Shawn Levy

Banderas' direction is a bit of everything and a lot of not much.

There is life to The Proposition, though, and brutal, pitiless life it is. If it breathed more (and if Huston had spoken less), it might have been remarkable. As it is, it's monotonous, grim and uneven.

All you could hope for from a summer movie: dazzling action, jaw-dropping effects, cool clothes, steamy romance and more of the nifty "Matrix" mythology introduced in the 1999 original.

It's the sort of sophomoric exercise that will be appreciated chiefly by viewers already convinced they love it even before they've bought their tickets.

It's a fresh-hearted film that only frustrates when you sense how close it is to being exceptional.

A modestly scaled, sharply observed film.

Episodic and, at times, overwrought. And occasionally its deliberate opacity becomes too cloudy. But the things that shine through are remarkable. War is indeed Hell, it tells us, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing if you're filled with demons.

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

The film is somewhat sketch-like in its episodes and in placing Raquel within a larger world. But it’s very surefooted when it stays close in on her and her universe of chores, rituals and fears.

Developing late in the film, the romantic subplot has the effect of retarding the war story, stretching it out and adding unnecessary elements of sentimentality and sensationalism.

A mature, tense, frightening and altogether masterful film.

Woo's hand is sure and his eye, as ever, finds beauty in everything, even death.

Built around Firth’s fine work, A Single Man is a handsome film that, like its slender source novel, is stylish, quiet and sure.

A tug-of-war between a bracing vision of a truly infernal crime spree -- complete with engaging whodunit storytelling -- and a sometimes clumsy period drama.

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

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.

You nevertheless can't help but be swept up in the kids' enthusiasms and aspirations and gobs of energy.

Fabulously acted throughout.

An exhilarating slap in the face, bracing and sexy, smart and visceral, stylish and raw -- the advent of a fabulously exciting new moviemaking talent.

For all the flash and sparkle, there's little heat. The Dreamers wants to be "First Tango in Paris." It's more like "Last Tango Under Glass."

Not only does this film make you think, it makes you want to think. Few films -- few works of art of any stripe -- can claim that.

It's hooey, but it's hooey that picks up in the second half, not exactly redeeming itself but fitfully engaging.

It's the sort of history you could nibble on for hours.

In addition to being a funny movie about the movie business, it's a cheeky, ingenious motion picture puzzle.

Far too often, the film has to submit to the inevitable and stop so that Affleck can struggle like a yoga student to bend his face into a human emotion. He even cries. So might you.

If you've seen more films in your life than you have fingers, much of it will be forgotten by the time you floss the last popcorn skin from between your teeth.

It's professional, smart, quick-footed and snappy -- enviable traits in both a prizefighter and a nice little B-movie.

Working with someone else's material and a story outside the mainstream of his (Lee) work, he delivers laughs, puzzles, tension and the immense gift of fine actors at their delicious, familiar best.

In a film culture in which contrived tomfoolery and overinflated emotions stifle in their effort to provide comedy and romance, something as light and precise as The Puffy Chair feels like more than an exception; it feels like fresh air.

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

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.

Though intermittently entertaining, it's too long and rarely insightful in new or meaningful ways.

Brainless, witless, inept, ugly and crude,

The film has a dreary, worn quality; much of it is set in winter in Buffalo, N.Y., after all. You know before long that the best you can hope for is that these folks won't kill each other or themselves.

The result is a film that outrages and fills the viewer with poetry that's at once epic and intimate, scandalizing and life-affirming -- a real work of art.

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.

For Whitaker's performance alone, Last King is a substantial piece of work. Otherwise, the film is estimable but not quite great.

The film is masterful in many ways, and brilliantly acted by its lead player, Eriq Ebouaney, but it's often overly dense and fast with information, background and ideas.

Privy to virtually all phases of the debacle, the filmmakers have created the behind-the-camera equivalent of a slo-mo crash test.

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]

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.

Fairly lightweight, going after targets we can all agree deserve the needle. But there are five, six, seven gags you've never seen before -- real surprises- -- and the film deploys them smartly to keep you laughing and unsteady for the duration.

