Nacho Libre enhances Hess' reputation as a gifted filmmaker and suggests there's more to Black than manic dementia. Both director and actor, however, need to find projects better-suited to their respective (and often impressive) talents.

Just don't think about what's going on, and you should be OK.

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.

Despite these flaws, people sick of gross-out films and teen-sex comedy may be so hungry for farce that they laugh.

A flimsy, genial romp peopled with early-twentysomethings and targeted at teens and young adults.

Delivers deliciously low blows at corporate America, office politics and the lengths people will go to avoid work.

Weitz doesn't manage Pullman's feat of being rational and magical simultaneously. But he rapidly and intelligently opens up Pullman's world.

Woo's antiwar intentions and his talent are at odds. In Windtalkers, war is a beautiful hell.

For a movie with such a vibrant real-life base, An American Rhapsody is surprisingly low-impact.

Neither Grimm comes across as especially interesting to watch, and neither does anything in the movie offer much to get excited about.

The final half-hour is like the not-so-grand finale for a silly-sticky sitcom. It's a college-town “Friends” with an unearned doctorate.

It's as if the book itself has been locked up and institutionalized, forced to conform to a system that all but obliterates its own unique personality.

It's exciting and satisfying, even if the chief villain isn't terribly original and the chase scenes are overlong. Bullock is plucky and believable as an average person who must marshal her strength and smarts to get her life back.

Disney is creatively bankrupt and bereft of ingenuity -- especially in its live-action films. [25 Dec 1998, p.8F]

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

The movie bobbles along on a weird, soft-edged sarcasm.

Like a party where everyone is so desperate to have a good time that it makes you miserable.

Aside from Lillard, the stand-out here is Cook, who plays a new breed of post-feminist Cinderella with a convincing mix of seriousness and vulnerability (although just once, it would be nice if Cinderella could keep her glasses on and still be beautiful). With her doe eyes and peaches-and-organic-yogurt complexion, Cook resembles a young Winona Ryder (if that's possible), right down to the appealing blend of sweetness and self-assurance. [29 Jan 1999: 1E]

Refreshingly, the movie never wavers in the importance it places on friendship over just about anything else.

The final resolution is silly by just about any standard. A little grounding in reality and a larger effort to avoid the trite could have made Everyone's Hero fun and inspirational for everybody, not just the very young.

Irreversible, though, is not a Kubrickian head trip. All Noe has come up with is a turn-on for sadists.

What makes it all work is that Frank remains a self-made hero.

The one thing most sorely missing is movie magic.

The film is a thoughtful, but by no means somber, look at an issue that might strike a particular chord with Jews.

In an age when light-and-easy racial farces have become mainstream hits, he remains a tough-love comedian.

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

Johnny English never builds any momentum, and Atkinson simply isn't a good enough actor to mine continued laughs from repetitive material.

Rarely has appalling, reckless behavior been so soporific as in Savage Grace.

Darren Aronofsky labors awfully hard to get across a pretty simple message in The Fountain. But his efforts are so ethereal and extreme, it's almost impossible to turn away.

It's deliciously warped, deceptively smart and undeniably funny. Isn't that enough?

Initially powerful and unsettling, the movie loses its hold when it becomes stupid and violent. [12 Apr 1996]

Look, I love dogs. But this film tried my patience almost beyond endurance.

A slice-of-life where being gay is a fact of daily existence, not an excuse for existential dilemmas or grand tragedies.

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

Conventional wisdom has it that the best Star Trek movies are the even-numbered ones. Nemesis may keep that streak alive, but barely.

As a narrative, it has serious problems -- holes so gaping that they're all but unavoidable.

But the film's most annoying error is the arrogant conceit of revisionism. It postulates a world that did not exist, because it exorcises the entwined concepts of communism and Cold War.

This film isn't an enjoyable martial-arts extravaganza like "District B-13" or the "Transporter" films.

A bit like a real-world horror film with "heart," right down to the trick ending.

Step Brothers at its best is a smarter "Dumb and Dumber."

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]

A great cast can't quite pull City by the Sea out of the drink.

Now and Then tells twin stories. One is a delight. One is a disastrous distraction. [20 Oct 1995]

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.

There's good trash: throwaway, intellectually undemanding action movies that, despite their heavy body counts and hard edges, are executed with a touch of class and a sunny disposition.

Avary has taken a pig's ear of a book and turned it into a pig's ear of a movie.

It all comes off as a case of filmmakers wanting to have their communion wafer and eat it, too.

The movie is a corpse. It's a fish that stinks from the head. They ought to bury it in the Jersey Meadowlands. [25 Dec 1992]

Too bad director Scott Hicks and screenwriter Carol Fuchs didn't look more closely at their source material, a 2001 German film called Mostly Martha. That film used the same basic premise but injected real conflict into the mix, in ways sexual, culinary, even ethnic. That film tried to do something, even while it was entertaining us.

Blethyn's performance belongs in another movie, not this bipolar comedy-drama.

