwarzenegger on "Terminator 2"), and when he's doing his thing, no one does it better.

The movie is dark, intense and disturbing.

Megamind is an amusing family entertainment and gains some energy from clever dialogue and the fun Will Ferrell has with his character.

The characters are zany, the plot coils upon itself with dizzy zeal, and the roles seem like a perfect fit for the actors -- yes, even Brad Pitt, as Chad, a gum-chewing, fuzzy-headed physical fitness instructor. I've always thought of him as a fine actor, but here he reveals a dimension that, shall I say, we haven't seen before.

The film's primary effect is on the senses. Everything is brought together into a disturbing foreshadow of dreadful secrets.

This film has moments of uncommon observation and touching insight.

She is also, we sense, a woman of great generosity of spirit, and a TV natural: The star she most reminds me of is Lucille Ball.

Has the high-octane feel of real life, closely observed.

Some of the bits work and others don't, but no one seems to be keeping score, and that's part of the movie's charm.

I guess there's an audience for it, and Ice Cube has paid dues in better and more positive movies ("Barbershop" among them). But surely laughs can be found in something other than this worked-over material.

An imperfect movie with so many moments of truth that you forgive its stumbles. You also note that it's probably of historical value, because it centers on the first performance of an actress who is going to be a big star.

Circle of Friends is heartwarming and poignant, a love story that glows with intelligence and feeling.

Deathtrap is a wonderful windup fiction machine with a few modest ambitions: It wants to mislead us at every turn, confound all our expectations, and provide at least one moment when we levitate from our seats and come down screaming.

Amigo is not as tightly crafted as "Lone Star." It's a messier work whose dialogue is at times a tad too purple, its political allusions a little too obvious, and it has a one-note character that is uncharacteristic of its creator.

A movie like Keyhole plays like a fever dream using the elements of film noir but restlessly rearranging them in an attempt to force sense out of them. You have the elements lined up against the wall, and in some mercurial way, they slip free and attack you from behind.

It would be easy to tear the plot to shreds and catch Kramer in the act of copping out. But why? On its own terms, this film is a joy to see, an evening of superb entertainment.

Jaws the Revenge is not simply a bad movie, but also a stupid and incompetent one - a ripoff.

It's corny in places, and kind of dumb, and its subplot about the romance between the boy and the girl seems plundered from some long-shelved Roddy McDowell script. But The Man from Snowy River has good qualities, too, including some great aerial photography of thundering herds of horses, and the invigorating grandeur of the Australian landscape.

It's a political conspiracy thriller, a science fiction adventure, and sort of a love story. Most movies that try to crowd so much into an hour and a half end up looking like a shopping list, but Dreamscape works, maybe because it has a sense of humor.

Everything about the film -- its casting, its filming, its release -- is daring and innovative.

What I liked most was its unforced, genuine affection for its characters.

There's some good stuff in the movie, including a cast that's good right down the line and a willingness to have some fun with teenage culture in the Mass Murder Capital. But when everything is all over, there's nothing to leave the theater with - no real horrors, no real dread, no real imagination - just technique at the service of formula.

One of the secrets of Youth in Revolt is that Nick seems bewildered by his own desires and strategies. He knows how he feels, he knows what he wants, but he'd need a map to get from A to B. It's his self-abasing modesty that makes the movie work. Here, you feel, is a movie character who would find more peace on the radio.

Tilda Swinton hasn't often been more fascinating than in Julia, a nerve-wracking thriller with a twisty plot and startling realism.

Tequila Sunrise is an intriguing movie with interesting characters, but it might have worked better if it had found a cleaner narrative line from beginning to end. It's hard to surrender yourself to a film that seems to be toying with you.

Cuts between a rich assortment of characters; it's like a low-rent, on-the-fly version of Robert Altman's "The Player" or "Short Cuts."

This is one of those comedies that doesn't pound us on the head with the obvious, but simply lets us share vast amusement.

With most action thrillers based on graphic novels, we simply watch the sound and light show. V for Vendetta, directed by James McTeigue, almost always has something going on that is actually interesting, inviting us to decode the character and plot and apply the message where we will.

A well-crafted family thriller that is truly scary and doesn't wimp out.

It is unabashedly sentimental and epic, and rather bold in the way it takes place during and after the Holocaust but is not defined by it.

