William Arnold

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.

Its heart is in the right place and it resists the temptation to junk up the story, but Depp does nothing with his character and the movie has little of the unique wit or panache that would make it appealing to an older-than-10 audience.

In the end, there's also something distinctly distasteful about a movie in which the central figure casts himself as noble martyr while character-assassinating his parents.

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]

An immensely enjoyable cross-cultural parable full of appealing characters and well-crafted performances. [14 Feb 1992]

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.

Seems like very tame stuff, with little in the way of graphic sex and all the baggage of a run-of-the-mill art-house costume drama.

Where "The Cat" book was anarchistic but ultimately sweet-spirited, this movie is ugly, dumb and colossally mean-spirited.

The mystery is never very compelling, Paul McGuigan's direction tends to be obvious and flat, many of the characters are stagy and unconvincing, and Bettany doesn't have anywhere near the star power to hold the movie together.

It struck me as the most exciting and original Hollywood thriller, occult or otherwise, since "The Sixth Sense."

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

"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.

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.

A tasteful, richly textured, exquisitely nostalgic drama that carries with it an enormous emotional punch. [09 Oct 1992]

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.

And, of course, the film's biggest selling point is the performance of China's reigning superstar, Gong Li. Playing a sexy, shrewd but strangely suicidal character who is a far cry from the stubborn courtesans and determined peasant women characters that made her famous, she's as enigmatic and irresistible as ever, and demonstrates once again that she is the Garbo of China. [21 Dec 1995]

Despite a few places where the air of déjà vu is a bit too thick, it's a class act, with a textured script, one of the series' more stunning title sequences.

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

Above all, the film is a classic of "poetic realism," that distinct brand of pessimistic '30s French urban drama that gave lyrical, sometimes even surrealistic, interpretations to working-class romances and underworld characters, settings and dramas.

The movie is an unusually witty and intelligent romantic comedy and Hollywood's best Valentine's Day gift in years.

It's not only the most gentle and effortlessly funny movie so far this year, it's a film with a style and sensibility that wonderfully harkens back to Hollywood's golden age of sophisticated comedy, and in particular to the masterpieces of Crowe's filmmaking idol, Billy Wilder.

For those of us who hold The Last Picture Show dear, this movie still works as a perfect sequel. It takes a different approach - humor - to enlarge the characters, to show the toll of the intervening decades of American life, to meditate on the sadness of growing old, and demonstrate the precious bond that comes to people with a shared past. [28 Sep 1990]

Unlawful Entry is a heck of a nail-biting suspense piece, and a surprisingly intelligent movie about the paradox of police brutality. [26 June 1992]

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.

Falls disastrously flat.

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

The kind of movie you're glad somebody had the guts to make, but you don't really want to endure.

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

It should have been a cut above the usual teen comedy. But it touches the same old bases in the same old dumb ways.

The film concludes that there's still simply no way out of the forest.

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.

Fails to be anything special. It makes passable preteen entertainment but comes off as clunky and heavy-handed in most of the places it should be graceful and enchanting.

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.

No, it doesn't exactly re-create the magic that made the original such an instant classic, but it's faster and more involving than "Reloaded" and it rounds off the premise and themes of the trilogy in a surprisingly satisfying way.

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

The movie is exactly what it's billed to be: the successful blending of two distinctly different filmmaking sensibilities from two different generations. But the stronger, and more pessimistic, sensibility -- Kubrick's -- carries the day.

There's no real wit or cleverness to the script.

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.

The movie never gets off the ground. Kaufman's script is never especially clever and often is rather pretentious.

Quickly becomes an endurance test: like watching an old Carol Burnett skit that's not working, or a high school play that's trying to be bad.

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]

A resounding dud.

An excruciating rehash that has virtually none of the wit and charm of the original.

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.

Grueling but ultimately rewarding new documentary.

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.

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.

Simply enjoy its witty and expertly crafted scenes, its controlled performances, its eccentric but mostly admirable characters, its succession of bleak but cozily Nordic panoramas and its surprisingly optimistic view of the world.

When, in its eventful final act, Merhige finally reveals what this thing is REALLY all about, it comes not with any blissful storytelling satisfaction but a grinding sense that this strange movie is a structural mess.

