William Arnold

Its overall impact is soothing and reassuring without being overtly manipulative, propagandistic or flag-waving.

The sum of all this is moderately rousing and deliciously irreverent in the Moore style, but not earthshaking as journalism, and devoid of anything that the average person doesn't already know from reading the newspaper.

Has an unforced, pleasingly New Age feel to it; an unexpected but satisfying ending (a la "Shrek"); and a script that -- despite its overdone, body-switching premise -- comes together to nicely convey a cogent, environmentally conscious moral lesson.

One of the year's few sci-fi films that actually takes itself seriously, and a movie that goes a long way on the strength of its unique premise, steady performances and impressive visual style.

It doesn't really come off, but it's an admirably ambitious, and mostly very engaging, coming-of-age adventure that apes the spirit of Joseph Conrad.

There are no fresh revelations and the film can't touch Paul Schrader's 1988 drama, "Patty Hearst," as an inside account.

The result bears so little resemblance to the original that you have to wonder what happened. It seems more a remake of "How the West Was Won" than 3:10 to Yuma.

It's harmless fun, and it makes for an often impressive display of the latest generation of computer-wizardry. But the enterprise is utterly void of substance: instantly forgettable and about as enriching as a rerun of "Johnny Quest."

Diane Lane overplays many scenes, she tries way too hard to be ingratiating and, in many other ways, it's one of the least of her performances.

Much of this movie is very funny, it has some genuinely endearing moments.

If you find her (Ryan) distinctive persona to be too irritatingly cute to bear, this mannered movie is likely to play like fingernails on a blackboard .

Hawn mows down everything in her path with a giggle. It's great fun to watch her just eat up this movie.

Charlize Theron, playing the one woman member of the team, handily steals the movie from the guys with her no-nonsense display of verve and vulnerability.

It's a daring failure that should delight many devotees of Classic Hollywood.

For what it's worth, the film also goes out of its way to be a lavish visual re-creation of the 1880s.

Predictable but entertaining kid movie.

But the movie goes absolutely nowhere. It allows us to be a fly on the wall to a whirlwind of gossip, confessions and intimate moments. But when the ending comes, it's an epic letdown. It's just so much Oprah-esque eye candy, without a point of view, or a plot.

It's a mixed blessing.

Has a delightfully nasty villain and pumped-up action, albeit along familiar lines.

Caro Diario is an alternately charming and unsettling mood piece that communicates well the offbeat world view of a self-confessed '60s-style rebel. [21 Oct 1994]

The movie as a whole seems pointlessly ugly. And with a gang rape that includes more than 50 participants and a homophobic bashing that results in a crucifixion, complete with heavy-handed Christ symbolism, it also opens itself up to a charge of being a tad overblown. [11 May 1990]

Like most Price movies, it's challenging, engaging and free of the usual thriller cliches.

The film's European locations, sets (in Rome's Cinecitta studios) and photography are unusually striking; Rachel Portman contributes an elegant score; and Holm (who played the emperor once before in 1981's "Time Bandits") embodies the character with an effortlessly regal charisma.

The film -- Lelouch's 49th in 41 years -- stars Fanny Ardant as a glamorous, beautiful and phenomenally popular Parisian novelist who we first see in a flash-forward as she's being hauled into the Sureté, interrogated and formally charged with murder.

The only difference between the two films is that this one chronicles Capote's New York environment in more detail (and with humorous interludes), and it's a tad lighter in tone and perhaps a bit less high-horse condemning of its subject's literary ethics.

The ordeal undeniably strikes an emotional chord, and much of this is due to Holmes, who wonderfully communicates both the character's streak of rebellion and her desire to atone. The movie is a solid star vehicle for her.

Not surprisingly, the best thing on the screen is Mirren.

While the movie may border on teen exploitation in many scenes, its heart and values are mostly in the right place, and it qualifies its thrill of victory with a very sober message: few high school athletes become NBA millionaires, many are cheated out of an education.

It's a handsome production, nicely shot by Elliot Davis on Italian and Moroccan locations, with a performance by Castle-Hughes ("Whale Rider") as the Virgin that's so pleasing and minimalist it could have been lifted from a fresco by Giotto.

The truly bizarre Ben Stiller farce, Night at the Museum, is no laugh riot, and misfires all over the screen, but it develops its own unique charm and leaves a pleasant afterglow. A family audience could do worse for a comedy this holiday season.

All or Nothing has some appealing performances, several scenes of absolutely shattering domestic drama and an uncanny aura of gut-wrenching, documentarylike authenticity.