I realize that Nothing in Common wants to surprise us by inserting tragedy in the midst of laughter, but the problem is, the serious parts of this movie are so much more interesting than the lightweight parts that the whole project gets out of balance.

A step or two above the usual Clint Eastwood Western.

The film is a display of traditional movie craftsmanship, especially at the level of the screenplay, which respects the characters and story and doesn't simply use them for dialogue breaks between action sequences.

It is goofier than hell - you can't stop watching because nobody in the audience, and possibly nobody on the screen, has any idea what's going to happen next.

It's a nine days' wonder, a geek show designed to win a weekend or two at the box office and then fade from memory.

It's the kind of thriller where it's fun to chortle over the plot--a movie for people who are sophisticated enough to know how shameless the film is, but fun-loving enough to enjoy its excesses and manic zeal.

Charlize Theron is one of the few actresses equal to the role, bringing to it beauty, steel-edged repose, and mystery.

If the film is less than perfect, it is because Smith is too much in love with his dialogue. Smith is a gifted comic writer who loves paradox, rhetoric and unexpected zingers from the blind side.

All of the cliches are in the right places, most of the gags pay off and there are moments of real amusement as the Australian cowboy wanders around Manhattan as a naive sightseer. The problem is that there's not one moment of chemistry between the two stars.

Set It Off is advertised as a thriller about four black women who rob banks. But it's a lot more than that. It creates a portrait of the lives of these women that's so observant and informed; it's like “Waiting to Exhale” with a strong jolt of reality.

This great film by Anthony Fabian tells this story through the eyes of a happy girl who grows into an outsider.

You savor every moment of Jackie Brown. Those who say it is too long have developed cinematic attention deficit disorder. I wanted these characters to live, talk, deceive and scheme for hours and hours.

It's a family film that deals with real problems and teaches real values, and yet is exciting and entertaining.

So unsuccessful in so many different ways that maybe the whole project was doomed.

There's a lot of funny stuff, but the most unexpected comes from Arnold, who has been uneven, to say the least, in his movies.

A Burning Hot Summer failed to persuade me of any reason for its existence.

The movie isn't laugh out loud funny, under the circumstances, but it is bittersweet and wistfully amusing; the actors enjoy lachrymosity. We witness the birth of a new genre, the Post-Slasher Movie.

This movie left me reeling with turmoil and confusion, with feelings of sadness and despair. Those are the notes it strives for.

One hell of a movie. It left me speechless. I can't say I loved it. I can't say I hated it. It is expertly directed, flawlessly cast and written with merciless black humor by Tracy Letts.

A bleak comedy, funny in a "Catch-22" sort of way, and at the same time an angry outcry against the gun traffic.

Prelude to a Kiss is the kind of movie that can inspire long conversations about the only subject really worth talking about, the Meaning of It All.

Dead Man is a strange, slow, unrewarding movie that provides us with more time to think about its meaning than with meaning.

Bitter Moon is wretched excess. But Polanski directs it without compromise or apology, and it's a funny thing how critics may condescend to it, but while they're watching it you could hear a pin drop.

Movies like this are an antidote to the violent and defeatist thrillers a lot of younger moviegoers seem to be hooked on. It's an adventure, it's exciting, it stirs the imagination, and there are scenes of terrific suspense.

It leads to one of those endings where you sit there wishing they'd tried a little harder to think up something better.

Perry tries to be faithful to the play and also to his own boldly and simply told stories, and the two styles don't fit together.

A tender and perceptive film.

We're left with a promising idea for a comedy, which arrives at some laughs but never finds its destination.

Ocean's Thirteen proceeds with insouciant dialogue, studied casualness, and a lotta stuff happening, none of which I cared much about because the movie doesn't pause to develop the characters, who are forced to make do with their movie-star personas.

A peculiarly entertaining comedy, revisits the rapport that Favreau and Vaughn had in "Swingers" (1996), and rotates it into a deadpan crime comedy.

This is not one of those delightful movies based on a Jane Austen novel. It is about hard realists, constrained in a stifling system and using whatever weapons they can command.

The entire film centers on the remarkable performance by Natasha Richardson as Hearst. She convinces us she is Hearst, not by pressing the point, but by taking it for granted.

There is a bright spot. He (Poirier) used up all his doggy-do-do ideas in the first picture "See Spot Run."