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.

A mesmerizingly suspenseful drama.

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

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.

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]

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

While Madison is earnest and inoffensive, it offers no surprises, few fascinating characters and a hackneyed script.

A botched job: the various relationships and personal histories of the characters are never made clear, the last act is glaringly disjointed, the writing and direction are all over the map.

Hanson's real strength as a filmmaker is subtle suspense, and his film is even more eerie when his characters are out of the water. His setup of the situation is a small masterpiece of visual storytelling, and he sustains the psychological tension. [30 Sep 1994]

Morrow and Linney are gifted, extremely likable actors, and the movie has some ingratiating moments and a seductive soundtrack. But there's a by-the-numbers inevitability to every scene, and it never clicks into place to be anything special.

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.

A mostly fascinating, often frustrating, boldly uncommercial Hollywood version of a boldly uncommercial art film. It's very atypical of the previous work of both director and star, and it's as personal a film, I suspect, as Cruise will ever make.

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.

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.

Almost perfect ghoulish family entertainment. [24 Aug 1990]

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.

It's a consciousness-raising personal odyssey in the tradition of such recent indie hits as "Sideways" and "About Schmidt" -- only less obviously comedic and, as always with Jarmusch, blissfully unresolved.

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

When it's good, there is no more riveting movie genre than a courtroom drama, and Class Action is one of the best in ages - perhaps since "The Verdict" in 1982. [15 Mar 1991]

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

The attainment it achieves is in the depths of pointless, mean-spirited exploitation.

The writing here is truly dismal.

It never quite takes off.

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

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.

Not terrible, but distinctly disappointing, not nearly as engaging or thrilling as its premise seems to promise.

It's eye-filling, well-cast, often very funny and executed with great imagination and flair.

The cumulative effect of the movie is repulsive and depressing.

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.

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

A funny, sad, scary and ultimately tragic coming-of-age drama/black comedy that skillfully -- and uncompromisingly -- creates its own world and uniquely pessimistic vision.

The movie goes down very easily.

In the end, it's just a pointless downer.

An absorbing slice of the New China and a fascinating duel between two magnificently stubborn antagonists.

Flat-out one of the best Bonds ever.

Popcorn is not scary enough to work as horror, not funny enough to work as comedy, not cute enough to work as camp, not skilled enough to work as a tribute to the bad movies of the '50s, and so indifferently acted by the cast (including Tony Roberts, Dee Wallace Stone and Ray Walston) that it just seems a waste of everyone's time. [01 Feb 1991]

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.

It is a foul-mouthed British underworld comedy so they may be hoping it will attract the hip audience of films like "Snatch" and "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels."

A pathetic sports comedy that aspires to be a college-football version of "Major League" and doesn't even get close. [27 Sept 1991]

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.

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.

No one does this genre better than actor-writer-director Christopher Guest.

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

It's a rich, engrossing ensemble drama that reveals itself very slowly, is filled with multidimensional characters and multi-layered performances, and works toward an amazingly verisimilitude. [19 Jan 1996]

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.

But the main reason you might find the film a bad trip is that its 30-year-old Holden Caulfield-type hero is so harrowingly unsympathetic: unpleasant, unappealing, self-pitying.

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.

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

The humor is very broad, the occasional attempts at suspense are uniformly unsuccessful, and the script is a by-the-numbers collection of sci-fi movie cliches, right down to the - groan - lonely child who adopts a lovable and misunderstood alien. [27 Apr 1990]

Kidman's Virginia Woolf is already controversial -- Yet there's something fierce, noble and deeply affecting in her work that mirrors Woolf's prose style, and her turbulent presence is the soul of the movie.

Penn has overwritten the dialogue and, though the filmed-in-Nebraska movie has a certain gritty authenticity, it rings vaguely false. You sense he has no knowledge of the '60s, Midwestern angst or smalltown life. [04 Oct 1991]

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]

Like D.O.A., Against All Odds, No Way Out and other recent remakes of film noir classics, this overblown and heavy-handed film is just one more reminder of how much more thoughtful and entertaining movies used to be. [21 Sep 1990]

There's a huge subplot that makes absolutely no sense at all and, in the end, the only thing the movie has going for it is Diesel's Neanderthal charm.

