Roger Ebert

Set aside your memories of the Conan Doyle stories, save them to savor on a night this winter and enjoy this movie as a high-caliber entertainment.

If Edwards had somehow found a way to really grapple with the implications of his story - if he had pushed to see how far he could go - Switch might have been a truly revolutionary comedy, on the order of Tootsie but more sexually frank. Unfortunately, he seems determined to make everything palatable to the sensibilities of the kinds of people who probably wouldn’t attend this kind of movie in the first place - and, in the process, he takes a daring idea and plays it safe. Too safe.

It's all recycled material from other movies - all except for some nice personal touches added by the actors. They bring style to a movie that needs it.

Timecop, a low-rent "Terminator," is the kind of movie that is best not thought about at all, for that way madness lies.

This is an appallingly silly movie, from its juvenile comic overture to its dreadfully sincere conclusion.

A meandering movie that usually meanders in entertaining directions.

The film has been directed by Jonathan Parker; he adapted the Melville story with Catherine DiNapoli. It's his first work, and a promising one. I admire it and yet cannot recommend it, because it overstays its natural running time.

About reaching out, about seeing the other person, about having something to say and being able to listen. So what if the ending is in autopilot? At least it's a flight worth taking.

Sweet rather than exciting.

Spacey does what can be done with the material, but it never achieves takeoff velocity.

The Theory of Flying is actually fairly enjoyable. At least it doesn't drown its message in syrup and cornball sentiment.

This question, which will instinctively occur to many viewers, is never quite dealt with in the film. The photographers sometimes drive into the middle of violent situations, hold up a camera, and say "press!" - as if that will solve everything.

The movie is not quite the sitcom the setup seems to suggest; there are some character quirks that make it intriguing.

There is not much here that comes as a blinding plot revelation, but the movie has a raffish charm and good-hearted characters, and like "The Full Monty" it makes good use of the desperation beneath the comedy.

That it works is because of the high-energy animation, some genuinely beautiful visual concepts and a story that's a little more sensuous than we expect in animation.

The movie doesn't have the complexity and depth of "Groundhog Day" (which I recently saw described as "the most spiritual film of our time"), but as entertainment it's ingratiating and lovable.

The performance by Ross invests Jessie with a kind of zealous hope that is touching: Here is a slutty loser touched by the divine, and transformed.

Until it descends into mindless routine action in the climactic scenes, Tears of the Sun is essentially an impressionistic nightmare.

A deserted island movie during which I desperately wished the characters had chosen one movie to take along if they were stranded on a deserted island, and were showing it to us instead of this one.

A confusing and not very exciting private eye caper.

Easy Money is an off-balance and disjointed movie, but that's sort of okay, since it's about an off-balance and disjointed kinda guy. The credits call him Monty Capuletti, but he is clearly Rodney Dangerfield, gloriously playing himself as the nearest thing we are likely to get to W.C. Fields in this lifetime.

There is very little comic invention in the idea for Doctor Detroit (the screenplay is Identikit sitcom), but there's a lot of invention in Aykroyd's performance.

Here is Lee at his most spontaneous and sincere, but he could have used another screenplay draft, and perhaps a few more transitional scenes.

Jet Lag is sort of a grown-up version of "Before Sunrise"...The difference between the two films is sort of depressing.

It's is not a great high school movie like "Election," but it's alive and risky and saucy.

Tucker's scenes finally wear us down. How can a movie allow him to be so obnoxious and make no acknowledgment that his behavior is aberrant?

Is it funny? Yes, it is.

Caddyshack never finds a consistent comic note of its own, but it plays host to all sorts of approaches from its stars, who sometimes hardly seem to be occupying the same movie.

The story is predictable, but the style had me on the edge of my seat.

The movie did make me smile. It didn't make me laugh, and it didn't involve my emotions, or the higher regions of my intellect, for that matter. It's a perfectly acceptable feature cartoon for kids up to a certain age, but it doesn't have the universal appeal of some of the best recent animation.

I'm Gonna Git You Sucka is a comedy that feeds off the blaxploitation movies, and although, like all good satires, it is cheerfully willing to be offensive, it is almost completely incapable of being funny.

There are several Idiot Plot moments when a simple line of dialogue (''He has Tourette's syndrome'') would work wonders but is never said. And yet the movie has a sweetness and care that is touching.

Strong performances, particularly by Glenn as the hard-bitten climber with a private agenda, Vertical Limit delivers.

I have such an unreasonable affection for this movie, indeed, that it is only by slapping myself alongside the head and drinking black coffee that I can restrain myself from recommending it.

The movie is not a special effects extravaganza like "The Grinch," but in a way that's a relief. It's more about charm and silliness than about great hulking multimillion-dollar high-tech effects.

It's one of those movies like "Ghost World" and "Legally Blonde" where the description can't do justice to the experience.

Plays like it was directed as a do-it-yourself project, following instructions that omitted a few steps, and yet the movie has an undeniable charm.

Burnt Offerings is a mystery, all right. What's mysterious is that the filmmakers were able to sell such a weary collection of ancient cliches for cold hard cash.

War movies used to have dash and color and a certain corny sentimentality; Midway hardly even makes us care.

The idea of the president's daughter being held captive isn't blindingly original (it's an alarmingly dangerous occupation), but placing the story on a space station is a masterstroke, since we're about filled up to here with prison movies set on Earth.