The movie consists of the journey, the conversations, the scenery, the little human stories. No big drama. No emergencies. Just carrying the mail, which over the years has supplied the threads to bind together all of these lives.

A fairly competent recycling of familiar ingredients, given an additional interest because of Harrison Ford's personal appeal.

For a parody, the movie is surprisingly competent in some of the action scenes, when the dim-witted hero turns out to have lightning improvisational skills.

Ingenious in its plotting, colorful in its characters, taut in its direction and fortunate in possessing Cate Blanchett.

The Bounty is a great adventure, a lush romance, and a good movie.

Is this movie for the whole family to attend? No, it is a movie for small children and their parents or adult guardians, who will take them because they love them very much.

[Furie) retains the ability to make a picture move, grow on us and involve us. That’s what happens during The Boys in Company C.

Many of the parts of City Hall are so good that the whole should add up to more, but it doesn't.

The point is, adults can attend this movie with a fair degree of pleasure. That's not always the case with movies for kids, as no parent needs to be reminded. There may even be some moms who insist that the kids need to see this movie. You know who you are.

A step or two down from the first and second, but it has some very funny moments, and maybe that is all we hope for.

Antwone Fisher has a confrontation with his past, and a speech to the mother who abandoned him, and a reunion with his family, that create great, heartbreaking, joyous moments.

A series of well-drawn sketches and powerful scenes, in search of an organizing principle.

The experience of watching The Doors is not always very pleasant.

This is a smart, observant movie about two very particular people, and its casting is pitch-perfect.

The formula is obvious, but the story, curiously, turns out to be based on fact.

It's over the top, an exercise in action comedy that cuts loose from logic and enjoys itself.

A conventional film for an unconventional actor.

Working Girls is not a slick and dramatic movie. There are moments that seem forced and amateurish, and the over-all structure of the story is fairly predictable. What the movie does have, though, is the feeling of real life being observed accurately.

Harold is death, Maude life, and they manage to make the two seem so similar that life's hardly worth the extra bother. The visual style makes everyone look fresh from the Wax Museum, and all the movie lacks is a lot of day-old gardenias and lilies and roses in the lobby, filling the place with a cloying sweet smell.

I suggest a plan: Why not try flushing this movie down the toilet to see if it also grows into something big and fearsome?

This is essentially Renee Zellweger's picture, and she glows in it.

It's sometimes distracting to tell a story in flashbacks and memories; the story line gets sidetracked. The director, Taylor Hackford, is successful, however, in making the present seem to flow into and out of the past.

Marooned isn't very interesting from a stylistic point of view, and the actors tend to get buried beneath the technology, but it does tell an exciting story, And that, I imagine, was all Sturges (whose storytelling includes The Great Escape and Bad Day at Black Rock) was really trying to do.

The result at times approaches screwball comedy. But no, this isn't deliberate comedy. It's essentially realistic. It's simply that the real lives of these figures are funny.

Quaid is just right as the guilty husband who somehow becomes the wounded party.

The target audience for "Rugrats" is, I think, kids under 10. Unlike both insect cartoons, the movie makes little effort to appeal to anyone over that age. There is something admirable about that.

The movie was produced by Seinfeld, and protects him. The visuals tend toward the dim, the gray and the washed-out, and you wish instead of spending a year with their store-boughts, they'd spent a month and used the leftover to hire a cinematographer.

The scenes between the old man and the teenager are at the heart of the movie, and it's a pleasure to watch the rapport between Connery, in his 50th year of acting, and Brown, in his first role.

Parsimonious with its plot, which is revealed on a need-to-know basis. At first, we're not even sure who is who; dialogue is half-heard, references are unclear, the townspeople know things we discover only gradually.

Body-switch plots are a license for adults to act like kids; probably nobody has had more fun at it than Tom Hanks did in "Big," but Curtis comes close.

There is no one in the movie to provide a reasonable reaction to anything; the adults are all demented, evil, or, in the case of Mr. Poe, stunningly lacking in perception, and the kids are plucky enough, but rather dazed by their misfortunes.

The movie itself is surprisingly affecting, perhaps because Shepherd never goes for easy laughs but plays her character seriously.

