A carefully conceived and earnest movie that announces its many points just a bit too carefully and earnestly.

By contemporary standards, The Recruit is a halfway decent spy melodrama -- at least to the halfway point.

At best it's a bit like Mel Brooks' "The History of the World Part I" (except Ramis stops somewhere in Genesis); at worst it's like a Scary Movie-type parody of John Huston's "The Bible."

It's a real shame the film gets mushy at the end. The result is an all too conventional ending on a film that should have been much better.

As subtle as a cinder block crashing on your head.

If only it had a plot mere humans could follow.

That's the problem of Downfall in a nutshell: It provokes insufficient emotional and intellectual responses to a grotesque and atrocious dictatorship. Instead of the banality of evil, it gives us the banality of banality.

A cautionary tale, a warning not to gather all of your neurotic friends in one room - or better yet, not to have so many neurotic friends.

Gets the hell of war right and struggles to depict the unyielding passion of love. But the two sides make for an uneasy mix, one that not even the actors seem comfortable with.

But the movie really just sort of peters out rather than reaching a sublime point. In "Groundhog Day," there was an exquisite moment where the wonderfully horrid Bill Murray actually regained contact with his humanity and rejoined his species. No such thing occurs in "Multiplicity"; the movie just staggers toward a point where it's gone on long enough to do everybody the favor of ending it. Send out the writers. [17 July 1996]

Caan is so good as a man who watches helplessly as everything he's worked for crumbles around him, that he steals the picture from both Wahlberg and Phoenix, the ostensible stars.

It's so wispy that at the end you wonder: Exactly what runs in the family?

A pleasantly lightweight confection.

Helped immensely by a lush and poignant musical score by Joe Hisaishi, Fireworks makes a quietly powerful impact. [22 May 1998]

Shark Tale is "Finding Nemo" with bigger-name stars, far less heart and, the guess here is, about one-third the staying power.

There's a ton of joy in The Legend of 1900 -- but it's laid on so thick that one ends up more numbed than stirred, overcome by one too many Hallmark moments.

Retro in a refreshing sort of way, a return to those sci-fi films of the 1950s, filled with cheesy special effects and over-the-top acting, but with a gem of an idea at its core, and all done with just enough wit and inventiveness to keep audiences in the cheap seats happy.

Until the last 15 minutes, What Lies Beneath is a well-paced maze that earns every gasp from its audience.

Romeo Is Bleeding revels in its own trashiness. It aspires to join that small circle of near-outlaw works set on the grimy edges of film noir, along with "Reservoir Dogs" and "True Romance" -- defiant champions of ultraviolence, campy outrageousness and dime-novel nihilism. Alas, it's nowhere near as good as those two, but it has a certain zany charm. [22 Apr 1994]

Too soft on its lead character and too willing to chalk up America's drug appetites to the times-that-were-a-changin' in the '60s.

Should make comic modern-day fanboys happy, what with its dark undertones, its beat-it-to-a-pulp action and its sly winks at comic greats past and present. Everyone else, including fans of Will Eisner's original Spirit, may find themselves wondering what all the fuss is about.

Stuck On You is proof that sweet and funny don't always make for the best mix.

A lyrical, mysterious and provocative meditation on the power of memory and narrative, After Life is a fascinating speculation on life and death -- until its plot takes a turn so melodramatic that the spell is broken. [20 Aug 1999, p.3E]

In this day of overstuffed action flicks and dumbed-down "comedies," (Snow Day) is kinda refreshing.

Truth is, one can probably tell as much about Jackson Pollock the man by looking at his paintings than by watching this movie.

An uneven, if lively, diversion.

The most refreshing thing about the original Men in Black was that it was relatively small - a modest, slapdash, 98-minute special-effects farce. The most refreshing thing about Men in Black II is that it is 10 minutes shorter.

It's a shame his (Foxx) performance isn't surrounded by a better film.

