William Arnold

Douglas brings a hilarious kind of Gordon Gekko assurance to his character, and Brooks' long-suffering, naggy persona -- which hasn't had a showcase this strong since "Lost in America" -- sparks off it like Hope with Crosby.

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]

Its strangely paced narrative line, its rich texture of eccentric characters, its high-contrast black-and-white photography - and its very '60s air of innocence and possibility - make this a surprisingly enjoyable little time capsule from a vanished world. [16 Feb 1990]

There's no question where filmmaker Jonathan Nossiter's sympathy lies, but he makes his case leisurely, without hysteria and with much playful screen time devoted to the various interviewees' pet dogs.

Overcooked and simplistic in spots.

T. M. Griffin's script is imaginative and clever.

A redundancy, and a bore. The characters are harrowingly unsympathetic, the action sequences are by-the-numbers, and Carpenter's usual saving grace -- his sense of humor -- is nowhere in evidence.

Like Kubrick, Field doesn't make any moral judgments about his characters, and his film remains stubbornly enigmatic. It can be read as a high-class revenge thriller, an ode to the futility of vengeance or almost anything in between.

It is entertaining and eye-filling enough to appeal to a mainstream male audience. [22 May 1992]

Like Spielberg, even if the content is questionable or the performance is missing, his scenes always manage to be visually thrilling.

Unlike original director Rob Cohen, Singleton has no gift for giddy action and his movie is a crashing bore.

Minghella does a good job of dashing any lingering image you might have of the Civil War as a conflict fought along neat geometric battle lines with the nobility of Appomattox.

In a way, Wild Strawberries is a cliche of a Bergman movie, but no cliche ever seemed more perceptive, more gentle, more understanding of human foibles and imperfection, or more humorous. [25 Jul 1997]

Wise, entertaining and often very funny.

His heart may be in the right place, but 25-year-old writer-director M. Night Shyamalan can't even begin to pull all these episodes together into anything that seems remotely special, or even makes any sense. [03 Apr 1998]

Philip Messina's claustrophobic sets and Cliff Martinez's elegantly creepy score add to the film's distinction and work off Clooney's performance and Soderbergh's staging to create an hypnotic spell and suggest a cosmos full of spiritual possibility.

A gracefully subtle, sweet-spirited French parable of the brotherhood of man that was nominated for a Golden Globe, won Omar Sharif a César Award for best actor and has been a surprise hit in Europe.

A powerful experience, filled with dazzlingly executed action sequences that generally avoid the rock music and drugged-out conventions of "Apocalypse Now," and even exude a certain core of humanity.

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

It's funny, touching and crammed to the rafters with clever dialogue, splashy production numbers and stiff-upper-lip charm.

It's a low-key, subtly inspirational drama that builds its charm slowly but surely.

The horror and spectacle of medieval battle has never been re-created on film before with such ghastly beauty.

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.

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.

The movie is basically a piece of fluff, not always coherently directed and almost too consistently somber for a movie that wants to be a romantic comedy. Still, it comes together with considerable emotional impact, mainly on the strength of the stars. [24 May 1991, p.14]

The filmmaker's vision is harrowingly ugly and profoundly upsetting every step of the way.

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]

Its dazzling blend of rock magic and 3-D technology just may be ushering in a whole new kind of musical theater.

Actually, the film may be too grubby and sordid and ghoulish for its own box-office good. It's certainly going to send more than a few of the New Zealand director's sensitive women fans running from the auditorium.

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

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

A cheerful and stylish romantic comedy that's easy on the eyes and ears, and makes few demands on the intellect.

The movie is 23 minutes longer than the Lean version, yet it somehow seems much less evocative of the novel's immense scope and texture. And its Cockney accents are such a strain to understand that as much as a third of the dialogue is indecipherable.

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.

An unusually engrossing World War II epic.

Cliched, mostly routine and never especially satisfying.

It's an abysmal movie.

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

Loaded down with credibility problems.

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.

For three-fourths of its journey, Adaptation is, for my money, the movie of the year: an incredibly audacious and original exercise that challenges the conventions of moviemaking and stretches the boundaries of fiction -- almost, but not quite, to the breaking point.

