William Arnold

The movie year's most expensive and ambitious sci-fi spectacular, I Am Legend, is three movies in one: a futuristic effects-o-rama, a zombie thriller and a survivalist parable. Each is better than average, and the experience is fairly gripping.

In spirit and nuance, this is an amazingly faithful remake.

The new black-and-white print is gorgeous, the film plays well in this broader key and it sets the historical record straight.

It's still primarily a showcase and offbeat star vehicle for Moore. It's a bravura role and she brings it off with a chilling malevolence and a strange, disjointed vulnerability that almost, but not quite, makes her sympathetic.

It's a well-made little inspirational drama featuring both a familiar older star (James Garner) and a new one (Abigail Breslin).

It's often surprisingly clever, dripping with respect for its model, and done with considerable wit and style.

An entertaining slice-of-life documentary that gets ever more fascinating as it moves along.

John C. Reilly, with his homely face and mop of curly hair, has been the movies' second banana of choice since his debut in 1989's "Casualties o War." In the comedy, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story," he finally gets a starring role and he rises to the challenge.

All of Scorsese's movies deliver a mixed message, but this one is downright schizophrenic.

The humor is sweet-spirited, the dialogue (all improvised by the cast) is acerbic and witty, the celebration of unbridled tackiness is often hilarious.

A documentary that is half confessional memoir.

Stiller is enjoyably long-suffering, and De Niro convinces us that Attila the Hun would make a preferable father-in-law.

It's a surprisingly happy film, almost completely devoid of bitterness or cynicism.

Whether or not all its subtleties come through or not, the movie is enjoyable solely on the level of its performances. There is not a weak link in the chain. [28 Aug 1992]

Donovan makes us totally believe the character and his predicament, co-star Mary-Louise Parker is especially witty and winning as the film's screenwriter.

Grant's timing is flawless, his delivery is perfection, and he once again demonstrates himself to be the movies' unrivaled master of sophisticated verbal comedy.

With very few natural gifts, Bingenheimer managed to spend his life doing something he loved among people he worshipped. At the end of the game, very few people can make such a claim.

It's no earthshaker, but the indie film is refreshingly different from the current movie norm, it's won more than 15 awards on the festival circuit, and war-movie aficionados will find it well worth the journey.

Truth or Dare (the title comes from a game she plays in the final scenes) is actually most revealing when it is not trying to be. It gives us a good sense of the pressured life of a big concert tour, as well as how demanding and unbalancing it must be to have a star of Madonna's magnitude in the family. [17 May 1991]

The best thing about The Power of One is that it works as a history lesson. Avildsen and his writer, Robert Mark Kamen, have managed to simplify and sort out the players and their points of view in a way no other film about South Africa has done. It makes painfully clear just how deep the problems run, and how their solution will invariably require an almost evolutionary change in everyone. [27 March 1992]

Condon's direction is steady and fearless, Neeson and Linney are individually excellent and together they create an inspiring chemistry for a truly adventurous marriage.

To its credit or detriment (depending on your point of view), the film doesn't have an agenda, or make any kind of systematic argument as to how quantum physics likely will impact the 21st century. It just looks at the wondrous evidence and asks us to imagine the possibilities.

McNamara finally gets to tell his side of the story -- and is somewhat humanized in the process -- but still comes off looking like a tragic character living in a state of denial.

Stylistically, Religulous is very much like a Michael Moore documentary, in that most of the scenes have a comic structure, end with a punch line and are designed to make Maher-the-interviewer look sane and rational while his subject comes off as a complete fool.

States straight off that the man's legacy has been tarnished in most of the liberal world's eyes by his being the spoiler of the 2000 presidential election. "It will be engraved on his tombstone," says his friend Phil Donahue.

An absorbing slice of a lost world that's actually very reminiscent of Kurosawa's underappreciated 1957 film, "The Lower Depths."

It would be easy to categorize the Lebanese women's picture Caramel as a Levantine combination of "Sex in the City" and "Beauty Shop," but it's actually a lot smarter, sharper and deeper than that.

Has the power to transport us to a different place. The spark of special anime magic here is unmistakable and hard to resist.

Effective piece of election-year propaganda.

The film is so explicit (endless swinging parties and porno scenes, more bouncing breasts than a Russ Meyer movie) that it finally becomes the thing it fears.

The most totally appealing and seemingly heartfelt performance of (DeVito's) career.

