Shawn Levy

The combination of ideas and wit, lively characterizations, believable human dilemmas and a climax that both melts and braces you makes for a fine blend. A movie about ideas may sound like a drag, but this one packages them in well-earned emotions.

Acted with earnest commitment and scored and edited with jazzy, laconic grace, "Lights" tells us absolutely nothing we haven't heard before -- and often -- in sports films

The chief problem with Shadow Boxers is that it's too short.

Amazing as Penn is, Morton is his equal, creating a complete personality out of gestures, glances and unadorned bits of actorly business.

Beneath its frantic surfaces, Narc is terribly ordinary, built on a mystery that will puzzle only those who have never watched a TV cop drama.

In some regards, watching Passione is like being cornered by actor John Turturro and forced to watch a slide show of his trip to Italy.

An exquisitely mounted and achieved film (shot, as it so happens, on Paris sound stages), it tells a story so protracted and uneventful that you wonder if writer-director Tran Anh Hung isn't pulling your leg. [08 Apr 1994, p.AE15]

The film always teaches and entertains in equal, ample measure. It's a treat -- and it's good for you.

Sincere, delicately funny, a little staid, a little precious, and more interested in the ebb and flow of the heart than in the dubious rewards of sensational narrative twists.

The problem here is that while some of Mann's work is overwhelmingly great, the sum of it simply never compels.

Wild demonstrates that even a workaday movie can become something special when blessed with once-in-a-lifetime casting and a couple of dozen hilarious one-liners. [19 Jun 1998, p.32]

It's long, like life, but like life it continually fascinates.

Rodriguez, who never acted before auditioning for the director, is utterly convincing, fluid and determined and jaded and wild like any teen-ager, but with a bracing spirit and a shocking store of ferocity.

It is affecting, accomplished, witty, poignant and memorable.... Unstrung Heroes is one of the year's best films. [22 Sep 1995]

A winning, grown-up film that benefits from fine, homey performances, a steady directorial hand, and the sense that everyone involved was invested in the story and not just the job.

If it happens to lose you as you wander through this strange land, at least it does so to the accompaniment of captivating visuals and music.

A spry and appealing film that throws off comic sparks with aplomb.

Merry Christmas is long and ponderous, but for a few moments, its heavy hand is refreshingly light and agile, and you feel something other than frustration.

Despite a cast of solid actors and a director with one of the most exquisite visual sensibilities in the business, the film is too often flat when we want it to dazzle us.

Gets behind the armor and the camouflage to give viewers a clear if brief view of the men and women who fight and die under the American flag every day in Iraq.

And while it may be true that Almodóvar doesn't have Hitchcock's way with terror, it's not clear that Hitchcock could leave the real world behind so wholly and convincingly as Almodóvar does here.

There are fine actors at work here. Chow is quiet and cunning, Gong Li is haughty and cold-eyed, Chen Jin is sturdy as a ghost who appears out of the past, and Gin Junjie is vividly bratty as the youngest, and most underappreciated, prince.

This fascinating and occasionally transporting film never quite transforms into something really great.

The exquisitely exact photography and sound design represent the highest level of craft of Van Sant's career.

It's a splendid ensemble, equal in almost every way to the fine, probing script.

It's all polished and slick and credible, but it never truly engages. Perhaps it's because Irving's story is well-known; perhaps it's because of the script's repetitions and tangents; or perhaps it's simply because Hallstrom himself is ambivalent about his protagonist.

They were fast, they were sexy, they were clean, they were the future -- and they're already gone.

At the end, you're refreshed, like Pauline after she swallows an entire soft drink in one gulp, and it feels terrific.

Despite a strong start, Only Human loses its grip on all that merry energy and comes to feel more like a sitcom than like "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" or "Some Like It Hot," to name just some of its forebears.

While a splendidly acted and worthily grown-up movie, too often has the feel of a potboiling soap opera, with twists and turns that range from the grimly ironic to the absurdly sensational.

Ellroy's bully-boy schtick is getting stale, and Moverman is overly beholden to it.

Delirious. Hilarious. Absolutely one-of-a-kind.

The film is enthralling, even as the tale becomes more and more dire, with scores of millions dead and societal upheaval imminent. The circumstances depicted in Contagion are terrifying, but the power with which the film is made blends the horror, as only the best art can, with beauty.

Pieces of April isn't the biggest or best film of the year, but it's touching, witty, smart and well-made. You have to sort through a lot of chaff at the multiplex to find all those qualities in a single movie.

It's a crowd-pleasing, artful and convincing movie that just misses being great but nevertheless gratifies.

It's a film for those people -- and they are legion -- who recoil in horror from the very notion of Christmas cheer. If you're in that crowd, and you know who you are, you'll love it.

As a brief introduction to Belle and his amazing gifts, District B 13 is a treat. But as a movie its feet are dully planted on the ground.