A kind of "Seabiscuit"-lite.

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

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.

An unusually satisfying and inspiring historical epic from one of contemporary cinema's best filmmakers.

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

Yes, you've seen this movie a hundred times before, and "The Cutting Edge" is even more annoying than most predictable sports movies because it was so obviously shot on the cheap: the overall production values are as low as any film released by a major studio this year. [27 March 1992]

It's a strange and strangely unaffecting little drama -- but played very flat, with no particular emotional impact sought or achieved.

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]

The story is so compelling and the movie is such a pleasure to the eyes and ears.

The film's deliberate pace, its constantly confusing structure, its thematic vagueness and its clumsy and often embarrassingly amateurish Garden of Eden sequences combine to make The Loss of Sexual Innocence at best, a tough sit; at worst, a self-consciously arty parable of a self-indulgent filmmaker. [30 Jun 1999]

Penn's direction is amazingly sharp and intuitive, full of masterful touches that give an epic dimension and scope to the parable.

An unusual, visually hypnotic, American Gothic historical epic that traces the rise and tragic fall of a Western mining magnate of the Gilded Age.

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.

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.

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.

An extraordinarily absorbing neo-realistic tragedy.

It's an unimaginative, mean-spirited affair that makes you hate yourself for laughing at it, and it's so devoid of anything close to wit, subtlety or sophistication that it stands as damning evidence that Hollywood has surrendered wholesale to stupidity and crassness.

A sleazy, uninspired, pathetically unfunny sex farce.

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]

With his usual intelligence, technical virtuosity (the reverse-aging effects are astounding) and storytelling panache, director Fincher gives the film a power and unity that make nearly three hours go by in a flash and pulls its diverse elements together to be something unique for a Hollywood movie -- a true spiritual experience.

It's a much more interesting and engrossing film than its somewhat nefarious reputation may indicate -- though, granted, elements of it are very hard to take, and it finally leaves you feeling pretty down and out.

Ironically, the challenge of directing a Japanese-language film with a non-English-speaking cast seems to have brought out the very best in Eastwood. His vision is alternately intimate and sweeping, his touch never seemed more light and sure, and several of his scenes are so delicate, dynamic and prototypically Japanese they could have been directed by Akira Kurosawa.

A delectable must-see.

It's a gripping outdoor adventure and the movies' most inspiring epic survival story in years.

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

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.

The movie offers one authentically terrific performance: Beach as Hayes. He's so painfully sympathetic in the role that he absolutely breaks your heart, and he looks like the front-runner in the best-supporting actor Oscar race.

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.

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

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

That play has made it to the big screen, but it has come so late in the moribund body-switching comedy cycle that it seems like a tired cliche, and a big-budget production and star cast just can't seem to breathe any life into it. [10 Jul 1992]

Greenstreet captures all the hubbub on film but, while he makes the point that we are indeed a house divided, he can't quite persuade us that this particular situation is a metaphoric example of our national malaise.

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.

It comes off as tedious, pretentious, self-indulgent, talky and so garbled it might have been improvised by the actors.

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]

Wonderfully cast but underwhelming and never especially believable.

By far the best thing about it is Zeta-Jones.

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

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's one saving grace is Ledger (Mel Gibson's son in "The Patriot").

A poorly written collection of comic-book movie cliches that offers nothing new to the genre, generates very little in the way of action thrills and plays like a self-important, humorless rip-off of "Kill Bill."

The movie grabs us from its heart-pounding opening sequence and pulls us inexorably along its trajectory with the grip of the last gruesome act of a Greek tragedy. Its fascination is not what happens but HOW it happens.

If you loved the 1990 smash hit, Home Alone, you may have similar feelings about its inevitable sequel, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. It's the exact same movie. And then again, you might feel cheated for the same reason - or at least wish you had rented the video of the old one and saved yourself the time, trouble and cost of a baby sitter. [20 Nov 1992]

The final scene of Balthazar's demise is one of cinema's most moving and haunting moments.

A clever, charming, laugh-out-loud-funny road comedy that works in almost every scene.

