It's Stiller's knowledgeable use of these smaller touches that (along with the excellent cast -- it's great to see Winona relinquishing period gowns and back where she can do some real damage) pushes the film along a solid, fresh line and toward its admittedly Hollywood conclusion. Stiller and company imbue their film with an honest, sarcastic wit that's all too familiar: apparently, somebody's been filming our lives. Does this mean we'll all be getting royalties?

Certain things must be answered, like Seagal's environmental lip service that is utterly mocked by the movie's need to blow things up and destroy property.

This remake of the 1972 Peckinpah gem lacks the Ali McGraw/Steve McQueen heart and soul of the original, opting instead for the vacuous and thoroughly forgettable anti-chemistry of Baldwin and Basinger.

This movie simply reeks.

Manic energy is the term that comes most readily to mind when describing Ace Ventura.

The reality of this film is that it is pretty innocent fare, for the most part, and Depardieu does prove his versatility by possessing a natural comic flair that eases him into the paunchy papa bear role.

Henkin's vision of Mona Demarkov (Olin) as a remorseless, amoral, lethal, and sexually devastating (you should see what she can do with a prosthetic limb) arch-criminal is a nightmare come to life. But perhaps like dreams, the story works best when played out in the furtive dark spaces of the mind's eye.

Lush, succulent, verdant, aromatic. These are the kind of words that come to mind when describing this new Vietnamese film, a film dominated by textures rather than plot.

Gone is the working-class charm and truly clever, humorous situations evocative of the early 1960s and in their place, all the sophomoric, redundant jokes reminiscent of the Police Academy films. Even stars from the original show -- Nipsey Russell and Al Lewis -- can't save it.

Although Ferrara's Body Snatchers might not be the preferred among the three versions, it is nevertheless a clever reading of the story. The decision to start the pod plot within the military is a great one, and there's a disconcerting lack of privacy for the Anwar character.

Driving home with all the windows down, I, for once, relished the bumps on South Lamar and leaned into the curves along Pease Park and, home at last, gave my trusty, tired old Honda a grateful, affectionate pat on its overheated hood.

Part drama, part civics lesson, part entertainment, it sustains our deep curiosity despite the forgone knowledge of how things turn out.

For in relating the true story of Conlon's wrongful conviction and 15-year imprisonment, Sheridan has used the tools of the filmmaker to evoke a visceral echo of Conlon's waking nightmare.

With token computer graphics thrown in to pad an already overlong script, Ghost In the Machine gamely tries to hop aboard the Virtual Reality bandwagon and only succeeds in crashing the Net.

Grumpy Old Men is supposed to be about how love reinvents life and I'm not even really sure where it gets lost, but it ends up going nowhere.

As much as these actors heroically struggle to focus the film, the director more successfully hacks it apart. But if you really love Westerns, despite its faults, it's got to be recommended for Kilmer's performance alone.

While it's sad the filmmakers didn't lavish more detail on the characters' faces and fluidity of their movement, the picture is still dynamic looking: moody, haunting, full of bold shapes and action, striking compositions, and clever quotes from the encyclopedia of noir. It has style to spare. And for any kid at heart whose breath catches at the sight of a caped figure swooping across the sky, it has moments when your lungs will be stopped by a Dark Knight to dream on.

Still, Philadelphia is comprised of enough “little moments” that provide all the richness and grace we need to get us past the film's more inelegant moments. Primary here are the transcendent lead performances by Hanks and Washington, both of whom are, at all times, exciting to watch.

It's a mess, but it's Wenders' mess, and that means that there are any number of salvageable parts to the whole.

Unfortunately, The Pelican Brief comes across as a prolonged bout with deja vu: you know you've seen this before, and more than once at that.

The movie's ending at the train station and the modern-day epilogue feel protracted and indulgent...Apart from the ending though, this is Spielberg's most articulate movie ever.

The astounding performance of David Thewlis as Johnny is in no small measure responsible for the success of Naked. Talking his way through every scene, his portrait of this drifter is mesmerizingly appealing, hateful, humorous, self-destructive, honest and compelling. Still, I am unable to separate my loathing for this character from my feelings about the formal achievements of this movie. The effect may be one of naked observation but the view is ugly and corrosive.

Surjik's skewed Canadian vision keeps WW2 from descending to the level of Thanksgiving leftovers, with frequent touches of out-and-out weirdness and the sure-footed knowledge that this is a comedy, period. It doesn't have to try to be anything more, and that, I think, is why it works so very well.

Certainly movies are a business, but it's only good form for them to at least pretend that they have some reasons for existence other than the purely mercenary. The goal of entertainment has been forgotten here in the mad dash for formulaic guarantees. These comedy nun pushers have forgotten that there's no bottom line at heaven's gate.

A film about Geronimo and about the great feared Chiricahua Apaches would offend, should offend our sensibilities. We should be forced to confront and understand a different way of thinking. This is a more civilized movie, a more noble movie, a remarkably and consistently boring movie.

I'm not sure if this is a failing of the play, the actor, the director, or whatever, but it's a nagging perplexity at the center of this story. Yet there's so much else going on here, ideas and lines of thought that it engenders, that it's difficult not to enjoy the experiences. It's also bitingly funny.

There's not as much bombast here as there was in Parker's Commitments, but then Frears is an entirely different kind of director. He prefers the ensemble to the character study, and here he does a wonderful job of it.

At its best, 32 Short Films manages to convey something of Gould’s state of mind, often using the musician’s own words.