The ensemble rolls gleefully with the script's twists (which aren't all that twisty, to be fair), and the film piles up laugh after laugh agreeably.

In the main this is a muscular, exact and thrillingly cool movie.

There is greatness in Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York: titanic acting, violent poetry, moviemaking on a grand scale, a real air of daring. And there is flab in it as well, and confusion.

As it stands, the film is perhaps a tad low-key to catch the eye, but it's carefully enough made and, especially, acted, to keep a hold on the brain and heart long after it's over.

It's a film with many strengths, but it's not a knockout. And that's Tarantino's own fault, though not in the first way you might imagine.

An intermittently engaging and confused blend of biopic, chop-socky, dopey mysticism and, oddest of all, melodramatic weepie, is no ``JFK.''[7 May 1993, p.AE15]

Even as Inarritu has matured as a craftsman, he has stood perhaps one beat too long in the same place as a storyteller. In ways, Babel is his best work, but it's time to move on.

Tepid, boilerplate production.

It's a goofball of a movie and a throwaway, but it's also completely free of self-import and the slightest hint of sentiment -- a perfect light entertainment that's guaranteed to launch itself as a franchise.

There's little that's conventionally pleasant about the experience, save the satisfaction of having witnessed the novel and the extreme. But that sensation is at the heart of a lot of great art, from Poe to Stravinsky to Picasso to Diane Arbus to NWA. Nöe would likely, with a black-hearted grin, appreciate being ranked with such company.

Mendes has extraordinary gifts, but he has leveled them at the Wheelers like a firing squad. Strangely, he evinced no particular moralizing agenda when making films about the mob or the military. But put ordinary people in his sights and he's venomous. It's unbecoming -- and it should be worked out in private, not in a movie theater.

A middling contender in this summer of gigantoid sequels.

It’s absolutely charming to be reminded of -- or, in most cases, introduced to -- Berg and her particular genius.

Filled with vivacity, charm and, yes, beauty.

The highlights of The Cooler -- the portrait of Bernie-as-schlub, the ecstatic union of two losers, the depiction of shadowy old Vegas confronted with its sanitized corporate future -- are superb. You can easily live with the rest to get to them.

It does a splendid job not only of introducing newcomers to a vital artist they might have missed, but of reminding rabid fans of Earle's stripe why they were infected to begin with.

Despite the rich, atmospheric textures, Norton's artificiality, Watts' unlikability, and a plot comprised of one melodramatic wrinkle after another all contrive to frustrate our empathy.

Ullman and May make something intermittently memorable of an otherwise minor film.

Comes to be dominated by the acting, and this is an unfortunate fate.

It's a film in which complex issues are boiled down to human essences, not so much simplified as dramatized in the very best way.

Even with the flaws of the final half, The Avengers is grand, brisk fun. It comes tantalizingly close to reaching the level of the very best comic book films of the current generation.

It's a nicely tart gulp of grown-up wit and cynicism -- with, for a change, a cherry on top.

Hardcore might have been confused and crude, but it was never guilty of being tepid, like this film.

There's drama here, and moments of genuine tension, but there's fun, too, which is the point of a movie like this. To Ratliff's credit, he never lets the considerable craft get in the way.

Filled with personal vignettes and famous-people testimonials, the film has a few too many narrative digressions, but it's a moving portrait of all-too-human personalities and the dogged optimism that keeps them going.

It's ambitious, sharply observed and spectacularly well-acted like so much of Sayles' canon. But it's also overstuffed and underdeveloped.

McGregor is a real charmer, a young Malcolm McDowell with a Scottish lilt; Brain Tufano's photography manages to be both rich and stark at once; Hodge's script has some genuinely arch lines. [03 Mar 1995]

It starts as clever, but it ends in real feeling.

Combines spareness in plot and dialogue with luxurious, sensual technique in such a way that the craft sometimes overwhelms the slender story.

An engaging if not riveting film based on David Benioff's adaptation of his own novel. It's not nearly Lee's best picture, and it's guilty of a few wrong turns that only a confident filmmaker could make, but it's assured and, perhaps more importantly, reassuring.

It's a deeply uneven film that can't decide if it's a satire, a joke, a thriller or a heartstring-tugger, and in dithering in its tone and its aims it ultimately turns out to be none of the above.

Fair Game, a murky potboiler based on memoirs by both Plame and Wilson, makes a hash of these piquant ingredients.

Has its heart someplace worthy. But its head -- not so much.

Sometimes the best way to relate history is to tinker with it and make it feel like a living thing.

What we've got is a mixed though certainly entertaining bag.

Wright and company do a splendid job of distilling it down to a fresh and entertaining joyride of a film.

Deeply strange, oddly shimmery movie.

It’s a timely and lively film that reminds us that such phenomena as reality TV, YouTube celebrity and living one’s life 24/7 on Facebook and Twitter aren’t necessarily brand new.