Wise Guys is an abundant movie, filled with ideas and gags and great characters. It never runs dry. It never has the desperation of so many gangster comedies, which seem to be marching over the same tired ground. This movie was made with joy, and you can feel it in the sense of all the actors working at the top of their form.

This is in many ways his most revealing film, his most painful, and if it also contains more than his usual quotient of big laughs, what was it the man said? "We laugh, that we may not cry."

Cats Don't Dance is not compelling and it's not a breakthrough, but on its own terms, it works well. Whether this will appeal to kids is debatable; the story involves a time and a subject they're not much interested in. But the songs by Randy Newman are catchy, the look is bright, the spirits are high and fans of Hollywood's golden age might find it engaging.

Two people finally tell each other the truth. This is, of course, an astonishing breakthrough in movies about teenagers, and All the Right Moves deserves it.

The training sequences are as they have to be: incredible rigors, survived by O'Neil. They are good cinema because Ridley Scott, the director, brings a documentary attention to them, and because Demi Moore, having bitten off a great deal here, proves she can chew it.

The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover is not an easy film to sit through. It doesn't simply make a show of being uncompromising -- it is uncompromised in every single shot from beginning to end. Why is it so extreme? Because it is a film made in rage, and rage cannot be modulated.

It is an immensely skillful sci-fi adventure, combining the usual elements: heroes and villains, special effects and stunts, chases and explosions, romance and oratory.

The funniest movie character so far this year is a stuffed teddy bear. And the best comedy screenplay so far is Ted, the saga of the bear's friendship with a 35-year-old manchild.

The Goonies, like Gremlins, shows that Spielberg and his directors are absolute masters of how to excite and involve an audience. "E.T." was more like "Close Encounters"; it didn't simply want us to feel, but also to wonder, and to dream.

A film like this can end honestly in only one way, and Ku is true to it. Life will go on, one baffling day after another. There can be no release, only a gradual deadening.

If you walk out after 10 or 15 minutes, you will have seen the best parts of the film.

Not since young Hutter arrived at Orlok's castle in "Nosferatu" has a journey to a dreaded house been more fearsome than the one in The Woman in Black.

You can enjoy U-571 as a big, dumb war movie without a brain in its head.

I admired this movie. It kept me at arm's length, but that is where I am supposed to be; the characters are after all at arm's length from each other, and the tragedy of the story is implied but never spoken aloud.

An important film as well as an entertaining one.

A friend asked: "Wouldn't you love to attend a wedding like that?" In a way, I felt I had. Yes, I began to feel absorbed in the experience. A few movies can do that, can slip you out of your mind and into theirs.

I have never seen anything remotely approaching the mess that the new punk version of "Romeo & Juliet" makes of Shakespeare's tragedy.

These are fellow human beings who suffer, who are limited in their freedom to imagine greater happiness for themselves, and yet in their very misery they embody human striving. There is more of humanity in a prostitute trying to truly love, if only for a moment, than in all of the slow-motion romantic fantasies in the world.

Empire of the Sun adds up to a promising idea, a carefully observed production and some interesting performances.

I look at a film like this and must respect it for its ingenuity and love of detail. Then I remember "Amelie" and its heroine played by Audrey Tautou, and I understand what's wrong: There's nobody in the story who much makes us care.

Fear of a Black Hat, which treats rap with the same droll dubiousness that This is Spinal Tap provided for heavy metal, is not as fearless and sharp-edged as it could be - but it provides a lot of laughs, and barbecues a few sacred cows.

Fright Night is not a distinguished movie, but it has a lot of fun being undistinguished.

Watching the movie is an entertaining exercise in forensic viewing, and the insidious thing is, even if it is a con, who is the conner and who is the connee?

The movie operates at the level of a literate sitcom, in which the dialogue is smart and the characters are original, but the outcome and most of the stops along the way are preordained.

Bresson suggests that we are all Balthazars. Despite our dreams, hopes and best plans, the world will eventually do with us whatever it does.

Murder on the Orient Express is a splendidly entertaining movie of the sort that isn’t made anymore: It’s a classical whodunit, with all the clues planted and all of them visible, and it’s peopled with a large and expensive collection of stars.

This is a good film, involving and wonderfully acted. I was drawn into the characters and quite moved, even though all the while I was aware it was a feel-good fable, a story that deals with pain but doesn't care to be that painful.