The most famous and (naturally) least engaging film on the subject, John Sturges' melodrama about the friendship between Earp (Burt Lancaster) and Holliday (Kirk Douglas) is handsomely mounted and as dull as a dish. [02 Jan 1994, p.D06]

The film has a candy-colored look that stands in well for the books' primitive appeal. And the all-star cast of vocal performers -- Will Ferrell as Yellow Hat, Dick Van Dyke as his boss, David Cross as his rival, Drew Barrymore as his sweetie -- aim squarely and appropriately at a 4-year-old audience.

Sufficiently resembles the first film that the heartiest fans should be content.

The loudest, dumbest, slowest, least entertaining and most annoying by a very comfortable margin.

A film in which barbs of wit, anger and grief continually prick at you.

Time to retire OSS 117's license to kill before any more innocent people suffer.

Nest of Spies may be a small, subtitled release, but it's also a gauntlet thrown at the feet of the upcoming big-screen adaptation of "Get Smart." See it and you'll have a substantial idea of what a spy comedy should be.

Filled with vivacity, charm and, yes, beauty.

Though it's handsomely made and peppered with seamlessly achieved visual glories, Narnia is ineptly acted, crudely staged and burdened with a score that only a masochist could love.

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.

Though excellent in many ways, American Beauty is, finally, an uneasy mix of assured technique and simplistic satire.

It's hard to recall the last time a big-ticket summer movie delivered so fully on its promise.

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.

Precious can’t be endorsed as entertainment: the circumstances and incidents and emotions in the film are far too dark and painful. But there is exhilaration in its daring, in its craft and in the powerhouse work of its principal actresses.

For much of its going, Up in the Air moves with the same refreshing pace and attitude that marked Reitman's "Thank You for Smoking" and "Juno" -- with the added frisson that the subject matter is so torn-from-the-headlines that it feels, in a good way, like reality TV.

Had Williams chopped away more pointedly at the rambling script, he might've had something memorable.

An unforgettable movie with a message that is likely to add wrinkles to your conception of what it means to be a good steward of the Earth.

Heart of Gold feels like an ample slice of the real America, the one truly worth caring for. And it's such a rare thing in this benighted age that the simple clarity with which it's presented feels like nothing less than a miracle.

In an unassuming way, the film sizzles -- a perfect embodiment, as it happens, of the marriage of the bad man and the man of letters.

The result is an overly long, overly cute film that is far too tickled with its own naughtiness. It truly is an instance of if you've seen the trailer, you've seen the film.

It's written almost without wit or romance, it's populated by bland actors, and it's photographed as if through a Jell-O mold. If this is adolescence, then senility can't come soon enough. [29 Jan 1999]

The film does a lovely job of balancing emotional clarity, formal trickery, pop sweetness, and heartfelt narrative. It is, yes, cute, and it is, yes, quirky. And it is entirely justified, estimable and loveable in being those things.

Creates a thoroughly curious combination of tension and eroticism.

Rent isn't nearly as transporting a film as the Oscar-winning adaptation of "Chicago," but its energies and passions compensate for a lot of its deficiencies.

I am here to tell you that Greengrass has fashioned one of the most powerful films I have ever seen, and that watching it makes you value your loved ones and your privileges more, perhaps, than you ever have. He has made a film that makes you feel, makes you think and makes you want to connect. And that, finally, might be the greatest thing that art can do.

It's quite possible that Titanic is one of the greatest romantic epics ever filmed.

A charming but only partly satisfying portrait of its subject.

The film reveals itself to be not so much a historical allegory as an Iliad of the heart. It's sad and smart and beautiful and true.

Gripping, outraging documentary.

An unusual and absorbing, if somewhat preachy film.

Would somebody please pull the plug on James Bond? It's not that Tomorrow Never Dies is inconceivably bad. What with dashing Pierce Brosnan cavorting as 007, nifty Michelle Yeoh playing chop-socky on bad guys' heads, and a nearly-sentient BMW in Bond's bag of tricks, it's got at least as much going for it as, oh, a good Steven Seagal film. [19 Dec 1997, p.19]

Its heart is never anywhere but in the right place.

The film ends on an absolutely sick-making note, with live-action footage of the massacre and its aftermath.