Zobel isn't a sadist about all of this as, say, Roman Polanski or David Lynch or Todd Solondz might have been. There's a humanity here, even for the restaurant manager. But that still doesn't make Compliance easy to ingest.

A garish and fascinating little movie that comes bouncing in the wake of Bennett Miller's "Capote" like a yipping puppy trying to keep up with an elegant show dog.

You can learn about the grand shifts of history from Persepolis, but you learn about a handful of lives as well.

Despite the film's inevitably downbeat tone and occasional repetitiveness, there is that heavenly music to remember -- or to encounter for the first time. You will leave the theater singing, if with a touch of melancholy.

Characters in Bullhead act out of stupidity, greed, anger and vanity; their world is filmed in a washed-out haze; the miserable fortune that devastated young Jacky haunts him ceaselessly still. The film's final notes hint at a state of grace, perhaps, or at least of release. But there's a tautological determinism throughout that suggest otherwise.

There's plenty of freshness and skill here, both in front of the camera and behind it.

You can imagine a better adaptation of The Hunger Games, but you can much more easily imagine a far worse one, and all in all that's not a bad outcome.

With the grounded performances, a pleasant look and feel and the brains to refrain from anything more than a quiet portrait of life, The Housekeeper makes for the sort of well-seasoned meal that's so refreshing in the summertime.

A masterfully varied set of images, paces and moods.

You wouldn't necessarily want to be Valentino, but this sprightly film may make you nostalgic for a life you've never lived.

A dark, violent film, it has undeniable visual power and sporadic moments of wit. There's quite a bit of fun, but it's not the cheery entertainment you might be hoping for from your favorite porker. [25 Nov 1998, p.D1]

At 118 minutes it's longer than "The Philadelphia Story" or "Annie Hall" or "When Harry Met Sally" or "500 Days of Summer" or, well, you get it. Working from a script by Dan Fogelman that wasn't overly bright or sharp to begin with, directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa dawdle and stretch and repeat themselves, until what should have been light and brisk becomes leaden and overdone.

It's possible for a despicable heart and mind to make great art. And if Gibson hasn't quite done that with Apocalypto, he's nevertheless made an impressive and engrossing film. If you choose out of hand to miss it, which is your right, you'll be missing something.

If this sounds like cheesy melodrama, that's exactly how director Francois Ozon ("Swimming Pool," "8 Women") wants it.

Never quite as resonant as Spielberg's earliest "Indiana Jones" films, in which, for all the clamor, it often feels like something real and vital and human is at stake. But at its best, this film is as joyful as anything in those movies, and that is something of a movie miracle.

The film features some fine performances and explores an intriguing set of themes, but it fails to ever take life, causing its laudable message to fall on deadened ears. [12 Oct 1993, p.C1]

All the hammy acting and meandering storytelling in the world can't drown the essential appeal of the story.

It's as sullying and disheartening an experience as the movies can offer .

Watching it isn't easy, but it is definitely worth having waited for.

If there's a calmer, more self-collected star out there, then he or she has hidden the fact pretty well.

Capable but not transporting, never unraveling the mystery of its hero's genius or, worse, making us care enough to look deeper.

The film is nothing much to look at and has trouble swallowing its own clichs and implausibilities.

One of those gratifyingly nostalgic works of art that accept the present day but remind us, as well, that the past wasn't necessarily worse.

It happens to be splendidly acted and to be poised, as a narrative, on a knife's edge (the final shot, at a great moment of indecision, is utterly haunting). But, chiefly, it's a portrait of an essential and sympathetic human dilemma, and in that it's both real and timeless in ways that transcend borders, cultures and languages.

The Illusionist might trick some moviegoers into thinking it's clever, deft, old-fashioned fun. But I urge those folks to stay home with a real classic romantic thriller on DVD or cable to remember the difference. This film doesn't even manage to breathe old life into the forms it apes.

While it lacks the experimental razzle-dazzle of "Lola," the film is a similarly confident and fetching look at love, coincidence, tragedy and fate among the young, the bored and the beautiful.

Isn't a bad movie so much as one that feels like an amateur version of material from more accomplished works -- a movie that not only isn't sure what it really is but doesn't seem terribly much to care.

"Waltz" requires you to be on board with it from the start and doesn't often enough rouse itself to magnetize you if you're not.

One of those American independent films with two chief points to recommend it: the earnest good will of its creators and its determination to be unlike any studio film.

Why We Fight attempts, somewhat sketchily, to connect the dots between Ike's Cassandra-like warnings and current events.

It's a movie of charm and insight, well-acted and carefully observed, but it's also one that lacks any real heights to offset the generic competence that characterizes it. There's no real drama to follow, no surprises of sufficient magnitude to enliven the experience.

An engaging spectacle of energy and special effects built around a doomy mood and an ensemble cast vigorously pursuing a story line that isn't nearly as snazzy as the dressing.