Much of it is imaginatively directed (by Leonard Kastle, a one-time director who took over after Martin Scorsese was fired) and the film has the same distinctive, rather charming low-budget noir look of Night of the Living Dead, Hideous Sun Demon and other super-low-budget cult films of the '60s. [04 Dec 1992]

After a slow start, these two characters absolutely absorbed me. The drama develops a strong (and not altogether pleasant) voyeuristic appeal and the performance of Karen Sillas (a regular of the Hal Hartley movies) gradually becomes one of the most devastating and original performances I've seen by an actress in a movie this year. [07 Oct 1994]

It induces a serious case of sensory overload that left me drained and edgy.

Only a qualified success. It suffers in its transition from page to film, and my guess is that its devoted fan base will think the adaptation misses the mark by more than a few inches.

Has a certain ghoulish fascination, and generates a fair amount of B-movie excitement.

It's unspeakably morbid, and never adds up to be something special.

It's a parade of insanity, murder, suicide, arson and crimes of passion; delivered in a style as sardonic and tongue-in-cheek as a Vincent Price monologue; complemented by deadpan narration that keeps injecting inappropriate bits of civic boosterism.

It's an art-house genre piece, very much in the tradition of "Enchanted April," "Shirley Valentine" and "Under the Tuscan Sun." But, a few charming scenes aside, A Good Year is in the hands of the wrong star and wrong director.

The story line is the typical M:I labyrinthine mess, made even more confusing by the always challenging Robert Towne as screenwriter, and by the continuation and overuse of the flawlessly lifelike "mask" device established in Part One.

Lee doesn't seem to have the slightest sympathy for his hero, no particular point is made, and the whole exercise seems cold and empty.

In any case, for all its good points, this movie doesn't click, it never builds much dramatic tension or momentum, it doesn't communicate a clear vision of the man behind the myth, and it finally can't find a coherent narrative line to tell its (ultimately inaccurate) story. [01 Dec 1995]

Truth be told, the film is routine: the kind of one-note war movie that Hollywood used to crank out by the dozens every year in the 1950s.

And the casting basically works. Seven-year-old Mason Gamble makes a believable, if never especially lovable, Dennis. Walter Matthau is, of course, so marvelously "right" as a neighborhood grump that no other actor could even have been considered. [25 June 1993]

Definitely still beating a dead dinosaur here, but the film is leaner, more exciting and superior in every way to the last outing.

With its machine-gun editing, extremely loud (mostly rap) soundtrack, occasional music-video interlude and overall in-your-face sensibility, it's a movie that's determined to chase anyone past age 30 or so right out of theater.

It's more intelligent than most Hollywood movies you'll find in the heat of summer, and its saving grace is the quality of its acting, including Jackson's uncompromising turn as the old fighter, and delicious bits by David Paymer and Alan Alda as veteran editors.

Before it runs completely out of creative steam in a disappointing final act, Celtic Pride flirts with being a surprisingly effective comedy about the phenomenon of sports obsession. [19 Apr 1996]

Imaginative and frequently thrilling, and the love-hate relationship of its protagonists is quite compelling; Woo is always at his best in portraying the complexities of male bonding under intense pressure and violence.

It still celebrates the vigilante spirit and justice delivered with a biblical swiftness, but it has been cleansed of much of its gratuitous violence and more offensive red-neck sensibilities. Mercifully, it's also a full 40 minutes shorter than the original.

It's not nearly as good as "Women," but it's still his most likable film since, and there is some definite magic in it. [5 Apr 1996]

It's exuberant, exhilarating, poetic and -- intentionally and not -- rather silly.

One of the American cinema's rare excursions into pure autobiography: the movie is Montiel's own coming-of-age story, with little or nothing disguised as fiction.

Spurlock is good company: a more likable, less abrasive, less manipulative Michael Moore.

This one is a kiddie show all the way, with characters as broad and one-dimensional as a billboard, a vision of good and evil as simple as a bumper sticker and a tiresome chimpanzee mugging through every other scene like something from a bad Tarzan movie.

Well-cast and sporadically gripping.

Hopkins' Picasso is a first-rate performance.... With his intense stare, his air of subtle lechery, and his life-devouring zest, he not only looks uncannily like the real Picasso, he was actually able to convince me that he was Picasso. [4 Oct 1996]

An absorbing little drama full of unexpected revelations, keen insights into the Anglo and Hispanic cultures of L.A., and strong supporting performances.

The characters are not hugely compelling, the performances never completely grab us, and much of the story, while visually arresting, is dramatically tedious.

As well-acted and well-directed as many of the individual scenes are, the movie itself is a mess. Lumet, who made the mistake of writing the script himself, apparently couldn't leave out anything that was in the book. It's a confusing jumble of characters and themes, with off-screen actions that crowd and diminish the movie's impact. [27 Apr 1990]

It dares to test the audience in several ways: It may not be Asimov but its plot is truly labyrinthine, it works a specific theme (the very real possibility that robots will evolve on their own) and it's happy to end itself in a shroud of enigma.

