Clooney badly botches the spy plot by casting himself as Barris's agency contact... and a truly awful Julia Roberts as Barris's Mata Hari lover (she's soundly upstaged by Drew Barrymore as his devoted girlfriend). Yet the mounting delirium drives home Kaufman's basic point: that a shadow government rules by bread and circuses.

I've heard it said that Philip Seymour Hoffman, one of the most talented character actors currently working, can't carry a film himself, and unfortunately this indie feature isn't meaty enough to prove otherwise.

I seem to be in a distinct minority in finding the satire toothless, obvious, and insufferably glib -- Still, I found genuine pleasure in watching Catherine Zeta-Jones, Renee Zellweger, Richard Gere, and John C. Reilly try their hands at singing and dancing.

The results are masterful, admirably unsentimental, and never boring, if also a little stodgy.

As this wonderful adaptation reminds us, Dickens endures mostly because of his characters.

The result is somewhat better than a Masterpiece Theatre gloss job, but it's far from the essence of Woolf.

Based on the real-life exploits of Frank W. Abagnale but played more for myth than believability.

The recut American version is truly awful, but a good 75 percent of the awfulness is attributable to Miramax, the film's distributor.

Screenwriter Kate Boutilier provides plenty of sharp patter, and Paul Simon contributed the catchy song "Father and Daughter."

Fans of director Lynne Ramsay's first movie, the bleak Ratcatcher won't be surprised that this little existential exercise makes The Stranger look like a funwagon.

Bland comedy romance. Grant and Bullock fail to put across the tired dialogue, and many scenes seem ad-libbed--in desperation.

As a director Carnahan definitely has the goods: the opening foot chase, a sequence that's been done to death, is genuinely terrifying.

Starts off with a lot of promise and excitement but winds up 165 minutes later feeling empty and affectless.

I was floored by Cronenberg's mastery of the material. Fiennes gives one of his finest performances; Miranda Richardson, playing at least three characters in the protagonist's twisted vision, is no less impressive.

Denzel Washington's directorial debut reminds me of a 60s British movie called "The Mark": it's liberal minded, heartwarming, sincere, and consequently somewhat old-fashioned and stodgy.

The film persuades us to think long and hard about what prison means, and Lee has shaped it like a poem that builds into an epic lament, especially in a beautiful and tragic closing that risks absurdity to achieve the sublime.

One of cinema's most absorbing fantasies.

This is quick and unpredictable storytelling, its dialogue simple but tough. Alberto Jimenez is excellent as the conscience-stricken father, whose duty to respect the law tests his relationship with his own son, and both kids, Juan Jose Ballesta and Pablo Galan, give passionate, committed performances.

Since the virtues of heroism and decency it celebrates are universal, I hope it doesn't get absorbed into the dubious agitprop of American exceptionalism.

Despite a continuity problem or two, this is one of those rare contemporary romantic comedies that actually work.

Flimsy transformation comedy.

Soggy and predictable screenplay.

Much more deserving of plaudits is the secondary cast--Hope Davis as Schmidt's resentful daughter, Dermot Mulroney as the waterbed salesman she's engaged to, and, above all, Kathy Bates in a hilarious turn as the latter's New Age mother.

Exuberant music and precision choreography furnish the thrills in this thoroughly enjoyable saga.

The film's a swell way of torturing yourself for 108 minutes.

Reasonably entertaining if utterly familiar entry in the long-running SF franchise.

Watching John Leguizamo labor to keep this leaky vessel afloat, I was reminded of all those Hell's Kitchen melodramas James Cagney rescued in the early 30s.

This tepid sequel to Harold Ramis's mobster-on-the-couch comedy "Analyze This" (1999) is partially redeemed by Robert De Niro's handful of scenes with Cathy Moriarty-Gentile, who made her screen debut as the teenage wife in "Raging Bull."

This is like a Ferris wheel--the ride's enjoyable but you've gone nowhere once it's over.

This operates at the intellectual level of the old "Star Trek" in its limp last season, and the professed humanism is belied by the extreme violence and Nazi-chic production design (not to mention a voice-over that traces the outlawing of emotion to "the revolutionary precept of the hate crime").