The jokes are sparse and predictable, and the storytelling is, too. But Buscemi and Gershon have great fun with their roles, and Pitt is strangely agreeable about the whole thing. Bully for him.

A pure, sweet romance that moves along with bouncy comedy and a touch of grown-up realism and rue.

It's a bit insidery, yes, but isn't it a treat to be brought inside a hidden world by a movie?

A purely cinematic experience. You've got to see it, in other words, to understand.

The darkest, most operatic, and technologically richest "Star Wars" movie to date, "Sith" is grim, stirring entertainment and a nearly complete vindication of everything its creator has been saying for six years about where the series was heading and what its final shape would be.

Mournful and moody, crepuscular and poetic, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford turns one of cinema's most rehearsed tales into a dreamy inquiry into the nature of sadism, hero-worship and betrayal.

With so much potential, The Valet is disappointingly flat and wan, with few of the moments of cringe-and-laughter-inducing mortification that are Veber's stock in trade.

If you're not a Beasties fan, you'll get almost nothing out of this after about two minutes. But if you like the band and want to see them rock hard in front of their oldest fans, it's a tasty treat.

A movie that, like its title character, is meandering, unstructured and only dimly aware of what it’s doing.

A dense, sharp, hilarious and unflinching film about a group of British Muslims who seek to shock the world with an apocalyptic act of jihad but are too dumb, contentious and accident-prone to succeed at anything much more audacious than ringing a doorbell and running.

If The Good Thief isn't up to the work that inspired it, it's nevertheless fresh and distinct, a shot of citrus in a movie season far too often tasting of pablum.

Atmospheric, absorbing and completely in the control of the man who made it -- unlike, especially, “Bringing Out the Dead,” which it sometimes resembles.

Frequently gory, often talky, almost always watchable, never quite thrilling, Gladiator is a cold and big film that mixes solid acting with cheesy digital effects and sweaty action with stultifying chatter.

Moon doesn't arrive with a train of ballyhoo, but its quiet charms easily drowns out the clatter of bigger, dumber pictures.

Music aside, what finally puts Once over and makes it a film you can watch more than once is its slight but thoroughly credible realism.

There's some great fun in the film, and a bit of unexpected wit, and lots of action, much of it ludicrous but some quite engaging.

One of the most exciting American movies about recent political history since, ironically, Oliver Stone's "JFK."

Kung Fu 2 does almost NOTHING to advance the story, to deepen the characters, or to charm, amuse or entertain.

The message here is vital, though, and Siegel retains the gift of making you dream of making a difference.

There's a terrific balance between human comedy and just-this-side-of-science-fiction in Robot & Frank.

It's nonetheless a fascinating, thirst-inspiring, thought-provoking journey. Just one request for the lengthier version: fewer shots of dogs' swimsuit areas, please.

"Sixth" achieves a rare hushed poetry where Stir, for all its strengths, is more earthbound and familiar.

In effect, Caden's life passes before his eyes while he is living it. And Kaufman shares this effect with us through a strange process he achieves with invisible strings; it's a knockout.

You don't often hear critics gripe that a movie isn't long or explicit enough, but Sorkin and Nichols could have gone the extra lap or so to show that Wilson's saga is more than just a story of a good ol' boy accidentally pulling off a remarkable coup; it's a sobering account of the geopolitical hijinks that gave shape to our current world.

A mature, tense, frightening and altogether masterful film.

An energetic, witty and altogether well-built martial arts drama that is familiar in many ways but distinguished by its high level of craft, its sincere sentiment and drama, and the forceful charisma of its star, Donnie Yen.

There's a touch of whimsy to his misadventures, but the malfeasance he uncovers -- often using hidden cameras and microphones -- is anything but a joke.

It's an experimental film about a sensational event, placing tragedy in the context of the dulling normality of human life and resisting easy interpretation, just as did the inexplicable death of Kurt Cobain.

Handsome, professional and dutiful, but it never feels inspired.

It isn't perversely genre-busting like "Drive." Instead, it feels like somebody turned down the volume on a hard rock album so as to hear the details better -- for which relief, much thanks.

Spins a complete, thoroughly satisfying yarn from a short-form series.

When the picture's good, it's really something; when it's bad, you grit your teeth and pray it will end.

The story told in Garbo: The Spy is so outlandish that you almost feel as if you're watching a mockumentary. But it appears to be entirely true.

There are real thrills here, especially as the Bang Bang starts touring and becomes a minor sensation. But it's a little too hermetic and goopy and humorless and cool to invite you to wrap your arms around it. The Howes shared a single liver, but what this film version of their lives needs is more heart.

The script's contrivances and the director's lax handling aren't enough to hold you.

Filled with nasty, nasty stuff.

Credit the great Bruno Ganz with creating a vivid Hitler: furious, unsteady, crushed and frankly cracking up.