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.

No matter your opinion on where we're headed, this film will give you some crucial information about where we've been.

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

Watching it is like filling up on baklava: Later you may feel really guilty, but you don't exactly complain while it's going on.

Never quite catches fire. They take a crackerjack premise and a comely, committed leading lady and turn in a merely OK film.

Almost nothing that's said or done here is convincing. And the energy is set at near-coma level.

There are more compelling stories to be found in the comic book world, and there are more expressive directors than Jon Favreau. But on the bases of wit, verve, spirit and whiz-bangery, it's pretty tough to find fault with.

It's jaunty and bright, but Pray never gets under the skin of things or ever truly questions the essence of advertising as an art or trade.

It's an often lovely, constantly assured film that now and again burps forth a really remarkable vision. But it's also half-nuts -- maybe three-quarters.

Toothless, limp and clumsy.

Brimming with bittersweet wit and emotion and built with deceptively fluent craft.

A limp and annoying picture.

One of the most joyous, diverting and original mainstream American movies in years.

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.

The combination of emotional anemia, predictable plotting and tepid language makes what might have been a crackerjack treat play like a soggy piece of popcorn.

Such a staggering, start-to-finish disaster that you don't know how to begin detailing its outrages and failings.

Though the fiction doesn't quite equal the documentary in razzle-dazzle impact, it's a credible, handsome and engaging entertainment.

Goes on too long and doesn't have much to say.

Under the tight wraps provided by a veteran director and a generally clever script, he (Arnold) has, in The 6th Day, his best picture in many years.

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.

If the result doesn't make dazzling watching, it nonetheless has the power to haunt.

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

As it stands, it entertains quite a bit, frustrates too much, and leaves you feeling slightly undernourished, like a meal of tasty but not filling hors d'oeuvres.

An ugly, stupid movie it turned out to be. Incoherent, arbitrary, hyperactive and dark enough to make you fear you've gone blind.

A sweet but weightless and witless romantic comedy, Sandler is not only deeply unfunny, he's deliberately unfunny.

Anderson, possessed of an eerily Edwardian aspect, is superb, luminous and knowing and convincingly proud and desperate as the situation requires.

While Coulter and company try gamely to forge two powerful stories, they manage, finally, about one-and-a-half -- which is a lot more than most films, and for which moviegoers should be grateful.

There are moments of levity throughout the film, but it’s made with pedestrian craft and feels more like a set-up and a series of vignettes than a compelling yarn. Chiefly, it demonstrates just how accomplished the Coens are even when their films seem offhanded and easy.

Malick is a unique director of extraordinary gifts, of that there can be no doubt. If he ever chooses to shoot a script as fine as his technique, he will surely produce a masterpiece of the medium.

Occasionally sloppy, with a finale so abrupt and incoherent that it feels like something is missing. But it's also pleasantly odd and truly funny, and it builds in strength as it goes along.

At barely an-hour-and-a-quarter in length, it's one of those very rare feature films that you wish were longer.

There are moments of pleasure, humor and, yes, terror to be had here all the same.

They almost got it really right with Lucky Number Slevin, but they also almost got it horribly wrong.

A painful, funny and fresh comedy.

For long stretches, the film is just as funny as the first -- which is saying something, since the first is one of the funniest comedies of the decade, the only film in years to truly infiltrate our communal language and sense of humor.

It breaks so sharply from the practice of contemporary horror film that it requires us to return to the most basic understanding of what it is to be frightened by a movie.

One of the best films ever made in this country, filled with our proudest national virtues, cognizant of our deeply rooted human weaknesses and frighteningly able to evoke emotions.

Alas, the drama surrounding him (Caine) rarely rouses anything but yawns.

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.

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.

There are movies that reach for the top. There are movies that go over the top. And then there is Smokin' Aces, a slick, shallow and sometimes quite enjoyable action film that is so far beyond over-the-top that it likely mistook the top for the bottom as it burst through it on its way to who knows where.

Van Sant has been quoted in recent media reports as being done with the type of filmmaking that these four movies represent. If that's true, then Paranoid Park is a fine summation of what he learned from making them.

