The movie's strength is in its comedy; a tragic subplot feels merely manipulative.

If you're looking to be romantically captivated, this movie just might do the job.

This eerily dry drama bravely attempts to show, without resorting to the literal staging of contradictory scenarios, how much perceptions of the same situation can vary.

This is mainly smoke, not fire.

Still about as good as Allen gets, a persuasive, nuanced, and relatively graceful portrait of an egotistical yet talented jazz guitarist of the swing era, astutely played by Sean Penn.

Capable, if slightly show-offy, performances by McTeer and Brown give this Sundance favorite a little sparkle.

The plot is largely a series of excuses for one-liners expertly delivered by Maguire, making all the hatred, maiming, and killing seem like digressions.

Peter Hyams, a pretty good cinematographer but a mediocre director, goes to work on a script by Andrew W. Marlowe that's designed to carry us from one bit of hyperbole to the next.

Some powerful dialogue.

This 'heartwarming' thriller refuses to distinguish realism from stylization, and much of the plot is a twisted mess of repetition and unpersuasive motivation.

This keeps one reasonably amused, titillated, and brain-dead for a little over two hours.

Tim Burton's new movie is gorgeous -- shot by shot it may be the most impressive thing he's done.

For me it felt like a good many weeks at a politically correct summer camp, though the talented actors--including Cecilia Roth, Eloy Azorin, Marisa Paredes, Toni Canto, Antonia San Juan, and Penelope Cruz--certainly seem to enjoy the taste of the characters they're playing.

There's something more than a little perverse about taking one of the most timid, self-effacing heroines in English literature and turning her into a paragon of modern free-spirited womanhood.

Told from too many perspectives, the narrative puts suspense above substance, and its social consciousness seems contrived.

Intending to study the degree to which social class would determine the subjects' destinies, the series actually documents something more filmable--the degree to which the subjects believed social class would determine their destinies and the degree to which they believe it has.

If you're an 11-year-old boy at heart, this is undoubtedly even better than the pile of dinosaur shit in Jurassic Park.

Everything seems to fall into place according to earlier Egoyan films, which suggests that you're likelier to enjoy this one if you haven't seen the others.

Poor execution sometimes points up the difference between the telling of a story and the story itself--in this case, without diminishing the power of the latter.

This goofball comedy is easy to take and just as easy to leave alone--unless you develop an affection for the hapless characters, which isn't too hard to do.

Luc Besson--and Andrew Birkin wrote the pandering, adolescent screenplay for this pseudosubversive hagiography, and nearly every scene screams out its sensationalist intent, though few actually achieve the status of spectacle.

Halfhearted food movie that's also a romantic comedy crammed with issues.

The passionate and carnivalesque sense of politics reminded me at times of "Dog Day Afternoon," but despite the absence of cynicism this is a 90s story in every sense of the word

A fascinating humanist experiment and investigation in its own right, full of warmth and humor as well as mystery.

By the time the fighting between clones and their originals turned to fraternal bonding, I was quite moved, even blissed out.

Viewers have almost two hours to become thoroughly disgusted.

You feel it in your nervous system before you get a chance to reflect on its meaning.

This mild thriller's consistently dark atmosphere makes the scene-of-the-crime tableaux...transcend exploitation and even suggest a kind of feminist odyssey.

The narrative emphasizes coincidences, but they're nicely understated. If it didn't seem gimmicky and self-indulgent...the movie might be more affecting.

Almost cagily creating understated drama from high-stakes reality.

Compels questions about Kinski's bravado and artistry, and suggests that it might not always be easy to distinguish his from Herzog's.

Often coming across as simultaneously out of control and self-possessed, Borchardt can't have been an easy target, but the filmmakers seem to have nailed him.

Essentially a one-trick pony.

A painstakingly crafted nonrealist story, which doesn't seem to imply anything beyond what it depicts.

Ultimately this is a sharp-focus issue movie, decrying intolerance as it explores the effects of labeling, the complexity of fetishizing, and the differences between business and crime.