As a movie, it's respectably well-acted by everyone, directed with Reiner's usual panache and intelligence, but fits so snugly into the Grisham-movie formula that it's hard not to be a bit suspicious. [20 Dec 1996]

The film has a gorgeous, Grant Wood-ish visual style - it was photographed by Freddie Francis and designed by the late, great multi-Oscar winner Gene Callahan (to whom the film is dedicated) - and there are a smattering of effective scenes and ingratiating performances to go with it. [04 Oct 1991]

It offers no special insights into its subject, it doesn't connect on any higher level, and it left me feeling vaguely dissatisfied and let down.

The experience is fun enough that it's sure to be the summer's first blockbuster.

Her (Ardant's) diva-in-decline is funny, lightly campy and dead-on in the way it encapsulates the sadness at the end of a selfish life lived only for art.

But the movie soars as docudrama. Niccol's model seems to have been Scorsese's "GoodFellas" and, like that film, the blitzkrieg of images and rapid-fire narration takes us on a breathtaking inside tour of a scary world. It's an extraordinary expose.

The film manages to be an intriguing, grimly entertaining, strangely haunting little slice of heartland noir very much in the experimental tradition of such previous Soderbergh oddities as "Schizopolis" and "Full Frontal."

"Clouds" fills its exteriors with the glory of the Utah mountains and its interiors with the work of the late Hopi artist, Dan Lomahaftewa -- a pleasing combination that gives the film its own special visual style and magic.

The movie is a relentlessly enjoyable star vehicle and a hard-charging action-o-rama full of the usual Bondian elements, for the most part well done. It's one of the year's better action films.

It's a chilling tale that leaves us with the fear that Latin America's exploding social problems may well be beyond solution.

The movie works amazingly well as a historical epic.

It's hard to imagine an upbeat movie about homelessness, but Dark Days is just that.

In many ways, a magical little movie in its own right, and a thoroughly pleasant experience.

Allen does become quite likable, the cloud of his off-screen turmoil disappears, and his movie turns into a good time. [20 Aug 1993]

With his Jack Nicholson mannerisms extinguished and his boyish features made up to look worn and aged, Slater also makes us believe and care about this guy. A movie this marginal isn't likely to get much notice, but it's one of the very best things he has done.

What the film does extremely well is take us deep into the crime scene, and give faces to the victims so we can experience this epic, incomprehensible and somehow prototypically American act of violence on a more personal and intimate level.

The movie eventually settles down to become a routine thriller, but its first hour has moments of sheer brilliance as Andrew Klavan's screenplay and first-time director Jan Egleson build an agonizingly detailed satire of the hypocrisy and self-devouring nature of corporate America. [23 Mar 1990]

Director Emanuele Crialese captures a stifling, dead-end rural culture awash in nature's beauty but seething with pent-up sexual frustration.

The big downside of the film is that it always feels slightly contrived.

Director Fred Schepisi has done an admirable job of making all the characters and their various interests clear, and he gets a fine, deglamorized and convincing performance from Pfeiffer as Connery's love interest. [22 Dec 1990]

A cogent, optimistic and mostly entertaining slice of ghetto life.

It's a rare film that's about social class in American life, and Bellingham writer-director Enid Zentelis explores its hidden structure and silent barriers in a novel, subtle way that makes its points without hitting us over the head with them.

A bit smarter than it seems at first glance, and ends up being a rather colorful and fascinating -- and often imaginatively Capraesque.

The first hour of the movie struck me as being truly inspired, and I haven't laughed so hard all year.

As the film loses its focus on the "Protocols" phenomenon -- it becomes too scattered to have the impact Levin is after.

The movie goes down very easily.

Foxx is magnetic in the lead, and the subplot in which he bonds with his Saudi police liaison (Ashraf Barhom, giving the movie's best performance) is touching.

What makes this film truly chilling is the fact first-time feature filmmaker Scott Elliott and his writers somehow make every step of this descent harrowingly believable.

Cronenberg is one of the cinema's true originals, and a trip to his spooky world is always a harrowing, thought-provoking experience.

The only downside is that Bier's vision of upper-middle-class America does not always seem authentic.

An utterly nihilistic, harrowingly upsetting vision of hell on earth.

Ken Loach's new film, "Ladybird, Ladybird," takes us deep inside the true story of a woman who is a long-term victim of brutal men, and examines her predicament with such intimacy and ambiguity that the experience becomes the very antithesis of cliche. [27 Jan 1995]

As good as it is in pieces, its protagonists are distancing, its story is tangled, its film-noir cynicism is oppressive and unglamorous, and it just doesn't leave us with the satisfying unity of the kind of great movie it wants to be.