You go into an Austin Powers movie with a big grin on -- or at least you should. The charm of this one is that you leave smiling even more broadly.

It's an exemplary and incendiary instance of documentary filmmaking as real-world advocacy.

A breezy, dumb and lightweight film that has the benefit of not trying terribly hard to be about much of anything and succeeding (bravo?).

There is such a thoroughgoing nastiness to the plot and dialogue that the film almost achieves a level of buoyancy.

The film is sugary, simplistic and riddled with cliches -- yet it still manages to absorb you in its story and even carry you with some of its emotions.

Bad Education, in this light, is Almodovar's "8-1/2" or "Day for Night," a lens through which all of his movies appear as a seamless whole. It's not the story of his actual life but, more excitingly, the deft, witty, bittersweet story of the life of his art.

The picture is Logue's entirely, and without him, it might not be worth a visit.

This is some of the finest acting you will see on-screen, maybe ever. Single-handedly, Washington turns The Hurricane from so-so to must-see.

One of the best children's movies in years. Spunky, inventive and filled with life and wonder.

it's so much fun because, like Haynes' film, it's made by people with a genuine love for the entertainment they're bringing back to life. You'd have to be a real prude not to go for it.

Flawed though it may be, it's frequently an unaffected pleasure, in no small part because of Depp but also because of a raffish air that's a welcome respite from the heavy going of "The Matrix Reloaded," "The Hulk" and other behemoths.

It is a pure, streamlined delight, the advent of a talent with no exact equal in modern film.

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.

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.

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

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

If the film doesn't touch the original, it doesn't hit rock bottom, either.

Ought to win a prize for sheer audacity.

This one's painful.

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.

As a fable, The City of Lost Children may not have a resonantly significant moral, but as a film, it is without a doubt the most incredible thing that the cinema has brought us this year. [22 Dec 1995]

From the acting to the special effects to the landscapes to the cinematography, editing and music, to the details of decor, wardrobe and armaments, we never once feel that we are in anything but the hands of an absolute master of the medium.

Some aspects of Siddhartha seem terribly dated: the '60s-ish nude sequences, the wispy music, the big-eyed earnest acting. But it is a lushly beautiful film. Shooting largely in natural light, Nykvist creates a poetry more beautiful than Hesse's prose and as profound as the author's message.

There are wonders here, but there are as many things that just plain make you wonder. By the end you're too addled to be truly moved.

In Volver, the latest marvel to emerge from his sharp and joyful mind, Almodovar blends autobiography, gossip, melodrama, music, the supernatural and the suffocatingly quotidian in a story about a woman -- indeed, a tribe of women -- struggling through a life of pain and disappointment.

It's not deep for a second -- indeed, it repels depth deliberately as if allergic to it -- but it's as swell a swell time as grown-ups could want at the movies.

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

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 movie so lame that Keanu Reeves lends it gravity with his mere presence.

For a Hollywood studio movie, you see, The Mexican is remarkably strange and eccentric with a plot like a wrinkled bed sheet and a black comic sensibility that consistently swerves away from the cliches that have been established in this Age of Tarantino.

Its breeziness keeps it from ever being completely bland or flat.

Perhaps this is what fans want from a movie like this: to sit back as if in a Jacuzzi and get a quick impression of history and Rome and such. If so, Howard, Brown and company likely have another monster hit on their hands.

It's a handsome film, but the pace is continually gummy and the set-ups stiff and artificial. Most crucially, nothing in it vanquishes the sensation that we're being sold something superfluous -- like a service contract for a carton of eggs.

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

It's a fascinating patchwork.

Gorgeous and saddening, Osama makes the human-scale claim for the overthrow of governments ruled by the iron hand of religious fundamentalism far more persuasively than any of the rhetoric coming out of the White House or No. 10 Downing St.

There’s quality throughout, but, visual verve aside, the enterprise is dull, heavy-handed and dispiriting.

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 alternately mind-boggling and patience-testing, mixing astounding sequences of over-the-top invention with scenes of inept acting and indifferent filmmaking.

So rich, moving and surprising that a familiar story starts to feel new again. The details, the personalities and the final twist grab you until you're left truly shaken and inspired.