The film's deliberately overblown cartoonishness and its gleefully pandering adolescent cruelty never blend into the enjoyable style of, say, a good spaghetti western (Rodriguez's acknowledged model), or even a bad Quentin Tarantino movie.

A slick and entertaining package.

It has its flaws, and traditionalists are likely to think it falls well short of its inspiration, but it works on its own terms, it fills the screen with Burtonesque excitement and it strikes me as one of this tepid movie summer's better offerings.

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]

The film is an across-the-board charmer that should appeal to children as well as their parents, aficionados of animation and old-movie buffs who will be challenged to sort out the blur of seemingly hundreds of classic film references.

Tells a light-hearted fictional story and creates a maze of imaginative animation and special effects to illustrate how the heavier thoughts of the science apply to the everyday world.

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

The film is highly critical of America's counterterrorist efforts, and not at all subtle in making the point that our stupidity and Nazi-like methods have helped create -- and vastly acerbate -- our problems.

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.

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.

Indeed, it is a uniquely dreamlike, lushly romantic, highly erotic and prototypically Coppolaesque version of the story - a movie that does for the vampire genre what "The Godfather" did for the gangster saga, and what "Apocalypse Now" did for the war movie: raises it to the level of grand opera. [13 Nov 1992, p.5]

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.

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]

The whole enterprise is a colossal waste of everyone's time.

With so much going for it, it's sad that Red Eye goes into such a third-act tailspin and cliched slasher-flick finale.

Less a portrait of this controversial man than a touchstone "to trace the history of contemporary terrorism."

White Hunter, Black Heart may not be a spectacular success, but it contains Clint Eastwood's best work as an actor and director in years, and is worth seeing. [21 Sep 1990]

Not only have they (Coen Brothers) stripped it of all its wit and charm, they've loaded it down with the kind of race-baiting and bathroom humor they've always avoided in the past.

With a steady eye and a warm (but never overtly sentimental) heart, it explores a territory where few movies have ventured before.

The carefully conceived mayhem that ensues is understated and subtle, but always highly original and frequently quite brilliant. [04 Jun 2004]

Resnick's script never engages, the stars can't find the keys to their broadly played characters, and Ephron's direction is harrowingly out of sync.

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

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.

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

The film is such a good-natured and easygoing ride that it's ultimately very hard to resist.

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

But it also works as a compelling thriller and whodunit; as a powerful political metaphor (the reservation is a kind of microcosm of the Third World and America's relationship to it); and as a piece of environmental mysticism, celebrating - like so many recent films - the psychic purity and spiritual superiority of its aboriginal characters. [3 Apr 1992]

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.

It's not his (Scorsese) best film, but it's his most accessible and most thoroughly entertaining.

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

Director Thomas Schlamme ("Miss Firecracker," "Crazy From the Heart") also does a better than average job of evoking the romance of his San Francisco locations; giving his mystery-comedy a Hitchcockian "feel"; and getting likable performances from Brenda Fricker as Charlie's mother, Anthony LaPaglia as his cop best-friend, and Nancy Travis as the maybe-murderess. [30 July 1993]

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.

Dillane gives such a layered, detailed, utterly convincing performance as a man struggling with an inescapable and suffocating burden of guilt that he quickly makes us forget that he's too old for the part.

Above all, the film is just wonderfully ... well, Fellini-esque. It looks like nothing the cinema has seen since then.

Hayek throws herself into this dream Hispanic role with a teeth-clenching gusto. She strikes a potent chemistry with Molina and she gradually makes us believe she is Kahlo.

Whatever it is, the film is the first major release of the fall worth talking about: a fast-paced, visually slick, psychologically fascinating Boston-set cops-and-crooks saga.

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.

This retread has been bloated far beyond its B-movie origins, beefed up with more characters and an all-star cast, stripped of any real suspense and loaded down with music cuts and one-liners aimed at pleasing a crowd of rowdy male teenagers.

It's a by-the-numbers action affair, and one that is considerably more mean-spirited and humorless than the norm. [4 Aug 1995, p.29]

A marvelous piece of cinematic storytelling, acted to perfection by Sihung Lung (the father in "The Wedding Banquet"), fueled by an ingratiating sense of humor and so infused with the sheer joy of Chinese cooking that it will probably make you rush right out for a Chinese meal. [05 Aug 1994]

The best thing the movie has going for it is Kidman's performance.