It's an immensely successful movie - and far and away the most emotionally charged, psychologically uneasy and diabolically suspenseful thriller Polanski's made since his heyday. [27 Jan 1995, p. 26]

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.

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.

Like Lyne's other heavy-breathers, this one has glossy production values, a relentlessly somber mood and its share of sexual gymnastics. But it's atypical and unique in the way it builds a volcano waiting to erupt with nail-biting anticipation and sympathy for all three characters.

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

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.

There's no denying that Eating is a significant achievement: a movie that explores one of life's most important subjects in an intelligent, entertaining and original manner. [29 Mar 1991]

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

When movie historians talk about the greatest Hollywood comedies of all time, they invariably mention this classic, 1937 screwball romp that showcased Carole Lombard's most endearing movie performance. [19 May 1995]

A very good movie could probably be made about the black experience in the Old West, but Mario Van Peebles' Posse is not it.[14 May 1993]

It has the low-budget look and feel of an indie dating comedy -- and not a very good one at that.

It's by far the worst comedy either he (Carrey) or the Farrelly Brothers have ever made.

Johnny Suede seems in every way a pale imitation that is so vacuous and self-consciously hip that it just fades into nothingness. [13 Nov 1992]

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.

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.

A brilliantly conceived, boldly executed, cumulatively thrilling fantasy epic that expands the art of film and is sure to be the middle link of one of the movies' greatest trilogies.

It's a buoyant, often thrilling piece of animation that more or less does for the Central African rain forest what "The Lion King" did for the East African savanna.

Henry and June may be as sexually explicit as any major Hollywood production since the early '70s, but it is also intelligent, well-acted and expertly crafted. [05 Oct 1990]

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

The best thing -- maybe the only good thing -- about the expensive sci-fi movie, Jumper, is its high-concept premise, which gives its hero the power of teleporting himself anywhere on the globe in the blink of an eye: from the Coliseum of Rome to the North Pole.

Well-cast and sporadically gripping.

Though it seems long and its pace occasionally lags, it certainly struck me as a well-mounted, gloriously eye-filling and often exhilarating entertainment that brings back some of the delicious excitement of the great movie musicals.

Outrageously confident and wearing a kilt through the mayhem, Jackson proves once again that he has few equals in bringing off a broad, over-the-top lead.

Forget "Raising Helen" and "The Notebook," this is the movie summer's most touching young romance.

The script and direction by Irish filmmaker Mary McGuckian is just deadly.

Makes a serviceable summer shoot-'em-up, but it's surprisingly trashy and rather stupid, and its efforts toward being a gripping military drama in the Tom Clancy tradition are fairly pathetic.

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]

As a matter of fact, so much of Pacific Heights is laughable, and the film is so preposterous as a premise and so clumsily directed and lacking in suspense, that it plays like a parody of a Hitchcock thriller. Or did I miss the point and this was Schlesinger's intention all along? [28 Sept 1990]

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.

A fairly loathsome and shallow movie about loathsome and shallow people, but it's almost worth catching to see star Christian Bale chew up the scenery.

The music, art direction and camerawork blend together with an integrity and scope that's wonderfully exhilarating. Every frame seems to communicate the grandeur, power and fatal pull of the sea.

As a director, Duchovny is in big trouble every frame of the way. His characters ring false, his scenes seem improperly motivated in a glaring way, and his distasteful obsession with imagery of unflushed cigarette butts bobbing in a toilet is beyond inexplicable.

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

Rather incredibly ends up being a kind of inspirational upper.

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]

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

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.

Williams' self-conscious and rather bland performance never comes close to bringing his character to life.

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]

A rousing, eye-filling, song-and-dance period musical spectacular that - despite a certain inability to decide whether it wants to be a kids' movie or "Les Miserables" - is a surprisingly enjoyable and entertaining throwback to the great movie musical style of the '40s and '50s. [10 Apr 1992]

His characters and his situations all ring false, and his movie just seems painful and pointless. [12 Jan 1996]

It disrespects Seattle. Not only is this yet another filmed-in-Vancouver movie that's supposed to be set here, it takes place in a blinding rainstorm of the kind only a Hollywood rain machine can make. As we all know, it never rains like that in Seattle.

