Unfortunately for Fox, the softer his movie gets, the more Ashkenazi and Berger grow to resemble Ben Stiller and Ashton Kutcher in some unreleased, homo-erotic comic romance.

At times, Sex and Lucia is too precious for its own good; a movie that demands its own flow chart isn't always a good thing. And events turn on one coincidence too many. But Medem's exquisite craftsmanship and full-throttle eroticism make his film a morass worth the attempt to unravel.

An uneven, if lively, diversion.

The bulk of the film merely yearns for lucidity and magic. At its worst, Respiro resembles My Big Fat Italian Nervous Breakdown.

Despite the movie's several shortcomings, it leaves us sated. That's because, unlike Oliver's workhouse, it does give "some more" - more emotional breadth, more hardscrabble farce, and more haunting drama.

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

L’Auberge Espagnole (The Spanish Hotel) is unexpectedly entertaining because it captures the point in young adulthood when life is unseriously serious, or maybe seriously unserious.

Jacobson and his actors do so much with the characters that they leave an ambiguous residue of blood-streaked regrets and sadness.

This would be an excellent movie from a first-time filmmaker, but from one of America's premiere directors, it's a disappointment.

At the end of Napoleon Dynamite, you're glad the geeks have their day (even Kip's chat-mate turns out be a winner); you're also relieved to be rid of them.

Gloriously retro, unashamedly celebratory of the joy of moviemaking and the love of old-fashioned heroism.

Despite the dominant air of foolishness, the filmmaking is lush, lively and intelligent, but the gap between the direction and the script is appalling.

In fact much of Guilty By Suspicion takes place in a trashy roman a clef zone, with bigger-than-life versions of famous moments and people; the trouble is, the bigger they are, the less like life they seem.

It's one big miss.

The Beautiful Country is not a happy film by any means, but it does offer a fragile hope, that beauty exists at the end of every journey, if only one has the strength to finish the trip.

Laura's histrionics sometimes seem forced, and Hines has to struggle to be the heel the screenplay sometimes asks him to be.

Gory but lifeless.

8 Women would probably be a looser, giddier salute to show-biz ideas of femininity if it were performed by eight drag queens.

What's bleakly hilarious about the whole movie is that Bekmambetov directs the nonaction scenes just as hyperbolically.

Outbreak is fast on its feet and simple in its head.

Add McKay's stylish direction (his experience in music videos is evident) and the pounding soundtrack, and you have a movie that young women in particular will really connect with. [20 Sep 1996]

This movie will be remembered not for the notorious Bettie Page but for its showcase of the burgeoning Gretchen Mol.

Clockwatchers has a terrific, submerged feel, in keeping with its themes of corporate lassitude, isolation and paranoia. [24 Jul 1998]

Still, it's hard not to long for the Pooh stories of old, those endearingly anarchic little tales that captured the wonder of a child's world without ever once condescending to it.

Romanek does such a nice job of calibrating his film's squirm factor, it's possible to overlook some flaws that would sink a lesser film.

American art movies rarely come fancier or emptier than Northfork, a down-home arabesque made of angel fluff.

The best moments in Paper Clips - and there are plenty - come when it doesn't resort to mundane cliches or calculated emotions to make its point.

This is a video stroll through a family scrapbook.