Tom Keogh

The basics of Draper’s story hold promise, but the film derails because Jack and Oliver just aren’t charming as social pariahs.

The unusual but revealing documentary Matangi / Maya / M.I.A., a hodgepodge of old video diaries, music videos, performances and interviews spanning decades, reflects M.I.A.’s passionate efforts to enlighten fans about victims of government oppression — while also getting people around the world dancing to her music.

Cooke presents a case that the war on drugs in America is not only a no-win scenario, it is no longer (if it ever was) designed to be won as much as fulfill disturbing, narrow agendas in the public and private sectors.

Perhaps in an effort to tell a PG story about an all-ages storyteller, Te Ata lacks vitality, pulling its punches and sometimes resorting to a cheesy shorthand. (A scene featuring Greene’s reservation leader and a racist senator is especially cheap.) Despite that, Te Ata lingers in the memory as a tale of an artist’s promise — and fulfillment.

There’s plenty here to enjoy.

Bell can sculpt a funny moment to polished realization, but deprive it of oxygen at the same time. It’s not until late in the film’s third act that a different feeling emerges, a looser hand that provides room for characters to be more warm and human than pieces in a constricted design.

Ripped works best as a middling series of gags about being far too many tokes over the line.

In more careless hands, Middle Man’s deranged farce could have resulted in an unchecked, undisciplined movie with nothing to say. But beneath the roller-coaster madness here is an earthbound terror that art is meant to reveal.

A riveting and illuminating documentary.

That’s a lot for a viewer to take in, and as pleasing as some aspects of Your Name can be, there’s no question Shinkai’s overstuffed movie often trips over itself.

For Here or to Go? offers an insightful group portrait but lacks imagination in a romantic subplot and (except for a requisite Bollywood-style dance number) is visually dreary.

Despite the stakes, Mendeluk can’t scare up any particular urgency, largely because everything is so contrived and inauthentic.

You feel hints of a strange energy in Emily that remind us we don’t always know why we do what we do in relationships. The hard part is holding on for the ride.

Driver’s performance as an uncertain man getting through the day-to-day prosaic, quietly buoyed by passion and artistic commitment, is exquisite.

What follows is a post-setup hour of imaginative action and dazzling stunt work, all taking place on one of cinema’s great self-metaphors: a speeding train changing scenes every few seconds and heading toward an unknown destination.

Within this uncertain world, Lopéz-Gallego relishes such noir staples as fatalistic shadows, eruptive mayhem and terse, ironic dialogue. But he and his cinematographer, Jose David Montero, also carve out fresh visual territory.

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.

The Charnel House is watchable, even if you can tell very soon what’s really going on behind mysterious doings.

So compelling is writer-director Joel Potrykus’ unnerving scenario — with its largely ambiguous tone of horror dramatically offset at times by explicit frights — that a viewer isn’t necessarily bothered by a lack of basic story information about who, what, when, where and why.

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.

With its boyhood-to-manhood tropes (growing up means getting a girl’s attention and winning an idol’s respect), London Town can’t be taken too seriously. But it’s nice to see part of the Clash’s populist legacy in a fan’s journey.

The film distinguishes itself by what it lacks: simple, unrealistic answers to Perry’s regrets and the hole in his soul. His path to authenticity might not lead back to glory days, but contentment is closer than he thinks.

The best material gives the excellent Scott and Kroll plenty of love-hate energy: Robbie’s condescension, Bill’s passive-aggressiveness. It will look all too familiar to anyone who isn’t an only child.

A number of Kelly’s scenes play out like stand-alone sketches — some quite funny; not all of them essential — rather than parts of a whole. But that’s easily forgiven considering the candor of his insights and his strong cast.

Brother Nature at least enjoys moments of deep-end mania from Killam and Moynihan.

Co-writer and director Lars Kraume brings muted colors and a claustrophobic, urgent energy to the procedural part of this story, while reminding us that not every moral hero looks like Captain America — in fact, like Bauer, they can be a rumpled, misanthropic mess.

A harrowing spectacle that makes one forget to breathe.

Miike misses an opportunity to add even more resonance by telling us a little extra about each of the samurai fighting the good fight. But he's also busy shooting nearly an hour's worth of complicated fight choreography. Enthralling as that is, Miike's greatest achievement here is in giving us reason to deeply care.

Director John H. Lee keeps the action taut and often deeply felt when it comes to sacrifices and losses. But the script is often bogged down by deifying MacArthur.

