Todd McCarthy

Schrader directs with a very smooth hand, providing a good-natured and frequently amusing spin to eventually grim material that aptly reflects the protagonist's almost unfailing good humor.

Series regulars Chevy Chase, Beverly D'Angelo and Randy Quaid (who joined for "Christmas Vacation") are all back for more, and thank God for Quaid, who injects a few bracing shots of mangy humor into what is otherwise a lukewarm brew.

Working in his typically idiosyncratic and episodic vein, Jim Jarmusch has nonetheless pitched the film slightly more toward mainstream tastes than usual for him, using excellent thesps in the service of accessible material.

Paul Schrader hits a low water mark with Forever Mine, a strenuously straight-faced film noir wanna-be that edges perilously close to self-parody.

Like hard-edged "Masterpiece Theater."

Holes will no doubt speak clearly and appealingly to its intended early teen audience.

A film of chuckles, smiles and light amusement rather than big laughs, galvanizing excitement and original invention.

Tony literary material, a fine cast and intelligent script and direction.

A remarkably mirthless and inept romantic comedy.

This is one of those high-concept pictures with a big windup and weak delivery.

In its animated work, DreamWorks has repeatedly flip-flopped between the hip and the square. This time out, it's as if the company tried to apply a hip approach to a square subject, with unresolved results.

Like a crafty predator, the Danish knock-out Holiday lays patiently in wait as long as it needs to — in this case nearly an hour — before stunning its prey, the spectator, with a shocking scene that catapults the film to a whole different level.

A well-acted and crafted character piece that's a bit too calculated and cutesy for its own good.

Emerges as the best in the overall series since "The Empire Strikes Back."

Director Alan Rudolph achieves fresh as well as humorous insights into family life and strategies for keeping a damaged relationship from expiring. But a tiresome final act proves trying.

Craig comes closer to the author's original conception of this exceptionally long-lived male fantasy figure than anyone since early Sean Connery.

Performances are aces top to bottom

Boldly and magnificently strange, There Will Be Blood marks a significant departure in the work of Paul Thomas Anderson.

Unfortunately, the diverse elements introduced here don’t coalesce into a comfortable package, with much of the background action proving notably listless and unconvincing.

An often lively comedy-drama that lands some nice jabs at the mega-corp ethos, In Good Company makes for pretty good company until going soft when it counts.

It's a film of myriad minor pleasures but scant compelling qualities.

Taken together, "Flags" and "Letters" represent a genuinely imposing achievement, one that looks at war unflinchingly -- that does not deny its necessity but above all laments the human loss it entails.

The picture has vitality, a fine cast and excellent craft

Crucially, the teaming of standup favorite and "Martin" star Lawrence and "Fresh Prince" Smith clicks from the outset, with both right at home handling action and comedy on the bigscreen. Even when it's not particularly funny, their interplay is engaging, and their lively, raucous personalities keep the proceedings punchy and watchable for the slightly overlong running time.

This energetic, dramatically potent look at the band's Hamburg days has quite a bit going for it in the way of cultural and musical history, but lacks a crucial, heightened artistic quality and point of view that would have given it real distinction.

Impressively made and well acted by an exceedingly attractive cast, this dark tale of ceaseless conflict is adult entertainment and will likely disappoint viewers expecting a "Camelot"-like love triangle.

A collection of five femme-oriented vignettes that are not intricately linked dramatically but overlap characters, this observant, emotionally acute drama is distinguished by a pronounced poetic sensibility.

Moppet appeal of the present feature rests in three can't-miss concepts -- cool gadgets, the desire to see grownups disappear and space travel. Pic delivers on all three points and doesn't have to do a whole lot more.

Adds relatively little insight to the public understanding of wayward military behavior more incisively analyzed in "Taxi to the Dark Side."

Offers potent romantic fantasy elements for men and women and a cast that should produce the best commercial returns for a Woody Allen film since "Match Point."

The way the picture dwells almost exclusively on cinematically exploitable elements -- gangbanger crime, prostitution, honor killing, terrorism paranoia -- gives it a sordid patina that even the classy, able thesps can't offset.

Those who see it at fests, and in carefully tailored specialized release, will be struck by the adroitness with which it addresses touchy issues, as well as by the outstanding performance of Ryan Gosling in the difficult leading role.

