Steven Rea

Affleck, for his part, behaves as if a Zero from "Pearl Harbor" dropped one too close to his noggin. He looks permanently shell-shocked.

Doesn't take itself seriously, and that's a good thing.

Foxx makes what he does look effortless. He's the reason to see Collateral, as he walks into the frame and walks off with the picture.

As for Duff, she's bright-eyed and bubbly, though her singing talents are nowhere near as awesome as Raise Your Voice's who's-going-to-win-the-big-scholarship plotline requires.

There's whimsy and raunchy humor here, but also an underlying sense of darkness and despair.

Charming is such an overused, film critic-y designation, but The Way Home is that, and more.

A syrup-thick New Age ghost story of the same sappy stripe and mawkishness as another Costner foray, "Message in a Bottle."

The film is based on Ryne Douglas Peardon's novel Simple Simon, which I haven't read. I can only hope it's less exploitive of people with autism than Mercury Rising is. For all the filmmakers' apparent efforts to treat the issue with sensitivity (there are teachers and nurses who patiently explain to Willis the various symptoms, the behavioral patterns of autistic children), the issue has no place in a standard-issue Hollywood thriller. It feels like a gimmick, and a shameless one at that. [3 Apr 1998, p.03]

All about the wacky borderlands where reality and invention intersect. But there are no safe demarcations -- no demilitarized zone, no Berlin Wall -- to cue us to which side we're operating in, or that Barris is operating in.

Both the leads are scarily good, and Ozon imbues his troubling tale with jarring blasts of light and the sun-dappled beauty of the natural world.

With its feverish, percussive soundtrack and bravura cinematography, is like a bolt from the blue, chock-full of unexpected delight.

The film - despite being a half-hour too long - is a rocking, rolling supernatural spectacle.

Fever Pitch works. At times, it works brilliantly.

Things get a little tricky by the end, but it's the sort of trickery that's immensely satisfying.

It's impossible to imagine anyone, right-leaning or left, coming away from this hugely important documentary unshaken by its representation of the United States and its military establishment.

Sly, sophisticated and surprising.

What's maddening about Angel-A is that Besson is so brilliant with his visuals - and so in love with his two leads and the city they're parading around - that you desperately want the story, and the characters, to make some kind of emotional sense. This, however, does not happen.

A taut, tricky thriller.

City Slickers I managed to poke fun at the whole Iron John/discover-your- maleness movement at the same time the film was able to embrace it. But while City Slickers II tries for the same mix, it doesn't work. Instead, we get shots of three smelly, unshaven guys getting blubbery and hugging each other. [10 June 1994, p.03]

It's a tale of survival and kitsch that will win you over.

A crushingly sad, beautiful film.

We feel it, in our hearts. And therein lies the great power of this small, wise film.

Trapped between edgy art flick and exploitation psychothriller, The Quiet manages to be neither, and manages to be pretty awful in the bargain.

Gripping, powerful, heart-breaking.

My Best Friend, not surprisingly, is about what it means to have friends - and not to have them, to be alone. It's about connection, about trust and vulnerability. That Leconte's little film is a mild-mannered farce, makes the heartache funny, but really, this is serious stuff.

How do you say "tearjerker" in Spanish?

As funny as it is sick (and it's plenty of both).

Delightfully creepy suspenser.

The Island could be read as a metaphor for societal ills (commercialization, conformity, pharmaceutical overkill) if it weren't so shamelessly dumb. And dumb it is.

It's human drama, high and mighty.

Empire, with its double-barreled shoot-outs, its predictable carnage and conflict, and a rush-job of a resolution, is ultimately just one more urban gangland genre flick.

Manages to pull off a couple of startling surprises.

Slower and talkier than the five Potters that came before - but not necessarily in a bad way - Half-Blood Prince is a bubbling cauldron of hormonal angst, rife with romance and heartbreak, jealousy and longing.

Washington's portrayal of a down-to-earth, dedicated detective is what we've come to expect from the star: intense, meticulous, likable. But there isn't much depth to his role. [16 Jan 1998, p.03]

Simply put, it's terrific.