This material is intriguing enough that I wish there had been more of it. Comedy consists of the application of logic to the absurd, and there are many more opportunities here than the screenplay takes advantage of.

Because the opening scenes of Sleeping with the Enemy are so powerful, the rest of the movie is all the more disappointing. The film begins as an unyielding look at a battered wife, and ends as another one of those thrillers where the villain toys with his victim and the audience.

When the movie's over, you realize that the first hour only seemed convincing: The whole movie is made out of thin air.

As a family movie, Operation Dumbo Drop is sort of entertaining. As history, it's shameless.

A sad and painful documentary that serves little useful purpose other than to pound another nail into the coffin. Here is a gifted actor who apparently by his own decision has brought desolation upon his head.

This kind of film requires us to be very forgiving, and if we are, it promises to entertain. Angels & Demons succeeds.

This is the second movie Judd and Freeman have made together (after "Kiss the Girls" in 1997). They're both good at projecting a kind of Southern intelligence that knows its way around the frailties of human nature.

Paltrow is truly touching. And Black, in his first big-time starring role, struts through with the blissful confidence of a man who knows he was born for stardom.

The very soul of sophomorism. It is callow, gauche, obvious and awkward, and designed to appeal to those with similar qualities.

At one time or another, Casino Royale undoubtedly had a shooting schedule, a script and a plot. If any one of the three ever turns up, it might be the making of a good movie.

The Longest Yard more or less achieves what most of the people attending it will expect. Most of its audiences will be satisfied enough when they leave the theater, although few will feel compelled to rent it on video to share with their friends. So, yes, it's a fair example of what it is.

It tries to be the best bad movie that it can be.

In a season of movies dumb and dumber, One Day has style, freshness, and witty bantering dialogue.

Aric Avelino shows an almost tender restraint in his story-telling, not pounding us with a message but simply looking steadily at how guns have made these lives difficult.

This is a small film and knows exactly how to be a small film. Like many New Yorker short stories, its purpose is to strike a particular note and allow it to reverberate.

Hoffman has countless characters inside of him, and this is one of his nicest.

But what the movie lacks is a story arc to pull us through.

Rubber-stamped from the same mold that has produced an inexhaustible supply of fictional Southern belles who drink too much, talk too much, think about themselves too much, try too hard to be the most unforgettable character you've ever met, and are, in general, insufferable.

A lot of Murder at 1600 is well -done. Characters are introduced vividly,; there's a sense of realism in the White House scenes, and some of the dialogue by Wayne Beach and David Hodgin hits a nice ironic note. But then the movie kicks into auto - pilot. The last third of the film is a ready-made action movie plug-in.

The first five or 10 minutes of Airplane II -- The Sequel are genuinely funny -- so funny I thought maybe this movie was going to work. That turned out to be a premature hope. The new inspirations quickly run out, and Airplane II turns into a retread, plundering the same situations and characters that made the original Airplane so funny.

This is the kind of movie where the filmmaker hopes to shock you with sickening carnage and violent amorality, while at the same time holding himself carefully aloof from it with his style. He would be more honest and probably make a better movie if he got down in the trenches with the rest of us.

There are good lines of Wayne dialog and good exchanges with Ben Johnson (as the cook) and some scenes in which you can see that even Wayne thinks Gabriel looks ridiculous as an Indian. And these scenes help pass the time and help you forget how wooden and uninteresting Hudson is. Which is pretty wooden and uninteresting indeed.

The movie leaves no heartstring untugged. It even has a beloved old dog, and you know what happens to beloved old dogs in movies like this. Or if you don't, I don't have the heart to tell you.

The film is lame comedy surrounded by high-energy blues (and some pop, rock and country music).

The Great Raid is perhaps more timely now than it would have been a few years ago, when "smart bombs" and a couple of weeks of warfare were supposed to solve the Iraq situation. Now that we are involved in a lengthy and bloody ground war there, it is good to have a film that is not about entertainment for action fans, but about how wars are won with great difficulty, risk, and cost.

How could they take this material and make it really original? Maybe by refusing to be seduced by the Screenwriter's stock Hollywood "originality" and probing more deeply into the real human lives of the characters. The people in Back Roads are so heavily laden with schtick that they never have a chance to develop personalities.

Pleasant, harmless PG-13 entertainment, with a plot a little more surprising and acting a little better than I expected.

Any professional film editor watching this movie is going to suffer through one moment after another that begs to be ripped from the film and cut up into ukulele picks. Never mind the film editor: A lot of audiences, with all the best will in the world, are going to feel the same way.

There should be a special category for movies that are neither good nor bad, but simply excessive.

It lacks all of the style and sense of fun of the original Critters (1986) and has no reason for existence - aside, of course, from the fact that Critters is a brand name and this is the current model.

The movie is sort of a sideways version of "Sideways," even down to a scene where the two men join two women for dinner. The difference is, in "Sideways" the guys desperately want to impress the women, and in The Thing About My Folks, they want to impress each other.

Jessica Lange plays Frances Farmer in a performance that is so driven, that contains so many different facets of a complex personality, that we feel she has an intuitive understanding of this tragic woman.