I don't know what I was expecting from Back to the Beach, but it certainly wasn't the funniest, quirkiest musical comedy since Little Shop of Horrors. Who would have thought Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello would make their best beach party movie 25 years after the others?

Developments unfold according to the needs of the characters. The movie is not about springing surprises on us, but about showing these people in a process of discovery. The performances are not pitched toward melodrama; the actors all find the right notes and rhythms for scenes in which life goes on and everything need not be solved in three lines of dialogue.

The subjects of their comedies are defiantly non-P.C., but their hearts are in the right place, and it's refreshing to see a movie that doesn't dissolve with embarrassment in the face of handicaps.

It isn't about thrills and explosions, but about tenacity, and most of it takes place within our own imaginations.

The beauty of the film is in its quietness.

Sara Forestier is uninhibited in the role and has great comic energy. She won the Cesar for best actress for this performance.

Julia is the story of a fascinating woman, told from the point of view of someone who hardly knew her. That is, I realize, an unkind judgment against Lillian Hellman, whose wartime memoirs provide the inspiration for the story. But this movie's problems start with its point of view, and it never quite recovers from them.

It is great for an hour, good for about 25 minutes and then heads doggedly for the Standard 1980s High Tech Hollywood Ending, which means an expensive chase scene and a shootout.

Too bad the movie relies on special effects to carry the show, and doesn't bring much else to the party.

Doesn't quite click.

The documentary visits elderly women who, then and now, can best be described as tough broads, and listens as they describe the early days of women's wrestling. What they say is not as revealing as how they say it.

Begins as an ominous rumble of unease, and builds to a shriek. The last 20 minutes are searingly intense: A paranoid personality finds its mate, and they race each other into madness.

As for Madchen Amick, a stunning beauty with an edgy intelligence, Kazan has given her a role that grows more interesting as it deepens.

Five minutes into the film, I relaxed, knowing it was set in the real world, and not in the Hollywood alternative universe where Julia Roberts can't get a date.

A feeling movie, a mood movie, an evocation of the kind of interaction we sometimes hunger for.

This is the movie to seek out.

The film doesn't make us work, doesn't allow us to figure out things for ourselves, is afraid we'll miss things if they're not spelled out.

Odd and intense, very well acted, and impossible to dismiss.

Even if the ending doesn't entirely succeed, it doesn't cheat, and it comes at the end of an uncommonly absorbing movie.

Perhaps this movie was so close to Egoyan's heart that he was never able to stand back and get a good perspective on it -- that he is as conflicted as his characters, and as confused in the face of shifting points of view.

A film like The Last Mountain fills me with restless anger. I have seen many documentaries like this, all telling versions of the same story.

The damnedest film. I can't recommend it, but I would not for one second discourage you from seeing it.

Only a few sequels have been as good as the originals; the characters especially like "Aliens'' and "The Godfather, Part II.'' As for Scream 2, it's ... well, it's about as good as the original.

This movie is spellbinding storytelling. It begins with such a simple premise and creates such a genuinely intriguing situation that we're not just entertained, we're drawn into the argument.

I liked the movie for the quirky way it pursues humor through the drifts of greed, lust, booze, betrayal and spectacularly complicated ways to die. I liked it for Charlie's (Cusack) essential kindness, as when he pauses during a getaway to help a friend who has run out of gas.

Begley and Stevens add tone to the cast, and Hingle comes over like an especially earnest Karl Malden. The moral of the story is vaguely against capital punishment, and there's a lot of that thin, windblown guitar twanging for you thin, wind-blown guitar twanging fans.

Very funny in an insidious way.

What I admire most about the film is the way it enters the terms of this world -- of international politics, security procedures, shifting motives -- and observes the details of all-night stakeouts, shop talk, and interlocking motives and strategies.

We suspect that the film will be about their various problems and that the hotel will not be as advertised. What we may not expect is what a charming, funny and heartwarming movie this is, a smoothly crafted entertainment that makes good use of seven superb veterans.

A stronger plot engine might have drawn us more quickly to the end, but on a scene by scene basis, Interview with the Vampire is a skillful exercise in macabre imagination.

A triumph of style over story, and of acting over characters.

Gibson, as director, doesn't give himself a soppy speech explaining why he doesn't say them. He lets us figure it out. That is the essence of the story and, we eventually realize, the essence of teaching, too.