Disturbingly good. The writing and the performances are such that as things go from bad (sad motel-room affairs) to worse (a 4-year-old gone missing), the film's characters get inside your skin, your soul. It's enough to make you want to cry.

It's one of the great have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too performances of the year.

If Munich raises disturbing issues about Jewish-Arab relations, past and present - and how can it not? - it is also an absolutely riveting tale of the hunt and the hunted.

Mixes the intimate, indie vibe of "Daytrippers" with the absurdist screwball streak of "Superbad," to winning effect.

Some tacky animated sequences notwithstanding, Youth in Revolt is smart, cool and frequently hysterical.

The Cartel does what good reporters are supposed to do: follow the money.

13 Tzameti is cut from the same cloth as the humans-hunted-for-sport classic "The Most Dangerous Game" - and from that early talkie's many subsequent remakes and rip-offs, including John Woo's "Hard Target."

Splendid, smile-inducing fun.

The kind of glossy, Hollywood-forged waste of time that would depress even the most happily lackadaisical retiree.

Cusack is especially good in a role that's got more (and less) going on under the surface, while Peet offers up another coltish, trash-mouthed vamp.

A kind of deadpan soap opera - but one that, despite its high melodrama and wicked humor, delivers a real emotional wallop.

Not just a great sports movie, Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 captures a pivotal moment in recent history.

Hopped-up and electrifying. The soundtrack is wall-to-wall and propulsive.

Filled with close-ups of Jesus and his apostles (all the better to hide the absence of elaborate period sets), mixing quotes from the Scripture with flat exposition, this low-budget affair is earnest and, alas, more than a little bit cartoonish.

Breaking and Entering is smart and smartly done, as it describes these inter-circling worlds - the well-to-do Brits and the newly deposited foreigners, trying to shake off their homeland tragedies and start anew.

This is the kind of unusual but involving picture that's ripe for a Hollywood remake - but while you're waiting for the Sandra Bullock-Ethan Hawke edition (it's a good post-movie game: coming up with your own casting ideas), Read My Lips is well worth checking out.

The special effects are effective, though not terribly special. While director Minkoff pays homage to past masters of the genre, the past masters were better at this game than he.

Scary Movie 3 is a veritable time capsule of of-this-moment kitsch, schlock and bad taste. And it's funny, too.

Aspires to the devilish crudity and unfettered social commentary of South Park. But Zwigoff's direction lacks the exaggerated cartoonishness necessary.

Very slight and, in the early going, slightly annoying, Coffee and Cigarettes is a long-borning Jarmusch project.

Clean, director Olivier Assayas' spellbinding study of a junkie trying to get her life in order so she can reclaim custody of her child, avoids the pitfalls, brilliantly.

Loose, eminently likable stuff.

This long (nearly three hours), revelatory movie is both a thrilling adventure about endurance and survival, and an elegiac examination of centuries-old tribal culture, fast-fading in the new millennium.

Casey's big brother has made a tough, taut mystery.

The effectively creepy Stir of Echoes, is enough to make your blood chill.

JCVD juggles humor with whomping martial-arts moves and a kind of melancholy star turn from the melancholy, muscular star.

A satisfyingly moody, melancholy, madcap live-action romp.

It's a wise and endearing little film.

In a sense, Everyone Else traces, over a stretch of days on the sunny Mediterranean, the whole trajectory of a relationship. It's a marriage in miniature: courtship, consummation, conflict; love and hate; the longing for freedom vs. the need for companionship.

A deft, affecting drama about childhood sexual abuse and its lifelong scars.

The Trigger Effect asks some important questions about society's increasing reliance on technology (and how we take the high-tech infrastructure of daily life for granted), but the questions are wrapped in a bleak, humorless allegory about alienation and rage. [30 Aug 1996, p.03]

Winner of a prize at the Cannes Film Festival in May, the quiet, solemn Climates is a bit like those towering ancient columns that Isa photographs to show his class. The fragmented architecture is beautiful and striking, but also extremely dated.

