Ruthe Stein

The new movie shrieks of motherhood - raising hot-button issues like biological clocks running down, the rights of birth mothers and whether to adopt or give artificial insemination a shot.

Still feels stagebound, inert when it needs to be cinematic.

A compelling and visually arresting drama.

As good as family entertainment gets.

Pretentious drama.

Much as she did in "Little Miss Sunshine," Breslin imbues Kit with joy.

Suffused with a golden glow, the movie looks and sounds like a fairy tale.

This movie borders on the ridiculous, but is pulled back by an aesthetic portrayal of the supernatural and by its stars.

A quirky but surprisingly lighthearted dark comedy.

Every once in a while you catch glimpses of originality and see what Gray Matters might have been if it hadn't gone soft and safe.

Considering the talent on both sides of the camera and a story that worked beautifully the first time around, Shall We Dance? should have been a lot better than OK.

Bloody good.

A warmhearted film.

The problem with this one may be that it just isn't British enough.

Like its singular central character, Before the Fall stands out from the pack.

Glatzer and Westmoreland live in Echo Park, and they have given their film a remarkable sense of place.

Boasts a collection of oddball characters, some more sharply written than others.

Don't little ones have enough to worry about without ecological concerns popping up in family entertainment? Happy Feet should have stayed light on its feet.

The Fountain' never comes together. Like the time traveler at its center, it's all over the map.

This so-called comedy is so not funny, it makes "Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo" look like Chaplin.

Filled with moments that will make you smile.

A frothy comedy with the most adorable buddies since "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid."

The film has aged gracefully.

To say it is about a debilitating disease is as reductive as saying "Little Miss Sunshine" is about a beauty pageant. Both are intimate stories of family ties that bind but sometimes also choke.

A junior version of "Fight Club," only with no movie stars and different moves.

By creating likable characters and putting them in situations that seem plausible, if a bit of a stretch, the film succeeds where others of its genre fail.

Fun to watch although falling short of a real hoot, this latest in a barrage of family movies largely succeeds at keeping the kiddies entertained and their parents from nodding off.

Director Robert Mulligan exhibits the same sensitivity about young people and their foibles as he did in "To Kill a Mockingbird." In 1962. You never sense that he's making fun of Hermie or his pals. [08 Jul 2007, p.16]

It's doubtful that audiences go to animated features to hear movie stars talk. They go because a film sounds like fun and something their kids and maybe they themselves might enjoy. Bolt is all that and more.

Watching the film is like being at a freak show: You feel like a voyeur, yet you can't take your eyes off this Mommie Dearest or her childlike middle-aged daughter.

The director has a natural's gift for storytelling and eye for casting.

A solid WWII movie that's been lost among myriad others about the same war. [02 Jul 2006, p.28]

Lange seems at a loss to know how to convey Martha's malevolence -- and writer-director Jonathan Darby offers almost no guidance.

Caruso, a very visual director, serves up some surprises and scares, and he's paced his movie briskly. You're out of this disturbing suburbia before you know it, shaken and even stirred.

The casting, at least, is magical. Plowright shows both her character's strength and her heartbreaking vulnerability, sometimes at once.

A wildly entertaining fantasy thriller that propels Russian cinema into the 21st century.

If you can still be entertained by a thriller that unabashedly borrows from others of its ilk and don't mind reading subtitles, you could do worse than District B13. It's over so fast, in a quick 85 minutes, there's scarcely time to get bored by the silly plot.

The ending is predictable to anybody who's followed the trajectory of outsourcing. Outsourced humanizes those affected by it - even if the story sounds familiar.

One of very few films to accurately portray the experience of growing up male.

Becomes tiresome.

A breed apart from anything coming off the Hollywood assembly line or, for that matter, from the saccharine romances Britain has lately produced.

Vanessa Redgrave makes a regal if too-brief appearance.

Hanssen is such an enigma that any attempt to explain him has inherent interest. Breach expends too much energy on a minor functionary, but it is still worth seeing for its fleeting looks into a heart of darkness.

Heart-wrenching film.

It is crystal clear who screwed up this tortuously slow-moving romantic drama.

With a strongly visual director, Ridley Scott ("Blade Runner," "Alien", the film really shows what's involved at this level of combat training.

Intermittently funny.

Van Houten, a veteran of European TV, is in almost every scene, and her energetic performance keeps Black Book percolating despite an overstuffed plot that strains credibility and often tips over into melodrama.

A heartwarming, inspirational tale.

Attempts something startlingly original by melding light opera with soap opera.

Sleuth"is that rare film that would have been better longer. You're not through looking at Caine and Law when the final credits roll.

A bit of fluff expertly made and a hoot to watch.

Deliriously original.

It's a first feature film for both screenwriter Alex Rose and director Gaby Dellal, and their inexperience shows in Frank's underdeveloped relationships with family and friends and in the movie's sluggish pacing.

