Walter Addiego

An intriguing portrait of an insular community, but its recounting of the seduction of a bright young man by the surrounding culture is heavy-handed.

Gripping.

A simple, serene and occasionally humorous film about a subject that is complex, emotional and usually treated with solemnity.

This is the heart-rending true story of a man with a seemingly benign preoccupation that turned into something close to madness and brought him to a terrible end.

It's not as good as the original - which was fresher, funnier and scarier - but if it were, then by the criteria of the film's resident movie scholar, it wouldn't be a genuine sequel.

Mesmerizing documentary.

The silence captured in this documentary -- a meditative look at life in the Carthusian monastery of the Grande Chartreuse in the French Alps -- may be the most eloquent you'll ever hear.

You need not be a believer to appreciate its humor and humanity.

There's more than a touch of whimsy in A Touch of Spice, a sentimental Greek offering that's been immensely popular in its home country but doesn't translate well.

The movie equivalent of the fruitcake you get every year from the folks back home. It's brick-heavy and full of nasty bits you don't want to put in your mouth, lovingly wrapped in pink cellophane.

In general the film is so impressive that we can't leave the theater without wanting more.

Beguiling.

A loose, amiable documentary tracking several decades in the life of this most unusual farmer.

Overall, it's pretty elementary stuff, along the lines of a Disney Channel TV movie. It's uplifting, and it's in a good cause.

You can't help cheering for Selena, but the good feeling is diminished by the sense that her story's been simplified and sanitized.

Has more in common with a horror movie than with a genuine political work.

Two hours of senselessness and overkill, decked out in lurid, bad-trip colors.

Though short on subtlety, A Walk on the Moon does offer the consolation of some decent performances.

Besides some fine dogfight sequences, it often feels threadbare, just an exercise in recycling.

Two points save "Lousy 2" from the absolute abyss. One is a couple of imaginative touches in the art design: Cori drives an old Citroen, and a couple of Vespa-like motor scooters are briefly glanced. The other is the performance of Frewer, who played the lead in TV's "Max Headroom." He endows the character with more sardonic humor than we have a right to expect from the junky script by TV-oriented director Farhad Mann.

The ending is a disappointment, a perfunctory upbeat gesture.

The film is dazzling and bewildering in equal measure.

A misfire.

Brower's legacy, however, is beyond question. Historian Starr calls him "an American hero," and though Brower was a prickly sort and a zealot, that judgment sounds right.

Breaking Upwards has its amusing and touching moments, but we're left wondering just what we're supposed to make of it all. In the end, the relationship at the film's core is less absorbing than the filmmakers imagine.

Modestly better than last year's awful "End of Days," though it falls well short of Arnold's "Terminator" peak period.

Nicholson squeezes every wretched drop of buffoonery from this character, and it's distressing to watch him play an easy role for easy laughs.

Much of what we see is revealing, but I was unable to quell an occasional sense that the dice were being loaded, that the subjects were being given just enough rope to hang themselves.

A giddy French comedy.

The veteran Baker anchors the proceedings, and you would like to see more of her character.

Maybe the film works best as nostalgia for Baby Boomers who recall the picture from their childhood.

Not up to Ozon's standards.

Marshall has an astounding instinct for popular entertainment. He's done it again with The Other Sister.

Depending on your tolerance for talking Chihuahuas, this could make for a fun family night out.

In the end, all the bitterness seems like window-dressing to disguise a trite story.

Defamation tries to give all sides a full airing, but it's not hard to guess the director's own feeling. At the end, he says, "Putting too much emphasis on the past, as horrific as it has been, is holding us back."

Parents should note the PG rating. There's little bloodshed, but several fight scenes, lots of loud roaring and some overwhelming special effects sequences could vex younger viewers.

Lacks the spark of the best recent Disney spectaculars, like "Beauty and the Beast."

There's a sense of genuineness throughout Girlfight.

There so much entertaining information in Art & Copy, a documentary about modern advertising, that it takes a while to realize we are being sold something

This flawed drama about a self-destructive young actress and her reclusive novelist father has its rewards, mainly in some good performances.

So it's hard to know who gets the blame for Payback. I say we cut Mel some slack and put the hex on Helgeland.

Living in Emergency is sobering, in part because it powerfully conveys that, despite the group's heroic efforts, its impact is "a drop in a sea of oceans." There's never enough time, supplies or volunteers, but, as one of the doctors notes, "the demand is pretty much infinite."

You can take it straight as an example of a bygone day of outsize filmmaking or enjoy it as kitsch, but it's exhilarating either way.

It's a celebration of a shady landmark, but also a lament.

A dimwitted, fill-in-the-blanks horror opus that slanders a fine and useful mammal.

Lacks the finesse of other puzzle films.

Francis Ford Coppola's Jack has its affecting moments, but in the end illustrates the pitfalls of the "concept" movie, the kind you can boil down to a one-line hook.

At 126 minutes the movie is excruciatingly long, but it is still too short to pack in all the subtle changes in character he means but fails miserably to convey.

Has compelling stretches, but the film's formal concerns overwhelm the storytelling.

Lane, with his extensive stage experience, is acerbic, profoundly cynical and endlessly disgruntled. As the foil, Evans strike the right comic nice-guy note; he has fun with the character's sweetness and refuses to degrade him.