Decidedly loopy and nonlinear, Mister Lonely is precious and artsy, but there are moments when Korine's, er, unique vision brings something bold and beautiful to the table.

An embarassingly unfunny, stumblebum adaptation of Toby Young's memoir.

The tiny, intrepid rodent is so cute it's impossible not to ooh and aww, just looking at him. Which is a good thing, because you'll need something to get you through the long stretches of fairytale pastiche that make up this overwrought yarn.

The plain, reportorial style of Lost Boys -- which simply records its subjects in various settings and situations -- results in a film that doesn't preach, doesn't politicize.

The music is symphonic, the cinematography spectacular, the narration — ay, there's the rub. In Oceans, the latest Disney nature documentary, the voice-over almost manages to turn the majestic into the mundane. Almost.

Fulfills the promise of its title: It's transporting, it's magical.

Quiet, watchful, out for himself, Sorowitsch is a complicated figure - neither hero nor villain, and certainly no fool. The Austrian actor Markovics is riveting in the role; he is wiry, anticipatory, his eyes darting with intelligence and worry.

A flat-out cynical attempt to launch a new Lethal Weapon-like franchise.

Frost/Nixon is not the epic gladiatorial face-off, the ricocheting verbal shoot-out that writer Morgan and filmmaker Howard imagined.

What this slow-moving but fascinating two-part portrait does do is hunker down in the jungles and mountains of Cuba and (in the second part) Bolivia, capturing in keen, almost Zen-like detail the trudging and trekking, the recruiting and strategizing, the fighting and the philosophizing.

It's a trippy but tender examination of human emotions, relationships, all-consuming love.

Another tale of Tinseltown drugs, sex and excess - has transferred itself to the screen with mind-boggling, laugh-inciting horribleness.

The title Brooklyn's Finest is drowning in irony, of course, but Fuqua's moves are less obvious: His film is classical and gritty, his violence makes you want to duck and run.

Engagingly odd and full of sad, funny moments.

A fine, inventive '70s period piece about friendship, first love, and growing up to face the hard lessons of life.

Kinnear does what he's done in the past: You underestimate the guy's acting chops, and suddenly, strikingly, he floors you.

Monster brings the horror stories of everyday life down to a recognizable level -- even as the actress inhabiting that story remains startlingly unrecognizable.

A modest and obviously heartfelt endeavor.

A feast for the eyes and succor for the soul.

It's not just the grainy stock and bad sound - technically, we've come a long way. It's the cheesy sex, the awkward edits, the hammy symbolism, the mix of art-house aesthetics and exploitation cliché. Strange creature, this is.

Some of the most tasteless and un-PC comedy in the film is also the funniest - Farrelly Brothers-style humor that plays off the Bateman character's physical limitations.

This sad, staggering drama should be seen: out of the grimness, and the profound calamity, you can almost taste life in your mouth.

The trouble with Alfie - apart from the film's existence, and the wrongheaded idea of remaking a minor classic - is that not a soul is likable.

Sweet-natured but overdone, over-long film.

A small, beautiful film exploding with big ideas.

Feels thoroughly canned.

An eerily quiet, bracingly bloody, and expertly laid-out adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel.

Johnny Depp, who portrayed Thompson's alter-ego in Gilliam's film, provides the narration. If there's hagiography here, it's counterbalanced by biographical truth.

The script appears to have been designed, created and produced entirely in 1-D: a mishmash of kidcentric antics, follow-your-dream cliches, and innocuously icky humor.

With visual nods to Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" and a fairly faithful adherence to the tenor and tone of the Korean scare genre, The Uninvited doesn't startle and shock so much as it lulls you into a series of unsettling, hallucinogenic set pieces.

Has a low-key tone that works in its favor for a time.

A sweet but unsticky comedy from Norway that was one of the five foreign- language nominees at this year's Academy Awards.

Despite a strong cast and a willingness to lampoon the fundamentals of fundamentalism, Saved! isn't as funny, or as wicked, as it should be.