Sagan's novel Contact provides the inspiration for Robert Zemeckis' new film, which tells the smartest and most absorbing story about extraterrestrial intelligence since "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."

Meryl Streep is indeed poised and imperious as Miranda, and Anne Hathaway is a great beauty who makes a convincing career girl. I liked Stanley Tucci, too, as Nigel... But I thought the movie should have reversed the roles played by Grenier and Baker. Grenier comes across not like the old boyfriend but like the slick New York writer, and Baker seems the embodiment of Midwestern sincerity.

I can imagine a broader comedy in which the situation might work. Remember Mrs. Robinson or Stifler's mom? But here there's a fugitive undercurrent of sincerity. Hello, I Must Be Going raises questions it doesn't have the answers for.

The performances have a gravity about them that is unusual in the movies. How you respond to Butterfly Kiss depends on what you bring to it, and how much empathy you are willing to extend to these sad and horrifying women.

Here is a gripping film with the focus of a Japanese drama, an impenetrable character to equal Alain Delon's in "Le Samourai," by Jean-Pierre Melville.

Essentially just a love story, and not sturdy enough to carry the burden of both radical politics and a bittersweet ending.

Perhaps Lumet was simply too ambitious in trying to work anti-bugging sentiment into the film. If he'd thrown out all the hidden mikes and stuck with the Heist, The Anderson Tapes would have moved with a more confident step in the direction of Rififi.

There have been articles lately asking why the United States is so hated in some parts of the world. As this week's Exhibit A from Hollywood, I offer Zoolander.

What impresses me more is that she (Delpy) has a lighthearted way about her and takes chances in comedies like this. It is hard enough to be good at all, but to be good in comedy speaks for your character.

It is an enchanted folly suggesting that romance is a matter of chance, since love is blind; at the right moment we are likely to fall in love with the first person our eyes light upon.

An absolutely superb mounting of a hollow and disappointing production. It shows a technical mastery of filmmaking, and we are dazzled by the performances, the atmosphere, the mood of mounting violence. But by the second hour of the film we've lost our bearings: What is this movie saying about its characters? What does it feel and believe about them? Why was it necessary to tell their stories?

A lot of Trollhunter - but not enough - is funny. I imagine the best way to see the movie would be the way it was presented at Sundance, at a "secret" midnight screening at which the capacity audience allegedly has no idea what it is about to see.

Tougher, less sentimental mirror version of "Save the Last Dance."

The movie hums along with a kind of sublime craftsmanship, fueled by the consistent performances of Hackman and Hoffman (in their first film together), the remarkable ease of John Cusack (the most relaxed and natural of actors since Robert Mitchum), and the juicy typecasting in the supporting roles.

9/11 was a savage and heartless crime, and after the symbolism and the history and the imagery and the analysis, that is a point that must be made.

The films portray the Klan as criminal, racist and anonymous, but those have always been its selling points; it is not portrayed as boring and stupid.

We laugh, that we may not cry. But none of this philosophy comes close to the insane logic of "M*A*S*H," which is achieved through a peculiar marriage of cinematography, acting, directing, and writing.

The performances by Miller and Graynor are high-spirited enough that you yearn to see them in worthier material. The potential is there. If there's anything more seductive to Manhattanites than sex, it's a cheap apartment overlooking Gramercy Park.

Boxcar Bertha is a weirdly interesting movie and not really the sleazy exploitation film the ads promise.

The movie finally becomes just an exercise, then: a brilliant one at times, and with a wealth of sharp-edged performances, but without people for its things to happen to.

What makes Vice Versa so wonderful is the way Reinhold and Savage are able to convince us that each body is inhabited by the other character.

Kindergarten Cop was directed by Ivan Reitman, whose best work shows an ability to mix the absurd with the dramatic, so we're laughing as the suspense reaches its peak.

Until the last twenty or thirty minutes, however, First Blood is a very good movie, well-paced, and well-acted not only by Stallone (who invests an unlikely character with great authority) but also by Crenna and Brian Dennehy, as the police chief.

A pleasure to look at and scarcely less fun as a story. I came to scoff and stayed to smile.

The material might have promise as a black comedy, but its attempt to put on a smiling face is unconvincing.

Compellingly watchable.