Recycles a plot that was already old when Tracy and Hepburn were trying it out. You see it coming from a great distance away. As it draws closer, you don't duck out of the way, because it is so cheerfully done, you don't mind being hit by it.

There are some nice things in "Slamdance." Hulce has a certain dogged charm as the hero who draws cartoons in the spirit, if not the style, of Gary Larson, and who is extremely upset that there is a dead body in his apartment. Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio gives a sound, three-dimensional performance as the ex-wife who has to decide if this guy is worth the trust - and the trouble. And Harry Dean Stanton remains quintessentially himself.

The movie has terrific if completely unbelievable special effects. The actors had fun, I guess. You might, too, if you like goofiness like this.

It drifts above the surface of its natural subjects, content to be a genre picture. We're always aware of the formula--and in a picture based on real life, we shouldn't be.

The mistake of The Mummy Returns is to abandon the characters, and to use the plot only as a clothesline for special effects and action sequences.

A threat to the Bond franchise? Not a threat so much as a salute. I don't want James Bond to turn crude and muscular on me; I like the suave style. But I like Xander, too, especially since he seems to have studied Bond so very carefully.

A movie with a lot of funny one-liners, but no place to go with them.

The movie lacks a port of entry for young viewers -- a character they can identify with. All of the major characters are adults with adult problems like debt, romance, and running (or swimming away from) the mob.

The movie tries for tragedy and reaches only pathos, but then Bobby lost his chance to be a tragic hero by living this long in the first place.

The movie deserves more stars for its bottom-line craft, but all the craft in the world can't redeem its story.

Director Chris Columbus has fun with this goofy premise, but as always I am distracted by the practical aspects of the story. Does it bother the Greek gods that no one any longer knows or cares that they rule the world? What are the genetic implications of human/god interbreeding?

Its pacing is too deliberate, and it doesn’t have a light heart. That’s revealed in the handling of some characters named the Brownies, represented by a couple of men who are about 9 inches tall and fight all the time. Maybe Lucas thought these guys would work like R2-D2 and C-3PO did in “Star Wars.” But they have no depth, no personalities, no dimension; they’re simply an irritant at the edge of the frame.

John Waters' Pink Flamingos has been restored for its 25th anniversary revival, and with any luck at all that means I won't have to see it again for another 25 years. If I haven't retired by then, I will.

Recycles the 1977 comedy right down to repeating the same mistakes.

The movie is a little more lightweight than the usual People's Choice Award winner at Toronto, but why not? It was the best-liked film at the 2006 festival, and I can understand that.

Steve Martin is good at that aspect of the Bilko persona, and good, too, at suggesting that there's not a mean bone in the sergeant's body.

Tells the kind of story that would feel right at home in a silent film, and I suppose I mean that as a compliment.

Josie and the Pussycats are not dumber than the Spice Girls, but they're as dumb as the Spice Girls, which is dumb enough.

If the movie is imperfect, it's not boring and is often very funny, as in a solo dance that Nick does in his apartment, to Frank Sinatra singing "I Won't Dance."

My problem with Borstal Boy isn't so much with the facts as with the tone.

A typical Kitano film in many ways, but not one of his best ones. Too many of the killing scenes have a casual, perfunctory tone.

This is a disappointing, misguided movie that has all of the parts in place to be a much better one.

Here their hearts are in the right place, but the film tries to say too many things for its running time.

Meg Ryan does such an effective job of evoking her sexually hungry lonely girl that it might have been better to just follow that line and not distract her and the audience with the distraction of a crime plot.

Hotel de Love is a pleasant and sometimes funny film, without being completely satisfying.

It's so neat, so formula, so contrived, I was thinking about "The Graduate" instead of about characters I had spent two hours with. So, I suspect, was Nichols.

This movie kept me involved and intrigued, and for that I'm grateful. I'm beginning to wonder whether, in some situations, absurdity might not be a strength.

A subtle but unmistakable aura of jolliness sneaks from the screen.

During the course of Failure to Launch, characters are bitten by a chipmunk, a dolphin, a lizard and a mockingbird. I am thinking my hardest why this is considered funny, and I confess defeat.

The more I think about Simon Magus, the less I'm sure what it's trying to say.

Most audiences will find it baffling and unsatisfactory. Those who are open to its flywheel peculiarities may find it bold, funny, peculiar and delightful.

This is a dishonest, quease-inducing "comedy" that had me feeling uneasy and then unclean. Who in the world read this script and thought it was acceptable?

This is a very far from perfect movie, and it ends on an unsatisfactory note.

To the degree that I was able to put aside my questions, forget logic, disregard continuity problems and immerse myself in the moment, The Matrix Revolutions is a terrific action achievement. Andy and Larry Wachowski have concluded their trilogy with all barrels blazing.

Love and Bullets is a hopelessly confused hodgepodge of chases, killings, enigmatic meetings and separations, and insufferably overacted scenes by Steiger alternating with alarmingly underacted scenes by Bronson.

It's not art, it's not “Juno,” it's not “Girlfight,” for that matter, but as a movie about a flesh-eating cheerleader, it's better than it has to be.

Has an intriguing cast, a director who knows how to use his camera and a lot of sly humor. Shame about the story. When you see this many of the right elements in a lame movie, you wonder how close they came to making a better one.

Of these characters, the rival played by Lucy Punch is the most colorful, because she's the most driven and obsessed. The others seem curiously inconsequential, content to materialize in a scene, perform a necessary function and vaporize.