The relationship between Chris and his diminutive namesake is at the core of the film - the determination to be there for his son, no matter what; the mentoring, the pair's goofy, lovely banter. And Smith and his bright-eyed boy pull it off brilliantly.

While it flirts with "After School Special"-ness, at least has the courage to address racial and cultural cliches with a degree of honesty.

An unflashy but fascinating meditation on addiction and greed. The junkie was clearly Mahowny, but the greed, in a way, was everybody else's: the bankers', their flush clientele's, and the casinos', all busy feeding his habit.

An interesting choice for a Valentine's Day outing, He Loves Me is a weird, bubbly cocktail -- effervescent charm and troubling pathology, shaken together.

The Cooler is small-scale moviemaking about small-scale lives. But it's big in all the right ways.

Awesomely ridiculous thriller.

This is a sad, passionate, beautifully wrought story, and Bardem's portrait of Arenas is at once daring and deeply moving.

Shot in Panama, with a cast of local Indians and B-tier Latino and Anglo actors, End of the Spear has neither the marquee heft nor the artistic gravitas of "The New World."

A lot of dark, Orwellian fun.

You can feel the world closing in, which, I would venture, is exactly how Fassbinder wanted you to feel.

A handsome-looking movie that's full of the muted greens, browns and grays of the tony Hamptons, director Williams' tale never quite finds its footing.

Chicken Little is entirely lacking in anything "Disneyesque."

Beyond turbocharged. It whooshes along at warp speed. And still, despite some awesomely choreographed stunts and the two stars' pedal-to-the-metal appeal, the movie seems endless.

Don't run off before the credits start to roll, though: The Incredible Hulk ends with a jokey cameo by a certain movie star with his own newfound superhero franchise.

The film's save-the-world scenario may be the stuff of crusty cliff-hangers, its imagery may be borrowed, and its jaunty dialogue anything but deep, but there's something exhilarating going on here. It's darn sublime.

Shortbus suffers from a vague, ad lib-y script and a cast that, while hardly shy, isn't exactly charismatic.

It's not as good, nor as complex, as "The Lost Boys," but that doesn't make the story of mass annihilation, sprawling refugee camps, the generosity of Americans, and the resilience of a handful of Sudanese survivors any less worthy of telling - again.

As a character study, City by the Sea is engaging. As a police thriller, it's not all there.

The trouble with The Last Kiss comes down to Paul Haggis' screenplay.

The Golden Door feels, at points, like a silent film - a silent film with CinemaScope vistas and dazzling, saturated color.

Everything about An Unfinished Life's screenplay is cliched and predictable, but the actors manage to elevate the proceedings above and beyond shameless soap.

A wonderfully crafted, smartly acted study of a complex old coot.

Like "The Square," the startling Down Under noir released a few months ago, Animal Kingdom explores the down and dirty side of human nature, fraught with greed, suspicion, and betrayal.

In Bruges, at its best, works like "Pulp Fiction" with Irish (and Belgian) accents, digressing into weird discourse and giving a bunch of actors the occasion to shine in small, peculiar roles.

What Never Die Alone is is a hackneyed tale of vengeance set in the 'hood, teeming with stock characters, slo-mo gunplay, and rampant misogyny.

I'm ripping up my Lars Von Trier fan club card.

This gory horror romp is a goofball medley of "Dawn of the Dead," "28 Days Later" . . . , and Monty Python-style severed-limbs/blood-spurting sicko comedy.

Amusing, compelling and technologically fascinating tale.

In the end (and it's a happy end, to be sure), Catch Me if You Can is as crisp and trim as a new suit. Well, a new old suit - say, circa the 1960s.

For all its flaws, offers an enjoyable look at the machinations of moviedom and fame, and a look into a future where what is real and what isn't becomes scarily blurred.

The real-life career criminal Jacques Mesrine is seen in all his wild, scary, violent glory.

Goes somewhere the first "Hellboy" never ventured: into the Realms of Tedium.

