Tom Keogh

The story, ultimately, is about the classic conflict between a desire to cherish and protect one's unique gifts from a brutal world and a more practical instinct to compromise beauty.

The would-be emotional centerpiece of his three-hours-plus adventure flick is the most juvenile romantic tale of 1997.

This is a pretty leaden cinematic experience.

Ross might have been better served by dismissing verisimilitude altogether and going for a real fable-fable to make what is essentially a very simple point about the dangers and rewards of accepting life's beautiful risks.

An authentically spirited popcorn movie.

Rob Schneider's stab at an "Ace Ventura"-like gamble for stardom.

This is still Ron Shelton in good -- not great, but good -- form here, and the rewards are plentiful.

This much-anticipated but terribly underwhelming black comedy represents a seriously squandered opportunity.

Not a waste of time, but not quite in control of its destination.

The script by Liu Zhenyun becomes ponderous and redundant, kept on oxygen by its lead actress’s complex performance as a child-woman with enigmatic wisdom.

All fleeting charm where it could have been one of the most memorable films of the decade.

Simply a case of severe overreaching and the illusion that an overstuffed movie is an epic movie.

Once at sea, The Perfect Storm collapses in a heap of spectacle and a dubious piling-on of scary incidents.

The film's very premise, while initially promising, doesn't hold up to lengthy scrutiny.

The film is simplicity itself.

Jim Carrey is magnificent as Kaufman.

If you're paying close attention, there is reason enough to find Up at the Villa a fascinating experience, almost an experiment in some ways, but it's not a fully realized work of cinema.

When Phillips is out of the zone, however, Road Trip slows down, awaiting another redemption.

Streep delivers another of her chameleon-like transformations in appearance, accent, and manner.

About two lives in which transformation is a constant, destabilizing threat to freedom and sanity. That's a very provocative premise, though halfway through the movie Doyle and Walsh abandon its potential to go for easy laughs.

Rounders is more involved with the insulated, arcane world of a gambler than it is with the things that actually make a movie work, such as characters and relationships and a script that connects all its dots.

It is an ostensibly serious story about being young and struggling to wrest control over one's life from the hands of fools, yet it doesn't behave like a serious drama that wants to lead us anywhere.

Shaft is a decent popcorn movie and Jackson rises to the responsibility of appearing bigger than life.

What the film doesn't have, ironically, is a soul.

In the tradition of "Sunrise" and "Eyes Wide Shut," crises set the characters on a kind of dreamy, nocturnal journey through chaos and fear.

A dark comedy that squanders its potential and never quite, as they say, suspends disbelief.

The film’s bleached colors and Reeves’ trademark woodenness add to its emotional remoteness, though Basso, Zellweger and Belushi create a convincing family in crisis. Zellweger, especially, delivers a fascinating, complex performance as a damaged survivor.

Lawrence's style is purely will-it-stick-the-wall-or-not, and when it doesn't he looks pretty puny up there on the big screen.