D’Souza manipulates viewers’ passions while telling them who to blame for their bile. As for Hillary, D’Souza asserts she wants to nationalize all our industries and steal all our money. His lack of evidence undercuts his message.

[A] warmly revealing documentary.

If you’re partial to the Northwest outdoors, co-writer and director Alex Simmons (best known for documentaries) makes the long trip a visual treat, too. Indeed it is time for fresh air.

Despite promising elements of mixed-genre thrills, the film is finally the underwhelming sum of too many plot devices.

Time to Choose tells us all is not lost — yet. But the hour is late.

T-Rex is ultimately about a remarkable (and likable) young person finding her personal power despite pressure from all sides.

Writer-director Jo Sung-hee subtly evokes American Westerns and “X-Files”-like weirdness while dreaming up such pulse-quickening set pieces as a shootout in a fog-filled room.

Pali Road — an engrossing psychological thriller with a trapped damsel’s very sanity on the line — demonstrates how an enigmatic story can unabashedly overflow with disorienting puzzles and perverse twists, all for the sake of blurring the line between reality and illusion.

Though Dough is often in danger of running off the rails with improbable and unnecessary plot twists, it is always essentially entertaining and warm in its observations of hope rekindled through simple relationships.

What rescues “Diaries” and its grimy, cracked-glass look is its firm grip on Stephen’s incremental awareness that he and his misery are not the center of the universe.

As feverish and dark as this first feature by filmmaker Can Evrenol gets, there is a sense that something larger is at stake — an elusive explanation having to do with a recurring dream, twisted destiny and the bond of a promise.

For all its strengths, Krisha can also be self-indulgent and artificial.

Hock handles that perennial sports question — what is the athletic limit of a human? — with interesting sidebars about the brain and physics. Such mysteries mingle with irresistible lore in this satisfying work.

This modest film’s heart is really in the mysteries of small moments.

Anime enthusiasts will enjoy The Boy and the Beast, but so will anyone who appreciates a good fantasy yarn.

It is another sumptuous visual feast from the studio, full of endless images finely detailed and often lavish.

Director Park Hyun-gene skillfully engineers the inevitable triumph of the heart over every kind of human foible, and — why not? — a viewer is temporarily hooked.

Ting, to her credit, is more interested in the battle between heart and head, instinct and obligation, than in what follows. “Already Tomorrow” is about ambivalence, not gratification, and is more interesting for it.

Mustang could easily have been a pure heartbreaker, but it isn’t. It is surprisingly nuanced and even something of an adventure tale about a fight for freedom and identity.

A viewer might expect the film’s widescreen, busy images to fill with revenge-action sequences. But in its own way, Mr. Six is much more about a unique man adjusting an out-of-fashion personal code for a new type of crisis in the shadow of his mortality.

Chalk this film up as an unusually intelligent thriller about that which scares us the most: accepting our accidents of fate.

Rohmer's trademark dialogue...is as poetic in its plainness as ever.

One of the best films seen in many years about the mysterious workings of time and memory.

Abittersweet fable about the raw joys of human revival.

What makes Hit and Runway uniquely fun, however, is the unapologetic extent to which Livingston and Cohen turn it into an index of beloved Woody-isms.

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

The effects never really get ahead of the characters or the script's layered personality.

Few movies this year have been quite so rewarding with their 11th hour epiphanies.

Its own, tough-minded antidote to the grab-the-brass-ring whimsy of its premise.

The film's light success really comes down to Shannon, though, the exuberant "SNL" star whose alter ego actually seems more real and sympathetic here than she does in brief TV skits.

All such good intentions collapse by the third act, when Mission to Mars becomes a tediously late pastiche of chimerical nonsense from the early 1980s.

The lure of Sling Blade is both elemental and hauntingly familiar, and I would not be surprised if Thornton's breakthrough film is one day considered a classic in its own right.

Firmly establishes Crowe as a standard-bearer of original thinking in the dispiritingly redundant state of American cinema. Don't miss this one.

So funny and smart that holding it up against its predecessor is as pointless as comparing peak episodes of "Seinfeld."

I would rather have been scraping gum off my shoe than sitting there another minute.

Watching Left Behind's plodding screen adaptation may make you feel the Deity has already abandoned us to a shockingly dull post-apocalypse.