The dialogue and action in One False Move seems instinctive and unforced. There isn't an iota of caricature, there isn't an affectation of "style," there isn't a false note sounded.

There's real joy in O'Day's eyes - and larynx - as she bobs and weaves through an amazing songbook.

The film never gives you a real sense of what drove Darin on, fighting a heart ailment (from childhood rheumatic fever) and fighting an industry and press that wanted to pigeonhole him.

Too long (and it sure ain't taut), but it brims with passion.

As a meditation on the vicissitudes of love, on the need for people to connect, and the struggles that come by both making and missing those connections, the movie is wading-pool deep.

As in David Lean's "Brief Encounter," the suspense in Cairo Time comes from what doesn't happen between its pair of "lovers."

Beauty in Trouble offers a meditation on the legacies of communism and the lure of capitalism, but also on the human need for love, connection and family.

Linklater's film adaptation succeeds in bringing the flamboyant Welles to life.

As a bratty, punked-up sci-fi romp crammed with pop- cult references (everything from Baywatch to Batman, Stiff Records to The Wizard of Oz), Tank Girl has energy to burn. [31 March 1995, p.3]

A mercifully fleet and lamentably uninteresting adaptation of the DC Comic about a war-weary Confederate soldier.

Whether or not the story makes any sense, The Promise promises to transport - and does.

This modest drama is the art-house equivalent of comfort food: satisfying in its familiarity.

Simplistic and corny, this adaptation by director (and co-writer) Stephen Sommers nonetheless delivers the goods: exciting animal stunts, breathtaking subtropical scenery (India and a jungle-ized Tennessee and South Carolina) and a likable if not exactly three-dimensional cast of characters. [23 Dec 1994, p.03]

A bizarre counterculture jukebox musical.

Has its effectively nasty, chilling moments -- and it also brings body piercing to new heights of ickiness.

In key ways, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is like Guillermo del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth": a child, caught in the waking nightmare of one of history's ugliest times, confronting the horrors of a grown-up world, and dealing with them as best he, or she, can.

Flipping his cigarette lighter and snapping deadpan retorts, Reeves plays the demon-hunting detective with Keanu-esque panache.

Potter explores midlife ennui, (middle-)East-West tension, theology, biology and the irrational nature of romance in this ambitious, if ultimately sketchy, drama.

On a deeper level, the Dardennes' film offers a portrait of a fragile yet determined woman set on making a home for herself in the world, even as that world unravels before her eyes.

Thoroughly engaging.

Although Mal is ostensibly the movie's hero, and River its heroine, Whedon does a good job of giving all onboard their own story arc, their tragedies and triumphs. The cast, to a man (and woman), is solid, although it's the ballet-trained Glau, who gets to mope in high angst and go Zhang Ziyi-crazy in a couple of martial-arts scenes, who steals the show.

Without editorializing, Mermin raises fascinating questions about the cultural impact of globalization, the allure of the West, and the troubled history of an ancient land.

Kiss of the Dragon is a straight-ahead star vehicle for the trim and terse Li, whose steady gaze and fist-flying ways are tempered by a gentlemanly mien.

By recording this all too commonplace and dehumanizing process, Puiu's film shows the sick old man and the strangers who deal with him to be all too human - extraordinarily so.

The folks at Disney's Touchstone Pictures would have been wiser, however, just to have forgotten all about this hyperactive farce.

A deadpan, dead-on comedy.

Suffers from several goofily tacky animated reenactments and a music score that unnecessarily underlines the significance of key events, but for those who lived through the turmoil of Vietnam, and for the generations that have come since, the film is an important document in its own right.

From its jungle forays to its waterfall tumbles to its deadly spider bites - is entirely, utterly unoriginal.

This is a sweet, gentle film - slow and sunny like a summer day, with a message that growing up can be hard, but can also serve as the wellspring of memories that will sustain you for a lifetime.

Often incomprehensible (a combination of jumpy editing and lots of thick British Isles accents) and hardly ever entertaining - even unintentionally.