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 film is a dud in the tradition of such weak horror sequels as "Exorcist II" and "Dracula's Dog."

A suspenseful, fascinating movie that milks the premise for all it's worth.

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

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.

It's an ingratiating star vehicle and elegant entertainment.

I loved it...Without trying very hard, Farnsworth commands a unique and immensely appealing screen presence that could be called "a compilation of all the great western heroes of the movie past."

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.

There's not an authentically scary moment in it.

The movie itself is not completely successful, but it's consistently both engrossing and entertaining, and -- once again -- Spacey's performance creates a spell that lingers long after the lights come back on.

Staggeringly awful.

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.

In the end, it's not much fun to watch a brave artist getting his dream kicked out of him.

An absorbing, exciting costume drama that works as a historical romance, a family tragedy and a showcase for its young stars.

It works on several levels, and stands out as a wistful meditation on the psychological cost of 9/11.

In a time when even the best of big Hollywood movies all seem to be mired in a certain nagging, unimaginative visual sameness, this one dares to take us to a place we haven't been before.

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

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.

Despite a few weak points, the most heavily dramatic Sandler vehicle to date is a striking, genuinely touching, meticulously well-acted friendship parable, and a big audience pleaser.

Moves like a bullet and, even if they're overblown, the action sequences are still mostly exhilarating and hypnotic. Moreover, the film's human dimension and character development is richer and more rewarding than the genre requires, and its philosophical underpinning more intellectually audacious and seductive: The film is more of a mind-trip than I expected.

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.

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

This movie seems even rougher around the edges than much of his past work. Still, it's hard to resist.

Culturally, the film is a fascinating document because it's so obviously a conscious amalgam of Hollywood gangster movie conventions, reflecting the retro sensibility of writer-director Melville, an incorrigible fan of American culture. [25 Apr 1997]

That's Entertainment! III - which comes 20 years after the original, and celebrates MGM's 70th anniversary - is largely a rehash of its predecessors. Though it's not nearly as fun or exciting, it is still worth seeing if you're an old-movie buff. [03 Jun 1994]

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.

This is a much dumber movie than "The Lake House." In fact, the script is an ungainly mess and ultimately a shaggy-dog story.

As usual, Albert Finney gives a towering performance in his new movie, "A Man of No Importance," and, as usual, the movie around his performance is not much. [03 Feb 1995]

It's a sporadically thrilling visual epic and a gruesome reminder that war is hell.

First-time director Ali Selim does an exceptional job throughout, his movie has the balance, uncluttered leanness and emotional impact of a Willa Cather short story, and it's no surprise that it has been nominated for Best First Feature in the 2007 Independent Spirit Awards.

The casting also works. As the Khan, Japanese actor Tadanobu Asano ("Zatoichi") is all effortless charisma, and Chinese actor Honglei Sun (as his best friend-turned-enemy) and Mongolian actress Khulan Chuluun (as his faithful wife, Borte) are just as effective.

So violent and junky it seems to have been designed as evidence for the growing congressional movement to censor Hollywood.

Columbus is a member of the '80s generation and he gives the play authenticity, the respect of a classic, an epic visual scope and a sensibility that's blissfully free of any generational self-pity. It seems to be the movie he was born to make, and he serves it well.

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]

The movie doesn't make much narrative sense and its complicated flashback structure (which assumes some knowledge of Ivens' rather obscure film career) doesn't help. But the film is so delightful to the eye that we almost don't care. Like "The Lover," sometimes the visual pleasures of a visual medium can be enough. [13 Nov 1992]

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

It's hardly a must-see laugh riot, but it is a good chuckle, and it does its job well.

Harry IV is an intelligent, visually seductive and mostly very satisfying fantasy epic of the first order.

Disastrously unfunny sex farce.

The film is also an impressive showcase for a large ensemble cast that also includes Josh Brolin, James Franco and Kerry Washington. The standout, however, is Hurt, who gives an almost unbelievably courageous performance as the movie's least sympathetic character.

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 witty new indie with a good cast and high production values that has fun with the absurdity of the frenzied bidding wars that can break out over a "spec" script by an unknown or first-time screenwriter.

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

Absurdly over the top and not especially funny.

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 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.

The movie is so engrossing as an intellectual puzzle and such a solid thriller in every other department that it's probably actor-proof.

