Contemporary adult themes that resonate as much as those in Perfect Blue (stalking, the cult of celebrity) have become increasingly rare in this animated genre better known for tentacled demons and cute forest sprites; it's refreshing to be reminded that not everything in anime need feature that lovable scamp Pikachu, either.

Kaplan's lustily awful film is to be avoided if at all possible, and if not, well, don't say I didn't warn you.

Just enough laughs to keep you from feeling blatantly shortchanged.

A mildly diverting comedy but has little of real substance to recommend it.

For all its flaws, Better Than Chocolate is a fair enough entertainment value -- certainly no less meritorious overall than, say, Runaway Bride. But, like many other films that have boasted both a high likability quotient and a positive social message, it seems to be getting a bit more credit than it really deserves. And as far as I'm concerned it's no favor to allow a filmmaker of Anne Wheeler's obvious gifts to operate so far below peak efficiency.

A quietly interesting but unusually perceptive story about love and relationships.

Gleefully, goofily over-the-top.

Why remake Norman Jewison's staunchly cool 1968 heist film in such a lackadaisical, uninspired manner?

A mess, albeit one with occasional flashes of brilliance.

Often elegant, at times frustratingly uneven, comedy that is hopelessly in love with theatre, poetry, and -- for once -- marriage.

Clearly the single best, the single coolest (to borrow from Harry Knowles) animated film in a great while.

Works best when it works its mournful magic alone, without fanfare, using only the flickering fear in Cole's gaze as it meets the compassion in Crowe's.

At once emotionally charged and genuinely, disconcertingly surreal...a marvel of subdued, genuine filmmaking.

Too bad their characters are comprised of nothing but the most hackneyed clichés and that it apparently never occurred to anyone to add even sketches of believable character development.

A preposterously silly bit of work, chock-full-o' nuts and rife with the kind of plot holes you could drive a submersible ROV through.

This biting parody of flyover-state beauty contests feels like a bad made-for-TV movie of the week.

Like the cartoon on which it's based, Inspector Gadget has moments of absurd fun and droll wit, but they are fleeting and few.

Effects-driven chills rarely work as well these days as good old-fashioned audience imagination (a fact firmly driven home by the breakaway success of The Blair Witch Project). Unfortunately, De Bont has wedged so much bang-pow drivel in his film that it ends up being about as tantalizing as a desiccated Gummi Bear.

A smallish cast peppered with a pair of bullish performances by both Platt and the lesser-known Gleeson. The two spark some chemistry between them, which is more than can be said for Pullman and Fonda's moribund performances.

It's an engaging recollection that's more sweet than bittersweet, tempered by an eagerness to please that pulls us into its remembrances of things past.

These scenes of debauchery and lust that make up the film's centerpiece are among some of the most powerful and disturbing ever put to film.

Ingenious in its simplicity.

A fairly uninspired, albeit entertaining, Muppet movie that falls short of the original outing from Jim Henson's creature shop while still managing to bring in a few lesser chuckles.

Amidst the rubble of political rhetoric that underlies Arlington Road, one thing is clear: The enemy is us.

A go-for-the-lowest-common-denominator grab bag of raunchy sex gags and freakish outbursts. The cool thing is that it works.

An intelligent, viscerally kinetic throw-down, a jolt of pure adrenalized Spike that holds more than a few touches of genius in its overripe storyline.

The script by S.S. Wilson and Brent Maddock (Ghost Dad) is so jumbled and the direction so chaotic that it's often hard to tell what's going on -- where, when, and why.

Gross-out funny, over-the-top offensive, and just as amusing -- or idiotic -- as you find that Comedy Central sitcom.