Watts, who is one of the film's executive producers, brings a taut intelligence to the proceedings, but her character, like Roth's, is more archetype than actual person.

A handsome Holocaust melodrama hobbled by a transparent and cartoonish script.

Stylishly spooky and featuring a hammy, cigarette-sucking performance from Gena Rowlands.

A strange mix of showbiz whodunit and soft-core eroticism, with a couple of fine actors - Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth - wandering around stunned and stoned-looking, as if someone slipped them a mickey.

Unfortunately, Mission: Impossible - which assembles a new Impossible Missions Force and plops it down in Kiev, Prague, London and Langley, Va. - doesn't have the momentum or suspense of De Palma's best pictures. It moves, awkwardly at times, from one elaborate set-piece to the next. [22 May 1996, p.E01]

A frighteningly unfunny comedy. [17 Feb 1995, p.05]

A meditation on a life lived in the public eye, I'm Still Here is strange, riveting, and occasionally appalling stuff, any way you look at it.

A chase movie, a spy movie, a futuristic thriller full of colorfully bizarre characters and deftly choreographed stunt work, Children of Men works on multiple levels - as action and allegory.

Although the sequel retains its predecessor's breezy retro spirit, The Mummy Returns is a mite darker and scarier and the effects a little spiffier.

It's a scary tale.

Bacon's portrait chills to the bone.

Hip, stylish, funny.

Intelligent, scary (scorpions! lots of scorpions!) and full of the possibilities of scientific fact taken to far-reaching (but credible) extremes, The Arrival delivers more bang for the buck than its high-profile multiplex-mates. [31 May 1996, p.3]

The Core is unabashed Hollywood spectacle, but with a cast of up-from-indie actors that makes the cataclysmic kitsch all the more fun to behold.

Twilight - directed with savvy humor by Catherine Hardwicke - turns vampirism into a metaphor for teen lust.

A genre pastiche that's fun to watch, although it's also frustrating.

As it is, most of X2's action is restricted to the Northeast Corridor, with a climactic face-off in the western Rockies, where, in typical blockbuster fashion, everything goes kablooey and ka-bam.

Works the basics with style and intelligence.

A campy homage to those days of malt shops, drive-ins, and saucer-shaped UFOs - you know, the ones that go crashing into nearby buttes, unleashing terrible terrors from another galaxy.

Loaded with Hitchcockian hugger-mugger, this is a genre Polanski clearly revels in.

With the filmmaking techniques pared to the bone, it is left to the actors to bring the scenes alive - and they do, often brilliantly.

Lady Vengeance is not for everyone. The violence, while less over-the-top and orgiastic than Park's two previous installments, is still hard and crackling. The sex is grim and graphic. And deadpan nihilism permeates the air.

Does the world really need another movie about a married guy wandering blindly into an affair, or the married gal who can't decide whether to remain faithful or fool around?

It's earnest, but it feels beside the point. Blood Diamond's real point: box office.

This is a smart, spirited spoof that will leave you with a smile on your face - and an appetite for some serious '70s funk to play on the eight-track in your solid gold Cadillac convertible.

Doesn't match up against the new millennium martial artistry of "The Matrix," nor do the special effects - but he knows how to establish characters and relationships.

Rivette's slow-moving but seamless study of the rituals of courtship has a disarming grace, even as its downcast hero, Depardieu's Gen. Armand de Montriveau, limps around stiffly.

It's a hokey piece of melodrama in a movie that cheats its characters - and its audience - out of some emotional truth.

A comedy about friendship, faith and the acting life, Le Grand Role is unabashedly corny and tear-jerking - and still quite likable.

Kings and Queen, full of passion and humor, madness and grief, is close to a masterpiece. It's like life: messy, impossible, elating, unavoidable.

To be sure, there are goofy flourishes here, the in-jokey, left-field rummies that are the Brothers Coen's stock-in-trade. But this is altogether a quieter, more philosophical sort of endeavor.