There is a long stretch toward the beginning of the film when we're interested, under the delusion that it's going somewhere. When we begin to suspect it's going in circles, our interest flags, and at the end, while rousing music plays, I would have preferred the Peggy Lee version of "Is That All There Is?"

In the real world, Elle Woods would be chewed up faster than one of little Bruiser's Milk-Bones.

Heartbreakers is "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" plus Gene Hackman as W.C. Fields. I guess that's enough to recommend it. It's not a great comedy, but it's a raucous one, hard-working and ribald, and I like its spirit.

Because I had, in a sense, already seen this movie, it didn't have surprises or suspense for me, and the actors on their own aren't enough to save it.

Because it is attentive to these human elements, Ladder 49 draws from the action scenes instead of depending on them. Phoenix, Travolta, Barrett and the others are given characters with dimension, so that what happens depends on their decisions, not on the plot.

Burlesque shows Cher and Christina Aguilera being all that they can be, and that's more than enough.

All of the performances are pitched correctly. Nobody pushes too hard. Nobody underlines anything. Perhaps calmed by Van Sant, the characters seem peaceful, not troubled (as they should be).

At the end I didn't feel engaged. I didn't feel that the hero's attention had been quite focused during his quest for the meaning of life. He didn't seem to be a searcher, but more of a bystander, shoulders thrown back, deadpan expression in place, waiting to see if life could make him care.

The movie is worth seeing, for the good stuff. I'm recommending it because of the performances and the details in the air-traffic control center.

The movie is a genial comedy, but it has significant undertones. Like some of Frank Capra's pictures.

Some stretches are very funny, although the laughter is undermined by the desperation and sadness of the situations.

In its own way and up to a certain point, 1492 is a satisfactory film. Depardieu lends it gravity, the supporting performances are convincing, the locations are realistic, and we are inspired to reflect that it did indeed take a certain nerve to sail off into nowhere just because an orange was round.

The movie is carefully modulated to draw us deeper and deeper into the situation, and uses no contrived plot devices to superimpose plot jolts on what is, after all, a story involving four civilized people who are only trying, each in a different way, to find happiness.

Kevin Bacon is on a roll right now after several good roles, and here he channels diabolical sleaze while mugging joylessly before the telethon cameras.

But, lord, the characters are tireless in their peculiarities; it's as if the movie took the most colorful folks in Lake Wobegon, dehydrated them, concentrated the granules, shipped them to Newfoundland, reconstituted them with Molson's and issued them Canadian passports.

It handles a sports movie the way Billie Holiday handled a trashy song, by finding the love and pain beneath the story.

Not a well-oiled enterprise but more of a series of laughs separated by waits for more laughs. It has a kind of earnest, eager quality, and it's so screwy you feel affection for it.

I couldn't believe a moment of it, and never identified with little David.

Who was Joseph Fiennes channeling when he chose this muddled tone? Obviously he was reluctant to gave a broad, inspirational performance of the kind you find in deliberately religious films.

Conventional as it may be, Shall We Dance? offers genuine delights. The fact that Paulina is uninterested in romance with John comes as sort of a relief, freeing the story to be about something other than the inexorable collision of their genitals.

The most curious thing about Hiding Out is that the plot continued to intrigue me even after I'd more or less given up on the movie's ability to find anything interesting in its material. What would it really be like to be in high school again? To revisit your past, knowing what you know now? Hollywood ought to make a good movie about that idea. In fact, Hollywood has: Peggy Sue Got Married. This one fails by comparison.

The screenplay feels unfinished, the direction is ambling, but the performances are interesting.

The movie evokes that long-ago world carefully and with a certain poetry; it was shot in the Dominican Republic. There is a lot of music, much of it from the period and performed by the same musicians or their successors.

This is the third animated feature in a row (after "Curious George" and "Ice Age: The Meltdown") which aims at children and has no serious ambition to be all things to all people, i.e., their parents. But for kids, it's OK.

The plot is as good as crime procedurals get, but the movie is really better than its plot because of the three-dimensional characters.

Yes, the movie is profoundly silly. What surprised me is that it's also very scary. The special effects are on such an awesome scale that the movie works despite its cornball plotting.

Bound by Honor contains some effective performances, some moments of deeply felt truth, and a portrait of prison life that I assume is accurate. What seems to be missing is a clear idea of why the movie was made, and what the director, Taylor Hackford, wanted to say with it.

Here, the charm doesn't happen because the movie doesn't care about them as people. They have little human dimension; they are the tools of the plot, and it's unfair to ask actors to supply qualities that the screenplay doesn't account for.

The Legend of Zorro commits a lot of movie sins, but one is mortal: It turns the magnificent Elena into a nag.

Moves at a breakneck pace, it has strong and simple characterizations, it has good location photography and terrific special effects, and it supplies what it claims to supply: an effective action movie.

The warmth of the actors makes it surprisingly tender, considering the premise that is blatantly absurd. If you allow yourself to think for one moment of the paradoxes, contradictions and logical difficulties involved, you will be lost. The movie supports no objective thought.

Wesley Snipes understands the material from the inside out and makes an effective Blade because he knows that the key ingredient in any interesting superhero is not omnipotence, but vulnerability.

