If you feel yourself glowing after Love Actually, you might be suffering from sugar shock.

A campy riot of retro cool, a warm and fuzzy ode to the '70s buddy cops.

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.

Painfully boring.

This is definitely a post-"Field of Dreams" movie, at home in an era that specializes in building ersatz old parks, like the honey at Camden Yards. I love that place, even if it's more theme park than ball yard (I also love theme parks). But "The Sandlot" isn't a theme park or a ball yard; it's a con job.

But the fine performances of all three leads rise above the cliches, giving the film a sense of reality that both impresses and inspires.

Playing by Heart is a disheartening example of how episodic, prime-time- style storytelling has taken a stranglehold on Hollywood films, even at their most "independent." [22 Jan 1999]

Put the tango in "To Sir, With Love," and you've got Take the Lead.

The comedy of manners becomes strictly a comedy of bad manners.

A pleasant little confection that leaves behind the sneaking suspicion it should have amounted to so much more.

The cognoscenti will no doubt follow the plot permutations a little bit more easily than those of us on the outside. But even we of the uninitiated will appreciate the cleverly escalating tension. [18 Nov. 1994, p.12]

Mirrormask is a gorgeous psychedelic cameo of a movie.

Painfully earnest, The Astronaut Farmer is, sad to say, a bunch of hooey. It's Frank Capra without the genuine heart, certainly without any sense of perspective.

Even a full week after seeing it, I'm still influenced enough by the film's many enchantments not to be overly concerned with its flaws.

There's way too much blarney in Evelyn.

It's not hell, but limbo, junior high-school style.

There's a power to Woman Thou Art Loosed that transcends its limitations, a determined, heartfelt belief in the possibility of redemption.

The Missing is so dour it makes you wonder why they didn't all just pack up and go back East.

In The Last Samurai, the body count is almost as high as the dead-brain-cell count.

By the time it reaches its supposedly crowd-pleasing finale, Baby Mama may have self-respecting comedy fans (and even Tina Fey fans) crying uncle.

If Pride had concentrated on a gifted coach's teaching and training techniques, it might have been a contender. Instead, all the overheated melodrama evaporates our rooting interest.

A mistaken message is a price a filmmaker pays when he tries to load weighty themes like the cycle of violence on an overgrown boy who scoots around on a bicycle.

Pointed and satiric. Best of all, one must hasten to admit, it's pretty funny.

The animals in Road Trip are pretty hilarious; as a five-minute short on cable TV's "Animal Planet," this film would be a stitch.

The result is a passionate, enthralling film that isn't afraid to take chances - even if it sometimes should be.

The whole plot is a shambles. And yet none of this matters much when you're laughing as hard as this film makes you laugh.

A refreshingly unpredictable and fizzy comic fantasy. It tickles the fancy even when it strains credibility.

Dunston Checks In checks in somewhere between cute and zany. It's never really funny, but director Ken Kwapis has a low flair for slapstick that occasionally ignites a spark or two.