Dragon works just fine as a martial arts epic, with several extravagant and thrilling action sequences. [7 May 1993]

Much of it is funny and endearing, and its toned-down star, Adam Sandler, is as winning as he's ever been.

But the movie's vital signs improve remarkably in the second half, and especially in the last act. The proceedings suddenly pick up some screwball charm, the writing improves (with several truly inspired one-liners tossed in here and there) and the secondary characters begin to click.

Kline saves the movie and makes it something special. He does this not only by mastering the dialect and mannerisms and convincing us he is French, but by skillfully underplaying the character and slowly revealing his humanity. It's a master star turn: He makes a better Gerard Depardieu than Gerard Depardieu. [5 May 1995, p.28]

Sporadically enjoyable but instantly forgettable comedy.

Unfortunately, the film assumes viewers have such a vast knowledge of Fellini's life and films that it's likely to play best to graduate film students.

This 38th Allen film (and third in a row to be set in London) is a drama about two brothers that's so heavy in tone it seems inspired by Greek tragedy and the grimmest '40s film noir.

Dennis Quaid gives what may be his best performance in the stylish thriller Flesh and Bone, but the movie around him is so cold, quirky and ploddingly predictable that it's hard to recommend. [05 Nov 1993]

An engaging but essentially routine tragic romance.

It's only a notch above the routine, and it obeys all the conventions of its tired formula, but it also tones the anarchy with a serious edge and it works a surprisingly effective vein of race-relations satire.

Even if it lacks the finesse of Franklin's earlier work, High Crimes moves like a bullet.

Essentially works, even though the script is a mess and John Singleton's direction is often clumsy and heavy-handed to an annoying degree.

Ultimately, City Hall is more evidence for the contention that the best movies these days are made from novels in which the basic story has been well worked out by non-Hollywood personnel. The gaggle of high-priced writers who toiled on this script seem to have four different ideas of where they were going, and even what their movie is about. [16 Feb 1996]

There's no disguising the fact that, beneath all its talk, this is a very traditional, very predictable romance; it's sorely in need of some comic relief; and, if you're a non-smoker, you will get very tired of its heroine blowing smoke in your face.

In some ways, De Niro does a competent job in his second directorial effort but his characterizations are clumsy, and his members of the Power Elite always seem less real people than stick figures in a propaganda movie.

The characters are uniformly repulsive, the cliche-ridden script builds no real tension or psychological interest, and the bottom line is that Lee's innovative but ultimately tedious and even ludicrous MTV-style visuals add absolutely nothing to the story dynamics.

It never generates much interest in its story or affection for its characters, and it's simply not half as funny as it needs to be.

The cruel simplicity of the atrocity is made needlessly chaotic by artless camerawork that swishes rapidly back and forth across the action, to the accompaniment of a syrupy soundtrack.

It's a movie brimming with good intentions, solid production values and searing performances. However, it never quite clicks into place with any real satisfaction.

It's in English, but the actors speak it with tortuous accents that are a constant struggle to understand and make them seem like foreigners in their own land. Spanish with English subtitles would have served this story much, much better.

Lacks the driving unity that gave "Gettysburg" its focus, dramatic arc, climax and catharsis.

When the film suddenly turns into "Rocky" -- as all boxing films of the past two decades invariably do -- it invalidates its theme.

There's also a terrific performance from Collette, who, in only a handful of scenes, wonderfully communicates the unusual resourcefulness of a demented woman who has spent her life assuming a succession of physical handicaps as a survival technique.

Sadly, it's a disappointment. Nicole Kidman could hardly be more enchanting in the lead, but the script is one of writer-director Nora Ephron's weakest.

Without the saving grace of comedy, Martin's natural abrasiveness is off-putting, and he just doesn't have the stuff of a romantic lead.

To be fair, Aronofsky has a knack for stylistic overkill, and his hammering onslaught is undeniably riveting, at first anyway.

Somehow the elements do not add up to by anything especially memorable.

Unfortunately, the goofiness never quite finds its groove. The romantic chemistry is tepid, the comedy misses as often as it hits, the picaresque plot keeps dogging down and even actors as skilled as Platt, Irons and Lena Olin fail to register strongly in their roles.

A rather dull movie.

In fact, when not kicking butt, (Li)'s kind of a blank spot in the center of the screen.

The script's labored efforts to push the proceedings into a thought-provoking military drama -- and draw some clear moral issue -- are, at best, flimsy.

Its animation is simply glorious, but its story and characters are trite.

It's overblown and greedy and feels like more of a merchandizing scheme than a movie.