It's absorbing and often excruciatingly suspenseful, and it gives Viggo Mortensen a strong, change-of-pace vehicle to follow up his "Lord of the Rings" triumph.

The overall saga is moving, the performances are first-rate, the production values (which do not rely on the usual cartoonish CGI effects) are strong, and Carion captures the special insanity of stalemated trench warfare with an unusual horrific flair.

In the film's stronger moments, the artist in her definitely seems to be saying that the impulse to retreat into cultural fundamentalism carries dire risks, that much of what is old and traditional needs changing and there are some things about the detested process of globalization that are wonderfully liberating.

Brosnan pulls out all the stops in his quest to be the last word in crude boorishness, only slightly relieved by the midlife soul-searching. Whether the public will buy him in this extreme role is another question. But it's a fearless, and fairly skilled, comic performance.

The film uses '70s rock songs especially well to establish mood and act as the bridge between sequences. Director Zanuck's use of actors is also hard to fault. She gets strong, no-nonsense supporting performances from Gregg Allman, Sam Elliott and Max Perlich; and Jason Patric and the always-reliable Jennifer Jason Leigh could not be more believable as the tragic, doomed, criminally naive lovers. [10 Jan 1992]

Perhaps because I expected nothing - the movie struck me as one of the better comic-strip translations, and one of the better films of the genre. It's fast, colorful, entertaining and a clear cut above its most immediate predecessor, 1994's "The Shadow." [7 June 1996]

Vividly captures the joy of sailing.

You have to admire Chen's fearlessness in chasing the taboo subject matter, and in unblinkingly depicting the horrors of China's recent past. [29 Oct 1993]

An effective political lampoon.

The film is stylish, the compromising elements that usually junk up a Hollywood "date movie" are nowhere to be seen, the ensemble of supporting actors is strong and, despite a certain woodenness, Hartnett is appealing and mostly very believable.

It's done with an agreeable confidence and flair, the actors all fit comfortably in their roles and the effects are fun.

Veteran British director Eric Till otherwise does a credible job of sweeping us through this huge life, and his eye for detail combines with the Oscar-worthy production design and a succession of striking Eastern European locations to create a rich visual tapestry of the Middle Ages.

In its best moments, the film works as both an exciting and formula-breaking action-adventure and as an enjoyably sappy tearjerker.

A rarity: A fun, entertaining 'G' movie.

Sayles has also gathered uniformly strong performances from his ensemble cast of mostly Irish actors; he creates a rural Irish milieu with a remarkable authenticity (remarkable since he is not Irish); and he keeps the mood nicely balanced on a fine line between whimsical children's fable and realistic domestic drama. [17 Feb 1995]

Rather incredibly ends up being a kind of inspirational upper.

Good-natured and fun, the Austin Powers silliness of the era shines through, and Coppola family art director Dean Tavoularis ("Apocalypse Now," "The Godfather" trilogy) makes the film -- and its kitschy film-within-the-film -- look consistently terrific.

White Palace doesn't entirely work on this level (and is certainly no "Graduate"), but it carries a fascinating subtext. It dramatizes rejection of '80s values by a member of the '90s generation. Like several movies already released this year, it is a hopeful statement that the new decade will be - if not a return to the '60s - at least a clean break with the recent, shallow past. [19 Oct 1990]

An almost documentary reality and voyeuristic appeal.

Unashamedly positive look at the rise of the '60s counterculture.

the film is well cast and the script is mostly faithful to the novel. Visually, it's probably the most accurate evocation of Hardy's world ever put on film. [01 Nov 1996]

Like Lurie's previous two films, it's also simplistic and somewhat muddled.

It's essentially a one-joke situation, but screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and first-time director Spike Jonze definitely make the most of it.

Finally becomes a somber, sentimental and rather profound romantic fantasy that is more true to the spirit of the Golden Age of science-fiction writing than possibly any other movie of the '90s.

It's well-written, well-cast and skillfully directed in every scene, and, at the same time, it doesn't come together with enough impact to be hugely memorable.

It's aimed squarely at a young dating audience, and is not likely to be hugely captivating for anyone out of that demographic.

Bounces between funny and chilling.

A teary appreciation of the value of a good teacher, the joy of music and the payoffs of discipline and hard work.

The movie whips itself into being a surprisingly effective love story. [16 Aug 1991]

Whatever it is, it's totally Kubrickian: Its scenes have both an edge and an extraordinary visual perfection that could come from no other filmmaker.

It scores few points for originality, but it's a fuzzier, less pretentious and more enjoyable movie.