If McCulloch can draw this much humanity out of his actors, and do it in comedies with a deceptively easygoing poignancy, he's definitely a director to watch.

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

Certainly one of his (Scorsese's) most profound works.

We're forced to listen to misogynistic rantings devoid of wit, entertainment value, or even authenticity.

There's a lost opportunity here.

Nearly incomprehensible story.

It does yield solidly comic performances.

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

Levinson is at the top of his game with Liberty Heights, his instincts acutely cinematic, his purpose clear.

So mired in his own ludicrous equation for contemporary action pictures that it's constantly stuck in first gear.

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

This is a pretty leaden cinematic experience.

Soderbergh appreciates the value of having fun with a so-so script, turning its cliches into fresh experiences and infusing energy into the margins of a predictable story.

Can anyone but a lapsed Catholic possibly be interested in this unpleasant, anti-Papist creepshow?

A black comedy that never gets black enough to inspire Farrelly-style decadence.

The film isn't merely bungled. It's starved and battered by Lichtenstein.

For Stallone, and his original script for Driven reflects a more mature, self-effacing perspective.

Doesn't go the distance in either story or style, unwilling to liberate itself from real or presumed expectations about what it takes to sell a movie featuring teenagers.

Comes across as a deceptively streamlined comic-drama; an unnervingly violent, gritty film noir with a wink.

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

Gun Shy can't rise on wobbly legs, and its real potential is lost for good.

An exquisite trio.

A huge surprise: a startlingly resonant yet unabashedly entertaining slice of American history, a popcorn movie with complex observations about, of all things, racism.

Look to the cast as the best reason to see this film.

It's insulting and devalues the experience of watching not just this film but all films.

A smart marriage of modest technical ambition, sophisticated material, and a hang-loose presentation that belies the production's no-frills sacrifices.

A sequel from hell.

Looks plain silly without an appropriate tone or sustaining context.

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

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.

Merely reconfigures the same predictable gross-out jokes, sentimental platitudes, and decorative sex that figure into half the screenplays in circulation.

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.

Misshapen but magnificent vision of a soulful quest -- in the thick of misery and fear -- for the meaning of our lives.

The look, the feel, the brood-y, brilliant cast: This is an oddly affecting movie, all right, a jellyroll of Bronte and Hemingway.

A surprisingly vital film.

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

Achieves a kind of beauty through its overlaying enigmas, and Carrey.

Pours on some of the most ridiculous dialogue heard in a feature film in a long time.

Overpraised, intellectually soft, narratively unfocused, and thematically ambivalent.

A very moving and surprisingly funny experience.

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.

Beyond the fantastic contrivances of Gods and Monsters, these performances are startlingly human.

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

In all, this film is a major disappointment with a few powerful highlights.

The kind of minor work that may very well speak greater volumes about (Stone's) thoughts and feelings right now than another masterpiece would.

Lots of movies deal with friends and lovers of a certain age growing apart. But few can hear, as Thraves does, the sound of death chains rattling in the background.

The film's bemused but genuine respect for the ingenious obviousness of a bygone cinematic language is quite moving.

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.

If you don't ponder too much the script's muddled, self-serving influences, Arlington Road succeeds at discomforting a viewer and making one apt to look over one's shoulder for a day or two.

It's a complete drag.

It certainly has a place among the year's more accomplished productions.

Mercury Rising could have been a terrific movie with a little more gumption. [3 Apr 1998, p.G5]

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

As he did in "Run Lola Run," he has clearly patented an original combination of cinematic eye and ear candy and a profound, irresistible fascination for the role of chance in this world.

[Roos's] dialogue (including an on-and-off voiceover by Ricci's pregnant, runaway sociopath) has a ringing clarity, his satire is low-key but quite real, and his actors mesh so perfectly you'd swear they rehearsed for months before shooting.

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

This is pretty much a lazy film with a few lighthearted moments and no substance.

A careful, intelligent, and seamless design that makes room for a couple of unexpected twists.

Drama, swift action, and low-key, character-driven comedy.

Looks and moves like a film whose vital organs were yanked before shooting commenced.

One can be forgiven for leaving the theater feeling a modicum of hope, and for that we owe Warren Beatty something.

An excruciating misfire.

A wonderfully witty homage to the very king of disco movies -- "Saturday Night Fever."

A satisfying love story about two very different people with a common cause, people who endure trials of trust and faith in each other.

Don't be surprised if you exit Here On Earth feeling both moved and incredulous.