Every swing of its plot is preposterous, it stumbles to a trick climax that any regular moviegoer will figure out in the first 10 minutes, and the ending is so absurdly unmotivated that it plays like a slap in the face.

Funny, muckraking documentary.

Director Ryu Murakami obviously has a few nonexploitative impulses, but more than half of his movie is graphic sex scenes (it's rated NC-17), and it seems mostly just an excuse to sneak into a mainstream theater the kind of S&M, bondage and urination scenes that have been banned from even the hardest of hard-core porn videos since the late '80s. [15 Oct 1993]

As fast and exciting as it is, there's no gratuitous MTV razzle-dazzle in Where the Day Takes You. Virtually every choice made - from the shrewd selection of the music to the always-original camera set-ups to the subtly cumulative pacing of the sequences - is indispensable to the film's vision and gives evidence of the skilled hand of a born filmmaker. [11 Sep 1992]

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

It's a tough, tight, no-nonsense action melodrama filled with irresistibly hard-boiled dialogue and a large cast of engagingly hard-boiled characters. All and all, it's one of the better of the many recent Hollywood remakes of classic film noir. [21 Apr 1995]

Movie is so hip-swingingly infectious and leaves us with such a high that it's hard not to suspect that -- handled right -- it could well become the fall version of "My Big Fat Greek Wedding."

While careful not to denounce the religion, the film fires a powerful broadside at fundamentalist Islam in general and revolutionary Iran in particular. [11 Jan 1991]

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

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.

Too bad they didn't skip the gags and one-liners, along with the songs, and go the distance in making this an authentic dinosaur world.

Terrible in a terrible way: It's pretentious, incomprehensible and just numbingly dull.

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

I found it a surprisingly elegant entertainment: fast-paced, cogently written (by noted English author Arnold Bennett), well-cast (including a bit by a young Charles Laughton) and stylishly photographed on a gallery of stunning deco sets.

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.

The movie is a fascinating, if often confusing, mix of dramatized scenes from the novel, re-created and actual interviews with Desclos.

Another harrowingly cynical dirty-cop movie in the recent tradition of "Training Day" and "Narc." Yet it's so much more complex, engrossing and satisfying than those films that the comparison is not entirely fair.

His film has a kind of lyrical and poetic beauty at the same time it's remarkably free of sentimentality and didacticism, and it tells its tale with the minimalist effectiveness of a first-rate short story. [3 July 1998]

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]

In the latest of what is getting to be a booming genre of Iraq war documentaries, director Deborah Scranton gives digital video cameras to five members of the New Hampshire Army National Guard so they can intimately record their year of service in the Middle East.

A gripping, terrifying, profoundly touching human drama that's definitely worth seeing.

It's occasionally quite witty, it's able to tell us a great deal about its characters and their back stories in an economic fashion and its plot swings are surprising and compelling.

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.

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

It has a terrific retro style, it's well-directed and it makes an engrossing showcase for its trio of stars.

Tautou seems tired, mean-spirited and utterly devoid of that Audrey Hepburn-like charm that made her the international movie find of 2001.

A respectful, accomplished, non-exploitative piece of historical filmmaking and -- for audiences -- a gripping white-knuckle ride all the way.

Writer/director Raoul Peck never gives us enough intimate moments to let us feel we know the man on a personal level, and he doesn't have the narrative skill to economize the necessary exposition or steer a clear storyline.

Mesmerizing and curiously satisfying idyll that gradually, slyly maneuvers us into a whole new way of looking at the delicate relationship between man, art and Mother Nature.

Contains much abuse and brutality, an annoying celebratory air of pimp-chic and enough explicit gay sex scenes to qualify as (very tepid) soft-core porn.

Unfortunately, there's no great performance here. Pitt (who looks like Leonardo Di Caprio) delivers nothing close to Brando's tour de force, and all three stars may have been chosen less for their acting ability than their willingness to disrobe for the camera.

It's been turned into a stupid kung fu movie.

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

Jewison handles this rich tapestry of non-linear scenes with the skill of the old pro he is, and carefully modulates the drama to create the maximum emotional impact.

The Ring, is going to be this year's version of the "Blair Witch" and "Sixth Sense" phenomenon.