A sad and funny examination of issues of racial subjugation, cultural stereotypes and sexual mores. Although some of its filmmaking techniques seem naive and anachronistic now, there is much that is bold, inventive and poignant about Van Peebles' feature debut. [09 Nov 1994, p.E01]

"Lousy times make lousy people," someone opines, and maybe that's the point Romero's trying to drive home.

The film only occasionally comes to life - it's too literal (and literary), too studied, too still.

Mountain Patrol is breathtakingly beautiful, breathtakingly brutal and simply breathtaking.

Ozon has crafted a near-perfect film, a mournful, moving kind of cinema poetry.

Contrived story lines and an altogether phony resolution erase whatever energy and wit the film displayed, leaving the viewer with an empty, disappointed feeling.

Knowing has about a half-dozen screenwriter credits, which may explain why scenes crash up against one another - smart, stupid, far-fetched, compelling. And the trouble is that Cage walks (or runs) through them all, treating each with the same level of intensely goofy seriousness.

Like Mickey Rourke in "The Wrestler," Malkovich plays a star long past his glory days in The Great Buck Howard, but continuing to do the only thing he knows. The tone of the two films couldn't be less alike, but the story arc of the central characters graphs the same.

A mildly scary, totally meaningless excursion into the realms of psychological horror and alien-abduction conspiracies.

Rife with nightmarishly violent and horrific behavior. It's intense, graphic, frightening.

Where Mike Figgis' film, with Nicolas Cage and Elisabeth Shue, bore deeply and darkly into emotional territory, The Center of the World turns out to be just as fake as its setting.

A Good Man in Africa, which has been adapted to the screen by Boyd from his first novel, isn't an out-and-out dud, but it too seems to have been sucked dry. [09 Sep 1994, p.03]

13 Ghosts is the type of project that all parties concerned will have to live down for the rest of their lives.

The filmmakers' narrative device of framing Quinn's tale as a feature-length flashback doesn't pay off - we get a goody-two-shoes moral lesson at the end, and a look at movie studio aging makeup gone wild.

It's not exactly high art, but it's certainly high.

The film speaks to fundamental issues of history, truth, and the philosophical conflicts of humankind.

Owing a debt to Scarface (the DePalma remake more than the Hawks original) and to the gangland opuses of Scorsese, Belly gets inside the gangsta culture with a wired authenticity. [04 Nov 1998, p.E04]

Throw in the music -- a wall-to-wall whorl of Eastern modal dirges, thumping rock and Celtic-y skirl -- and you've got a veritable cinematic rhapsody of war.

It's a tearjerker, sometimes, and sweetly funny at other moments. It's near perfect.

A wholesome little drama aimed at the pre- and early-teen crowd.

Drawing comparisons to "The Wire" may be unfair, but taken on its own, this anemic vehicle for Ice Cube and Tracy Morgan to mug and jive through is just weak, weak stuff.

It's the dynamic between the three leads, Rawlins, Sives and Henderson - and the young McKinlay, who's like a miniature Shirley Henderson - that is this oddball and bittersweet story's pulsing heart.

One of the great things about this unpredictable, exhilaratingly goofy fable is how it shows that even the clueless - and the tragically morose - have a shot at redemption.

Just misses being great. The dark shaman mysticism doesn't entirely mesh with the earthbound quest across the wild and glorious Southwest. And the ending, with its shoot-outs and sacrifices, has a choppy, unneccessarily complicated feel.

Manny & Lo, wonderfully photographed (by Krueger's brother, Tom) and full of telling detail, is a wry, intelligent picture with a sweet, but hardly saccharine, story to tell. [06 Sep 1996, p.03]

The big shift between Carpenter's B-movie and filmmaker Jean-François Richet's comic book-style remake is that instead of a troop of bloodthirsty gang members encircling the precinct, the bad guys here all look like good guys.

Tunney, brimming with coltish, neurotic energy, holds the screen like a true star. She brings the role, and the movie, to life.

Stymied by a clunking script, crammed with expository exchanges and urgent blather.

A visually dazzling mood piece.