What starts as a bright look at the dim lives of temps in a large company slides into unfortunate digressions and drabness in Clockwatchers.

Without Watts, Scott Coffey's feature-length expansion of his identically titled short wouldn't amount to much.

Never comes close to making the case that its subject is worthy of the viewer's interest.

Spiked with wonderfully funny sequences and some brilliantly original notions, The Big Lebowski, a pseudo-mystery thriller with a keen eye and ear for societal mores and modern figures of speech, nonetheless adds up to considerably less than the sum of its often scintillating parts.

Attractively designed, energetically performed and, above all, blessedly concise, this adaptation of one of the most popular American kids' books of all time walks the safe side of surrealism with its fur-flying shenanigans. The younger the viewers, the better reactions are bound to be.

It's a very academic movie about academics that belongs in academia, not movie theaters.

Charlie Kaufman's clever screenplay bears many traces of the same brand of originality and eccentric imagination that graced his work on "Being John Malkovich," although even at an hour-and-a-half the conceit is stretched almost too thin for audience sustenance.

Has a sharper narrative focus and a livelier sense of forward movement than did the more episodic "Fellowship."

This odd, epic tale of a man who ages backwards is presented in an impeccable classical manner, every detail tended to with fastidious devotion.

A below-par star vehicle for Mel Gibson and Julia Roberts, Conspiracy Theory is a sporadically amusing but listless thriller that wears its humorous, romantic and political components like mismatched articles of clothing.

Had the young Jack Nicholson played such a character during the height of the Vietnam War, it would have been easy to go along for the ride. But skilled as Phoenix is at pulling off the individual scenes of Elwood's shenanigans, the actor doesn't come across as embodying rebellion to the marrow of his bones, which renders his scams arbitrary and disagreeably irresponsible.

Mix Brigitte Bardot in "And God Created Woman" with Carroll Baker in "Baby Doll," sex it up times 10 and you have a notion of the effect of Christina Ricci in Black Snake Moan.

On a scene-by-scene basis, in terms of performance and the grave issues under consideration, the film is quite absorbing.

A boner-headed comedy whose sense of gross-out humor is calculated rather than inspired.

The continuing saga of one of contemporary literature and cinema's most fascinating villains, as played once again with exquisite taste and riveting force by Anthony Hopkins.

This very New York tale is old-fashioned in good ways that have to do with solid storytelling, craftsmanship and emotional acuity.

In his bigscreen feature debut, director and co-writer Jonathan Mostow displays real flair for visceral cinema while adroitly sidestepping many of the usual tripwires of this sort of film, particularly silly coincidences, stupid decisions on the part of characters with whom you're supposed to identify, and superheroics performed by ordinary people.

So determinedly old-fashioned it makes a strong claim to being the best film musical of 1959.

More intriguing on paper than when it actually unspools onscreen. Kevin Willmott's small-scaled but ambitious picture is well-researched, sometimes amusing and not unintelligent.

May or not be Robert Altman's best film in years, but it is certainly his most pleasurable.

Ambitiously tackling his biggest canvas to date, Clint Eastwood continues to defy and triumph over the customary expectations for a film career in Flags of Our Fathers.

A good biographical film about artists should, at the very least, inspire the viewer to learn more about its subjects and the work they created. Total Eclipse has totally the opposite effect, of making one never want to hear about its protagonists again. This misbegotten look at the mutually destructive relationship between the 19th century French poets Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaineis a complete botch in all respects.

Lack of depth, complexity or strangeness make this a relatively routine entry for the director.

Builds and sustains considerable interest through its unexpected characterizations, unusual milieu and atmospheric style.

Pumping high-performance gas back into the series after a second lap sputter, third entry stays in high gear most of the way with several exhilarating racing sequences, and benefits greatly from the evocative Japanese setting.

A game, disarming lead performance from Jess Weixler, who won a jury acting prize at Sundance, goes some way toward making palatable this mish-mash, whose provocative nature could carve out a certain commercial niche.

Whether scarily charting the spread of the virus or choreographing a cat-and-mouse chase of choppers above a winding riverbed, Petersen demonstrates a smooth stylistic savvy that keeps the film highly absorbing from beginning to end.