Clearly not Zhang's forte, his directorial touch is neither light nor magical enough to bring off this kind of whimsy, his characters often seem contrived and unbelievable, and his movie comes off as slightly forced and naggingly unsatisfying.

It's a violent, R-rated action piece, but well directed, rather lavishly produced, filled with imaginative stunts, and it doesn't have a dull moment in it. [17 May 1991]

Adults will quickly tire of the dragon antics; kids will be bored by all the moralizing and faux metaphysics. [31 May 1996]

It's just never as gripping as it needs to be.

The movie depends on one of those big surprise endings for its effectiveness, but the script gives itself away in the first act.

It all comes together to be a remarkably dull movie.

Never quite rises above its one-joke situation.

Next to "Bad Santa" or "Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat," it's a paragon of sophistication.

It's hard to recall another time when the cross-purposes of two collaborating filmmakers of a major film has been quite so evident, or when the theme of the movie itself has been so totally schizophrenic -- half populist outrage, half Nazi.

Amateur, the fourth film of American independent filmmaker Hal Hartley, is by far his best - though, in the wake of "The Unbelievable Truth," "Trust" and "Simple Men," that is, admittedly, not saying much. [05 May 1995]

Witherspoon shines. She's never looked better, and she carries herself with both her usual comedic flair and a surprising elegance.

At 86 minutes, Sleuth '07 plays like a Cliffs Notes version of the original (which was skillfully adapted by Anthony Shaffer from his own hit play) with far too much of its pacing and delicious texture ruthlessly cut.

The futuristic thriller is overly familiar and never especially gripping -- and too somber and cerebral for the young action crowd -- but it looks terrific and is in no way an embarrassment.

Cult-favorite director Victor Salva ("Jeepers Creepers" I & II) is a competent visual storyteller and the film believes in itself so strongly (and with such a straight face) that it's hard not to halfway enjoy it.

It wants to be both an art-film homage and a rollicking, outrageous sex farce, and it's not really enough of either to make an impression.

It would be very possible for a reasonably intelligent person to sit through its tidal wave of imagery and not get this vision at all.

Imparts its fair share of laughs but bogs down after a solid start and never makes anything special out of its premise.

Diaz is quite believable in the part, and gets solid support from Brewster, who is even more appealing as the adoring, wounded and somewhat vacuous younger sister.

Ford tries very hard to be eccentrically funny -- to the point of forced, slapsticky mugging -- but he looks terrible, his timing is way off and his character is so uptight, abrasive and unappealing that he makes miserable company.

The movie is never engaging on anything but a superficial level, and it gradually gets decidedly tiresome.

Conceptually, the film is unique - it's a kind of nostalgia movie within a nostalgia movie. [16 Apr 1999]

Fans of figuring skating will enjoy much of the silliness, however, because its better moments have fun lampooning all the hoopla that surrounds the sport and there are cameos from the likes of Dorothy Hamill, Nancy Kerrigan, Brian Boitano, Peggy Fleming and Sasha Cohen.

But the movie doesn't quite work. In fact, despite some funny moments, "Honeymoon" has so many blown scenes and missed opportunities that it makes one suspect that Bergman may not be the best interpreter of his own material. [28 Aug 1992]

There's an enjoyably literate style here and some humorous moments.

Cliched, mostly routine and never especially satisfying.

The film wants to be "The English Patient" but doesn't have the elements that made that film a classic: sensitivity, perfect casting, a unique visual style and, underlying its grand action romance, a stubborn sense of honesty.

A mildly amusing but forgettable and way-too-scatological black farce.

The mock trailers are for impossibly schlocky Z-movies with titles like "Machete," "Don't Scream," "Thanksgiving" and "Werewolf Women of the S.S." They're by far the funniest part of the program, possibly because they're mercifully brief.

The script starts repeating its best gags about halfway through, and the direction gets ever broader as it goes along until the film finally loses all effectiveness as satire.

So lame and Woody himself seems so worn down and the humor is such a pale shadow of the former Allen brilliance that -- despite a few chuckles here and there -- it's a considerable disappointment.

The results are moderately entertaining, but the humor is broad and shallow; the film has none of the irony, bite or wit of its predecessor; and the script (by Glenn Gers) seems so calculated to appeal to every conceivable female demographic that it always feels contrived.

The script is full of holes and the premise is not especially credible.

It's vintage Moore: on one level the courageous act of a gutsy journalist, and, on another, a callously unfair and self-serving spectacle that makes Moore seem like a big bully, and puts his audience into the position of a vigilante mob.

Will Statham make it as an action hero? Hard to say. His personality makes Vin Diesel look positively debonair.

In the acting contest that ensues, each star comes off reasonably well, though, surprisingly, Lohan (who had well-publicized emotional problems on the set) wins out over Huffman's comic drunk and Fonda's leathery evocation of her father, Henry, in "On Golden Pond."

