Ruthe Stein

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.