Overall, it's a nice melding of sci-fi and a crime story.

While recognizably Ceylan's work, is more of a genre piece - a noirish suspense film - and less successful.

Godawful.

Tired comedy.

Throughout, Croghan knows where she wants to go, but has no fresh ideas for getting there. The characters are reasonably appealing, but the jokes are mostly weak.

William H. Macy is fine as the detective Arbogast, wearing a hat he could have borrowed from Martin Balsam in the original role.

It's funny in spots if you can tune out the Farrellys' ultra-crass jokes - along with any memory of the first movie.

Adams does offer quite a turn: Portraying a version of Disney's Snow White, she owns the character, down to every warble and twirl.

Surprisingly pedestrian.

You feel the full weight of the movie's three hours, since the filmmakers only had 90 minutes' of plot.

The title is exactly the sort of juvenile joke the entire movie leans on.

Painfully sincere but tired.

A remarkable cast for a small, non-mainstream effort.

An hour into the picture, Spade offers a pretty funny imitation of belter Neil Diamond, but it's a long 60 minutes for such a pitiful payoff.

It seems like another misstep - the story just doesn't hold up to Ritchie's treatment.

The film's grungy, ultra-low-budget look, thanks to the Safdie's handheld camera, is just right for catching the crummy, hardscrabble, rat-infested milieu.

The picture is a relentless blast of color and movement that's based on the old TV show, but boils down to a supercharged version of old-time Saturday-afternoon movie serials.

A superior adventure film with a poetic heart.

The author calls the movie "perfect" - reassurance that the director hasn't tried to pull any fast ones.

No-one's-home acting by Bierko and Mol doesn't help, while the talented D'Onofrio ("The End of the World") and Mueller-Stahl (a veteran of European pictures) are better than the material.

Its examination of identity and loneliness begins to feel like a soap opera season boiled down into one very long episode with too much happening.

As good as the film is in conveying the feeling of the walls closing in, it has to be said that the script won't win any prizes for subtlety - the director seems to relish ham-fisted ironies.

Though the material might lend itself to heavy-handedness, director Ole Christian Madsen is steady, and he gets fine performances from the two leads and Stengade.

A way-below-par golfing comedy.

The stories are harrowing, and because they are delivered by living, breathing witnesses, they move us in deep ways that the archival footage, for all its horror, cannot.

That's the real problem with this melodrama. Whether or not you agree with the pacifist message, the presentation is often overwrought and maudlin.

Maybe there's a real use for Carrie 2 after all. Stand it up against the original, and you have a pretty good lesson in what's happened to the movies in the last couple of decades.

A provocative character study and portrait of the times.

An enjoyable example of this extraordinary director's documentary work.

The comedy-drama is worth seeing for Christie's performance as a former B-actress married to a philandering handyman. She radiates a mature sexuality that's a rare treat on screen these days, and when the camera strays from her, you want to reach over and turn it back.

This documentary has no bells and whistles; Bill Haney, the director and co-writer (with Peter Rhodes), sticks to the facts.

Stagecoach both revived and elevated the Western.

The idea is intriguing - an inflatable sex doll comes alive and experiences the world with wide-eyed innocence - but Hirokazu Kore-eda's "Air Doll" is only partly successful. The film's poignant depiction of human loneliness is undercut by saccharine notes and a drifting tone.

These pictures need a light touch and a lot of attitude, but this time you can hear heavy breathing in the background.

Hawke has created a standard-issue, Sundance-friendly indie film that's full of the predictable angst suffered by Manhattan artistic types, but unfortunately the lead characters are both so callow that you finally don't care much about them.

Aimed directly at your inner 8-year-old, and it strikes home.

It's an impressive achievement: The film reveals things about each person's inner world, and how it looks to the other, without making us feel as if we're lost in a house of mirrors.

It's tear-jerker material but ends up being quite touching, and it's a good choice for family viewing.

Congratulations to director Mick Jackson and writers Jerome Armstrong and Billy Ray for liberating themselves from the tedious demands of believability.

The film's simplicity and intensity are aided by the crisp black-and-white photography of Tariel Meliava. Director Babluani's greenness shows itself in the ending, which is weak, but the film nevertheless stays with you.

It's an apocalyptic ghost story with some eerie images and a surprising turn toward the end, but it bogs down considerably between the good scenes.

Somehow, the funny stuff gets sucked into a kind of black hole in the center of the satire, along with all the comic debris. What should have been a surreal flight to the planet Lucas crumbles into a harmless collection of cosmic dustballs. [24 Jun 1987, p.52]

Some scenes are mild fun, but the mishaps that befall our hero aren't especially inventive, and although the South African setting provides a bit of interest, it's never really used incisively.

This affecting documentary focuses on their 2004 production, a play whose themes of forgiveness and redemption certainly ought to have some resonance for the inmates.

This is contemplative moviemaking, with its deliberate pace, often static scenes and emphasis on direct sound. The director keeps the dialogue pared to the bone.

This easygoing movie fully captures the couple's charm and offers a unique look at the '60s and '70s New York art scene.

A moving but flawed premiere feature.