A seedy little movie with little in the way of theme, purpose, energy or wit, 'R Xmas is the latest slice-of-death drama from that earnest maestro of grub, Abel Ferrara.

A dull, uninspiring film that combines pedestrian acting, lackluster special effects and deadly pace with a pseudo-religious theme.

In a world in which "Borat" is a global brand, there's certainly a place for Tenacious D -- who, after all, are merely the greatest band in the world: Just ask 'em.

Not much in the way of captivating magic, but all the expected notes are duly played. Hope springs eternal for the next film in the series, though: Columbus is handing the reins over to Alfonso Cuaron, an actual movie director.

Three impeccably cast actors are fully engaged in something like a psychological thriller that has much of the crushing weight and lingering pain of grown-up life on this Earth.

For all its handsome decor, tasteful restraint and old-fashioned look-and-feel, is a stiff, lacking tension, sizzle, drama, energy, appeal and, finally, purpose.

A genuinely handsome film, and it tells a story that is well worth knowing. It's a kind, gentle and sweet holiday confection. But my Christmas wish is that the DVD comes packaged with the book.

It's breezy enough, though, as a romantic comedy. And the stakes at risk in it are more grown-up and weighty than those in most Hollywood fare. Like Allen himself, you could do worse.

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.

A ghastly, unappealing mess that lacks a single absorbing character, engaging story line or entertaining snippet of dialogue.

Agreeable and warm, is content for the most part merely to allude to complexity and darkness in the lives of its subjects.

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.

A witless, listless muck-up that sends you reeling from the theater with thoughts of suicide instead of a chipper grin.

An old-fashioned romantic adventure film strongly acted, ably directed and written with stolid sobriety, the film feels, save for a few moments of verbal or physical intensity, as if it could have been made 60 years ago with Ingrid Bergman in the lead.

The animation is dull, the thought is fuzzy, the storytelling is vague and the music just plain stinks. It's not "National Velvet," it's sure not "The Black Stallion," it's not even "Dances With Wolves."

There's almost nothing to grab onto. It's like a gorgeous graphic novel with a protagonist and story that vanish utterly from the mind as soon as the last page is turned.

It's a terrible movie, ugly to look at, tediously drawn out, unfunny in every cell and fiber of its being.

Handsomely photographed, artfully edited and acted with skill and conviction. It is also so stupid that you expect to see strings of drool dripping from the corner of the screen.

Here the homages/critiques of old craft and form are often laughably mangled, and nothing sexy, profound or illuminating results. For all its prettiness, it's the sort of picture that gives the arthouse a bad name.

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

The story told by I'm Going Home is small and perhaps not terribly universal. But there's something poignant about an artist of 90-plus years taking the effort to share his impressions of life and loss and time and art with us.

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.

As someone new to the material, I found Jackson’s film soulful, respectful, masterful, horrifying, rending and emotionally true. It may not be the Lovely Bones that you have in mind, but it’s a fine and powerful one.

If any of what he says makes sense to you -- and even if it’s only a small piece, it’s terrifying -- then you’ll want to invest in gold and organic seeds and friendly relations with your nearest neighbors. You know: JUST IN CASE.....

Pleasant and light and builds nicely within its own self-circumscribed intent.

It's deeply ordinary, depressingly shabby stuff.

The most compelling question dangling at its end is, "Didn't Steven Spielberg used to know how to bring a movie to an end?"

Kenner mounts it all with a pleasingly fluent and varied style, which makes it more or less easy to absorb his arguments, even if they're familiar from other books and movies and are presented with unopposed certainty.

If film is an art, it's because it's possible for somebody to make films like this.

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.

Turns out to be more ordinary than the recipe might suggest. Oh, it's dense and funny and assured, but it's also chatty and listless in a fashion that constrains a narrative film, which, however reluctantly, it is.

Amir Bar-Lev shows in the absorbing, eye-opening and sometimes enraging film The Tillman Story, if there was one thing that you could count on Pat Tillman to do it was speak his mind: loudly, intelligently, and often in salty, pointed language.

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

Yes, you can enjoy bits and pieces along the way, more than a few, even. At the end of this journey, though, you feel more exhaustion and relief than catharsis or satisfaction.