A fairly routine heist drama and a never especially believable puzzle film.

And Mackenize Astin (brother of Sean, son of John Astin and Patty Duke) is so likable in this part that his modest success here may represent the advent of a new acting dynasty in Hollywood. [14 Jan 1994]

It's an even more tedious storytelling mess, with a plot so muddled it's impossible to accurately describe, generating zero interest in its characters and grinding on for nearly three endless hours.

Wilson's shtick actually works better with Stiller than it did with either of his former partners, Jackie Chan and Eddie Murphy.

Piñero never comes close to convincing us that this guy is worth a movie at all.

Murphy is remarkably convincing -- even endearing -- as each of the characters.

Travolta has dusted off his folksy Southern character from "Primary Colors" (one of his most acclaimed roles) and he has his moments with it.

The real bottom line here is that the character just doesn't make much sense.

Inferior remake.

Its overall effect is distinctly underwhelming.

It's very slick and small children will enjoy it, but it has little of its model's special magic.

The holiday movie season's only epic fantasy adventure, certainly gets no points for originality. It's such a clone of "The Lord of the Rings," it probably could lose a plagiarism suit. There's also a heavy dash of "Harry Potter." All bases are covered.

As directed and produced by Steve Miner, the film is gory (eyes gouged out, a tongue bitten out, children murdered), but it also features better than usual actors (including Richard E. Grant as a 17th-century warlock-hunter who also jumps into the future) and has such a giddy sense of humor that it's hard to ever get too indignant about its splatter violence. [12 Jan 1991]

It also has been retooled to be a Farrelly brothers comedy, which means most of Simon's wit has been replaced with gags involving S&M cruelty, explicit bestiality, flatulence, nose mucous, people urinating on each other, and foul-mouthed old men (Stiller's father, Jerry).

Paranoid Park is a movie about its teen hero's inability to express his feelings: to himself, to his parents, to his friends and, unfortunately, to the audience.

In his determination to lighten the heavy subject matter, Silberling also, to a certain extent, trivializes the movie with too many nervous gags and pratfalls: to the point where his heartfelt drama comes perilously close to tasteless comedy.

Romano just doesn't have the stuff to bring off a role that requires a Jimmy Stewart or Tom Hanks. He's supposed to be overshadowed by his nemesis, of course, but Hackman chews him up and spits him out so effectively that the movie is glaringly lopsided.

Kidman's performance is the best thing in the movie, but it's not at all appealing.

Fascinates by its very premise: the fact that, on the basis of a Web site logo, these two bozos could so easily pass themselves off as important officials.

A slow-moving, unashamedly weepy, middle-age love story of the kind big-studio Hollywood doesn't often make anymore.

The star-crossed love story that takes up most of the movie-within-the-movie is strangely compelling, and Douglas gives a believable, often powerful performance as a man in the process of discovering the karmic ripple effect of a closed-off life.

Ultimately, the script lacks the ambiguity, irony and heartfelt emotion that would make the conversion of a dozen hardened criminals very credible, and -- despite its obvious good intentions -- the movie seems pat, simplistic and slightly phony.

Zellweger is a gifted comedienne and her wonky persona sparks here and there, but the humor is so broad that the film is a poor stage for her subtle comedic skills, and she's not photographed well: her face has to be lit just so or it tends to looks strangely distorted. McGregor is terrible casting.

The movie offers several moments in which Williams comes alive, but they're few and far between.

Surprisingly, the weak link is Dunst, who's previously been the delight of all her movies.

It finally just rings false as a human drama.

Director Jonathan Frakes keeps the tone just this side of tongue-in-cheek.

The bright spot is Seann William Scott ("Dude, Where's My Car?") as Bo Duke. His good-naturedly maniacal manner and early Dennis Quaid killer smile are endearing, to the point where he occasionally threatens to elevate the movie into something special.

You've already seen this movie, right? Just a few months ago. It was called "The Score."

For genre fans, the horde-of-locust sequence may alone be worth the price of admission.

A fairly underwhelming experience for man or child -- not so much bad as just more of the same, with little of the original's novelty or freshness.

Sadly, it's still a plodding affair that's low on plausible character motivation and compelling action scenes, and it's still not much of a showcase for its star, Charlton Heston.

Passably entertaining.

For all its f/x pageantry, it is rather tired, as if it's the third sequel of a franchise, not the initial episode.

It's the first film I know of in which we get to see all five of the top-billed actors vomit

A clumsy and incompetent thriller for nine-tenths of its length, but it has an ending so clever and that goes so wildly against expectations it almost exonerates the film.

It fails to persuade us that its subject is significant enough to be worth a movie.