Surprise! After a clumsy opening, Guess Who goes down very smoothly. Its cast is appealing, its script is often clever and imaginative.

It assumes considerable knowledge of his life and times. But, with even a little of the familiarity it demands, the movie is something special.

After its rough opening, Smart People settles down to be a funny, wryly enjoyable, effortlessly poignant parable of family life and a splendid showcase for its cast -- especially Page, who handily steals the movie and proves that her "Juno" success was no fluke.

Subtly suggests it may not be all that much different from the delusions by which other cultures are structured.

It's vaguely humorous, and kids will like the animal sequences, but the movie as a whole doesn't hold a candle to the original. It can't re-create the pleasure of discovering something new, innovative and effortless. [13 Apr 1990]

Sandler's frequent director, Peter Segal, also rises to the occasion, giving the proceedings some of the rough-hewn, hard-edged look of the original, and brings it to a funny, satisfying climax that -- happily -- doesn't cop out.

While the film is intriguing as it's transpiring, it has very little impact. It's more intellectual than emotional, its message doesn't come through without a struggle and it was completely out of my mind five minutes after seeing it.

For all its other virtues, the supporting casting is lackluster, the script never quite kicks into place as a sports movie and Clooney the director seems to lack the touch that might have set the proceedings on fire as a zany ensemble comedy.

Obree's psychology is fascinating and, even though the competitive scenes mostly involve him racing against himself in a spectator-free indoor track, the movie manages to give its audience a suitable adrenaline rush here and there.

A fairly predictable musical-comedy vehicle for the rap duo Kid 'N Play that saws off much of the hard edge of the comic style they displayed in their lower-budget first outing, House Party. [05 Jun 1992]

As a caper movie, it's a travesty that's impossible to understand or follow, but it's quite funny and clicks along nicely as a giddy, self-deprecating showcase for its gaggle of stars.

If not cinema magic, The Dinner Game is still a workable screwball comedy.

The film plays like a Hollywood-influenced Japanese samurai movie, though nothing as subtle as Kurosawa's best, and with white subtitles that often are hard to read against the white of the Gobi.

A sweet-spirited, extremely well-cast little comedy.

As good as it is in many ways, the film is not as emotionally gripping as it should be, and comes off as a rather predictable liberal statement.

As a revenge thriller, the movie is serviceable, but it doesn't really deliver the delicious guilty pleasure of the better film versions.

It's a chillingly cautionary tale. Less an anti-war than a pro-order film, it tells us that the veneer of civilization is paper thin.

Undeniably riveting.

This new version has absolutely none of the distinctive tongue-in-cheek black humor that was the keynote of its model and the trademark of its original director, Paul Bartel.

Though he tries hard for bravado, hero Edward Burns is terminally wooden.

It's well-plotted, acted with a charismatic flair and right on the zeitgeist.

Offers nothing new. It's actually one of Polanski's more conventional films and, ultimately, it's hard to recommend it with a clear conscience.

The first two-thirds of the movie are a kind of stumbling relationship drama, but the last third segues into a spooky feast of torture, mutilation and murder.

Great fun, but it's just a tad this side of being overproduced.

This "Moreau" is also a pretty creepy affair - at least through its first two acts. Director John Frankenheimer, who is responsible for some of the most chilling thrillers in American film history ("The Manchurian Candidate," "Seconds") certainly knows a thing or two about building a menacing, suspenseful situation. [23 Aug 1996]

The mayhem is presented sparingly enough to be suspenseful, some of the sequences are genuinely terrifying and, compared with Hollywood's last zombie movie, the Robert Rodriguez half of "Grindhouse," it's a masterpiece.

Though an uneven, often confused, mixed bag -- the movie gradually comes together to be a fairly hilarious inside-Hollywood farce.

Has a certain morbid fascination, but it has no real bite, and finally seems so contrived and pointless it borders on being out-and-out exploitation.

Much of the film is funny and alive.

The movie is frequently hilarious, and, for a first feature, Cundieff has done a remarkably accomplished job of directing. Without trying very hard, it also manages to lay out some of the absurdity of the white-hating-paranoid/macho sensibility of rap culture. [17 Jun 1994]

It almost completely falls apart in a tortuous third act and ultimately leaves us feeling strangely empty and dissatisfied.

It's grim, humorless, uncompromisingly hard-edged, and marred by a handful of scenes that are clumsily staged and acted. And yet the film has an honesty and sincerity that is magnificently embodied in the always believable performance of star Plummer. [07 Nov 1992]

Clearly, this film is less than a suspense masterpiece. Its violence is often gratuitous.