It's often flat and dull, and it can be heavy-handed with the little acorn-that-will-yield-the-famous-oak bits that so often dot biographical films about the youthful lives of famous figures.

By now, you know exactly what to expect, which is both good and bad. To my mind, Anderson reached the acme of this formula in the first go, in "Tenenbaums," and has now replicated it twice, evoking smaller pleasures each time.

It's a breezy and charming film in all, well-acted, playful and filled with real joie de vivre.

This isn't much of a plot, but as in the "Toy Story" films the combination of a varied cast of characters and a vision of the human world from an unlikely perspective make for consistent amusement.

An attractive, charming film that has fun with its period settings, its goofy plot and its off-kilter performances.

Soderbergh, who hasn't ever attempted a film of this sort before, brings his gifts brilliantly to bear, with gorgeous shots of outer space, delicate, swift edits and a captivating score by his longtime collaborator Cliff Martinez -- But when the script becomes more about telling -- or, rather, arguing -- than showing, the film loosens its grip.

You'll laugh and cry at the film, but you'll bridle, too, at Brooks' clumsy technique.

It's a film that gently spoofs such cultural staples as ranchera music, illegal gambling, labor exploitation and tabloid media. And it's the sort of film that sneaks serious themes and emotions in just when you think it's about to dissolve into farce. Small but largely satisfying.

Fight Club -- cue the blurb machine -- is a knockout.

The result imparts something of the emptiness of Johnny's existence and, if you're not partial to either the fellow or the technique, might very well drive you up a tree.

The star, though, is the script, a rare enough occurrence in Hollywood that it merits special note.

The art of Miranda July, the former Portlander and hyphenate extraordinaire, balances on the edge of the cunning and the precious, of depth and naivety, of the fetching and (sorry) the revolting.

Funky, scrappy, dishy, screwy story of that star-studded, gilded squad.

If Ruby Sparks doesn't warm you much or form a seamless whole, it's nevertheless got pieces that you can genuinely admire.

Even with Paul Green's invective echoing in the back of your mind, nothing's quite so heartwarming as the sight of a young person blossoming.

If you've got the stomach for it, it's a treat.

There's atmosphere and tension and dark humor and some truly shocking gore throughout. But the positive impression all of that makes pales next to a headscratching finale that is admittedly well-executed but is also undeniably perverse and borderline random. Maybe you'll go with it, simply out of shock. I, alas, could not.

iI’s a film more content to amuse than truly to probe or feel.

Watching skinny-armed little Will pretend to be the spawn of Sly Stallone in a series of botched feats of derring-do is a treat, as is much of this film.

As an action film it roars forward with agreeable, transporting energy.

It gives you all that you could ask for when you buy a ticket to a thrill ride.

As cinema, it's polenta, but it's made palatable by the piquant sauce with which these two great stars season it.

Soderbergh's experiments are gripping -- the photography, music, wobbly chronology and so on -- but the movie is more of a curiosity than anything else.

Mostly it's inspiring: to think that a man of Antonioni's years and talents is still capable of producing such vital work.

Its got a deliciously audacious and cheeky tenor.

Its sense of play, its sleek design and Yuen's spectacular action sequences will make it, I suspect, attractive to palates not accustomed to the spicier or cruder forms of this genre.

The Coens have often been accused of coldness toward their characters, but the verve and wit of their films reveal genuine compassion and heart. Based on the evidence of this film, the Pangs aren't quite there yet.

Even though Spurlock, a totally likeable Everyman, is in the middle of it at all times, "PWPTGMES" never feels like the work of, oh, Michael Moore.

Stardust in a nutshell: hardly great shakes, but better and more satisfying than it first seems.

The film is gummed up by Bruno Ganz as an intelligence officer who wants not only to capture the bad guys but to understand them -- and to explain them, hand-wringingly, endlessly.

Few films so thoroughly lose their way as The Edge. After developing an engrossing plot and mood, it goes frankly bonkers, and the intensity whistles out of it like air from a punctured tire. When it finally limps home -- at least 20 minutes too late -- you're left with a sour, treacly taste where once you had savored something almost exquisite. [26 Sep 1997, p.21]

A perfect example of an ordinary movie made unique by the powerhouse performance of its lead.

Moves with lightness, verve and charm, which Magnetic Fields fans might find amusing, given Merritt's well-known morosity. But there is more than a suggestion here that his persona is just that, and that those sweet melodies he sings so dryly arise from a truly sweet core.

It's got some great action sequences and is peppered with genuinely dazzling images. It's also subtly infused with Mann's favored themes of men-at-work and the high price of loyalty to duty. But it hasn't got sufficient meat to warrant its draggy length.

It's not an ideal film, but it has the virtue of the ideal star, and that counts.

The Amazing Spider-Man is agreeable. And occasionally it's more. But, as with the American remake of the Swedish film of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," you can't help but feel that you've not only heard the story before, but that you you've seen it before, too -- and recently.