Franju conjures images -- sometimes gory, sometimes poetic, sometimes fantastical -- that genuinely haunt: the essence of the cinema distilled.

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

Factory Girl lives fast and dies young, but the corpse it leaves isn't really all that good-looking.

A story that would be charming if recited at the dinner table tries to carry a feature film, and it's not even close to the task. The result is screamingly bad.

The humor isn't as sharp as it should be, and the story isn't as tight as it could be.

A lifeless, confused mess, peppered with laughs, yes, but illogically and crudely plotted and smothered in tonedeaf music cues.

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

There are occasional moments of wisdom, drama and emotion, but we never quite forget the blunt confession of one of the founders of the world championship, who admits that the whole thing began as a joke. Psst, buddy: it still is.

As the film builds toward a ludicrous finale, it poses a question: Foster is a far better actor than Charles Bronson, and Jordan a much better director than Michael Winner, so why is The Brave One so much less satisfying than "Death Wish"?

Think of the worst Spielberg thriller or one of Hitchcock's dull late career works, then make it ugly and fill it with bad performances; voila: The Happening.

You're looking for the mammoth home run, and the film is merely a bloop single.

As to claims that the book provides a path to enlightenment, I'm an agnostic. But I can swear on a stack of ancient scrolls that the movie plays like 90-odd minutes of purgatory from which you feel you may never escape.

Recoing's performance is chillingly low-key -- sometimes you can swear that he believes his own fictions -- and Livrozet, making his film debut, has a perfect long-in-the-tooth charm.

An often pedestrian film, one that never inflates to the epic grandeur to which it aspires or transfers its own emotional trajectory off the screen and into the viewer.

Somehow Lee fails to make it speak to us. His heart is in the right place, but like many of the crowd that swarmed Yasgur's farm, he has rather lost his head.

It is, in its quiet, precise, classical way, nearly perfect.

See it for the star. Penn makes a film that in many respects feels low scale and ordinary into something painfully human and real.

As in so many films directed by actors, there's a generosity shown to performance that results in many lifelike moments.

You still marvel at the visuals -- cinematographer M. David Mullen has done miracles with what must have been a microscopic budget -- but you're less invested in the tale. Which is a pity, because it might have been a perfect little potboiler. As it stands, it's merely pretty darned good of its type.

It's a remarkably intimate look at the man and his thinking, and you wish for more history to flesh out the biographical aspects of his life.

Doesn't make the case that watching truly bad movies is worthwhile. But it does make you realize that nobody gets up in the morning, showers, breakfasts, dresses and goes to work thinking they're making the worst film in history, either.

Sorrentino is a spectacularly inventive talent and has harnessed an astounding performance from Servillo.

The Baxter is so ineptly conceived, staged, written and played that you suspect it's part of a psychology experiment to see if people will laugh at anything.

Kong is brilliant in many, many places. But it overwhelms its own best qualities with its sheer, punishing size. It is, literally, too much of a good thing.

The film, built around McKellen's magnificent performance, is a sleek and deceptively artful work, a bio-pic that manages to encompass the whole of a man's rich life by concentrating solely on the final months of it.

You've never been quite this close to a movie star, and after enduring the experience you'll likely never want to repeat it.

What makes The Last Days stand above the many similar films about the Holocaust and its survivors, though, is the fluidity with which Moll structures and passes through his material. In this, he's ably accompanied by Hans Zimmer's eloquent score and the crisp, simple photography of cinematographer Harris Done. [19 Feb 1999]

An empathetic portrait of humanity on a house-by-house, heart-by-heart basis.

Drowns in flat, clumsy and obvious direction.

It's a teeming, steaming, bubbling stew, a tremendous good time, a rich entertainment and a heck of a lesson in music, human etiquette and the politics of making it (or not) in show biz.

It isn't, finally, satisfying: It's too uneven, indulgent, fey.

We laugh, yes, but we're touched, too, a delicate balance that the film manages again and again, right through to its bittersweet conclusion.

It's the most charming and buoyant film Spielberg's ever made.

This is grand, inspiring entertainment of a sort that Hollywood aspires to and rarely achieves.