The movie is flawed and doesn't completely come off as a convincing biography, but its heart is in the right place, it has moments of poignancy and power, and it makes a pleasant change of pace for a genre that essentially has become a cry of despair.

The exception is Matt Dillon, who goes all-out to be arrogant and despicable. Indeed, building on his scary performance earlier this year in "Crash," he's shaping up to be quite the movie villain: definitely someone you love to hate.

As near as I can tell, it's the smallest-scale, lowest-budget, most experimental film Friedkin has ever made, as well as the most thoroughly unpleasant and off-putting -- though it builds a grisly, masochistic fascination as it powers along.

Comes across as a fairly weak retooling.

Here and there an inspired shot makes the film come alive, and at least three of its sequences had me positioned well on the edge of my seat.

Ultimately successful at what it sets out to do, even if it's not as much fun along the way as the original.

First-time director Fisher Stevens has a flair for dialogue comedy, the film operates nicely off the element of surprise, and the large cast is solid -- especially Marisa Tomei, who in an extended cameo as a merry dominatrix rarely has been more convincing.

Even if you know or care little about the sport, it's a fascinating saga.

The cast is uniformly non-French, and restrained to the point of rigor mortis. Dunst is the movie's strongest and weakest element. Her natural charm carries us through the scenery, at the same time her distinct Americanness rings false in every scene.

Loaded down with credibility problems.

A slick and entertaining package.

But the director hired for the job was Hopkins, who was responsible for two of the worst action movies of recent years - "Predator 2" and "Blown Away." And sadly, he has chosen to play the material as "Jaws" with Paws - a jump-out-at-you horror movie, and not an especially competent or thrilling one at that. [11 Oct 1996]

Whatever else it does, it absolutely convinces us that the life of most women during this supposedly enlightened period of Renaissance history was little better than slavery, and the only level playing field in the war of the sexes was the courtesan's bedroom. [27 Feb 1998]

Wahlberg is effective in the role and carries the movie nicely.

A real showcase for Penn, who seems to positively delight in playing a slimy, hateful character that most stars would not go near.

The cast is as likable as it is improbable (especially Nivola, who all but steals the movie as the charmingly decadent rocker).

While it's being sold as "an effervescent comedy," Happy-Go-Lucky is nothing of the sort. It's rather grim, the laughs are few.

The film is lovely to look at -- so overflowing with lavish furniture, jewelry and interiors that it's almost like a visit to Paris' Musée des Arts Décoratifs. If you're a fan of such things, "Pettigrew" is worth seeing solely for its sets.

A credible action spectacular.

The film is uniformly well cast, directed (by Alejandro Agresti, who also plays Valentin's father) with a certain flair and a good eye for the nuances of Buenos Aires. I found it light, agreeably short (86 minutes) and mostly quite enjoyable.

He's (Affleck) vaguely likable, but he's outshone by his co-stars and never particularly believable in his role.

Despite a consistent tone of all-out absurdity, it's a very demanding movie, and its goofiness is never inspired or laugh-out-loud funny enough to carry us along on its leap of imagination.

Some of the writing is very smart, its strain of show-business satire is dead-on and often hilarious, and some of the performances have an insanity and intensity reminiscent of "Dr. Strangelove."

Develops its own unique charm.

As imaginatively as some of them are staged, the action scenes are never authentically gripping. This seems to be the hidden handicap of our new digital filmmaking era in which all big action sequences are generated in the computer and look vaguely like cartoons.

It's a bold proposition, and the resulting film has some powerful moments and strong performances, but it fails to be an involving or satisfying drama, and it's not half as effective as the book in creating outrage over what junk food is doing to us.

It takes a strong stomach to sit through its two-plus hours of non-stop brutality (much of it involving very small children).

In the end, this could be the year's most sharply defined love-it-or-hate-it movie.

In no way is this a serious movie. Still, it's hard to resist.

A well-made but harrowing and extremely downbeat coming-of-age drama.

Very surprisingly, Meryl Streep is not wonderful as Schreiber's scheming, incestuously possessive mother. She gobbles up all the scenery but, for whatever reason, she's just not half as chilling a portrait of demented mother love as the original's Angela Lansbury.

As good as it is in places, Without Limits fails to be a totally satisfying biography or a riveting competition drama. It never communicates a clear vision of its hero's existential mind-set or makes a clear case for his unique contribution to his sport. It's hard to even know, from the evidence in the film, whether its title is ironic. [09 Oct 1998]

It's only half of a good comedy. After a delicious opening and setup, the movie really doesn't go anywhere very interesting, and doesn't come close to any epiphanies about the subject at hand, even in subtext.