A rather routine thriller that's got two things going for it: the ticking of a clock and the clickety-click of bicycle wheels. Both impart a sense of exhilaration to a thin and even silly story, engaging you when, really, you ought to know better.

The plot is tired, the energy sputtering, the jokes less manic. "Spy Kids" was a shot out of nowhere; Spy Kids 2 feels like a shot from someplace tiresomely familiar.

If you're one of those fussy filmgoers who demands that a movie engage somewhat higher body parts -- the heart, say, and the brain -- you'll find only intermittent comfort and joy in this high-concept, low-wattage film.

Weir is the real deal, and his gifts more than repay the time you invest in the film.

Absent the real sense of creepiness and highly honed film craft of De Palma, or the strong visual and emotional sensibility of Woo, M: I III feels like one of the more forgettable James Bond films -- saddled, moreover, with a star who's sliding into self-parody.

Witty, treasure-filled and nostalgic in the best sense.

To quote a source as authoritative as Francis Bacon -- namely a "New Yorker" cartoon: "On the internet no one knows you're a dog."

I Am Legend has one undeniably cool thing about it, namely the vision of Manhattan as a semi-feral wasteland.

Balanced precariously between a horror film and a war movie, but it's so sly and assured that you can't dismiss the allegorical, even satirical undertones that Cortés teases out of Sparling's conceit.

Never loses sight of the human beings at the heart of the conflict -- no matter what side of the conflict they're on.

In their hands [Terry Gilliam or Tim Burton or even Steven Spielberg], Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone might have made as terrific a movie as it is a book. When Columbus got the job, however, it was guaranteed only to be a commercial success.

It's exactly the film Jarmusch wanted to make, but it's also smug, excruciating, borderline pointless. You could call it a deliberate effort to invert the conventions of the thriller; you could also call it, more rightly, a self-deluded disaster.

The film holds charms for everyone but in a very unusual way: If some audience members feel cheated at the halfway mark, others will feel that the film is finally getting started. Nifty!

It's in its aspiration to depict deceit and obsession, selfishness and recklessness, bitterness, revenge and fury that the film's power lies. There and in Clive Owen's sure and powerful hands.

Transcends politics and forces us to consider just what it is we ask of young people who answer the call to duty.

A story like this requires a villain worthy of decades of built up horror and rage, and Christensen provides a thoroughly credible stimulus for the nail-biting events of the film.

Tries less to dazzle you than reel you in with competence and restraint.

It's often a vivid film and paints its small niche well, but only in the final passages, when AIDS changes everything, does it feel full-blooded.

A gripping account of grown-up sensuality, obsession, loss and hope.

Moncrieff manages to get beneath the skin of several of these characters, a nifty trick considering what a crowded world she's created. In all, it's a grueling, emotionally taxing, discomfiting film.

If you loved his (Gilliam) older work -- and if you can stand the twinge of pain that beholding the lamented Ledger will surely evoke -- it’s worth a visit.

A movie that tells -- or rather, circles -- the story of the band's formation and abortive career.

The liveliest thing here is the keen sense of regret you feel at seeing two TV icons reduced to supporting characters in a lame movie that trades on their good names.

Salt is hooey, but in a medium in which hooey is the stock-in-trade, it's effective hooey, and hooey with admirable craft, and, most of all, breezy hooey.

Something of an unforgettable experience.

Dick works best as a catalog of style: It's the story and the acting that are the window dressing.

Richly frightening film.

It's the screenwriting equivalent of those fat substitutes used by snack food manufacturers: the finished product looks all right but the taste is off, and the aftereffects are embarrassing and uncomfortable.

An audaciously unique and exciting film, not as successful as an A-to-Z story as it is mind-expanding as a vision of what the cinema can do.

An up-close, engaging and ultimately moving look at Telfair's family, his final high-school season and his decision to forsake college for the NBA.

Still, when a director of his pedigree and years brings so much life to the screen, inconsistency hardly seems to matter.

For all Smith's dedication and Mann's abilities, Ali remains a figure too big for even the big screen to contain.

[Murphy] makes a thrillingly flesh-and-blood creature of Kitten, with her yearning, her droll, self-deprecating wit, her breathless romanticism and her puckish vibrancy. It's easily the most fun bit of screen acting this year, and as rich and nuanced as the lead in any drama.

The word 'samsara' means 'continuous flow of life' in Tibetan, and Fricke and company surely experienced that sensation in making the film, which took them to 25 countries in a span of five years.

The increasingly crude plotting and stock dialogue are killers. All the beauty the eye can hold can't, in this case, fool the ear and brain into falling for Coppola's strained tale.

Tautou is, as ever, radiant and deep and affecting, but a film about such an extraordinary personage as Chanel shouldn’t feel so ordinary and wan.

It has a dickens of a time telling a story.

