Screenwriters Paul Attanasio and Daniel Pyne stick to Clancy's sure-fire formula -- building tension from the political infighting behind a worsening crisis.

This send-up of 70s blaxploitation flicks mixes parody and social commentary to make larger points about the current state of American culture and race relations. The audience I saw the film with was almost choking with laughter.

A treat for balletomanes, this 2001 feature may be too precious for others.

Months after seeing this, I still feel I know most of these people as if they were old friends.

More interested in standard thriller effects than in giving us human beings to contend with. The audience I saw this with seemed to want to feel insulted, and this piece of crap delivered.

Pacino is typically excitable but also strangely sad, as if the case could take all he's got; Williams, on the other hand, tries playing against type but still goes over the top.

The animators have re-created equine movement and behavior with uncanny verisimilitude.

It's a jaunty adaptation, almost screwball.

Despite its farcical moments, Late Marriage leaves an aftertaste as sobering as other recent films that critique cultural conservatives in the Middle East.

Illuminating with their energy and wit.

Persuasive, intelligent, and provocative.

Though the look aspires as usual to be both otherworldly and familiar, there's nothing that doesn't reek of southern California (as opposed to Hollywood) plastic, and this is as true of the characters as the decor.

Doesn't reflect anyone's love or hatred for anything, just a lot of anxiety about test marketing, which means it takes a nosedive when it goes shopping for an ending.

It isn't very good, but it doesn’t seem to care, which turns out to be rather refreshing.

This is absorbing throughout--not just a history lesson but, as always with Rohmer, a story about individuals

Isn't as lavish or flashy as the typical Bollywood product, and cricket aside, there's little to distinguish the plotting and wide-screen visuals from more traditional Hollywood musicals--though few recent American musicals are this fluid or engaging.

Chris Smith, codirector of the indie sleeper "American Movie," dreamed up this funny one-hour documentary, about five freaky homes and the people who live in them.

The film is only superficially superficial, and it grows in meaning and resonance as it progresses.

A wry, nonjudgmental look at the blind faith and materialistic ambitions permeating the superstitious Indian subculture, though the tone becomes more caustic as the hypocrisy and corruption of colonial politics strip Ganesh of his moral authority. The cast is uniformly excellent.

I only laughed once here, at a Treat Williams reaction shot; the rest of the time I was trying to figure out why Allen made this movie.

Between the kinetic and often exciting chase scenes, screenwriter David Koepp plays with every teen's yearning for a secret identity, and Tobey Maguire is charming as the insecure superhero.

Shafer (himself a former Playgirl centerfold) never quite manages the incisive social critique his story seems to require.

In the hands of Preston Sturges, this could have been the basis for some snappy mordant comedy, but Stephen Herek (Mr. Holland's Opus) sees only fields of corn, winding up with one of those pseudodeep stories (e.g. American Beauty) that Hollywood takes for spiritual.

Propulsive and highly satisfying documentary.

Here suspense is abandoned, and Jason is on-screen so long you get sick of seeing him -- and sick of the poorly staged slasher-film tricks.

It's been a month since I attended a preview, and I'm more grateful than sorry that I no longer remember it well. Drug thrillers and revenge plots bore me.

Bennett is also self-indulgent, giving us few clues as to what's behind this destructively hedonist behavior; instead we get shortcut insights as she and the men confess into the camera.

Period re-creations so rich you can taste them, and the fine cast.

The cast is certainly impressive, and probably reason enough for seeing this.

The intentionally broad Greek-American milieu is oddly colorless; having all of the cousins named Nick or Nikki is an OK gag, but once you're past it there's little to hold your attention.

Within the limitations of the genre, the film succeeds fairly well, with enough giddy sophomoric humor, stunning fights, titillating sex, and exotic sets and costumes to keep an audience entertained.

Neither the crime nor its detection is especially interesting, and screenwriter Tony Gayton doesn't appear to be aiming for psychological insights.

The actors are charismatic, particularly Ricardo Darin.

Crudup takes a riskier path: his architect isn't very nice and is possibly irredeemable. His performance is subtle, complicated, and fresh, and it's a shame the movie doesn't live up to it.

Julie-Marie Parmentier is fetching as the vulnerable younger sister, and the duo generate considerable erotic tension; unfortunately Denis' detached and indifferent camera never gets inside the story, its characters, or its milieu.

The 3-D effect is fun: during a thrilling launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, hurtling debris cracks the camera lens, and I found myself checking my goggles for damage.

I was periodically put off by a certain self-conciousness in delivering this material.

Characters remain stuck in their cliche profiles, and the direction -- by music video specialist Michel Gondry -- doesn't improve matters.

Only the epilogue, a happy ending tacked on to counter the cascading disappointments, seems contrived.

Jackson's portrait of impotent rage is tremendous, and Affleck, who drops his usual smugness, is surprisingly good.

It's good old-fashioned rural gothic that would make Flannery O'Connor proud, with tricky switcheroos that keep shaking up our assumptions about what's going on.

If it speaks with a quieter voice than many of Bogdanovich's early pictures, what it has to say seems substantially more personal and thoughtful.

The film is far too appreciative of its own jokes to let the audience discover anything on its own.