It is unusually but effectively organized as an almost unbroken chain of intimacies between the small and large players in this story.

It's possible that Ritchie's most important asset is the comic constant within his characters' existential dilemmas. To a man (and, indeed, they're all men), Ritchie's anti-heroes are at odds, in either large or small ways, with their own natures.

Miyazaki's films never stop at their brilliant surfaces. Spirited Away is a fairy tale in the classic tradition, a growing-up fantasy riding the rapids of the subconscious.

An authentically spirited popcorn movie.

An unusually clear, compassionate, and grownup satire about a rare subject: the true psychological underpinnings of young manhood.

Don't let Croupier go by without a look.

A painfully unfunny movie.

Finally, there's a female action hero for the summer of 2000, and she's a . . . chicken. But a chicken to believe in.

Quite smart, sensitive, and relatively sophisticated.

As with Bill Clinton himself, Primary Colors forces one to take the disappointing with the good, the letdown with the promise, the compromises with the hope.

A very pleasant experience in watching life unfold in its own direction and time.

As with most non-Disney animated features, Trumpet of the Swan does make the Mouse look like a genius.

An accessible but savvy political satire.

A wondrous honesty.

What we have here is a small story in an oversized setting.

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.

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

I don't like Say It Isn't So, but I understand its karmic inevitability.

The filmmakers went for cheap laughs as well as for some a little harder-earned. The only thing pure about this film is the dog, and he's magnificent.

Let your children have their childhood while you have a rare, grown-up experience at the multi-plex for a change.

Jim Carrey is magnificent as Kaufman.

Puts the Bond film series (this one makes number 19)-- back on track by stressing the fundamentals and applying a bit of authentic drama for a change.

God-awful.

This is vintage Allen, his powers intact after a string of increasingly cranky, creaky films in the last few years.

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.

A film so driven by pure style that a script barely seems necessary in its first half, Boogie Nights becomes bogged down in a predictable aftermath of drug deals, post-stardom decay, cocaine-fueled nuttiness, and self-loathing.

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

The true star of this film, funny and often breathtakingly lovely, Zellweger carries virtually every scene in which she appears -- which aren't nearly as plentiful as one might like.

If you like a little action with your war movies, or maybe some butt-kicking Resistance types and a Mission: Impossible-like finale, you won't be disappointed.

Will eventually be remembered as a disposable farce, but one that leaves a happy memory.

Whether or not Breaking the Waves succeeds as a profound work is something that's hard to say after one viewing, but it is certainly a wholly original piece of work.

It's sporadically funny but often unfunny, the latter worse than not being funny enough.

Dreadful suspense piece that has "Mystery Science Theater" appeal written all over it.

Over the course of two-and-a-half hours, the film not only gets up on wobbly legs but learns to dance by the closing credits.

Custom-made for an audience of mouth-breathers.

Fascinating noir, which will long be remembered for its extraordinary lead performance by Catherine Deneuve.

It's not just bad, it's ugly. Not just stupid but really aesthetically displeasing. The sooner this movie disappears from sight, the better.

Director Gary Winick ("Sweet Nothing") ingeniously complements Draper's layered approach by modulating the film's energy in fascinating ways.

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

It's very effective.

It is Foster who presents the biggest single problem, delivering a monochromatic performance that finds her character not much more than flinty and strained.

Could have afforded to be a little loftier and still be quite funny. Instead, it's a waste.

A mixed bag, all in all (casting Huey Lewis was not the best idea), but worth seeing.

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

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

While we may like what we see, it's impossible to comprehend what much of it means or why we should care.

The film is simplicity itself.

The extent to which Black and Louiso help make this film terribly witty and caustic and worth every minute of its almost two-hour running time is immeasurable.

We don't even have Joe Eszterhas to blame for this one.

A pulsing, wooshing, visceral experience that amounts to great fun and an entirely disposable movie.

Heckerling fails to crack the outer shell of the story and its key relationships.

The collapse of Office Space's second half is so egregious that one can't help but suspect Judge's Achilles heel may be his writing. It's not that he can't write -- it's just that his ideas tend to shine better within a pool of fellow scribes, as proven in his television career.

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.

By creating characters from emotional wellsprings rather than concepts, Leigh thrills us with the possibilities that emerge when people are merely in the same room.

Captivating an audience from the get-go and drawing our attention and emotions ever deeper into the layered mysteries of a dreamy fable.