And that ultimately may be the problem with the Polanski version: by bringing Oliver forward, you push the drama backward.

The acting is superb across the board, and the film moves dreamily yet with razor-sharp precision, building to a sequence of deeply felt climaxes.

The result is persuasive but incomplete. Dick is working here as a journalist, and the story is far from fully unfolded. Still, what he proffers will keep you thinking, talking and engaged.

There's much to enjoy in the lively, fun and fresh documentary Comic-con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope, but chief among them may be that its director, Morgan Spurlock, is nowhere to be seen.

For all the technical beauty of Marie Antoinette, there's nobody at home at Versailles.

The real star is Katz, who has stretched into a longer and more plot-driven form without diluting any of his talents or compromising his personal vision. And the other star is Portland, which is so beautifully and truthfully rendered.

Something like a finely-written and -acted soap opera. That isn’t death, but it’s less like life than you’d hope.

The little film is made uniquely engaging by the performance of its young star, Chris Marquette.

Bekmambetov revs it up furiously and unleashes one bit of hyperactive, dazzling invention after another. The result is a throwaway wrapped up in the coolest packaging imaginable, which is acres better than the opposite.

Director Bart Layton's film takes us to such strange and emotionally-charged places that we cannot believe that what we're seeing is real, even though it demonstrably is.

A feature film has to be more than just an interesting theme; it needs something that constitutes drama -- conflict, journey, adventure, what have you. The Notorious Bettie Page is a perfect example of a film that has a subject but no story.

The film isnt without bumps -- theres something rather gnomish and self-serving about its tolerance for grotesqueries and caricature -- but it presents us with a wholly rendered, largely credible world peppered with witty little moments and wryly chosen details. [19 Jun 1998, p.30]

There's real craft here and a vision that's nothing if not unique.

Ultimately well-made but only intermittently gripping.

Prometheus is breezy and comely and sufficiently clever to mitigate most qualms, and Fassbender, especially, is wonderful.

Such a powerful sincerity and goodness flows through Paper Clips.

Goon is a hoot.

Still, there's a decency at the film's core and a desire to do the predictable thing in a generally unpredictable fashion. Those traits make it impossible to reject "Happyness" out of hand.

The bitterness of the film is a far cry from the peppy young Godard's embrace of life -- and a very far cry indeed from either praise or love.

The lack of sentimentality and rhetoric is refreshing. It's a grown-up movie about some harsh facts of life.

Along the way it provides the grand, intelligent entertainment of a superior cast playing smart people amid a compelling plot. It may not be perfect, but it's decidedly a cut above.

Leaving aside politics, it's quite an achievement in art.

If Look Both Ways has a familiar form, this sort of emphasis on humanity, with which the film refreshingly pulses, is rare.

It's certainly all Araki up there, and the film is handsome and swiftly paced. But it also feels terribly routine and even, strangely, for all the trangressiveness it strives for, retrograde.

It's so steeped in the coldness and inhumanity of its protagonist that it's ultimately more clinical than absorbing.

It's gory, it's bleak, it's shamelessly tricky -- and it's also a good deal more fun than it had any right to be.

You're guaranteed never to have seen anything like it; objectively speaking, it's a wonder.

You could wish for more, but for that there's still the epic-length miniseries. If you want just two hours of mournful, lovely melodrama of manners, this is a fine choice.

It's a sharp and vivid film, filled with moments of tremendous ingenuity and characterized by a persistent avoidance of the expected tropes. It's far scarier than the big-budget remakes of "Godzilla" and "King Kong," more engaging than "I Am Legend," more human than a sackful of slasher films.

Perhaps Following Sean is as much of a cultural oddity as "Sean" itself turned out to be. But it's a decidedly interesting one nonetheless.

The Road walks a tremendously daring and delicate line between inspiration and horror, and it does so not only in the events it depicts but in its very air and atmosphere. It was unforgettable on the page, and it impresses equally, or at least it does so remarkably often, on screen.

A murky, turgid work that is no doubt exactly the film Malkovich wished to make but is so indirect and affected as to border on incoherent.

A deliriously entertaining field report from a historical moment when porn darned near became mainstream.

In comparison to others who struggle against real travails (the young Buck Brannaman, say), he (O'Brien) seems spoilt, entitled, impatient, shrill and mean.

Lennon's story is so remarkable and the footage assembled here so fresh and fascinating that the film engrosses despite its formal failings. Give it a chance.

So heavy-handed and blatant in its posturings and so incomplete at 73 minutes that you simply feel like you've been harangued more than educated.

It's built of such exquisite craft -- the acting, the decor, the photography, the music -- that to refuse it is to refuse the very sensations that draw us to art, romance and maybe even life itself.

There's no doubt that Tarsem's a visionary director. Now he needs to envision a worthwhile script for himself.

Until State of Play slips into its small cascade of improbabilities near its end, it proves a thoroughly engaging and professional enterprise.