Refreshingly old-fashioned.

(Bullock's) performance, and the movie's serious side, soon get lost in an overly slick script.

It was also a miscalculation to make the film so sexually explicit. It doesn't particularly serve the story and, for all his gifts, Macy is just not the kind of actor most people want to see in a whirl of sweaty, naked sex.

The movie's problem is that it's a cartoon, offering no emotional involvement with its characters and no dramatic imperative.

A fairly hypocritical exercise -- and one that's so flamboyant and overbearing that it comes perilously close to being a classic awful.

The script is tight and well-constructed, director Ernest Dickerson has a feel for film-noir aesthetics, DMX exudes a certain brutish charisma and the movie is as morbidly compelling as a good train wreck.

After its irresistible first act, Owning Mahowny loses its energy and focus very fast.

There's much to admire in this ambitious indie: top-notch production values, a gallery of evocative period detail (with location work on Scotland's famed St. Andrews' course) and solid performances from a cast .

Exotic Ninth Gate breaks down into clichés.

Visnjic is charismatic, sympathetic and believable in the role, and the first part of the film -- in which he's being drawn into the case against his will and then use his hypnotic skills to get inside the mind of the little girl -- is quite riveting.

The movie is so surreal it's just not very involving. As an action extravaganza, it's busy but dull.

Despite some moments, the movie stubbornly fails to be the kind of sparkling ensemble piece one would expect from its credits -- and the fault seems to lie squarely with Fry's unfocused script, lackadaisical direction and conceptual sleight of hand.

For all its improbable characters, wretched dialogue and stock situations, the movie has an earnest dumbness that sneaks up on you to be surprisingly entertaining.

Despite laughs, the movie only sporadically works. Its satire is too broad and silly to have much sting.

The movie is not exciting, original or instructive enough to justify the unpleasant experience.

Treu's sweet-spirited vision of life, and the winning performances of his ensemble of kid actors, gradually broke down most of my resistance.

No doubt about it, the movie is morbidly fascinating. Moreover, Cusack gives a delicate and agreeably world-weary performance.

Quickly assumes the characteristics of a bad slasher movie.

There are a handful of funny moments, and the top end of the cast comes off rather well. Duchovny has some of that same easygoing likability that made Glenn Ford one of the biggest stars of the '50s.

A forgettable, patched-together clone of other ghostly romances.

Directed with a Scorsese-ish flair by actor John Shea (who also plays a small part), the film is loaded with gritty atmosphere and touches of authenticity. [12 Jun 1998]

It offers a handful of funny and touching moments and maintains a level of cuteness. But it's far from original, and its star chemistry doesn't exactly light up the screen.

The casting is hit-and-miss. OutKast's Benjamin and "Troy's" Hedlund are weak, but Gibson is very appealing and the movie powers along on a strong lead performance by Wahlberg, who has never seemed more confident, commanding or scruffily charismatic.

The movie smacks of old-fashioned Hollywood phoniness. [22 Jan 1999]

Unknown seems fairly stale and unoriginal, mainly because it's yet another movie with the short-term memory loss premise ("Memento," "Fifty First Dates," etc.), and it comes so late in the cycle that it feels like a dying gasp.

Has a good cast, a nicely sustained mood of paranoia and several genuinely creepy moments, but ultimately ends up being one more highly formulaic teen screamer.

It never quite adds up to anything. It's engaging enough while it's going on, but has little visceral impact or resonance.

It's never hugely engaging and it's instantly forgettable, but it has a certain goofy charm.

Annoyingly shallow, filled with one-note characters, and not half as daring as it seems to think it is.

Anyone in the market for a bittersweet romantic comedy could do worse.

By the time we get to the unsurprising surprise ending, what seemed innovative and challenging in Taking Lives has lost its juice and reverted to formula form, and we leave the theater with that same old let-down feeling of having endured a ritual one more time.

The movie is full of action and stunts, but after the gangbusters opening, it loses steam and imagination very quickly.

It's simply not a very good movie. Its story line is populated with so many characters and meaningless names that it's nearly impossible to follow, and its author's message doesn't amount to much more than a cry of despair.

Feels forced every step of the way. Ultimately it's the kind of under-inspired, overblown enterprise that gives Hollywood sequels a bad name.

I walked out of it feeling much the same way I did after "The Cat in the Hat" and "The Polar Express" -- jarred by its excess, undernourished by its lack of heart and bored by its lack of originality.

So fluffy and sitcom shallow that it makes "Gidget Goes to Rome" and its other many predecessors in the young-American-girl-goes-to-Italy-and-falls-in-love genre look like high art.