Director Jay Chandrasekhar ("Super Troopers") will never be mistaken for an artist. But he's competent with crude humor and manages to balance affectionate parody and rote imitation.

Schlesinger's adaptation of Nathaniel West's classic novella, the Hollywood of the 1930s is decidedly as ruinous for its denizens as the Hollywood of the 1970s. [28 Jul 2000]

Despite the whiplike pace of events and the compelling realism of the martial effects, the film is dead in the water whenever it pauses to make a human gesture or consider, heaven help us, an idea.

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

There's a breeziness to Soul Kitchen, good performances by Moritz Bleibtreu as Zinos' slippery brother and Birol Unel as his fanatical new chef, and a peppy soundtrack.

Directed, written by and starring Allen Baron, it's a totally absorbing picture: dark, curt, rancid and lean in the best noir style. [28 Apr 1998, p.C01]

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]

Too well-made and well-acted to be entirely cute -- but the result is fairly tepid in comparison to the overheated highlights of Burton's career.

Beautifully shot and cut, written with a visceral aversion to cliche, deftly skirting sentimentality, sensationalism and simplicity, it continually surprises, engages and satisfies. For a small, unheralded film, it's a knockout.

There are moments that stir, and it's always lovely, but it's generally too remote to gain hold of you truly.

The film is shot (by Dan Lausten) with a credible creepiness, and it teems with clever touches. [17 Apr 1998]

Entertaining and informative.

The thrill, alas, is gone -- and Fellini seems to know it better than anyone. [11 Jun 1993, p.15]

Leaves you exhausted and even bored.

Invigorating, blistering and chilling.

Lively, cheeky, dense and, ultimately, too flip, clever and torturously twisted to be fully engrossing.

Anderson delivers a satisfyingly quirky, cinematically masterful valentine that contains more seeds of truth about the human heart than a hundred big fat Greek comedies.

A work of gentle, continual hilarity that feels far more ordinary than other Coen works and yet has every bit of the originality and exactness that makes the brothers' best films so wonderful.

It has the feel of something slaved over lovingly in merry isolation, and it is virtually the only thing I've seen this year that conveys in the viewing the obvious enjoyment its makers had in whipping it up.

A rousing and agreeable movie that resurrects a small but important episode in baseball history that parallels the larger history of the nation.

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.

As a manipulator of images and emotions, De Palma has few equals, and this is his most gripping film in at least a decade. Viewed simply as cinema and not as political rhetoric, it's often a kick in the guts -- even when it makes you roll your eyes.

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.

For good and ill, there is only one John Waters.

Though the film occasionally rises to moments of genuine emotion and wit, it slips appallingly into corniness and hokum before coming to an abrupt and unconvincing end.

With its protracted storytelling, its fuzzy philosophizing and its less-than-compelling leading man, it's far less gripping than the subject matter deserves.

Deeply strange, oddly shimmery movie.

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

At 80 minutes, it feels truncated and abandoned -- a sketch of a comic thriller rather than the real thing.

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.

Warts and all, Factotum feels very close to the real thing.

A riveting and impeccably researched documentary.

A resolutely awful film, it makes you want to swear off sex, comedy, Rupert Everett movies, flowers, yoga, children, roast beef -- many of the best things in life, in fact.

This is a first-class film that will appeal to anyone who wants to see a plausible, witty, absorbing human story told well -- indeed, told gorgeously.

Finely etched and acted but too often limpid and punchless in its impact.

Strip off the superfluities, and it's a chamber play about people with nothing in common talking about what, at their core, they have in common. A film meant to remind us of our shared humanity mainly unites us in frustration with its thick, gummy progress.

It's a fine debut, far more grounded, plausible and engrossing than most Hollywood thrillers.

Such a powerful sincerity and goodness flows through Paper Clips.

A draggy affair livened occasionally by bursts of color or raw emotion, but just as often convoluted and hackneyed. It's a case of a film taking on, admirably, more than it can chew.

At times an uneasy mix of cold-eyed neorealism and soft-headed sentimentality, but after its initial struggles it presents itself as a moving film, made with loving craft, a painterly eye and luscious language.