The problem with these feats is that they threaten to overwhelm the film's content, both as complex historical commentary and as aesthetic and theoretical gesture.

The story is so black-and-white that one feels like hissing the villain (Kenneth Branagh) and cheering the heroines at every stage, but it's so amazing that the simplicity of the telling seems warranted.

Even the action sequences are poorly executed, with lots of choppy editing meant to conceal the fakery.

A holiday film for the whole family, provided the whole family is obsessed with human waste.

Missing is most of Tarkovsky's contemplative and mystical poetry (which is why it's 90 minutes shorter), and added are some unfortunate Hollywood-style designer flashbacks -- The story is still strong and haunting, but I'd recommend seeing this, if at all, only after the Tarkovsky.

The grad student and her boyfriend (Marc Blucas) are blandly written and the story never develops any psychological depth; the paranormal explanation for what's going on is equally slight.

The film wobbles between impulses to be a simple feel-good story and a trickier, ultimately sadder tale about a man facing a moral and spiritual crisis.

Maybe I've seen too many James Bond movies by now, or maybe the trouble with this 20th installment is that the filmmakers are trying too hard to top the excesses of the predecessors.

"Friday" had moments of stoned charm and telling neighborhood detail; this second sequel never gets beyond the angry, cruel, and misogynist.

Reminded me most of Jean Genet's "Un chant d'amour," with bondage and latex replacing incarceration and cigarettes. This is not to say that it's equally good or poetic, but the eroticizing of a whole universe is no less apparent.

The key scene -- is typical of the film's fanciful narrative approach but also its grating pretentiousness.

Caine has already been cited as a likely Oscar nominee for his performance, which is clearly one of the most nuanced to date from this first-rate actor, and Fraser is funny and effective as a foil to the old pro.

Rebecca Miller's second feature shows her to be a careful but somewhat schematic scenarist; her shaky directorial skills are partly offset by her skill at eliciting convincing portrayals from actors.

In this uproarious and often scathing debut feature, writer-director Frank Novak charts the dissolution of a working-class marriage.

Columbus beautifully realizes many of Rowling's fantastic conceits -- but for the last hour I was searching for a spell to make the credits appear.

A gripping and carefully calibrated suspense story.

The plot of the picture is familiar, but it's realized with such delicacy and affection for the characters that it seems as fresh and warm as its verdant setting.

Erkel's folk-flavored music sounds a lot like middle-period Verdi, but many of the melodies are ravishing.

Expresses with uncommon power the highly relevant issue of public indifference to genocide, which is especially well dramatized by a scene with Elias Koteas as an actor playing a Turk.

Dismal.

There's no denying the music's magic.

Amaro is so lacking in gravitas that there's no opportunity to explore the intense emotionality of the church in Latin America --which is the source of its temporal power.

Just about everyone in this sharp, passionate feature is chillingly good.

Despite some amateurish moments, Pulido displays genuine visual intelligence, using repeated static angles to emphasize the blandness of the family's anonymous tract house and moving with the characters as they try to individualize themselves.

The movie has some of the braggadocio of its white-trash hero, building to its competitive climax as if it were a gladiatorial sporting event, and it carried me all the way.

A rich but regrettably lumpy pastry, with moments of genuine drama redeeming an almost defiantly hokey plot.

This brilliantly and comprehensively captures the look, feel, and sound of glamorous 50s tearjerkers like All That Heaven Allows, not to mock or feel superior to them but to say new things with their vocabulary.

If you decide at the outset that this needn't have any recognizable relationship to the world we live in, you might even find it an unadulterated delight.

Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island becomes a rousing SF adventure in this animated Disney feature.

Television director Michael Lembeck maintains a tidy pace suitable for commercial breaks, and though the committee-written script cites fuzzy logic, eBay, and Utah marital customs, it predictably avoids any mention of Christ.

Jonathan Winters voices Santa with no edge whatsover, while Ben Stein deadpans a droll tour guide.

Poignant if familiar story of a young person suspended between two cultures.