This one transcends the subgenre to be a respectful and very funny horror spoof. [11 Feb 1999]

Both intellectually absorbing and emotionally gripping.

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 real joy here is the performance of Jean Dujardin, who, besides being very funny as the Gallic Maxwell Smart, is also enormously charismatic and is made to look uncannily (and I do mean uncannily) like the young Sean Connery of "Dr. No" and "Goldfinger."

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.

This free-flowing film certainly hits the high points as it flips around its talking-head celebrity sound bites at warp speed.

Working for the first time in live action, under the constraints of a classic novel, he (Andrew Adamson) proves himself to be a capable visual storyteller but no Peter Jackson.

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.

The lack of stellar performances gradually becomes a virtue of the movie as we forget we're watching actors in roles, and Stone builds a documentarylike veracity that gives the saga of the trapped cops and their loved ones a riveting immediacy.

An uneasy mix that's too long, too confusing and too undramatically paced to be consistently gripping, and so blatantly panders to teenagers.

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

Its heart is in the right place, and it doesn't flinch an iota from its duty of rubbing our faces in the horror of the Third World over the past two decades.

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.

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

It lets down in the last act and is probably too mired in serial-murderer-movie formulaics to garner Oscar attention. But it's his tightest, best film since "Unforgiven."

In this movie, he (Shelton) falls so hard he becomes, for the first time in his career, genuinely offensive.

The movie is an extraordinary personal adventure that views everything through the eyes of its hero as it carries him from one apocalyptic situation to another.

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

Writer-director Bruce Robinson, whose credits ("Withnail and I") are all outside the thriller genre, has also chosen to throw a long, ponderous interrogation scene into the third act for no other reason than to give guest-star John Malkovich 15 minutes of hammy screen-time as FBI agent St. Anne. His movie is not only preposterous and dull, it's pretentious. [6 Nov 1992]

The Paper definitely works. By the time Hackett calls out that inevitable "Stop the presses!" Howard has caught all the romance of the great old newspaper movies - the camaraderie of the newsroom, the adrenaline rush that goes with the pursuit of a big story, the teary pride in the power of the press. [25 March 1994]

At its core, it's an exploration of the demands and obligations of brotherly love, staged with honesty, originality and a surprising spark of intelligence.

In its defense, I can only say that, technically, it's an exhilarating piece of filmmaking; it offers a commanding comeback role for Carradine, and it serves as a summation, dead end and, perhaps, epitaph, for Tarantino's unique contribution to world cinema.

Within the limitations of the script, both stars shine. Moore displays a wonderful flair for self-deprecating farce, and Brosnan is cumulatively endearing as her unflappable nemesis.

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

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

Touching, transcendent love story.

Preposterous, empty-headed and tedious.

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.

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."

Likely to provide many points of identification for many women.

Inferior remake.

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

It's naturalistic, briskly paced and never overreverential. It's not a bit stagy, yet it manages to be dazzling theater.

More of a leisurely paced ensemble character-study than the slam-bang traditional action gut-buster that its trailer seems to promise.

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.

All told, this first Bond of the new millennium may be far from the best of the series, but it's assured, wonderfully respectful of its past and thrilling enough to make it abundantly clear that this movie phenomenon has once again reinvented itself for a new generation, and is very likely to outlive us all.

Its overall effect is distinctly underwhelming.

This moody, progressively enthralling little French psychodrama is very much it's own thing: a boldly conceived, impeccably crafted and wonderfully enigmatic two-character study that turns out to be a most powerful showcase for its two stars.

Is it possible to have yet another expensive excursion into this genre that seems in any way fresh, original and alive? The answer, surprisingly, is yes.

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

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

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

Apparently no one bothered to tell Stone the movie was a joke. She plays it without a hint of the tongue-in-cheek required, and totally against her strong star persona, so that she serves mostly as the unnecessary straight woman to all the giddy male comedy. [10 Feb 1995, p.3]

Several times, Hotel Rwanda teeters on the edge of making a unique, visionary statement about our times, but can't quite do it. Too bad. If it could have pulled itself together in one brilliant scene, this may have been a great movie, instead of just a very good one.

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

To be truthful, the movie is not much, even by the limited standards of the genre. It's played almost too broadly for its own good. [07 Nov 1992]

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]

The film tells the story of Jimmy Hoffa in a refreshingly honest way. [25 Dec 1992]

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.