Suffers from suspense-killing righteousness.

Cattaneo proceeds gamely, though without much spark, through this familiar fare, but at least Nesbitt, with his sly, oddball charm, is fun to watch.

Goldfinger touch on many grand issues (theater rivalry, anti-Semitism, child labor, the generation gap, Israelis' hostility toward the Yiddish tongue) but stop short of exploring them, focusing instead on a family that personifies a dying tradition.

Stylish and effective, if slightly overlong, thriller.

It's a letdown from the man who brought us "Men in Black" and "Addams Family Values."

Painfully unfunny.

There aren't many movies that deal with middle-aged women, and this one manages to do so with a fair amount of wit and heart.

All the uplift could easily get cloying, but director John Lee Hancock knows how to keep things in control, and the whole is surprisingly satisfying.

Seems more theatrical than cinematic, needing the kind of direct address that only a stage can provide.

Powerful.

If you like being shaken up and don't care too much why or how, this is probably for you; Huppert gives her all to the part, and you won't be bored.

It's hard to pinpoint where things go wrong.

This moves back and forth between slightly clever and dopey or silly, kept vaguely watchable by the charming leads.

I was never bored but only occasionally interested.

I didn't feel I was wasting my time but I started looking at my watch long before it was over.

Might easily have been mawkish; instead it has a light comic edge and a dignity built on the fine characterization of Pauline.

Timely and informative.

Hits the ground running and never looks back. But after an hour of propulsive pacing the shock value wears off, and all that's left is pop-up carnage.

A genuine rarity: a sex comedy with brains.

There's so little urgency to the plot that one eventually feels not even the actors and filmmakers believe for a second in what's going on.

It's ultimately a losing battle when the audience's lack of interest in eastern Europeans is assumed at the outset.

The animation is remarkable, except for the stiff, marionettelike humans.

Has some flavor, and Ron Silver gives a swell impersonation of a cool and slimy studio executive.

As old-fashioned movie fun, this isn't bad, even -- especially? -- when it skirts the edge of silliness, and it's better than the 1960 George Pal version.

The whole movie feels stiff and awkward whenever the actors stop chasing each other long enough to talk.

Though the questionable motives and bad planning of offscreen characters who far outrank Gibson make it difficult to take at face value one soldier's last words -- "I'm glad I could die for my country" -- some viewers will, which may be as the filmmakers intended.

An early voice-over segment about the Casbah itself, before Gabin makes an appearance, is so pungent you can almost taste the place, even though the filming was clearly done in a studio.

The direction is so muted and sentimental and the pacing so soporific that only Ciarian Tanham's saturated color cinematography of the sylvan countryside breaks the monotony.

This is smooth and at times even sensual -- a well-oiled machine.

There are many plot complications, most designed to get us to applaud our tolerance of religious differences.

Howard lacks the sense of film rhythm --required to make such an exercise work. Just about the only clear triumph here is an underplayed performance by Angie Dickinson, though Winger and Rosanna Arquette also provide welcome relief from Howard and Le Mat's self-indulgent carousing.

Mildly exciting sports-in-prison movie.

We're never allowed to feel much of anything for these characters, and as a result their agonizing over their lost past and uncertain future seems like whining.

The result is an exploitation movie that seems like it's about something -- though what exactly I couldn't say.

The film is full of finely observed details.

A late radical shift in tone, from jittery exuberance to ruinous alienation, strikes an impressive contemporary note amid all the obeisance to custom.

Costner has an uncanny aptitude for gravitating toward the dopiest projects in sight, but this time he's outdone himself.

A mildly psychological suspense thriller with military trappings.

When the cast is shown during the final credits repeatedly cracking up in blown takes, one would like to think they were laughing at some of the lines they were expected to deliver.

A standard mix of performances, interviews, and gimmickry -- the image and sound sometimes loop or jump in a tiresomely literal attempt to translate the techniques of scratching and "beat juggling" into cinema.

Though there's a crime to be solved, a romance to go awry, and lots of trooper-police politics to elaborate on, the strangely drawn out pacing somehow feels fresh rather than oppressive.

This is truly a great film, recently celebrated at length in "My Voyage to Italy," Martin Scorsese's documentary about Italian cinema.

Stylistically lively and generally well acted. Thematically, however, it's somewhat incoherent.

Grossly unimaginative.

Ludicrous revenge thriller.

Shamelessly derivative and politically expedient.

Kitschy, clever expressionist sets, subtly marvelous 70s costumes, and an almost monolithic rock sound track enhance the meaty performances of actors who clearly appreciate the opportunity to riff on a classic--and promote vegetarianism.

The most subtly revolting aspect of the movie is how it manages to exploit violence for cheap thrills, in part by equating submission with love.

Devastating.

With tender skill, Moretti illuminates Samuel Beckett's phrase "I can't go on -- I'll go on."

It's a heady mix of the earnest, the grave, and the frivolous. Wizardly director Kevin Reynolds even manages to condense into a single shot, with a wisp of humor, several of the hero’s long years in a dungeon without making them any less grueling.

This is the scariest movie I've ever seen.

Becomes blandly idealistic.

This realist fairy tale of impossible love has a fair amount of nuance and charm.

Both provocative and awkwardly arty.