Despite the elements I could have done without, the movie is often very funny, and a lot of the credit goes to Del Toro, who creates a slow-talking, lumbering character who's quite unlike his image in "Usual Suspects."

Daylight is the cinematic equivalent of a golden oldies station, where you never encounter anything you haven't grown to love over the years.

The Mephisto Waltz, which is inferior to "Rosemary's Baby" on all sorts of fundamental levels like direction, photography and acting, is fatally inferior in its understanding of the supernatural. If a horror movie is to be taken seriously, it has to pretend to take horror seriously. And this one doesn't.

The movie doesn't seem sure what tone to adopt, veering uncertainly from horror to laughs to romance.

The agony of invention is there on the screen.

The Prince & Me has the materials to be a heartwarming mass-market love story, but it doesn't assemble them convincingly.

Employs superb craftsmanship and a powerful Denzel Washington performance in an attempt to elevate genre material above its natural level, but it fails. The underlying story isn't worth the effort.

The movie's strength, then, is not in its outrage, but in its cynicism and resignation.

This movie, in fact, is almost the story of his metamorphosis, from likeable young actor to faceless action hero.

The movie is pretty cornball. Little kids would probably enjoy it, but their older brothers and sisters will be rolling their eyes, and their parents will be using their iPods.

Obviously made with all of the best will in the world, its heart in the right place, this is a sluggish and dutiful film that plays more like a eulogy than an adventure.

A well-made thriller with a lot of good acting, but the death of Elisabeth Campbell is so unnecessarily graphic and gruesome that by the end I felt sort of unclean.

It's a rambling, unfocused biography of Wyatt Earp, starting when he's a kid and following his development from an awkward would-be lawyer into a slick gunslinger. This is a long journey, in a three-hour film that needs better pacing.

If the movie is a lost cause, it may at least showcase actors who have better things ahead of them.

One of those movies that explains too much while it is explaining too little, and leaves us with a surprise at the end that makes more sense the less we think about it. But the movie's mastery of technique makes up for a lot.

The only problem is that the plot meanders when nobody is singing. If you're making the kind of movie where everybody in the audience knows for sure what's going to happen, it's best not to linger on the recycled bits.

The movie works like thrillers used to work, before they were required to contain villains the size of buildings.

It has smart characters, and is wise about the ones who try to tame their intelligence by acting out.

The movie overcomes its lack or originality in the setup by making good use of its central idea, that a pair of sneakers could make a kid into an NBA star. This is a message a lot of kids have been waiting to hear.

One of the pleasures of Hollywood Homicide is that it's more interested in its two goofy cops than in the murder plot; their dialogue redeems otherwise standard scenes.

The result is unconvincing and disorganized. Yes, there are some spectacular stunts and slick special effects sequences. Yes, Jones is right on the money, and Snipes makes a sympathetic fugitive. But it's the story that has to pull this train, and its derailment is about as definitive as the train crash in the earlier film.

One of the movie's most enjoyable in-jokes is the way some of the animals actually look a little like the humans doing their voices.

It's the kind of movie you can't quite recommend because it is all windup and not much of a pitch, yet you can't bring yourself to dislike it.

It somehow succeeds in taking those pop-culture brand names like Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie and giving them human form.

The movie is an invaluable experiment in the theory of cinema, because it demonstrates that a shot-by-shot remake is pointless; genius apparently resides between or beneath the shots, or in chemistry that cannot be timed or counted.

Jennifer Garner and Joel Edgerton are appealing together as far from perfect parents, and CJ Adams has that ability of so many child actors to be pitch-perfect.

My Stepmother Is an Alien is a great idea for a movie, but it seems to have stalled at the idea stage.

I find movies like this alive and provoking, and I'm exhilarated to have my thinking challenged at every step of the way.

The first hour of Neighbors is probably more fun than the second, if only because the plot developments come as a series of surprises. After a while, the bizarre logic of the movie becomes more predictable. But Neighbors is a truly interesting comedy, an offbeat experiment in hallucinatory black humor. It grows on you.

All that could redeem this thoroughly foreseeable unfolding would be colorful characters and good acting. Everybody's Fine comes close, but not close enough.

Now is Slipstream worth seeing? I think so, if you'll actively engage your sympathy with Hopkins' attempt to do something tricky and difficult. If you want to lie back and let the movie come to you, you may be lying there a long time.

There's little that's new in the material, and nobody seems to have asked whether the emotional charge of blatant racism belongs in a lightweight story like this - even if the racists are the villains.

Courteney Cox, well known from TV, rarely gets an opportunity to revise her famous image, but here she is serious, inward, coiled. She carries the film; the other characters circulate through her consciousness as possibilities and hypotheses.

Yes. The movie works, and so we accept everything.

Those tensions and conflicts produced, I believe, the right film for this material. I don't require that its makers had a good time. I'm reminded of my favorite statement by Francois Truffaut: "I demand that a film express either the joy of making cinema or the agony of making cinema. I am not at all interested in anything in between."

What is remarkable about "Mr. Jones" is how clearly it communicates his feelings. We begin to understand why manic-depression is sometimes described as the only mental illness its victims enjoy - on the up days, anyway.

Bored out of my mind during this spectacle, I found my attention wandering to the subject of physics.

This is not a sermon or a homily, but a visualization of the central event in the Christian religion. Take it or leave it.