At nearly three hours, however, it rather overstays its welcome, trying the patience even as it sustains intrigue regarding its final revelations.

This decorous look at the great man's five years as ambassador to France in the period leading up to the French Revolution touches upon much significant history, incident and emotion but, ironically, lacks the intrigue and drama of great fiction.

A live-wire performance by Benicio Del Toro sparks an otherwise morose study of loss, addiction and catharsis.

A contrived but entirely workable premise is given a well-tooled treatment in Sweet November, a femme-slanted doomed romance with a heavily calculated feel to it.

A mostly formulaic approach that becomes more disappointing as the yarn unwinds.

Stealing the show is Jane, whose rage-fueled rants and scarcely concealed mutterings are loaded with sarcastic bon mots that are delivered to the hilt by McDormand.

Dee is an engaging, admirable lead character, and the striking, petite Beharie, in only her second screen role, is a real winner, bringing energy and fortitude to a woman who easily could have joined the ranks of society's victims and losers.

Convincing as a portrait of a marginal man gone beyond the emotional pale.

Most crucially, Brosnan makes the grade as 007. He handles the action capably and gets the standard quips out in a commendably straightforward way that's wry but not dismissive.

Thanks to a magnetic cast and intelligent adaptation, "Prelude to a Kiss" has made a solid transfer from stage to screen. Back in the 1930s or '40s, this sort of sophisticated, literary-oriented treatment of a simple romantic idea would have been the norm.

Good for a few lascivious titters but quite lacking in the sort of comic bite and social satire one hopes for in the work of Mike Nichols.

All the meticulousness, intelligence, taste and superior This curious, cloistered piece... is continuously absorbing but lacks the emotional resonance that would have made it completely satisfying.

Agreeably prepared and attractively presented, this remake of the tasty 2001 German feature "Mostly Martha" bears too many earmarks of Hollywood packaging and emotional button-pushing, but doesn't go far wrong by closely sticking to the original's smart story construction.

Although thin character motivation and some far-fetched plotting strain credulity in the late going, for the most part The Edge is a tense, visceral battle-of-wits thriller played out against a spectacular wilderness background.

The return of the legendary swordsman is well served by a grandly mounted production in the classical style.

Can be taken to task for its overt point-making, lackluster style and some late-on dramatic contrivances seemingly dragged in to provide a little violence.

The film's style, paradoxically both precious and rough-hewn, positions this as the season's defiantly anti-CGI toon, and its retro charms will likely appeal more strongly to grown-ups than to moppets; it's a picture for people who would rather drive a 1953 Jaguar XK 120 than a new one.

Neatly turning longstanding genre conventions upside down while working squarely within them, director Walter Hill has fashioned a physically impressive, well-acted picture whose slightly stodgy literary quality holds it back from an even greater level of impact.

For all its far-fetched formulations, this new entry maintains more of a dramatic throughline and has the bonus of a villain played with unsparing meanness by Philip Seymour Hoffman.

A generally old-fashioned costumer that runs out of gas even faster than does the tempestuous love affair between writer George Sand and poet Alfred de Musset that it so devotedly recounts.

Remarkably funny and entirely convincing, film pulls off the rare accomplishment of being an in-drag comedy which also emerges with three-dimensional characters.

A gritty and gratifying cheap thrill, Rob Cohen's high-octane hot-car meller is a true rarity these days, a really good exploitationer, the sort of thing that would rule at drive-ins if they still existed.

With its strong premise, a couple of fine performances and highly polished tooling, The Jackal scores as an involving high-tech thriller that occasionally hits peaks of pulsating excitement.

A potentially provocative idea is played out to diminishing returns.

Aimed squarely at family audiences, the Wachowski Brothers' return behind the camera for the first time since the "Matrix" trilogy is a blur of video action painting and very loud sounds notable solely for its technical wizardry. In every other respect, it's pure cotton candy -- entirely non-nutritious but too sweet and pretty for young people to resist.

Reheating the ingredients can't disguise how stale they are, as setpiece after setpiece strains to whip up excitement, only to fall flat while reminding of previous sequences that did such things ever so much better.