Sounds great and if nothing else should help diminish the stereotype, blasted by the film's subjects, of Gypsies as little more than pickpockets whom travelers need to be wary of.

With Lloyd Webber onboard not just as composer but also co-screenwriter and producer, the film seemed destined to stay true to its roots rather than attempt to transcend them.

Overly long and not especially enlightening film.

A mess, and that's really a shame.

Given the juiciest plotline, Tamblyn goes for it, turning in a hard-boiled performance that's a needed contrast to her co-stars' tendency to go for sweet.

A mishmash of a musical. The movie never gels -- despite Kline's nuanced performance, the stars' exquisite period clothes, designed by Armani, and, of course, Porter's great songs.

The film is a particular disappointment considering its pedigree.

A sweet, bordering on saccharine, comedy.

The film is better than it has any right to be, considering the prosaic source.

While dinner and a movie is in theory a great idea, I'd avoid eating before taking in Lunacy.

A slow-moving family drama guaranteed to induce a nap if not somnambulism.

I'm not denying that a 40-year- old woman might be self-conscious about going around with someone this young. But the subject isn't interesting or provocative enough to sustain an entire movie.

Has the slapped-together, cheesy look of a porno movie. While this could be distracting, the shoddiness sets the mood for a humorous spin on the European porn industry circa early 1970s.

Extremely pleasurable and well worth seeing.

The movie is unable to achieve lift-off and transcend the formulaic stuff coming out of Hollywood, despite the perfect casting of Uma Thurman.

A sequel arrives for Valentine's Day with the unwieldy title Step Up 2 the Streets. If it performs as well, watch for "Step Up 3: the Sprained Ankle."

An appealingly quirky thriller from Brazil.

Wise and wondrous.

Has an old-fashioned feel, as if it had been made in the period of its setting. I mean this as a compliment.

The key to enjoying the film is warming up to the heroine, Poppy.

The sequel is one big tease.

Suffers from Resnais' inability to open it up and give it the look and pulse of a film.

Evokes grand emotions -- anxiety, sadness, joy -- sometimes within moments of one another. Broken Wings has heart and a poetic soul.

As uneven as I Think I Love My Wife often is, it still has an emotional resonance lacking in most films about relationships. By dealing with temptation in even a quasi-realistic way, it affirms that, like comedy, monogamy is hard.

The movie [Sugarman] made gives little indication that she understands teen girls, dramatic or plain. Much of Confessions seems clueless and -- even worse for moviegoers of any age -- listless.

This deeply moving and disturbing film derives power from being based on the true story of a black South African who does everything possible, no matter how degrading, to get by within an immoral system, but becomes radicalized almost despite himself.

It's amusing in a trashy sort of way.

That Pride ultimately gets to you is more of a surprise than the outcome because it's not very well-constructed.

Visually, the film is a stunner, dotted with psychedelic colors and many shades of red -- one battle is fought with red laser-gun sights -- some looking realistically like blood. When gangsters open fire, their falls are choreographed like a ballet. The problem comes when the cast opens its mouth and Elizabethan dialogue tumbles out.

Shot on the streets of New York and offering vistas of the city before all the glass and steel skyscrapers, The Naked City, which won Oscars for cinematography and editing, boasts an impressive pedigree. [04 Jan 2004]

It works as an intriguingly offbeat character study while offering Nicolas Cage a chance to show why he used to be considered one of the top actors of his generation.

This harmless bit of fluff lacks the element of surprise but is not without random charming moments supplied by its incandescent star.

Well-intentioned but frequently inert.

If you enjoy gross humor -- elevated by an occasional witty line -- and looking at babes, and don't mind a little blood and gore, do I have a date movie for you.

For all its depiction of a descent into drug addiction, Candy is filled with surprisingly sweet moments and goes down more easily than seems possible given the subject matter.

Adapted from a French play but never seems stage- bound.

It says something about this movie that Redford is at his most compelling playing opposite a nag.

A revelatory independent film whose moments of incredible sadness are offset by the same state of grace that blesses its astonishing title character.

Recalling the earthiness Broderick Crawford brought to the original, I couldn't help thinking Gandolfini should have been cast as Willie.

A subtly rich performance by Dillane and a fine supporting cast make this Holocaust drama worth seeing, even if you don't think you can bear another one.

The biggest puzzlement about "What'' is what it's doing in major movie theaters around the country when it so clearly belongs on one of those small cable channels given to peculiar programming.

Richard Jenkins gives the standout supporting performance, worthy of Oscar consideration, as Josey's father, a miner unable to conceal his anger at his daughter for having a child out of wedlock and, now, creating dissension at his workplace.

An argument could be made that too many bad things happen to the good members of this sisterhood. The movie does occasionally teeter on the brink of soap opera, but then, so does life.

Perhaps the humor has been lost in translation.