Abandon tags Katie Holmes as a talented actor with surprising range and vast, untapped potential - so much, in fact, that watching her, one can almost overlook the film's many flaws. Almost.

For a documentary about a music festival, Soul Power doesn't include nearly enough music.

If only the director, or his deus, could have delivered us from the inevitable shock ending, which blends Darwin and Einstein with purest P.T. Barnum.

Sort of feel-good lesson kids will enjoy and parents should welcome.

With an all-star cast maintaining an amiable tone throughout, the result is a movie in which everyone should see themselves for at least a few minutes (and wish they were that young, that beautiful and that well-off).

Best advice: Just sit back and watch Freeman anyway. The man's a cinematic treasure.

Vintage Chan, with amazingly well-choreographed fight scenes.

While Bresson's insistence on juxtaposing brute force with sublime grace isn't subtle, it is effective.

Anyone who isn't charmed by the idea of a Beetle crossing the finish line first is either chronically churlish or isn't trying.

Star Maps is the work of a talented group of young actors and filmmakers anxious to try as much as they can and see what works. Not all of it does.

The story's more sober elements are regularly leavened by hip visual flourishes and even some quiet comedy.

Has the grisly appetite, if not the execution of the original. What it also has are monstrously good Ralph Fiennes and Edward Norton, plus a fine young Hannibal to save it.

It's not meant to be scary. It's meant to be Disney -- a fun and warm children's fantasy.

This movie has an aura of forced tragedy, like a fourth-generation version of "Requiem for a Heavyweight."

Isn't perfect, but it's fun, and Tim Allen shines

Occasionally quite amusing, it just doesn't build.

We don't experience the drama from the inside out because everything is on the surface. Redford is the only one who supplies internal life to Spy Game.

By contrast, the most amusing character is the ever-affable John Mahoney as the patriarch of the wayward Fitzpatrick clan. He gives consistently terrible advice, which his sons follow, which messes up their messy lives even more. I like that in a father.

Scrambled space-time comedy that's as light and silly as it is erratic.

What sucks the wind out of the movie's sails is the vacuum at its core.

So much of "Thunderheart" is so good and its intentions are so noble that it pains me to reach the ultimate judgment that the movie is a mess.

In the end, viewers are left with a nagging feeling that this was a long way to go for the incongruous pleasure of watching 20th-century method acting on a 17th-century stage.

Ephron's attempt at dark humor isn't a complete payoff overall in Lucky Numbers, but it doesn't fail either.

This handsome and occasionally exciting movie flounders because it confuses Tinseltown glamour with legendary heroism and beauty.

Cut above this genre's usual industrial sludge, even when the chops and kicks are too fast to follow.

The script is clever and would be brilliant if it worked.

Angelina Jolie focuses her wild energy into outlandish heroics, and emerges with more attractiveness and credibility than all three of those silly Charlie's Angels combined.

There's a subtlety to Crimson Gold that deserves applause.

Depends on breezy attitude and effortless delivery for its success.

Steven Soderbergh's Solaris is an uptight movie -- the opposite of his scintillating "Out of Sight."

The movie, in fact, is a lot like Willis' performance: impressive in an iconographic way, but really not nearly as much fun as it should be. It's like watching a spitting contest between totem poles. [20 Sep 1996]

Best when DeVito plays off the supporting cast surrounding him.

If nothing else, it may make one appreciate the cartoon even more.

Even at its most enjoyable, Eight Legged Freaks is disappointing -- it grazes your funny bone instead of tickling it like crazy.

The movie captures exactly why those of us who do this for a living can't seem to shed ourselves of it: that crazed, dizzying, exhausting sense of being, if ever so briefly, where it's happening; and the sense that somewhere out there in the great unknown landscape that is our readership is somebody who cares what we write. The movie understands what draws people to Suns both real and imaginary.

Role Models has a tart surface and a heart of goo. The movie grows more obvious as it goes along.

The climax and epilogue are the juiciest, most tough-minded bits in the movie. Too bad Mayer didn't work his way backward from the end.