Sympathetic, genial and exceedingly wholesome, it's a film that, once seen, will permanently and favorably influence the way viewers regard the characters' real-life counterparts.

Witty, thoughtful and illuminating.

Crucially for such an elaborately dressed production, the characters all come thoroughly alive with their ready wits and pulsing emotions, overcoming the two-century gap with seeming effortlessness.

Wood's powerlessness to break out of the emotive straightjacket hands the picture to his Russian costars on a platter, and they run with it.

Its politics and dramatic line are familiar and far from convincing.

The script is faithful, the actors are just right, the sets, costumes, makeup and effects match and sometimes exceed anything one could imagine.

Robert Altman takes an elegant, appealingly unemphatic look at the world of ballet.

Nicholson is outstanding as he gradually but tellingly sketches in aspects of a man driven by a mission that outstrips his instincts as a professional lawman.

The yarn's emotional undercurrents never take hold, resulting in a picture that leaves one thinking less about the fates of the characters than about how the actors had to spend most of their working days soaking wet.

Impossibly vulgar, tawdry and coarse, this much-touted major studio splash into NC-17 waters is akin to being keelhauled through a cesspool, with sharks swimming alongside.

Uses first-person on-camera accounts of the adventure by Simpson and fellow climber Simon Yates to backdrop newly shot you-are-there footage that brings home the awesome and harrowing aspects of their feat.

Both annoying and vibrant, casually plotted and deeply personal, Spike Lee’s Crooklyn ends up being as compelling as it is messy.

Lack of much substance or dramatic payoff makes the whole significantly less than sum of its parts.

Campbell Scott's latest foray behind the camera most excels as a subtly observed study of how the dynamics within a close-knit family can shift over time.

A spectacular performance by teenage thesp Ellen Page elevates this disturbing slice of designer shocksploitation into a film that's impossible to dismiss on principle.

A potentially exceptional story is told in a flatly unexceptional manner.

An absurdist piece about a rural community of clueless cretins who careen through life like poorly played pinballs, Napoleon Dynamite represents the definition of the comedy of condescension and ridicule.

There is plenty of bang-bang but very little kiss-kiss in Tomorrow Never Dies, a solid but somewhat by-the-numbers entry in the James Bond cycle.

Has a gaudy pop-culture personality that perfectly suits its subject.

The lively visuals, busy story, zippy pace and TV show running time will make this go down very easily with the target moppet audience.

This intelligently made picture is artful but not arty, political without being didactic.

A staggeringly misguided stab at making the past come alive by people who have absolutely no feel for period filmmaking. Banal at best and laughable at worst.

A sporadically funny romantic comedy with all the dramatic plausibility and tonal consistency of a TV variety show.

Considerable intelligence and strategic finesse have been brought to bear on this handsomely mounted adaptation of Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, which was hardly a natural for the bigscreen.

It feels much more like a shameless reshuffle of "The Princess Diaries."

Rare proof that a gigantic production in contemporary Hollywood can possess a distinctive personality and its own approach to storytelling, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World proves as bracing as a stiff wind on the open sea.

Solid middlebrow biographical fare in which meaty roles are acted to the hilt by a cast more than ready for the feast.

Delivers only annoyance and impatience.

A half-absorbing, half-ridiculous techno-thriller that often goes too far in search of audience-rousing effects.

As vivid and suspenseful as Roman Polanski has made this claustrophobic tale of a torture victim turning the tables on her putative tormentor, one is still left with a film in which each character represents a mouthpiece for an ideology.

A fine cast further illuminates a felicitous script.

A spectacularly gung-ho sci-fi epic that delivers two hours of good, nasty fun.

A humans vs. robots saga that feels machine-made, I, Robot looks to have been assembled from the spare parts of dozens of previous sci-fi pictures.

Feels too piecemeal and ultimately inconsequential.

A psychotic seizure of a performance by Christian Bale dominates Harsh Times, the directorial debut of David Ayer that channels "Taxi Driver."

This impeccably crafted piece of megabuck fantasy storytelling aims to pull off the tricky feat of significantly reworking the superhero format while still providing the expected tentpole-type entertainment thrills for the international masses.

Largely set in two of the least appetizing locations imaginable, a concentration camp and an insane asylum, this is a rigorously made film that does almost nothing to invite the viewer into its world.