There is not a spark of chemistry between Chris and Jamie, although the plot clearly requires them to fall in love. There is so much chemistry involved with the Anna Faris character, however, that she can set off multiple chain reactions with herself, if you see what I mean.

Never quite attains takeoff velocity.

A rambling, undisciplined, sometimes embarrassing failure from one of the most gifted comic filmmakers around.

El sleazo profoundo trasho zilch.

A big, slick melodrama that knows exactly what it wants to accomplish and does so with great craft.

Everyone in The Other Side of the Bed, alas, has the depth of a character in a TV commercial: They're all surface, clothes, hair and attitude, and the men have the obligatory three-day beards.

Filmed in the colors of newborn Technicolor, plotted as a tribute to the conventions of Hollywood romance, filled with standard songs, it's by and for people who love those kinds of movies. Others will find it cliched and predictable, but they won't understand.

Since the predator is imaginary but the people who made this film are not, Predator 2 speaks sadly of their own lack of curiosity and imagination.

I didn't much like the first film, and I don't much like this one, with its sadistic little hero who mercilessly hammers a couple of slow-learning crooks.

Leads us down the garden path of romance, only to abandon us by the compost heap of uplifting endings. And it's not even clever enough to give us the right happy ending. It gives us the wrong happy ending.

But at the center of the film is an actor whose mind and heart are far, far away, and he is like a black hole, consuming light and energy. He's running on empty. Sometimes there are even scenes where you can sense the other actors scrutinizing Phoenix in a certain way, or urging him, with their tones of voice, to an energy level he cannot match. It is all very sad.

The movie, unfortunately, doesn't really work; it's one of those films where the characters always seem to be Behaving, as if ordinary life has to be jacked up into eccentricity.

Newsies is like warmed-over Horatio Alger, complete with such indispensable cliches as the newsboy on crutches, the little kid, and of course the hero's best pal, who has a pretty sister.

Intense, erotic and willful.

Too many adults have a tendency to confuse bad taste with evil influences; it's hard for them to see that the activities in "Doctor Dolittle,'' while rude and vulgar, are not violent or anti-social. The movie will not harm anyone.

There is much cleverness and ingenuity in Payback, but Mel Gibson is the key. The movie wouldn't work with an actor who was heavy on his feet, or was too sincere about the material.

The film is smart, quick, and made with real wit. It's never just a crude action movie, bludgeoning us with violence. It's self-aware, it knows who Dirty Harry is and how we react to him, and it has fun with its intelligence. Also, of course, it bludgeons us with violence.

Red Tails is entertaining. Audiences are likely to enjoy it. The scenes of aerial combat are skillfully done and exciting.

What's lacking is a little more depth. This is a movie that covers a lot of distance in only 87 minutes.

Now let me ask you: Can you think of any reason the character John Miller is needed to tell his story? Was any consideration given to the possibility of a Chinese priest? Would that be asking for too much?

It's a cheerfully unashamed exploitation of two of our great national preoccupations, pro football and guns.

Like many other cultural experiments (minimalist art, "Finnegan's Wake," the Chicago Tribune's new Friday section), it is more amusing to talk about than to experience.

Within Clay Pigeons is a smaller story that might have involved us more, but it's buried by overkill.

It proceeds so deliberately from one plot point to the next that we want to stand next to the camera, holding up cards upon which we have lettered clues and suggestions.

Tells one of those rare and entrancing stories where one thing seems to happen while another thing is really happening.

The movie itself is sort of bland and obvious and comfortable.

It's a shame the plot is so contrived, because parts of this movie are really pretty good.

Toy Soldiers, a film with earnest performances and professional production values, is constructed out of characters, situations and gimmicks that will be instantly recognized by the weary viewer. There is nothing new here.

Actually two movies, one wretched, the other funny. The funny one involves the Jennifer Tilly scenes.

No movie has ever been able to provide a catharsis for the Holocaust, and I suspect none will ever be able to provide one for 9/11. Such subjects overwhelm art.

The Immortals is without doubt the best-looking awful movie you will ever see.

Whatever the faults of Tank Girl, lack of ambition is not one of them.

Mirror Mirror is a sumptuous fantasy for the eyes and a pinball game for the mind, as story elements collide and roll around bumping into each other.

Not a comic masterpiece, but it's entertaining and efficient, and provides a showcase for its stars. It's on the level of a good sitcom.

Bullock brings a kind of ground-level vulnerability to 28 Days that doesn't make her into a victim but simply into one more suitable case for treatment.

It is also probably relevant that Spacey, in preparing the project, knew something we could not guess: He is a superb pop singer.

The movie surprised me. It treats its disabled characters with affection and respect, it has a plot that uses the Special Olympics instead of misusing them, and it's actually kind of sweet.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice is a perfectly typical example of its type, professionally made and competently acted.

Beaches begins on a note of impending doom, and that colors everything else with an undertone of bittersweet poignancy and, believe me, there is only so much bittersweet poignancy I can take in any one movie.

Clever in the way it avoids most of the cliches of the vampire movie by using cannibalism, and most of the cliches of the cannibal movie by using vampirism. It serves both dishes with new sauces.

Kafka, as subject or character, simply doesn't fit into the world of this film. Soderbergh does demonstrate again here that he's a gifted director, however unwise in his choice of project.