You should have been able to treat this film as a grab-bag and pull out some plums. Instead it goes grabbing after you.

There's not a moment in Boiling Point that could be said to achieve a narrative temperature of 212 degrees Fahrenheit. Boil? This limpid pool of cliche and predictability never even bubbles.

As each male-female relationship works itself out in ways either contrived or predictable, here's betting you wind up more disappointed than enlightened.

It's obvious and stereotypical. It's leaden and unconvincing. It's not nearly as outrageous as it thinks it is.

If you expect anything more substantive from a movie - characters of more than one dimension, storylines that at the least play new riffs on old themes, plot developments that flow from the narrative - you'd best look elsewhere.

Is there anyone out there who hasn't seen this movie a dozen times before? Maybe even as recently as last week, since it's basically the same story line as the funnier, if less heartfelt, "Four Christmases."

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

A movie made at wits' end. There are four or five authentic laughs in the whole 170-minute extravaganza.

Solondz is still stuck in an adenoidal whine.

Like "Mr. and Mrs. Smith," The Island is the kind of suicidal high-concept movie increasingly prevalent these days: a film so thoroughly pre-conceived and pre-sold that most audiences know more about what's going on than the characters do for half the movie.

Scores some serious points for its dance moves but does a lousy job of remembering there's a lot more to this big old world than moving your feet.

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

If this version had been called The Poseidon Adventure, audiences could have sued for truth in packaging.

This rendering of the turbulent second marriage of England's King Henry VIII proves too heavy-footed for the old movie two-step of setting up a morality tale, then exploiting it for heat and titillation.

Nothing really connects; it's not fluid and roaring but a collection of set-pieces. [25 Feb 1994]

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

Because this Four Feathers is an utter botch, it might make savvy viewers feel that the subject matter is hopeless.

A bland also-ran in a post-"Sopranos" universe.

It's just another modest, unsurprising little heist flick. So why is it so much fun? Newman.

Allen's latest, his 42nd effort as a director, is the work of an artist devoid of ideas and energy. Perfunctorily staged and lazily written, it comes to life in only the briefest of spurts, usually when the ever-reliable Tom Wilkinson is on-screen.

The movie's sweetness, wit and charm go beyond its can't-we-all-just-get-along premise.

It's also unclear just what Niccol wanted this film to be: a satire? a spoof? a black comedy? a pointed social commentary? Perhaps all of the above - way too many hats for a movie this slight to wear.

The excitingly well-made Death of a President imagines the assassination of President Bush as a way of analyzing political violence. And Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, sight unseen, has labeled it despicable.

Even the title is off. I haven't heard an honest "Lucky You" since I was in sixth grade. For most people it registers as a sneer.

A somewhat simple-minded, overwrought mock epic. [22 May 1992]

Unwaveringly predictable.

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

But the most interesting aspect of the film is its sense of karmic retribution. Coincidences pile so high that "Gang Related" sometimes seems like a comedy -- not necessarily a bad thing. They all point to a larger force at work. Though not every evil is punished, the events in this film noir seem to have sprung from chaos theory: In their randomness, they draw a pattern. Gang Related"delights in bedeviling the devils.

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.

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

It's a blast!

Occasionally quite amusing, it just doesn't build.

The Sentinel moves quickly and never becomes a bore. It does become something of a cartoon, though, which proves a major letdown for a movie that aims for something far more intelligent.

The saving grace in an exuberantly graceless movie is Clive Owen. This actor is bulletproof. Even in a sick-joke jamboree like Shoot 'Em Up, he mows down the competition and gets his laughs without losing his composure.

As ugly, excessive and vulgar as "The Usual Suspects" was stylish, subtle and suave.

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

The only character with any personality in The Grudge is a Tokyo house, but not to worry - it's got enough mean in it to keep any horror movie afloat.

This fourth "Terminator" film is the ultimate heavy-metal parody. Better make that travesty, because there are next to no moments of comedy.

The first half is diverting and inventive. But the filmmakers use the second half as a box-office insurance policy. They fill it with the conventional super-heroics and heartbreak that they spend the first 45 minutes gleefully deconstructing.

True, John Ford and John Wayne did this stuff a lot better back in the day, but they're not around anymore. John Singleton is, and it's nice to see someone caring enough to keep the tradition alive.

It's a promising concept, albeit melodramatic, but what keeps the movie from halfway working is its infernal preciousness. [03 Sep 1993]

Should sell its soul for a joke.

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.

With Tristan & Isolde, the core must be a passion that enlarges two outsize characters and seems as momentous as the rise and fall of a kingdom. Too bad this film's Achilles' heel is its heart.

Despite the nice touches at the corners, the center does not hold. In I Think I Love My Wife, there's too much emphasis on the Think.

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.

Heaven knows what the suits at Disney were thinking, for what they ended up with was a bland Jackie Chan movie and a lifeless travelogue.

Graeme Obree was a champion bicycler who, by all accounts, rarely took the easy way out. Too bad this movie version of his life doesn't follow suit.