This perky, episodic film is as broad and obvious as it could be, but delivers on its own terms thanks to sparky chemistry between its sunny blond stars, Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston, and the unabashed emotion-milking of the final reel.

Despite a sprinkling of laughs and eye-catching moments, this adaptation of a popular comicstrip reps a middling effort from the house that "Shrek" built, a rather narrowly conceived tale that makes only modest hay from the overworked conflict between wildlife and encroaching humans.

A fine group of comic performers manages to keep the screen worth looking at despite the obsessively one-note nature of this curious matchup between MTV Films and producer Scott Rudin.

This is not "E.T.," nor is it a kid's film nor even necessarily a major mass-audience film, although Spielberg's name, high public anticipation and the child-oriented campaign will make it perform like one.

The excitement, majesty and extraordinary human accomplishment of the American lunar program of the '60s and early '70s is rousingly captured in In the Shadow of the Moon.

Newman's charismatic, multishaded performance elevates the hodgepodge caper comedy a couple of notches above its preposterous plotting and self-consciously movieish texture.

Takes a prominent place along with "Tomcats," "Say It Isn't So," "Saving Silverman" and "Get Over It" on the list of reasons why raucous teen farce is headed six feet under.

A wildly ambitious and gravely serious contemplation of life, love, art, human decay and death, the film bears Kaufman’s scripting fingerprints in its structural trickery and multiplane storytelling.

As rich in period and historical background as it is deficient in fresh dramatic and thematic ideas.

The pleasure is doubled in Spider-Man 2. Crackerjack entertainment from start to finish, this rousing yarn about a reluctant superhero and his equally conflicted friends and enemies improves in every way on its predecessor and is arguably about as good a live-action picture as anyone's ever made using comicbook characters.

Short on real drama and incident and long on tedium.

Traditionalists and older viewers in general will scoff, while pop culture addicts will no doubt go with the flow.

Physicality of the second half, then, will keep the audience going, but it is not quite sufficient to camouflage the elemental silliness of storyline.

Succeeds far more often than not in delivering a credible, kaleidoscopic portrait of creative, and often famous, individuals.

Well-mounted and very traditional, Of Mice and Men honorably serves John Steinbeck’s classic story of two Depression-era drifters without bringing anything new to it. Fine performances down the line and sensitive handling justify this attempt to introduce a new generation to the small tragedy of George and Lennie, although lack of any edge or fresh motivation to tell the tale will keep enthusiasm, and B.O. results, at a moderate level.

For a film that could have been either a scorching satire or an outright tragedy, W. is, if anything, overly conventional, especially stylistically.

A less raucous and more serious-minded neighborhood comedy than its entertaining predecessor.

Cronenberg is a master of creating and sustaining a mood of insinuating cool and dark allure, but while the director remains firmly behind the wheel for the first hour or so, he cracks up toward the end with sequences that send the film and the audience into a ditch.

Funny as much of the action is, however, the approach feels rather less fresh, and the gross-outs seem more gratuitous.

The flip-flops, coincidences, surprising disclosures, far-fetched happenings, TV-style chases and illogically protracted confrontations come flying virtually all at once, obliterating the plausible character work and making the film feel like a hundred others.

A hillbilly romantic comedy in which the hillbillies show up but the romance and comedy never do.

The few who saw the embalmed adaptation of "Snow Falling on Cedars" will recognize the same stifling approach brought to this more accessible material by director Scott Hicks.

The picture is stronger the closer it sticks to the streets and raw emotions and the more it avoids routine dramatic crutches and forced comedy.

The film’s virtues are modest, but Buscemi has come out on top by taking on people and a place he clearly knows inside out.

A melodramatic step backward for writer-director Victor Nunez after his last two pictures, the first-rate "Ruby in Paradise" and "Ulee's Gold."

A disappointingly pedestrian prison meller that falls between stools artistically and politically.

This refitting of Claude Chabrol's 1968 classic "La Femme Infidele" is less concerned with suspense and dramatic fireworks than is the usual American "erotic thriller," and much more devoted to nuances and the minutiae of how men and women behave, pretend and lie in duplicitous situations.