A bloody screwball comedy, a film of high spirits. It tells a complicated story with acute timing and clarity, and gives us drug-dealing lowlifes who are almost poetic in their clockwork dialogue.

The movie is an assembly of clichés and obligatory scenes from dozens of other movies, all are better. It has only one original idea, and that's a bad one: The inspiration of making the hero's sidekick into, simultaneously, his buddy, his critic and his rival.

I wouldn't go so far as to claim Manderlay is fun to watch. Von Trier, who can made compulsively watchable films ("Breaking the Waves"), has found a style that will alienate most audiences. Maybe it's necessary.

Jolie, the daughter of Jon Voight, and Miller, a British newcomer, bring a particular quality to their performances that is convincing and engaging.

Part 2 seems even more like a Stallone vehicle than the first movie. I'm not even sure it's intended as a comedy. It's filled wall to wall with the kind of routine action and violence that Hollywood extrudes by the yard and shrink-wraps to order.

But the problem is, The Deal, like a lot of real-life Wall Street deals, is a labyrinth into which the plot tends to disappear. The ideas in the film are challenging, the level of expertise is high, the performances are convincing, and it's only at the level of story construction and dramatic clarity that the film doesn't succeed.

The movie is not a comedy classic. But in a genre where so many movies struggle to lift themselves from zero to one, it's about, oh, a six point five.

Against the Ropes meanders until it gets to the final third of its running time, and then it catches fire.

Nothing heats up. The movie doesn't lead us, it simply stays in step.

Not a bad movie, although it could have been better. It isn't flat-out silly like "Troy," its actors look at home as their characters, and director Antoine Fuqua curtails the use of computer effects in the battle scenes, which involve mostly real people.

Grumpier Old Men is not terrifically compelling, although it is probably impossible not to enjoy Matthau and Lemmon acting together.

One Night at McCool's does not quite work, but it has a lot of fun being a near-miss.

The story is more entertaining as it rolls along than it is when it gets to the finish line. But at least King uses his imagination right up to the end, and spares us the obligatory violent showdown that a lesser storyteller would have settled for.

What am I looking for in a thriller? I think maybe a movie where people get into a situation, instead of one where an artificial and manipulative situation is imposed on people. "Fatal Attraction" convinced me it was about people who were in a believable situation. I cared about them. White Sands is all arbitrary melodrama, and so the considerable skills that went into it are essentially wasted. [24 Apr 1992, p.38]

I admire the craft involved, but the movie leaves me profoundly indifferent. After three earlier movies in the series, which have been transmuted into video games, why do we need a fourth one? Oh. I just answered my own question.

The movie pretends to show poor black kids being bribed into literacy by Dylan and candy bars, but actually it is the crossover white audience that is being bribed with mind-candy in the form of safe words by the two Dylans.

Hoot has its heart in the right place, but I have been unable to locate its brain.

Musical Chairs is a feel-good romantic fantasy that is likely to inspire a hollow laugh among some people in wheelchairs. Either it knows little about the realities of disability, or it knows too much.

Like an Astaire and Rogers musical, this is a movie you don't go to for the dialogue.

“The Ghost and the Darkness is an African adventure that makes the Tarzan movies look subtle and realistic. It lacks even the usual charm of being so bad it's funny. It's just bad. Not funny. No, wait . . . there is one funny moment.

Dan Brown's novel is utterly preposterous; Ron Howard's movie is preposterously entertaining.

The movie is unconvincing. At the end, Jim is seen going in through a "stage door," and then we hear him telling the story of his descent and recovery. We can't tell if this is supposed to be genuine testimony or a performance. That's the problem with the whole movie.

Her Majesty is the kind of movie where you start out smiling, and then smile more broadly, and then really smile, and then realize with a sinking heart that the filmmakers are losing it.

I liked the movie without loving it. It's not great Woody Allen, like "Sweet and Lowdown" or "Bullets Over Broadway," but it's smart and sly, and the blindness is an audacious idea.

Aniston, as a sweet kindergarten teacher and fiancee, shows again (after "The Good Girl") that she really will have a movie career.

An efficiently made thriller, cheerfully gruesome, and finally not quite worth the ordeal it puts us through.

I am not a mind-reader and cannot be sure, but I think a lot of children are going to look at this movie with perplexity and distaste. It's just not much fun.

I don't believe New Jerusalem takes a position in favor of either character. It's more of an intense study of these two men and their barren work in a shabby store by the side of a highway.

You know a movie's got problems when you find yourself wishing the heroes would agree with the villain.

Since the scenes where they're together are so much less convincing than the ones where they fall apart, watching the movie is like being on a double-date from hell.

Diaz has one of the most winning grins in the movies. Basically, what I wanted was more of it. Some of that Cary Grant dialog. More flirtation. More of a feeling the characters, not the production, were the foreground. More of the stars.

Somehow the movie really never takes off into the riveting fascination we expect in the opening scenes. Maybe it cannot; maybe it is too faithful to the issues it raises to exploit them.

The movie is pleasant, sedate, subdued and sweet, but there is not a moment of suspense in it.

Every once in a while, a movie like that comes along; a movie you’ve got to see so that you, too, can be in the dark about it.

What is good about this film is very good, but there are too many side trips, in both the plot and the emotions, for the film to draw us in fully.