Writer-director Chris Columbus (Home Alone) never manages to make the mix of humor and pathos gel. The characters never seem as engaging as he wants them to be, the comedy is often forced, and scenes fall flat left and right. [24 May 1991]

It pales in comparison to its two classic predecessors, and also just generally feels like one too many trips to the well.

Ultimately emotionally flat and eminently forgettable.

The movie is mainly an excuse to display special-effects gags in the form of the various miracles manifested -- some of which are highly imaginative, some of which aren't.

It's a moderately compelling sci-fi action movie with a handful of scary scenes -- though nothing at all special, and only a shadow of the original or even its 1978 remake.

While Keira Knightley brightens things up as Guinevere, the casting is otherwise lackluster.

As this all plays out -- and basically segues into "King Kong" -- the movie wins its biggest gamble: its entirely computer-generated monster works.

The film's creepier moments are pathetically weak, and its thematic update fails to attain the minimal credibility that even a wild farce needs to sustain itself.

It is long, mediocre and rather pointless. [07 Apr 1995]

It's hard to know what to make of the thing, though it has a sleazy charm, it's never boring and it goes a certain distance on Samuel L. Jackson's conviction.

A kind of "Seabiscuit"-lite.

Mr. Deeds, is -- perhaps predictably -- pretty much of a disaster. It's a bit like someone scrawling a mustache on the Mona Lisa.

While all the "Mission" plots are convoluted and slightly preposterous -- the keyword in the title is "Impossible" -- the latest is just this side of insultingly stupid. The longer you think about it, the less sense it all makes.

It's a lifeless little caper piece that never develops the magic and intellectual fascination it needs to bond with an audience.

Anyone in the market for an overblown and totally mindless adventure-comedy will certainly get his money's worth.

Wonderfully cast but underwhelming and never especially believable.

Has almost none of the nail-biting suspense and fascinating character interplay that made the original so authentically terrifying.

The affair of the necklace itself is so complex and many-sided that it would take a Sidney Lumet to do justice to it on film.

The Program has little bite as satire or as muckraking. It doesn't really want to offend anyone very deeply (perhaps because it was filmed with the cooperation of nine separate college athletic departments). If you read the sports pages, you could devise your own script and it would be twice as devastating.

It's an interesting and likably ambitious movie with an ensemble of mostly engaging character vignettes, but, sadly, it misses its mark.

It's mostly forced and predictable, too much of the physical comedy falls very flat.

Each star has his moments, and the supporting cast is good, especially Walken, playing one of his less extreme characters; Jane Seymour as his promiscuous wife; and the stunning Rachel McAdams as their daughter and Wilson's love interest.

But a movie is only as good as its script, and this one is labored, predictable, sexually unimaginative (despite its salacious poster, and Eszterhas' reputation), surprisingly abrupt (only 90 minutes) and strangely inconclusive. [13 Oct 1995]

The movie has a suspenseful moment or two, and it's never hard to watch, but it's ultimately one more totally forgettable Hollywood thriller.

By most of the ways movies are usually judged, pretty much of a mess. The camerawork is jerky and distracting, the dialogue is cliched and the story makes so little sense that the script seems to have been improvised by the actors as they went along.

It is preachy, didactic and heavy-handed as only an Oliver Stone movie can be. And yet ... and yet... despite all this, the film has an undeniable cumulative power. [20 Dec 1991]

There are some ingratiating moments in "Heart and Souls," but the comedy is mostly a misfire - derivative and emotionally calculated and never as cute or funny as it wants to be. [13 Aug 1993]

It's just one more competent but routine, midlevel ($70 million) late-summer action movie filled with the usual explosions, shootouts and male bonding.

The movie itself cannot begin to match its delicious high concept. It's offensively funny in places but it can't sustain itself for a feature length running time and it's not nearly as clever or as fun as it should be.

Too dumb and improbable to even go into.

The script (by Cheryl Edwards, who wrote "Save the Last Dance") is shallow and dumb, the conflict (success goes to Jackie's head) is especially unconvincing, and director Charles S. Dutton shamelessly allows his own small part (as Jackie's mentor) to hog the camera.

The film is your basic sensitive young people coming-of-age in the '60s formula piece. [29 Apr 1995]

It's routine, TV sitcom fodder, but the supporting cast is better than average.

Predictable and agonizingly politically correct.

Definitely deserves points for trying to be something thought-provoking and different, but it doesn't really stand up to analysis and it comes off as a pretentious mess.

Some of it works, most of it doesn't. But the real problem of the movie is that it's so utterly lacking in freshness and originality. This is exactly the kind of formulaic indie gay comedy that was so overdone in the '80s and '90s that it became a film festival cliché.

It is strangely paced (especially in the beginning), always confusing to follow, and extremely awkward as a romance.