Bound to seem, at best, a kind of CliffsNotes guide to the novel's highlights, especially if the casting is not all that inspired.

The film is an audience-pleaser, but very calculated and far from Curtis' best work: His script will go to any lengths to be cute, and his direction tends to be overly broad. In the end, he wears us out with the sheer volume of witty and endearing characters.

While its execution is fine, the movie is almost shockingly vapid.

Crash can't rise from the ashes of its pessimism.

A pretty dreadful affair -- ludicrous as history and a veritable gallery of visual cliches.

This may sound like a satiric comedy, and its intriguing setup carries a faintly comedic tone, but the movie becomes more straight-faced as it moves along and ends up being a fairly serious examination on the nature of, and necessity for, faith.

Likely to provide many points of identification for many women.

It has moments of effectiveness, some of the performances -- especially Whitaker and Robert Ri'chard -- are moving.

It has some wonderful moments and a handful of delicious Maughamian characters.

To the movie's credit, the cast is better than average.

A pleasant, old-fashioned kind of a love triangle.

The most noteworthy thing about the Iraq war home-front drama, Grace Is Gone, is that Clint Eastwood composed its musical score and title song, which have both been garnering all sorts of accolades, including dual Golden Globe nominations.

Stars are particularly strong. Snipes' fatalism is totally appealing, and Rhames makes a curiously compelling antihero.

It's by far the most violent, most clinical and most sumptuously atmospheric.

Manages to squeeze by on Angelina Jolie's surprising flair for self-deprecating comedy.

A frequently amusing and consistently outrageous but ultimately tiresome farce.

The movie also is designed to be an actor's showcase for Norton and Giamatti, two of the best movie actors of their generation. Each has his moments of fire, but some element is missing from the script that would make this duel of the titans riveting.

It's the first Hanson movie in a decade that doesn't quite click into place.

All the good intentions in the world and solid performances from three of the biggest and most respected movie stars of our time cannot disguise the fact that Lions for Lambs is resting on a talky, disjointed and not-very-well-thought-out script.

All told, the movie also is a tremendous downer. The script goes for a vaguely upbeat conclusion, but it has no spiritual dimension that the viewer feels with any emotion, and it conveys a hopeless, pessimistic future for the interconnected world that it portrays.

It's rowdy, often tasteless and very much in the buddy-action vein of the scripts that made him famous, but in a much more comic spirit.

It's an enjoyable period romance. Yet, ultimately, the unique magic of Austen so beautifully caught in 1996's "Emma" is missing.

Jackman, who stepped in after a cranky Russell Crowe walked away in a salary dispute, strikes just the right chord as a scruffy romantic hero.

Ultimately, it's a surprisingly empty experience.

A straightforward, no-nonsense, agreeably old-fashioned historical action movie.

There's still enough of Doyle's hilariously foul dialogue and outrageous, culture-shocked Irish characters for the film to be a good bit of fun.

As energetic and irreverent as it is -- the movie never finds the inspired blend of edgy black comedy and gleeful journalistic adventure that it's after.

Never as visually or viscerally thrilling as some might expect, but it still manages to be a fascinating study of a national phenomenon that has had very little impact in our part of the country.

Several of the special-effects sequences -- a Tokyo hailstorm, a system of tornadoes ripping through L.A. (and tearing up the Hollywood sign), a tidal wave breaking on the East Side and washing through the canyons of Manhattan -- are just dandy.

In Costner's best moments, he makes us absolutely believe this character and feel his pain.

As the very traditional hero, Li keeps us riveted through the fisticuffs, and he also carries off the film's heavier dramatic moments well enough -- though, as always, his lack of a strong personality prevents the movie from ever genuinely catching fire.

(Bacon's) most believable, heart-wrenching and charismatic lead performance in many years.

Even though almost everything about it feels forced and its casting chemistry hardly sizzles, its heart is in the right place, it has its quota of funny and touching moments, and it's ultimately fairly enjoyable.

The story is patently implausible and unnecessarily confusing, and it works to a moral dilemma for its hero -- and a trick ending for the audience -- that resolves the action with so little satisfaction that you wish they hadn't bothered.

A kind of homage to that more simple and elegant time.

Definitely works as an action piece, it's often surprising and never boring, and several sequences had me positioned well on the edge of my seat.