I was not bored during A Good Man in Africa. Just uncomfortable, as the characters thrashed about in search of a purpose.

It comes to life in the dance sequences, and then drifts away again.

The movie's dialogue is constructed out of funny names, puns and old jokes. Sometimes it's painfully juvenile. But there are some great visual gags in the movie, and the best is Pizza the Hutt, a creature who roars and cajoles while cheese melts off its forehead and big hunks of pepperoni slide down its jowls.

Seems conventional in its ideas about where it can go and what it can accomplish. You don't get the idea anyone laughed out loud while writing the screenplay. It lacks a strange light in its eyes. It is too easily satisfied.

A first draft for a movie that could have been extraordinary.

David Klass, the screenwriter, gives Freeman and Judd more specific dialogue than is usual in thrillers; they sound as if they might actually be talking with each other and not simply advancing plot points.

It must be said that this movie is sweet and innocent, and that at a certain level it might appeal to younger kids. I doubt if its ambitions reach much beyond that.

Tora! Tora! Tora! is one of the deadest, dullest blockbusters ever made.

If you're a fan of Hector Lavoe and Latin music, or Lopez and Anthony, you'll want to see El Cantante for what's good in it. Otherwise, you may be disappointed. The director (Leon Ichaso) and his co-writers haven't licked a crucial question: Why do we need to see this movie and not just listen to the music?

Jim Carrey works the premise for all it's worth, but it doesn't allow him to bust loose and fly.

The center of the film is the simple, almost elementary insight that fantasies can be hazardous: You've got to be careful what you ask for, because you might get it.

D. C. Cab is not an entirely bad movie -- it has its moments -- but if it had used more actual taxi-riding incidents and more recognizable driver types, it could have been a little masterpiece.

Here is a movie so absorbing, so atmospheric, so suspenseful and so dumb, that it proves my point: The subject matter doesn't matter in a movie nearly as much as mood, tone and style.

This is one of the most intelligent and compelling movie musicals in a long time - and the most grown up.

There are small moments of real humor.

Lighthearted fun.

Amusing enough to watch and passes the time, but it's the kind of movie you're content to wait for on your friendly indie cable channel.

Griffiths is one of the most intensely interesting actresses at work today.

A Martin Lawrence performance that deserves comparison with Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy, with a touch of Mel Gibson's zaniness in the midst of action.

Surprisingly good in areas where it doesn't need to be good at all, and pretty awful in areas where it has to succeed.

Is alive, and takes chances, and uses the wicked blade of satire in order to show up the complacent political correctness of other movies in its campus genre.

Of Amanda Bynes let us say that she is sunny and plucky and somehow finds a way to play her impossible role without clearing her throat more than six or eight times.

Maybe what makesFlipped" such a warm entertainment is how it re-creates a life we wish we'd had when we were 14.

Mad City might have been more fun if it had added that extra spin--if it had attacked the audience as well as the perpetrators. As it is, it's too predictable.

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.

The 'Burbs tries to position itself somewhere between Beetlejuice and The Twilight Zone, but it lacks the dementia of the first and the wicked intelligence of the second and turns instead into a long shaggy dog story.

Rod Lurie has made a first-rate film of psychological warfare, and yes, I thought it was better than Peckinpah's. Marsden, Bosworth and Skarsgard are all persuasive, and although James Woods has played a lot of evil men during his career, this one may be the scariest.

It is not an entirely successful movie, but it is new and fresh and not shy of taking chances. And the dialogue in it is actually worth listening to, because it is written with wit and romance.

By the end of Children of the Corn, the only thing moving behind the rows is the audience, fleeing to the exits.

Little Darlings really wants to be two movies at once: A fairly serious film about teenagers and sex, but also a box-office winner like "National Lampoon's Animal House" or "Meatballs." That's why we get awkwardly forced comedy like the food-fight scene. The movie also suffers from uncertain direction.

An ungainly fit of three stories that have no business being shoehorned into the same movie.

The movie does not propose to be a comedy, a musical, a film noir story or a medical account. It proposes to be a subjective view of suffering, and the ways this character tries to cope with it. Understand that, and the pieces fall into place.

Larry Clark's Bully calls the bluff of movies that pretend to be about murder but are really about entertainment. His film has all the sadness and shabbiness, all the mess and cruelty and thoughtless stupidity of the real thing.

There will be better movies playing in the same theater, even if it is a duplex, but on the other hand there is something to be said for goofiness without apology by broken lizards who just wanna have fun.

The quality of the acting is so much better than the material deserves.

The characters involve us, we sympathize with their dreams and despair of their matrimonial tunnel vision, and at the end we are relieved that we listened to Miss Watson and became the wonderful people who we are today.

But Parker's visuals enliven the music, and Madonna and Banderas bring it passion. By the end of the film we feel like we've had our money's worth, and we're sure Evita has.

There are few things more depressing than a weeper that doesn't make you weep.

A skillful, efficient film that involves us in the clever and deceptive game being played by Ramius and in the best efforts of those on both sides to figure out what he plans to do with his submarine - and how he plans to do it.

So the movie is daring, and well-acted. Yet it isn't very satisfying, because the serious content keeps breaking through the soggy plot intended to contain it.

Yellnikoff, played with perfect pitch by Larry David.