Shawn Levy

It's hard to overestimate what a job of work was accomplished here to keep this from being a catastrophe. But The Lake House, despite its dubious foundation, proves surprisingly sturdy.

While Stallone likely hopes to go out with a bang, this small, manipulative movie doesn't have any real punch to it.

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.

Quick and charming and irresistible.

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

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

It's best seen as a breezy entertainment and a reminder of how potent some of these performers -- many of whom are dead -- were in their primes.

After Life is a thoroughly original, wholly realized work that leaves a profound and nagging bug in your brain for days after you've seen it: What in your life is worth holding on to? What one thing would you wish never to forget? It's a question as relevant to the lives we live each day as it is to our final moments. [24 Sept 1999, p.26]

The trouble is that it's so lead-footed and delighted with itself even as bit after bit sinks like a lead weight.

The story, as so often in bad farce, treats them all as idiots, so it's almost impossible be engaged by anything other than the pretty rooms, gondolas and costumes.

Like "In the Bedroom," the film is studded with brilliant acting, and it's all rendered with gorgeously fluent technique. The result is a film that skirts cruelty and easy satire for deep, troubling realities -- a nearly thorough triumph, in short.

This edition -- clean and tight as Scott would have it -- presents a strong case for Alien as both the greatest horror film and the greatest science-fiction film ever made.

It's a terrible picture: ugly and illogical and clumsily staged and peppered with crude, witless humor.

Marnie is merely a marginal work by director Alfred Hitchcock, meaning, naturally, that it's superior to all but the best works of almost every other director ever. [02 Jun 2000]

You'll gasp appalled and laugh outraged and possibly, watching the spectacle of a promising young lad treading desperately in a nasty sea, shed an errant tear.

In a way, it's perfect: You can't imagine anyone seeing this mess and not feeling lesser for the experience.

At one and the same time it feels like a decent-but-not-great film of his '70s period and a perky and tart entry in his modestly successful revival in the last half-decade. Neat trick.

It’s not a great film, but parts of it are outstanding.

A frequently transporting depiction of the early and middle life of Ray Charles, the film soars on remarkable performances, a convincing sense of time and place, and, of course, the glorious music for which Charles was rightly billed as The Genius.

There are bits of this film that titillate, undeniably, but mainly you wait for the comic to bring out the big guns, and then he leaves you feeling more teased than tickled.

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

The movie isn't uniformly taut, but it's funny, acid and clever, the work of a fine craftsman working in a comfortable metier.

The highlights are the writing and the performances. There are real laughs to be had -- several scenes end on sharp, witty shards of dialogue. And whenever Eckhart, Northam or Ehle is the focus, the thing soars.

In the end, the intelligence of the dialogue and crack acting are wrestled to the ground by the zealous politics, the formulaic narrative and a wan and flaccid air unusual from the reliably nifty Parker.

The film is filled with cool little scenes of fighting and shape-shifting, and gloomy atmosphere. Subtitles themselves have morphed into gimmicks -- sometimes they float, sometimes they dissolve, sometimes they appear in unexpected places in the frame. It's all darned nifty.

Miscast, constricted, loose in tone and meandering in intent, it has far fewer moments of inspiration than unintended laughter.

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

In the wake of everything we've seen on TV and in movies in recent decades, it's amazing that something as harmless as language can still stupefy us. As The Aristocrats demonstrates, there is real humor in the confrontation of taboos.