In the lead, Anderson ("The X-Files") is competent but never quite makes the character come soaring to life.

Just a silly mess of a movie in which no one is trying very hard to do anything but goof off. [6 March 1998]

An action buddy comedy is such an offbeat and inspired notion that it's impossible not to think of it without smiling.

A rare flub for the usually spot-on director and cast.

Patrice Leconte's new film, My Best Friend, is probably his lightest and sweetest to date. Fans of his serious historical dramas ("Ridicule") or raucous farces ("Les Bronzes") may be disappointed, but others should find it a reasonably enjoyable feel-good comedy.

The old formula is showing its age. The movie just doesn't deliver the emotional highs that addicted millions to the Rocky cycle. For the first time, one does not leave the theater floating on air. [16 Nov 1990, p.8]

As it turns out, the movie is still very much about two well-dressed undercover cops who strike sexy poses, express plenty of attitude and drive expensive cars and fast boats as pop music plays on the soundtrack and palm trees sway gently in the tropical night.

Not the most thrilling of competition films. There are only two short debate scenes, and each time the team gets to argue (in sound bites of rhetoric) the politically correct side of the issue.

In the best tradition of Annaud's work, Two Brothers works as an engrossing outdoor adventure and quasi-documentary.

Anges has nothing but affection for its characters and fondness for their quirkiness.

For all its good performances and family values, it's a painful movie to endure. It consists of watching this poor guy suffer one agonizing setback after another for nearly two hours, and its modest emotional payoff comes only in the final moments.

An engagingly whimsical, sporadically charming, frequently very funny Southern Gothic fantasy that somehow doesn't quite come together to be as magical or meaningful as it's intended to be.

Has its own peculiar charm.

It's nicely crafted, respectably acted and often quite compelling in a low-key way, but it doesn't have the kind of flair, impact or resonance we've come to expect from the director.

It's an interesting and eye-opening journey.

The movie is occasionally funny, always very colorful and enjoyably overblown in the traditional Almodóvar style; and the performances -- especially Javier Cámara as the gentle, sweet-spirited Benigno -- are exquisitely tender and moving.

It doesn't, as they say, really work -- but it's enjoyable enough in spots to leave one feeling passably entertained.

Make no mistake: This not high art. But it does its job without insulting our intelligence or unpleasantly jangling our nerves.

Far from a great movie, it nonetheless does its job as a family adventure and saga of a woman's personal growth.

By most of the standards by which we judge movies, Jungle Fever is pretty bad. Scenes seem structured solely to provide an excuse for characters to deliver speeches, everything seems heavy-handed, obvious and didactic - and false. [7 June 1991]

Surprise! The remake is not a heresy. It's a decent enough stab at being what the old movie was to its time, following the same basic plot, full of respectful references to its model, updated with a gallery of fairly imaginative special effects.

It's the strangest comic-book superhero movie you're likely to see this year. For anyone looking for something totally different in this most overworked of Hollywood genres, this is it.

Above all, the film suffers from a lack of originality. The premise of Goodbye Charlie was at least something new in 1964, but Switch comes at the end of a long cycle of body-switching comedies that ran out of steam more than two years ago. [10 May 1991]

Even though he's strikingly played by Rockwell, Barris comes off as such a distasteful character and the silliness is so unrelenting that the movie wears you out. Long before it's over, you feel yourself reaching for that gong clapper.

As exciting and disturbing as it is in many ways, Children of Men -- based on a novel by P.D. James -- doesn't add up to a credible alternate view of the near-future: Its vision hasn't been well thought out, and, again and again, it struck me as a sloppy piece of storytelling.

A strangely mixed blessing filled with glossy production values and vibrant supporting performances but suffers mightily from a lack of credibility and the grinding predictability of its plot.

Best of all, the film showcases Leconte's full range of directorial gifts: his sense of pace and suspense; his ability to make a scene come magically alive with a small touch of wry humor; his ingratiating belief that, as bad as people are in the aggregate, they are capable of an amazing nobility of spirit as individuals. [06 Dec 1996]

Low-voltage and forgettable.

The movie just seems like one more Hollywood cop-out, and a waste of our original emotional investment.

A not-bad ghost story that marks a comeback of sorts for its star, Michael Keaton, who hasn't top-billed a movie for almost a decade.

It may be that the Hulk role was not made for sensitive method actors like Norton or Bana. When '70s TV-"Hulk" Lou Ferrigno made his obligatory cameo, a palpable wave of affection swept through the Seattle preview audience.