Boasts another formidable and fine-tuned performance from the great Charlotte Rampling.

Gretchen Mol stars as a 35-year-old virgin deflowered in lusty romance-novel fashion on a trip to Mexico. Her hunky lover-boy's name? Jesus Christ (played by Justin Theroux). The segment? "Thou shalt not take the Lord's name in vain."

Clones makes the Frodo-speak of "Lord of the Rings" sound like Noel Coward.

The spike-heeled, postfeminist pajama-party sisterhood that is Charlie's Angels is back, and it's serious dress-up time.

Moderately compelling and clinical. This isn't "Breakfast at Tiffany's"; this isn't even "Klute."

The Warlords, ultimately, tries to speak to the futility of war - but it does so by staging one gargantuan dustup after another.

It's a quietly powerful work, pulsing with gentle humor and a gripping sense of imminent calamity and dread.

A goofy combination of screwball farce and Dogma-style verite grit and gloom.

Signs is about God and family, too, but it's also about scaring the bejesus out of you -- and on that level it works like a miracle.

The whole affair has a painfully self-conscious, self-referential air. Jokes land with a thud, and so, alas, does Rocky, who seems to have forgotten how to fly.

Although there are several truly jolting scares, there's also an abundance of hackneyed dialogue and more silly satanic business than you can shake a severed limb at.

Crazy Heart is the real thing, and a real gem.

Gorgeous work, and its imagery and themes dovetail perfectly: a story about creating art, artfully created.

Like Hitchcock, only creepier, Haneke slowly cranks up the suspense.

Alas, Brick, from writer-director Rian Johnson, isn't as clever as its conceit.

The movie isn't as deep as it pretends to be, but it does have several nicely unexpected twists going for it. And it has Williams - memorably creepy, chillingly sad.

Girl With a Pearl Earring is really about watching paint dry. S l o w l y.

There's a xenophobic element to Taken's premise, to be sure - the idea that travel, even to Western Europe, isn't safe for Americans, and that foreigners (Albanians, Arabs) are by nature shifty and sinister.

The film turns into a story of corruption on many levels, and it moves fast, without a scrap of fat in the telling.

Ultimately, the movie's a bust.

Moon is a deceptively simple study of alienation, paranoia, and loneliness.

A triumph.

Eva Longoria brings a crisp swagger and fluent Spanish to her role.

This mildly amusing tale of infidelity, blackmail, class differences and corporate greed not only strains credulity - it strains for laughs.

Rodriguez manages to work in some nicely cornball messages (family togetherness and forgiveness is good, Stallone doing comedy is bad) and theatergoers get to walk out with their very own way-cool cardboard anaglyphic eyeglasses.

The problem with NATM:BOTS is that Stiller, Adams, and company seem to be pretending that they're having fun, too.

"March of the Penguins" - phooey! Those smelly little birds are built to survive in the frozen tundra, and nobody's asking them to pull a sled.

Entertainingly creepy.

One of the problems with the way Mamet resolves Mike's predicament is that it's ridiculously implausible - even in the context of a far-fetched fight story.

This heartbreaking film, with its rich performances and simple eloquence, lays claim to greatness.

The film feels long, the editing is choppy, and the plot strands are at once convoluted and cliched.

Much of the dialogue is the silliest sort of fantasy mush, and a good deal of the picture appears to have been shot while the lighting guys were out to lunch.

Finding Amanda isn't bad, and there is some smart, jagged humor.

Although Me and You and Everyone We Know requires patience on the part of the viewer - to get past the faux naivete of its grown-up characters, to get past its deadpan arty tone - Miranda July's feature debut is worth the time.

A disconcerting experience.

Intermittent moments of mild amusement ensue.

A lethargic, lurching holiday-themed comedy.

Unstoppable fun.

A loopy, surreal, beguiling collage of a film, the writer-director's meta-biopic embraces its subject.

The Spanish actress Marina Gatell is exotic and engaging as a young writer drawn to Lorca and puzzled why he is not drawn to her in return.