An almost documentary reality and voyeuristic appeal.

The premise clicks, the stars couldn't be more likable, and It Takes Two is as cute and imaginatively directed a family movie as we've had all year. [17 Nov 1995]

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]

This latest remake goes back to the spirit and letter of Eric Knight's 1940 novel.

With the original stage cast, the film is doggedly faithful to the play but has failed to translate it into much of a film.

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

An excessive, expressionistic, agreeably nonjudgmental period biography that carries with it an enormous emotional wallop. [01 Mar 1991]

Wants to be an offbeat, hard-edged, inspirational sports movie, but it misses its target by a country mile.

This week's excruciatingly dismal dating comedy. [8 March 1986]

Above all, I'm Not Scared pays off our emotional investment. In the end, its elements come together with the kind of genuinely thrilling, deeply satisfying climax that even the better Hollywood movies just can't seem to pull off anymore.

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.

Many regular moviegoers will be appalled by its gleeful crudity and saddened by the spectacle of three icon stars mugging through a farce that's not that many notches above "Jackass: The Movie."

Like all great film noir, however, the real delight of this film is in its mood and atmosphere.

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]

Seems a much more even-handed and thoughtful take on the man than anyone might have expected.

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.

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

This emoting doesn't mix well with the comedy and action, of course, and the best that can be said of the film is that it's marginally entertaining, and (for Murphy) reasonably inoffensive. But he's competent enough to make us suspect he might be surprisingly good if he ever did get a real Denzel Washington part. [17 Jan 1997]

As dreary an hour-and-a-half as you could ever want to spend at the movies.

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

The movie also qualifies as a kind of low-rent, male version of "Dreamgirls," but -- while many of the numbers are pleasant -- it doesn't have the moxie to work as a musical.

And the movie stands as a fitting memorial to River Phoenix, whose performance lingered in my mind for days after seeing it. [12 Nov 1993]

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 film's technological selling point -- having a computer-animated Scooby in a mostly live-action world -- is strangely unimpressive. In fact, it's virtually unnoticeable: a testament perhaps to the audience's increasing knowledge that in today's CG-driven Hollywood, all movies are cartoons.

Its script is sharp, its dialogue is acerbic, its stars could hardly be better and, in its more sparkling moments, it exudes some of the flavor and charm of the later Hepburn-Tracy comedies.

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.

Hilarious, near-flawless.

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

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.

It's an exciting action spectacle and a thoughtful, cumulatively moving family drama.

Ostensibly a love story, the film is also handicapped by Téchiné's strong gay sensibility and clear lack of romantic interest in his characters.

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

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.

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.

It's endlessly confusing.

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]

Since the expensive new movie version of the popular video game, Tomb Raider, is very true to its origins, it's a colossal bore.

Sporadically enjoyable but instantly forgettable comedy.

Weekend at Bernie's II stands as just about the best argument I've seen in a long time that the Motion Picture Association of America's rating system is a complete farce. [10 July 1993]

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

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.

This is still a director's movie and the real success belongs to Redford, whose overall confidence and command as a director have never been this impressive. He gets a little extra out of every scene and every performance, and he brings the film's diverse themes and story strands together with the special touch of the master filmmaker he has clearly become. [16 Sept 1994]

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.

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.

A sad, sad, sad, sad rip-off.

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.

Every frame of the way, it's eminently clear that Primer is the work of an engineer, not a film- maker.

Its overall effect is haunting, hypnotic and moving in a profound and unexpected way.

The movie misfires: It's numbingly cold and soulless, and the zeitgeist stays far beyond its reach. But it's so visually striking you almost don't notice, its relentlessly somber mood has a certain masochistic appeal and, while hardly a career-redefining performance, Hanks is as winning as ever.

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.

Broad and funny, its sensibility is very campy and it's out to be loved by everyone.

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

Makes the translation with all its wit, incisive dialogue and eccentric characters intact, and then some.

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.

As a thriller, Next goes a certain distance on Cage's sad-sack charm and sense of humor, but it does nothing with its intriguing premise, and it's mostly just one more tedious and progressively dumb collection of Hollywood action clichés.

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