The numerous plot elements don't come together in the end. Even though we are gradually expected to sympathize with the plight of the murdering vigilante cop, the whole vigilante theme is suddenly dropped midway through the film. It seems to have no real place in the larger story, except as a clumsy and purposeless O.J. Simpson parallel. [26 Apr 1996]

A fairly depressing experience.

It's a formula job all the way, filled with pratfalls, flying food, much male incompetence in the face of child-rearing realities, and a cast of violence-prone children on sugar highs who somehow turn into angels by the film's last sappy moments.

If you're in the market for a whimsical, incorrigibly weird movie that basically goes nowhere, try "Arizona Dream." But if you have little patience for self-indulgent movies that substitute scatter-gun blasts of surreal black comedy for dramatic structure and realistic characterization, steer clear of this curiosity from noted Yugoslav film-maker Emir Kusturica ("When Father Was Away on Business"). [9 Sept 1994]

The new production is handsome and offers a few riveting moments, but it's basically a botched job that misses all the impact of both the original movie and the 1946 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Robert Penn Warren that inspired it.

This harmless but mediocre enterprise was doomed to failure from the start. Hollywood magic can do a lot, but it can't raise the dead.

The script consists largely of goofy little scenes in which various groupings of the four characters banter in that nervous, Woody Allen-ish, never particularly funny or endearing or believable dialogue style of the '90s dating movie.

Baldwin and Broderick each click in their roles and consistently rise above their material in every scene. But the movie around them falls flat and can't begin to sustain its premise.

It’s a comedy, a romantic star vehicle, a thriller, a horror movie and a quasi-environmental parable that's calculated to appeal to all demographic groups. It's not enough of any one of these things to be particularly engaging.

Basically lives up to the old adage that the final work in a trilogy is invariably the weakest.

It is a fairly routine exercise in New Millennium movie mayhem.

It's a colorful and exuberant but by-the-numbers and fairly charm-free concoction.

The Black Dahlia, looks so terrific and is filled with so many imaginatively showy sequences and masterful directorial touches that you almost don't notice that, in every other way, it's just not a very good movie.

Edgy, hard-boiled crime drama that is very much in this Tarantino-esque tradition.

Reportedly, Lucas has been tinkering with this "director's cut" for nearly two years, so its sound and visual elements -- which were fairly impressive to begin with -- have been markedly enhanced, while new digital backgrounds give the film a more epic scale. Still, it's an extraordinarily unengaging and tedious affair.

The unlikely marriage of Murphy and Craven is indeed strange, and it results in what often seems to be two diametrically opposed movies in one. Still, it's not quite as bad an idea as it sounds, and the movie is passably entertaining. [27 Oct 1995, p.30]

Certainly, it's mediocre, but no more so than half the comedies that are wildly promoted by their studios these days.

Not as funny as the original, not nearly as funny.

Such an air of dumbness hovers over the movie, and it's all played so broadly that nothing about it is remotely believable.

Nothing at all special. It's one more cheesy, broadly played, poorly paced, instantly forgettable August action movie.

The film works up to a totally conventional ending: It's never much of a comedy or an exploration of the phone-sex phenomenon, and it often seems to be just an excuse for Madonna, John Turturro, Quentin Tarantino and other Lee pals to make cameo appearances and mug for the camera. [22 Mar 1996, p.24]

There is action galore (the deaths, by my rough count, may run somewhere in the triple digits). It's very cartoonish and not upsettingly explicit. But it's all so predictable and pointless that it quickly becomes monotonous, lulling the viewer into numbness, apathy, and perhaps even a peaceful sleep. [20 Sep 1996]

A new millennium version of "A Hard Day's Night" without any wit to balance the silliness.

It has its charms, but fails to strike a similar emotional chord.

Even though the supporting cast is likable and the film hits all the beats of its formula, it's weak, as if everyone has been to the well one too many times.

The script is fatally stupid, most of the gags fall flat, the secondary characters add little, Hudson fails to make anything interesting out of the exasperated heroine, and the endless references to McConaughey's sexual prowess finally become revolting.

The movie is all action. But there's no pacing, no suspense and no vulnerability for the protagonist so it all soon gets numbingly tiresome.

The finished film, while competently acted and staged, has missed the high mark Spacey set for it. It's self-important, tedious and ultimately pointless, with absolutely none of the sardonic wit that remains the most memorable feature of "American Beauty."

The repulsive turn of events erased all my good memories of the first half, and makes the movie hard to recommend to a normal human being.

The truth is this is an amateurish student film, marred by poor sound recording, stereotyped characters, heavy-handed direction, a mild racism (the two white characters - a shallow yuppie and an insensitive Jewish teacher - are harsh caricatures), and an unconvincing, tag-on happy end. [16 Apr 1993]