Whereas "Posession" was relatively light on its feet, this is so overloaded from the outset that it can only sink.

Birmingham and coscreenwriter Matt Drake adapted a short story by Tom McNeal, elaborating on its plot but beautifully capturing its low-key poeticism.

Buffeted by the usual car crashes and explosions, Wilson and Murphy never develop any comic chemistry.

Kidd has a great ear for dialogue, and he throws in a few unexpected twists. But the real fun is watching an established pro and a newcomer run with the script.

The movie's "Beverly Hillbillies" humor had me laughing moderately, and by the end I wasn't even looking around to make sure no one noticed.

If Wahlberg in a beret is your idea of fun, don't let me get in your way.

This is the Classics Illustrated version of Kahlo's story--fun mostly for the sets and the clothes.

A hokey but highly entertaining tale of corporate greed that should be especially satisfying if you're pissed off at big business.

Paid in Full isn't a complete success; still, it moves beyond many cliches to create an honest portrait of several Harlem drug kingpins on their way up and inevitably down.

A better name for it would have been the Herschell Gordon Lewis: the godfather of gore himself couldn't have topped this succession of grisly deaths.

Unfortunately I can't give this a thumbs-up or thumbs-down; I haven't yet developed an aesthetic that will accommodate a guy firing a bottle rocket from his ass.

A comic and moving examination of life in an impoverished South London housing complex, features marvelous performances, especially from Leigh stalwart Timothy Spall.

If you think 85 minutes devoted to a "difficult" French philosopher is bound to be either abstruse or watered-down middlebrow stuff, think again.

Gentle, low-key first feature.

This is effective as straight-ahead, action-packed storytelling, losing some of its energy only in the final stretch.

Stephen Gaghan, who scripted this turkey, landed in the director's chair after Edward Zwick (Glory) bailed out, and you can almost smell the flop sweat.

Led me to second thoughts about whether the feel-good tactics of "Schindler's List" were any worse than the feel-bad tactics on display here.

Some pieces of the plot feel dishonest, others contrived, but there are also moments of nicely observed detail and plenty of good messages.

This tired action comedy is the usual weave of over-the-top violence and cross-cultural shtick.

This is more like "The Sixth Sense" writ large: we are all dead but don't know it.

It's an utter waste of Watts; there's not a trace here of the talent on display in Mulholland Drive, perhaps because the script doesn't bother to give her a character.

The inventive performances -- keep this story interesting in spite of its puritanical framework.

Smart and consistently funny, with sharp performances.

The movie is about the interactions between these characters, and though I'm still trying to figure out what all the pieces mean, there's no way I can shake off the experience.

Until the ghost story takes over this is a tense and absorbing war picture.

Actually I quite enjoyed the film -- but how do I get rid of this awful discharge?

Malkovich is severely miscast as a heartless and conniving thug admired by the hero (apparently Charles Grodin was busy), and Hopper, in a paper-thin role, barely registers.

Moore's best film to date is this comic and grimly entertaining reflection on America's gun craziness and why we kill one another.

Entertaining but forgettable action flick.

The conduct of the French intelligentsia under Nazi occupation remains a tender topic, and the 2002 release of Bertrand Tavernier's film about two filmmakers who follow divergent paths through the Vichy years stirred intense controversy.

Director Jay Russell (My Dog Skip) paces everything so slowly, and the story is so devoid of genuine conflict, that this seems to go on for an eternity.

Superlative documentary by Christian Charles delves into the world of stand-up with a seriousness and attention to detail matched only by Phil Berger's book "The Last Laugh."

Alternates between chunks of opaque exposition delivered by cardboard characters and eruptions of colorful and highly imaginative action.

Schizoid romantic comedy -- The first half of the movie is full of broad but capable comedy, but the original film's sexual and class politics are clumsily handled, and the mood turns serious with all the subtlety of a falling guillotine blade.

Director Peter Kosminsky elicits such genuine performances from his talented cast that the film rarely strikes a false note.

I wouldn't have minded even the Hollywood schlock lurking behind the studied weirdness if I'd believed in any of the characters on any level.