I hope the producers bring Lin back for the fifth film and strip it down even more. They can lose all the human characters except Brian and Mia and simply call it F&F.

Huckabees boasts an impressive cast, and every one of them is fun to watch. But there's a strong sense that no one really knows what's going on here.

Turns into an amusing showcase for two of Hollywood's most appealing young actors.

New York Minute isn't High Art, but it is highly entertaining, especially if you're a member of its target audience.

What keeps the picture alive is Ghobadi's surprising, often explosive grasp of visual farce.

The best thing about 13 Going on 30 is that an ever-game Jennifer Garner is cheerfully convincing as a 13-year-old in a 30-year-old body. The worst thing is the feeling we've seen this movie before, done better.

Almereyda has done a splendid job of rendering Hamlet as expressive visually as it is verbally.

No great shakes as a documentary, but there are great shakes in the sight of 10- and 11-year-olds learning ballroom dancing in the New York City public school system.

What we have here is a suburban-legend movie stripped of rough edges and cut off from any depth that might have made it insidiously haunting.

The New Guy doesn't have a new idea in its head, but it trods over the old ground with such wit and heart that its lack of originality can be overlooked, if not entirely forgiven.

Look at Me is a virtuoso exercise in domestic tension - with the emphasis on "exercise."

Austin does have a psychedelic buoyancy and Dr. Evil an addle-pated sadistic goofiness that are original and engaging, but Myers doesn't build on their best stuff. That's where a real plot would help.

Eagle Eye has half an idea in its head, but over two hours there's no time to complete or explore it, since the movie isn't just a chase but a combination steeplechase and destruction derby.

Closely follows the Schwarzenegger formula, right down to the fiery, explosive-rife finale. If you like the formula, you'll probably enjoy the movie.

As the threesome's movie games push them into an incestuous menage a trois, the movie loses its grip.

The performers are all keen at expressing different variations on uptightness and with-itness. And McDormand is sensational.

A razzle-dazzle lower-depths melodrama.

Connery and Cage are a compelling team and redeem the film from ruin despite the mechanical plot, an excessive body count and a miraculous recovery (you'll know it when you see it).

The story of the triumphant underdog is irresistible, even when every single plot point comes marching down Main Street.

Too bad Kidron, Fielding and company pay only cafe lip service to satire.

Even as trick movies go, Confidence feels surfacey to a fault.

Nell doesn't jell. Earnest and well-intentioned, the film never quite breaks through a membrane into believability, and hence into empathy. [23 Dec 1994]

Tykwer made Potente a star in Run Lola Run, and here she repays him 10 times over. Without her force of gravity, this film would waft into the ether.

Nearly everything fresh and exciting about the 2002 documentary "Dogtown and Z-Boys" - the story of the Santa Monica-Ocean Park-Venice area misfits who revolutionized skateboarding in the 1970s - becomes studied and secondhand in The Lords of Dogtown.

Undeniably charming -- a dog movie that's more lovable mutt than stately pedigree.

Yet what is most impressive about the movie are the odd notes of grace it provides its ostensible villains. [4 Aug 1995]

Simply twiddling with the fine-tuning on the central character is not enough to warrant remaking a film. Both Glover and Willard deserve better.

A film as clever and embracingly ribald as this shouldn't have to resort to cliche in the end; director Nigel Cole should have kept his girls in Britain and kept the mood light.

Heaven is so determined to be poetic and beautiful, it comes across as forced and didactic, a lesson in relative morality whose storyline doesn't so much flow as lurch from one stretch to another.

Partially financed by the liberal Move On.org, speaks most eloquently when it lets Fox News do the talking.

Paid In Full's performances - especially by the always-engaging Phifer -- are strong, its message worthwhile and its sincerity doubtless.

In an era of exploding documentary innovation, Girlhood simply follows unfamiliar characters down familiar paths. It's not a negligible experience, but it's not an eye-opener, either.

Kingsley gives the movie a jolt and blows the rest of it to pieces.