It's far from strikingly original, but it's well-acted, skillfully plotted and moderately chilling, and it's something slightly different in the haunted-house genre.

Redford also deserves a lot of credit. It's not the kind of showcase that's going to earn him an Oscar, but, without too many compromises, he manages to find the soul of a difficult character and makes his emotional odyssey both believable and satisfying.

Plays like a series of well-done but disconnected acting-class sketches, filled with a huge cast of first-rate actors whose careers have all gone into decline.

It's a very slight and forgettable affair, and a formula job all the way. But it's easy to watch, the dance sequences are sporadically enjoyable (if hardly innovative) and Antonio Banderas is wonderfully magnetic and charming in the lead.

Rock, who seems to have studied every nuance of Beatty's Oscar-nominated comic performance -- is surprisingly appealing in what is often a straight role.

Ppaque and not hugely satisfying.

Doesn't completely work on its own terms, mainly because its romantic casting just doesn't spark: It doesn't make us fall in love with its lovers.

Still, Kitano creates his own scary and compelling world in the film, and there's no denying his charisma as a star. Like Charles Bronson and Clint Eastwood (two action icons to whom he's often compared), the 51-year-old actor holds the screen with seemingly no effort. He's as watchable as a tired old rattlesnake. [11 Sep 1998]

You may enjoy this complex, psychologically daring and visually stylish noir, which has been put together by director Bruce Evans ("Kuffs") with few dull moments and virtually none of the black humor you might expect from the premise.

Its violence is right out of a "Road Runner" cartoon and, despite the R-rating, relatively benign; its special effects and camera movements are often quite imaginative; and, at less than 90 minutes, it's mercifully short. [19 Feb 1993]

Despite its obvious good intentions, several strong scenes, and the skill with which it creates its milieu - post-colonial Africa - the film never quite clicks. [09 Sep 1994]

Hocus Pocus also offers a slightly different kind of movie role for the Divine Miss M, which she carries off fearlessly. In fact, with her campy makeup and wildly extravagant gestures, she is probably closer here to her cabaret roots than she has been on film before - and her oldest, purest fans are sure to love her for it. [16 July 1993]

It's bound to be the love-it-or-hate-it movie of 2003.

There's no mistaking the fact that this hybrid misses the impact of the Disney classic, and even that of the excellent 1934 MGM version. Both of these films are surprisingly hard-edged and every bit as thrilling -- and scary -- as Stevenson's 1883 novel.

Despite some engaging performances and good scenes, it's by far the least original, and least accomplished, of the six Redford-directed films.

For some reason, the emotional payoff of the film -- the healing of a dysfunctional family -- doesn't quite come off. Possibly this is because Franco doesn't generate the necessary sympathy or father-son chemistry with De Niro, possibly because it's just not in the script.

While there are good things about it, Stop-Loss is nothing spectacular.

As riveting as it may be, his film is a total shaggy-dog story.

The story is so sure-fire that it surmounts these obstacles to be passable entertainment, getting frequent infusions of excitement from the performances of Charlie Sheen, who is likably ironic and deadpan as Aramis; Kiefer Sutherland, who is splendidly charismatic and appealing as the world-weary Athos; and Oliver Platt, who confidently steals the movie as the comic Porthos. [12 Nov 1993]

Cage is more endearing than usual in his usual philosophical slob routine and Jackson is likeably long-suffering as the Spike Lee of the Theater. They click as a cinematic odd couple. [05 Mar 1993]

The bad news in this kinder, gentler, more subtle performance is that, by playing the woman (Streep) as less of a devil, the dynamic that propels the story loses much of its drive and energy, and what's left is a kind of high-class "Gidget" movie.

Griffin & Co. manage to be spectacularly outrageous, several of the gag sequences are hilariously imaginative and there's something almost deliciously liberating in the film's determination to make good-natured fun of what previously has been a very sacred movie cow.

An often trying and not wholly successful but highly ambitious and ultimately rewarding mental-institution movie that strongly echoes the 1966 classic of the genre, "King of Hearts."

Often distastefully juvenile.

When a filmmaker heavy-handedly imposes his contemporary values on a classic of popular art, it's devilishly hard not to destroy or invalidate the very thing that made it a classic.

Belongs to that distinctly '90s genre of sadistic crime comedy whose time has clearly come and gone.

Not only does it steadfastly refuse to condescend to its young viewers (it may actually be too scary for very young children), Carlei carries us along with his strong story sense, and pulls an unusually satisfying plot twist in his final act that elevates the movie, and cleverly turns it into an unexpected moral lesson. [02 Jun 1995]