Although decked out with a legitimate star and handsome production carpentry, pic takes no greater interest in creating three-dimensional characters or fleshing out a credible storyline than does the run-of-the-mill straight-to-video thriller.

This comically intended battle of the species is family entertainment for families that will buy anything.

The psychological dimensions of the story remain underrealized, but the loaded central premise and intimate focus the film sustains combine for a very involving and dramatic piece of crime lore.

The audaciousness that marked Todd Haynes’ earlier work has been supplanted by self-important preachiness in Safe.

A creepy-little-kid suspenser decked out with sufficient class to lend it a certain distinction.

Brightly drawn, fast-moving and mercifully short, efficient effort is a male bonding saga that hinges upon the fears of teenage pooch Max that he’ll grow up to be just as goofy as Dad.

This is a pure popcorn picture that benefits heavily from its trio of highly skilled, charismatic leading thesps, an unusual setting that provides plenty of visual stimulation, and a confrontational standoff that actually stems from a legitimately provocative premise.

Breezy, enjoyable romp gratifyingly zigzags in directions that aren't apparent at the outset and features some intriguingly personal subtext for longtime Woody watchers.

Still, there is an estimable integrity to the respect and fidelity with which the film regards its subjects, as well as an honesty in its attempt to illuminate the essences of these difficult people.

Once Damon's one-man truth squad goes off the reservation and starts behaving too much like Jason Bourne for comfort, the film begins not only spilling more blood but also leaking crucial credibility.

An uncommonly dour and even grim action thriller that globetrots as diversely as a James Bond film but offers a very limited view politically, emotionally and dramatically.

Despite all its agreeable revisionism and breezy bonhomie, Posse has the feel of a mish-mash of elements all thrown into a big pot and stirred. Lacking dramatic grounding and structuring, even the pertinent revelations that will be most surprising and interesting to modern audiences carry more intellectual than emotional resonance.

Lee takes a conventional, talking-heads-and-archival-clips approach to the material, but rewardingly establishes an intimate connection with his subjects by devoting considerable time to the personalities and families of the four victims.

Walks a fine line between the rarefied and the immediately accessible as it explores new territory for animation, yet remains sufficiently crowd-pleasing.

The modestly scaled film delivers some moving and affecting moments amid a preponderance of scenes of frequently annoying people behaving badly.

As carefully constructed, handsomely crafted and flavorsomely acted as a top-of-the-line production from Hollywood's classical studio era, Francis Ford Coppola's screen version of John Grisham's The Rainmaker would seem to represent just about all a filmmaker could do with the best-selling author's patented dramatic formulas without subverting them altogether.

Due to digital image manipulation that pushes the picture to the boundary between narrative and avant-garde filmmaking, slightly overlong effort is full of striking, fresh visual interludes showing cars, speed and the sensations surrounding the scene.

An exercise in improv-derived filmmaking that simply proves once again that there's no substitute for a good script.

Yields up plenty of opportunities for heated confrontations, wild and woolly dialogue and startling violence, which prove diverting in a shallow way.

This ostensible gay Western is marked by a heightened degree of sensitivity and tact, as well as an outstanding performance from Heath Ledger.

The movie's concerns are obvious, not subtle, and while intellectual energy abounds, laying in subtext, building underlying tension physical and creating visual dynamism are not Schrader's strong suits.

Clint Eastwood has crafted a tense, hard-edged, superbly dramatic yarn that is also an exceedingly intelligent meditation on the West, its myths and its heroes.

Half formulaic and half simply unimaginative.

An unabashedly old-fashioned entertainment loaded with traditional dancing and music.

A pretty skillfully handled domestic thriller about a criminal activity that, while always upsetting, is especially noxious now due to the too many recent tragic and highly publicized instances of it.

With Mexican star Gael Garcia Bernal energetically playing a vulnerable graphic artist with a hyperactive imagination and little confidence with women, picture has an overriding quality of sweetness that will prove endearing to audiences, especially younger females.

Well-observed and superbly cast picture is the filmmaker's best in quite a long time.

A charming, if lightweight, Coen brothers escapade flecked by plenty of visual and performance grace notes.

A perfectly dreadful film.

