By all means, buy a ticket to The Fast Runner, but don't go expecting a masterpiece; actually, in its first hour, the dramaturgy and staging of scenes set in igloos are cramped and amateurish.

As a spy film, The Sum of All Fears is flaccid, and as an expose of nuclear threats, there's not enough information.

It has a premise that never stops percolating.

Avoids pretension by never trying to be more than it is -- an acknowledgment that things frequently are not as bad as they seem. That's a concept that deserves a little spreading.

Manipulates the audience.

Nolan pushes the twilight-zone atmosphere so hard that it loses its capacity for mystery. When it's not assaulting us with jolting audiovisual expressions of fatigue, this movie plays like a pedestrian response to David Lynch's effortlessly eerie "Twin Peaks."

Spirit lacks that essential emotional resonance, and suffers because of it.

These actors have a firm playful grasp and a palpable affection for their characters' befuddled dignity and attraction. They understand what Wilde meant by the importance of being earnest.

Until the final shot, the movie keeps you wondering how it will turn out.

It's hard to stomp on a movie that pulls together a rich lay-about, hippies, a punk girl and an Amnesty International worker in a sort of Peaceable Kingdom, but About a Boy shows the limits of affability.

As the sequence builds, it accretes so many heroic and nightmarish associations it plays like a prelude to apocalypse, which of course will come in Episode III. Attack of the Clones is part soda pop, part witches' brew - and all visual ambrosia.

American movies are generally so skittish about sexuality that Adrian Lyne's appetite --and aptitude -- for exploring it in Unfaithful is a relief.

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.

At its best, The Mystic Masseur is like a tall tale that grows more beguiling and credible the taller it gets.

The overarching joke, of course, is that most movies are so lousy they might as well have been made by blind men anyway. Hollywood Ending is only mediocre, but you may leave wondering, what's Allen's excuse?

When the cast and their director are really cooking, they conjure a bipolar sense of high school-age emotion -- and use it to fuel outrageous fantasy.

The cast of Rain is first-rate, especially Wierzbicki and Peirse, whose tense relationship is as loving as it is competitive.

To top it off, the ending is a clumsy cheat. Of course, I was rooting for the news gal to expire and the film to die a quick death.

There's great action moviemaking here: You learn what it means to "carve" a pool, as you learn what it means to "close off" the boxing ring in Ali.

Enigma, named for the Nazi secret-coding machine, has everything going for it except a pulse.

The results are sometimes too frenetic, the laughs too obvious and predictable. But director Joel Zwick paces things well, and leavens the lunacy with enough seriousness (including a wonderfully poignant exchange between Toula and her brother) to keep the film grounded in the real.

Plays like Abbott and Costello Meet Conan the Barbarian.

The story may be about cold-blooded murder, but Bullock's pulsating performance is about the getting of wisdom.

The movie may be Nine Queens, but it slakes your thirst for surprises and thrills because of its Nine Jokers.

Supple, eloquent and enchanting.

For all its pretensions, Changing Lanes, ultimately, is about nothing more profound than one foul day.

Gory but lifeless.

This movie's biggest contribution to film history will be resurrecting Davies' reputation as a natural comedian stuck in deadly costume pictures because her lover wanted her placed on a pedestal.

Its effects don't linger long enough to seriously detract from the raunchy good time had by all.

It's hard to see Franklin's fingerprints on the material. It's as if he directed with his gloves on.

A comedy that doesn't work if you think about it too much. Cut it some slack, however, and you just might have a good time.

A very funny movie ... in some alternate universe, maybe.

Crush is the kind of movie that gives friendship a bad name.

If the movie has a flaw, it's that the working out of Vincent's psychology is too perfect.

To call Death to Smoochy satire -- or parody, burlesque, or even lampoon -- would be too generous. The moviemakers merely glide on the thin ice of yesterday's cynicism.

Not enough to keep Clockstoppers from turning viewers into clock-watchers.

The kind of joyless, over-calculated hit that may leave viewers feeling not haunted but headachy.

So witless it wins most of its laughs when Czech-speaking characters spout obscenities that get translated into English subtitles.

Promises may want to unite the audience in humanitarian emotions, but it's more useful as a prod to examine what these children are learning from their schools, their leaders, and their media.

About as good as the genre gets.

A great, lusty movie in the tradition of Bertrand Blier's "Going Places."

Humorous but much too predictable send-up of reality TV and the sheer banality of it all.

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.

Ice Age snaps with visual wit whenever director Wedge breaks the stale story to pieces and pumps in some bracing fresh air. So it's fitting to find, when the final credits roll, that he played Scrat.

Pleasantly meanders around a group of people who pitch projects and pitch woo on the Riviera.

The movie gives us a time machine that resembles a twin-engined Mixmaster and a script that was tossed together inside one.

Strings of four-letter words are a poor substitute for dialogue, and it's not until the movie is almost over that someone realizes there's no reason, other than assumed macho posturing, for Cube's character to go after these bad guys so hard.