The film wastes itself on silliness and scattered threads before very long, truly squandering a brilliant promise.

A nitwit script, full of pedestrian dialogue and building to a laughable climax, dooms the picture.

So filled with verve and wit for much of its running time that it's depressing to watch it devolve into genuine foolishness and borderline incoherence in its final act.

A frustrating, pedantic, cacophonous jumble of a picture, peopled with as many straw men and caricatures as living, breathing humans.

It's part action film, part buddy movie, part love story, part political tract and, in sum, much less: a meandering, preachy, condescending mess that only occasionally bursts into life and even then at such a tepid level that you can hardly call it living.

Loaded with fine performances, traffics in audacious images and generally comports itself with a great deal more grace and gravitas than most movies with roots in fantastic themes.

Tasteful, thoughtful fare that entertains without ever speaking down to the audience.

Like "Crumb" or "The Devil and Daniel Johnston," it's remarkably close-up moviemaking, with family secrets laid bare for all the world to see.

Hogan whips up a high-energy family entertainment that fairly erases memory of the other filmed versions of Barrie's tale.

Clever and charming.

There are mysteries and twists in Blood Work, but its real work isn't ratiocination but healing and connection. Outwardly it's a detective story; really it's a tale of the heart.

While the film has visual verve, its faux-Fellini finale only underscores how remote, repetitive, uninvolving and contrived the whole enterprise is.

Genre movies are often mere excuses for shows of gore and tricked-up suspense, and while The Grey should satisfy anyone who seeks only that there's something more profound and pure at its heart, making it a genuinely entertaining thriller that puts a chill through you in more ways than one.

The result is a hodgepodge: not as unpleasant as the alleged foodstuffs described in Schlosser's book, but not exactly prime rib.

Despite the stories' brief running times, they don't manage to generate much interest or make much sense.

Ought to win a prize for sheer audacity.

Has a sweaty, weary, often intimate feel, with the human aspect dominating the mechanistic. Donner can't help but push it over the top now and again, like a bodybuilder flexing his muscles when he spots a potential mate. But he contents himself with aiming for small virtues more often than grand impact.

Mostly, constant little reminders show that Breillat knows the business of movies in her bones. You can learn from it and enjoy it -- two things I never thought possible to say about a Breillat film until now.

Monsters is a tiny sci-fi thriller that makes up what it lacks in big effects with a fine photographic eye, a low-key sense of scale, and a genuine (if not always well-performed) human drama.

Babies will capture your eye -- and, probably, your fancy.

Woo's camera is easily the star of the film -- poring over Van Damme's cheekbones and chest (and groovy new locks) in an effort to make an epic character of him, caressing shotgun barrels and split lips, expanding and contracting time like Silly Putty. [20 Aug 1993, p.AE17]

Until it goes off the rails in its final 10 or 15 minutes, Wendigo, Larry Fessenden's spooky new thriller, is a refreshingly smart and newfangled variation on several themes derived from far less sophisticated and knowing horror films.

Washington makes it fun, which is about the best it could hope for.

Director Steven Shainberg makes something draggy out of something that wants to be light. It's got wit, but it's also earnest, and in proportion to those two traits it wins and loses you.

Even though it largely succeeds in putting a civil face on some unpalatable material, it lacks the heat and suppleness of the best Shakespeare on film.

Scott's cast is like a grand orchestra with various performers filling the roles of instruments: Thewlis a wise, ironic oboe; Neeson a stout cello; Norton a slightly battered flute. As it happens, the piece they're playing is a piano concerto and the keyboard -- that is, Bloom -- isn't big enough to match.

Even as the film sometimes veers into unproductive sidebars, there's a masterful tension to it, Alcazar is wonderful, and the final shot is a stunner.

They have been true to a classic source, using Adams' language and finding just the right actors, sets and costumes to flesh out his vision. Only the most persnickety cultist won't appreciate the effort.

Handsome and perky and built around a story so simplistic that it almost feels like it wasn't written down.

It's a triumph of the film that it manages to make Jeffrey Dahmer a human being -- at least a member of the species -- without ever bending toward empathy with or excuses for him.

Its heart is never anywhere but in the right place.

Whereas "Liaisons" mixed cruelty, wit, sensuality and drama into a deliciously tart frappe, Cheri is pretty, tepid and dull.

The film feels superficial even for something set in the fashion world, and after chronicling Sassoon's unlikely ascent, it all starts to feel air-kissy and fluffy. There is a great story here, though, and Sassoon is undeniably inspirational.

An engaging if overlong documentary.

It's a lively, charming film, and if it gave us a little more of the band's history, it would be perfect. As it is, it's a perfect introduction to some great songs and fascinating characters.

Franco is rather astounding, looking and sounding plausibly like Ginsberg and talking about complex ideas in a genuinely relaxed tone.