Animation is dull and characterless, and vocal talent has evidently received blanket direction to, when in doubt, shout.

Could scarcely be more dazzling on a purely visual level, but it's mortally anemic in the story, character and thematic departments.

A strained and pallid concoction that won't fire the collective imaginations of modern children.

Schroeder's first non-American film in 16 years feels like a rejuvenation; his adaptation of Fernando Vallejo's 1994 novel has a naturalistic freedom and ease that is both refreshing and direct in the way it tells a deeply disturbing story.

An astonishing work of studio artifice, A Little Princess is that rarest of creations, a children's film that plays equally well to kids and adults.

Disclosure is polite pulp fiction, a reasonable rendition of potentially risible material. This lavishly appointed screen version of Michael Crichton's page-turner about sexual harassment and corporate power has what it takes to deliver plenty of year-end bounty into Warner Bros.' coffers, although it might have been even more commercial had it been more shamelessly trashy.

Result is still innocuously mild and inconsequential.

Chris Gorak grabs the viewer by the throat in the first few minutes, but quickly fritters away involvement by concentrating almost exclusively on two characters who are both annoying and boring.

An exhaustingly elaborate romantic fantasy actioner.

One of the very best directed animated films on record. Not surprisingly from the force behind the "Babe" movies, the attention to detail is phenomenal, the humor ample.

Has the distinction of being a major motion picture that's far less imaginative, and quite a bit more stupid, than the interactive game it's based on.

A waterlogged would-be thriller deep-sixed by its misguided notion of high concept. [12 January 1998, p. 63]

Amusing and engaging yet lacking in snap and cohesion, this insider's look at the world of standup comics in contempo Los Angeles rings true in its view of the variously warped, stunted and narrow lives of its mostly male denizens.

Immaculately crafted in beautiful black-and-white and entirely absorbing through its longish running time, Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon nonetheless proves a difficult film to entirely embrace.

Shrill, undermotivated, feature-length catfight.

A markedly better picture than Roberto Benigni's far more sentimental Oscar collector.

Will serve as an excellent gauge of any viewer's tolerance level for schmaltzy contrivance and manipulation.

If an age produces the renditions of classic stories that reflect those times, then The Passion of the Christ, which is violent, contentious, emotional, extreme and highly proficient, must be the Jesus movie for this era.

Nocturnal setting, uneven tone, abrasive score and only fitfully successful attempts at humor create a generally grim atmosphere, occasionally leavened by goofy ideas and flashes of explosive action.

Te laughs "Fockers" generates are the type you feel embarrassed about almost immediately afterward.

Strikes some resonant chords but also hits notes that simply don't ring true and are borderline risible at times

For actor and director, the project seems like trying on a new coat, and it doesn't fit either of them.

The spectacle of Kenneth Branagh and Judy Davis doing over-the-top Woody Allen impersonations creates a neurotic energy meltdown in Celebrity, a once-over-lightly rehash of mostly stale Allen themes and motifs.

Swings, even if it doesn't always soar.

A complex look at an illicit affair that ends in disaster for everyone in its vicinity, "Damage" is a cold, brittle film about raging, traumatic emotions. Unjustly famous before its release for its hardly extraordinary erotic content, this veddy British-feeling drama from vet French director Louis Malle proves both compelling and borderline risible, wrenching and yet emotionally pinched, and reps a solid entry for serious art house audiences worldwide.

Arch and funny in equal measure, this looks like a theatrical non-starter that Clooney fans and football devotees might be tempted to check out down the line on DVD or on the tube.

A quiet work with Ozu-like structure and concerns, but remains more an intellectual exercise than one from the heart.

Mostly clunky and vaguely unsavory.

Overall, pic’s conception of the future isn’t terribly original or inventive, and viewers not into the head trip of bigscreen computer graphics will want to download a lot sooner than Johnny does.

Crudely made, somewhat overlong and larded with plenty of things that don't work, pic stands as proof positive that a comedy can be far from perfect and still hit the bull's-eye if it delivers when it counts in its big scenes.

The significant potential of its premise is squandered by an increasing reliance on teen movie cliches, silly plotting and the urge to be upbeat rather than to communicate life lessons.

Competently constructed and nicely acted by Kate Beckinsale and Vera Farmiga.