The movie never generates the authority it needs to be all that it can be.

Eventually becomes cliched, predictable and crude. And that's a real sin.

This kind of fiasco turns movie critics into so many Night Stalkers.

The beauty, vibrancy and complexity of Indian culture is on addictive display in Monsoon Wedding. If only there were more to the film.

Painstakingly painful.

Could have been a contender, but it lacks the courage of its own ambivalence.

Go see Crossroads if you want to hear Britney sing or see her wear next-to-nothing. But otherwise, avoid this train wreck at all costs.

Scratch will make even the uninitiated believe in the joy and propulsive power of hip-hop.

Puerile, offensive, degrading, dumb, pointless, insipid and may just well be a harbinger for the end of Western civilization as we know it. But I laughed. Sorry.

The movie goes awry from the opening shots.

Ragged and frenetic.

Collateral Damage isn't jingoistic; it also isn't exciting. It's a depressed rabble-rouser.

There's something junior varsity about the whole sensibility that makes the new version seem more dated than the old one.

See it to be reminded (if you need further reminding) of this actress' remarkable range. Otherwise, take a pass.

An odd little movie. And not in a good way.

Solondz is still stuck in an adenoidal whine.

The Son's Room is the anti-"In the Bedroom." I mean that as a compliment.

Performances by Jim Caviezel and Richard Harris make this a great adventure.

Almost sinks under the weight of too many red herrings, but is rescued by a skewed sense of reality and pervasive sense of dread that should keep audiences from dwelling on them.

For grownups, this treacle is going to be pretty hard to swallow.

The vocal canines appear for about 30 humorous seconds, in a dream sequence, and are then never seen again. Unfortunately, the same can't be said about the rest of the film, which runs an additional 98.5 excruciating minutes.

Italian for Beginners, on its own small scale, is a one-of-a-kind movie: a baggy-pants spiritual comedy.

Delivers an unexpected sweetness.

It's mindless, which is rarely true of French cinema, dull, which is rarely true of Hong Kong films, and portentous, which shouldn't be true of any film about a man-eating dog.

It's considerably flawed. It has a middle that's padded, a look that could use a few more light bulbs, a protagonist who never earns our sympathy, and an audio mix that leans much too heavily on the bass, often making it impossible to understand what's being said.

In its own quiet, voluptuous way, Rivers and Tides, an unpretentiously brilliant documentary, uses the work of Scottish sculptor Andy Goldsworthy to open up the hidden drama of the natural universe.

Black Hawk Down, in the end, is a docudrama. But it's sensationally well done, and it opens up a battlefield that needed to be documented.

Director Gillian Armstrong drains all the emotional energy out of the people who dot her movie's lovely landscape.

The film is so busy that every minute is exhausting. It's as if the filmmakers were idealistic teen-agers afflicted with a group case of Attention Deficit Disorder.

The film has a lot of right in it, including an ending that's suitably uncertain, but fraught with possibilities.

What a relief to see a movie in which an audience responds with peals of laughter to subtle facial shifts as well as punch lines.

It's one of the most ambitious biographical films ever made in this country, and one of the most unusual, moving and exciting.

Hasn't got quite the right sound as it did in Annie Proulx's novel.

A misstep or two aside, you don't have to belong to Mensa to know kids will enjoy it.

Method Man and Redman just don't have the comic timing to pull off 90 minutes at front-and-center.

The indisputably gifted Jim Carrey shows the side of him that just wants to be loved - the Riddler on Ritalin, the Mask unmasked. And it turns out to be stultifying.

This is harmless fun for the holiday season, but Tim Allen doesn't give movie the punch it needs.

A movie masterpiece -- thrilling, passionate and wise.

The union of thought and feeling becomes flesh and blood thanks to four brilliant performers in Iris.

Voluptuous dance about love, pain and the whole damn thing.

Isn't nearly the landmark comedy it thinks it is, but its quirkiness should appeal to the highbrow funny bone in all of us.

What proves the validity of Kandahar is that, by the end, all these scenes are human ruins of the same nightmare world.

Formless, feckless, mindless, directionless and at times stunningly humorless.

Like an over-packed three-scoop cone -- it melts into a mess while we're still slurping away.

It's like Chekhov with a British accent.

No Man's Land is a 98-minute wonder: this story of three men in a trench renews the meaning of the word "trenchant."

As they've proven before and doubtless will prove again, Soderbergh and his cast are capable of better, weightier, more substantial stuff. But for now, slumming has rarely seemed more appealing.

You know the line about paying to hear a great actor read a phonebook? I'd pay to see Channing just leaf through one.

It's plenty thrilling, and it appeals to the flag-waving patriot in all of us.

There's a lot of talk about sex in Sidewalks of New York, but precious little of it. And that's part of the point.

May be thin, but it's also sharp, like a stiletto.