Like all of Hallstrom's American films, "Something to Talk About" has a distinct European "feel," and is less interested in being a star vehicle for Roberts than a freewheeling ensemble piece that balances her in every scene with strong supporting work from Quaid, Duvall, Rowlands and especially Sedgwick.

It really does communicate an optimistic sense that race is irrelevant and we can all live happily ever after together.

So witless, sit-com shallow and bad in every way that it's just not worthy of much discussion.

A moody adventure story set in Alaska that resonates with envrionmental overtones and is filled with delicate character studies, but ends up being a terrific little genre thriller. [04 Jun 1999]

It packs surprising punch as a biopic.

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's not "The Wizard of Oz," and its cotton-candy fantasy of a story line is definitely aimed at very young children. But it's well made, and adults likely will find themselves yielding to its gentle, whimsical charm.

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

Overly familiar, poorly cast and often annoyingly crude New York comedy that never finds its groove.

A paragon of subtlety. Yet this message is exactly what we carry out of the theater, and it lingers on with a powerful resonance.

A familiar but rewarding little parable.

The film's real feat may be in its production design, in the sumptuousness and veracity with which it re-creates central Saigon and the Vietnamese countryside of the '50s: an exotic lost world of brothels and opium dens, trishaws and ao-dai dresses, Ming-deco interiors and water buffalos in rice paddies.

A witty, literate, wryly sophisticated parable of American politics: just the kind of movie that Hollywood, in its search for the global audience, supposedly doesn't make anymore.

For most of the way, it's indeed quite a ride: a cumulatively exhilarating, visually mouth-dropping, somberly stylish odyssey crammed full of virtuoso animation sequences.

In a movie era when brand names mean very little, it shows once again that Pixar is a stamp of quality.

It's hard to figure exactly what the point of this movie is -- except maybe to expose the myth of samurai machismo.

Sandler and Barrymore generate some believable, if low-voltage, chemistry: they're both so shallow and conceited and dingy that you think -- yes! -- in real life, these two people probably would go for each other in a second.

There's not a vaguely sympathetic character in sight; Kureishi ultimately seems prudishly disapproving of his heroine's last gasp of sexual adventure; and what another writer might have found liberating and healing, he finds distasteful and destructive.

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

The Sandlot is so exploitative of the myth of baseball and rings so false as a nostalgia piece - and is so unfunny as a comedy - that it makes "The Bad News Bears" look like "Pride of the Yankees." [7 Apr 1993]

Together, the two of them (Pitt, Roberts) are cute as a bug.

It's never consistently funny enough to work as a comedy and never forthright enough to be a successful relationship drama. And, like a lot of films made by directors whose apprenticeship was served in shorts, it is so slight it never quite feels like a feature, more like a half-hour film that has been padded out to fill a feature length. [02 Mar 1990]

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

Assuming the bulk of what we see is factual, it comes off as a gripping docudrama.

The film is magnificently mounted, it moves like a speeding bullet and it's so respectful of Superman traditions that even the pickiest of die-hard fans should love it. After a lapse of two decades, it revitalizes the franchise and makes it seem fresh and alive.

This is an actress (Streep) who can pull off anything -- including a shamelessly kitschy musical.

A frequently amusing and consistently outrageous but ultimately tiresome farce.

A big change of pace for the bad-boy Spanish director. Like his other work, it's kinky and proudly gay, but this time it's not a comedy. It's a serious neo-film-noir, and a pretty darn good one at that.

It's a richly textured, leisurely paced, visually impressionistic epic of the American past that fairly hypnotizes the viewer with its tapestry of sights, sounds and colors.

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.

Even with the good performances, the paces are just agonizingly familiar. [24 Oct 1997]

The film powerfully demonstrates the diversity, the adaptability, the resilience of the insect world. The rest of the animal kingdom (including man) may be on the brink of extinction, but these little guys are thriving. [22 Nov 1996]

The film goes for a grainy, fast-cut, documentary look that is both a blessing and a curse.

A clumsy, heavy-handed and unnecessarily sordid occult thriller that somehow has managed to generate a big pre-release buzz.

More mediocre than magical.

It's by far the most inspirational sports movie to come along in many a month.