Constant shock cuts and souped-up music and sound effects will keep small fry in a state of moderate petrification, while the trio of tweeny leads plus attitude-redolent cohorts will make teens feel welcome.

Enormously ambitious and masterfully made, Traffic represents docudrama-style storytelling at a very high level.

Wang has made a dramatically confident move into the mainstream on his own terms with highly congenial material.

A visually mangy but frequently hilarious low-budgeter.

An outstanding lean film trapped in a fat film's body.

Viewers who sit through Exit Wounds should at least do themselves the favor of staying for the end credits, which feature some truly funny off-color banter between Anderson and Arnold on the latter's ostensible talkshow.

A minnow of a movie. A drear moment in the careers of all concerned.

This handsomely produced period piece is easily the most emotionally effective bigscreen melodrama since "The Joy Luck Club," as well as the most intelligent.

This full-bodied adaptation of Dennis Lehane's involved and involving 2001 bestselling crime novel about old friends in Boston's working-class Irish neighborhood finds Clint Eastwood near the top of his directorial game with a cast of first-rate actors.

Johnny Depp's impersonation of the Thompson figure is effective up to a point, but it's hard to imagine any segment of the public embracing this off-putting, unrewarding slog through the depths of the drug culture.

This smooth inside job benefits from heightened bonhomie among the players, fab Euro locations and a diminished obligation to stick to the heist genre boilerplate.

With its exceptional multicamera coverage and dynamic editing, pic provides an amazing ride across the dusty roads and stunningly varied terrain of what could be the world's most demanding vehicle race.

May hold some appeal for Latino auds in the Southwest but will fold after a couple of rounds in the big arena.

Wallow in Hollywood hipster self-absorption.

Essentially approaches its subject seriously, but does take stabs both at horror and grotesque comedy, neither with much success.

Despite an effectively low-key performance by Billy Bob Thornton in the leading role, pic is no more spiritually insightful or illuminating than Sunday School instructional story, and a lot less dramatically coherent.

Lightning strikes twice, but not as brilliantly as before, in Shrek 2. The welcome sequel to the monster 2001 Oscar winner about an ogre's unlikely romance with a beautiful princess successfully recycles many of the qualities that made the first one an instant animated classic and worldwide smash.

There are some unsatisfactory elements–slow spots occur during the middle stretch, the mild anti-establishment stance is getting to be a bit cliche and one never knows whether E.T.’s mortal illness is physical or psychological in nature, or both. But, as with “Close Encounters,” the truly lovely and moving ending more than makes up for everything. Chalk up another smash for Spielberg.

One doesn't know how (auto)biographical any or all of this is, but there's a tartness to the telling of what amounts to a well-shaped series of anecdotes that bespeaks distant pain or, at least, wincing memory twisted into mordant comedy by time and sensibility.

As eye and ear candy, pic has its modest pleasures, beginning with the attractive Diggs and Lathan.

Borderline dull to sit through, The Sixth Sense is actually rather interesting to think about afterward because of the revelation of its ending.

Bears some telltale signs of Pixar's trademark smarts, but still looks like a mutt compared to the younger company's customary purebreds.

An aggravating romance that runs only 78 minutes but ends not a moment too soon.

Just as somber as "The Good Shepherd," the most recent domestic spy drama, but more tightly focused, Breach absorbingly zeroes in on how the FBI nailed the most damaging turncoat in American history.

This trifle about a dizzy downtown New York scenester who gets a grip on her life is energized by several attractive characters and enough youthful pep to put it over as an upbeat diversion for teens and twentysomethings, though it has no more substance than bubblegum music.

Screechily abrasive and sorely lacking in elements that engage the imagination.

There are certainly good laughs to be had. But the contrived script and bland direction prevent the film from ever developing a comic life of its own, leaving what fun there is seeming like the foundation to a rumpus room that's never finished.

Aside from Dillon, who brightens every scene he's in, the delightful surprise here is Selleck, who brings wonderfully mischievous, energizing and self-deprecating qualities to the role of the dirt-digging but ultimately on-the-level broadcaster.

A superficial look at the '50s sex icon, picture feels like it was researched via press clippings rather than attempting a fresh rethinking of its era and provocative subject.