Russell Smith

Now I realize my confessed appreciation for Kids will thoroughly bugger my credibility in describing Gummo with phrases like “appalling,” “gratuitously cruel,” and “exploitative,” but the unmitigated repulsiveness of this film pretty much rules out all subtler options.

Steel's target audience of 12-year-old boys would be better off staying home and busying themselves at traditional, character-enriching activities: sniping at family pets with BB guns, playing Nintendo, and masturbating.

It's just a little too ironic (to quote Okay Pop Singer Alanis Morrisette) that a movie with the word "magic" in its title should be such a perfect example of the difference between competence and inspiration.

This is one that, like a 1am rerun of a late-season Cavs-Grizzlies matchup, deserves to play out in darkness and obscurity.

Yet a nigh-miraculous blend of high spirits, poignancy, gentle satire, and unpretentious insight into the nature of human aspiration make this one of the most impressive films you're likely to see this year.

The underlying problem is the mainstream film format's length constraints, which seem to have forced a rude bowdlerization of the story.

Next time, Pooh, why not do the work it takes and give your drowsy-eyed meal tickets some of the (as it were) good shit?

A gleefully overplotted crime yarn that channels in sanitized form the perverse subtropical-noir sensibilities of Carl Hiassen.

A “thrill ride” movie with all the predictability, brevity, and industrial efficiency that cliché implies.

A slight, oddly lifeless movie with dubious appeal for even the most incorrigible Simon devotees.

Hall, one of our least appreciated great actors, is mesmerizing as Sydney.

Yet for all its unmistakable visual trademarks (hypersaturated colors; mad-scientist tinkering with film stocks and editing technique; sudden presentation of enigmatic, troubling images), this is also the most radical departure Stone has ever made in terms of basic sensibilities.

In this magnificent, profoundly tragic film, Nolte and Coburn each turn in career-best performances as a father and son who embody the ancient, seemingly ineradicable male pathology of violence, retribution, and the slow death of the soul.

Thanks largely to the raw bravery and intensity of the two leads' performances, Happy Together takes a quantum leap forward in terms of visceral power.

As enjoyable as it is, it's hard to escape a sense of Analyze This being the work of competent talents who knew exactly where the good-enough line was and didn't feel particularly inspired to push far beyond it.

There's plenty of solid, intelligent content here to stir the mind and heart, assuming you're able to overlook the distinctly patronizing presentation.

For my money the most gloriously, enchantingly trivial play in the Shakespearean canon, A Midsummer Night's Dream may also be the most screwup-proof of the bard's works.

If you're fed up with the stultifying, formula-driven character of today's mainstream films, give Fallen Angels a try. At the very least you'll be engaged, and if you're lucky you may just recapture some of your original wonder at the seductive power of movies.

A sketchy, half-baked, stylistically inconsistent movie that scarcely even pretends to care whether it makes sense or not.

Rare two-for-one Chan special.

The driving forces behind Dick's courageous, defiantly candid film are curiosity about all things human and a desire to explain the seemingly inexplicable.

This film's intelligence and uncompromising originality commend it to even moviegoers with zero tolerance for top hats, parasols, and crap English accents.

Within the context of films that include the word booty in their titles, it serves up an unusually fresh, inventive and good-natured brew of pure lascivious fun.

Assuming that rich human insight, great production values, and topnotch acting still count for something, Mrs. Brown should have no trouble finding an appreciative audience.

Most of the actors seem to have been issued one facial expression at the beginning of the film, along with pain-of-death instructions not to change it under any circumstance.

Nothing but tarted-up melodrama.

No originality, no memorable characters, no comic timing, and no good jokes equal no fun for the audience.

A center ring extravaganza of smackdown movie entertainment