The movie's repeated attempts to combine seriousness and humor as in a blender give it a dysfunctionally earnest tone.

Self-congratulatory feature, which artificially exalts the character--a classic saint with clay feet--by casting a grande dame and by reducing her motives to facile psychodrama

Conveys little sense of a connection, as if di Florio had made it mainly because she had access to a celebrity.

The film's storytelling and heartfelt pantheism are both impressive.

This outrageous comic fantasy may not sustain its brilliance throughout all of its 112 minutes, but it keeps cooking for so much of that time that I don't have many complaints.

Takes a while to arrive at what it has to say, but some of the performances kept me occupied in the meantime.

Beautiful story of doomed love.

Nicely toned.

The bitterly beautiful black-and-white industrial and residential landscapes reflect the sense of anonymity felt by the characters.

A text that provokes thought more than directs it, which should fascinate new and repeat viewers for a long time.

Powerful, funny romantic drama.

All I saw were unimpressive digital effects; artless, quick-cut abstracted gore; and a last-ditch attempt to evoke a visceral response by heaping the climactic scene with bat shit.

The script...and Rob Reiner's direction...bristle with phoniness.

A must-see.

Documentary filmmaker Chuck Workman has a slick and entertaining way of stitching together old footage and practically no analytical or historical insight at all.

Deftly realist character study.

Never seems to find its tone.

The movie is truly an open text--its generous poetry inspires free association rather than predictable emotion.

The wonderful Richard Farnsworth plays the lead, and he was clearly born for the part...a highly affecting and suggestive spiritual odyssey.

This exercise in mainstream masochism, macho posturing, and designer-grunge fascism is borderline ridiculous. But it also happens to be David Fincher's richest movie.

Nobody ever shuts up in this schmaltzy, mannered drama.

Humorless, lugubrious, and interminable.

Though complicated, the plot has an interesting payoff, the slow burn of an understated but surprisingly erotic love story that crisscrosses 40 years.

A highly enjoyable and offbeat thriller.

This is why movies were invented.

Contrasting the erotic with the disgusting is usually provocative and can be funny, but not in this underdog comedy.

A powerful piece of social protest, skillfully written, directed, and acted...Hilary Swank as Brandon and Chloe Sevigny as his girlfriend Lana are especially fine.

On the very edge of coherence -- but I find its decadent erotic poetry irresistible.

The final image, a minimalist evocation--perhaps a compromise for an unmarketable ending--puts an intriguing spin on everything that's come before it.

Elmo's obsessive reaction is never examined, compromising the ability of this rambling minor spectacle to put across its obvious lesson about sharing.

Its charm and humor will be overshadowed for some by the exploitation of gay stereotypes--which is ironic, since their arch usage ultimately allows the movie to be progressive, if only slightly.

Nothing's wrong with this movie--the hockey footage is exciting, the characters quirky, the subplots idiosyncratic--but nothing's special about it either.

This buddy movie grows on you.

Impressively nuanced.

The visuals are wild, the sound track has the audacity to underscore the subtext instead of just echoing the obvious, the comedy is irreverent and occasionally slapstick, and the metaphorical details are consistently strong.

A rare example of a successful documentary in the mode of Frederick Wiseman made outside the United States.

In this inept thriller...the script is a coloring book, and the director's careful to stay within the lines.

The material is powerful--one boxer has been accused of a crime and the trial conflicts with a crucial competition--but much of it feels predigested, the themes inadvertently one-dimensional.

I enjoyed this while it lasted, especially for the cast.

Honigmann assembles a mosaic of the postcolonial diaspora that populates the crowded ethnic enclaves of Paris, and the emotional, lovingly captured songs seem to turn the City of Light into a bazaar of world music.

Pales in comparison to the controversial "Life Is Beautiful"--a more provocative fiction, if only because it's even less realist.

This frantic tale seems at once preachy and incoherent, collapsing into a more or less random collection of disconnected, unfocused scenes.

Partly because the seducer's technique is methodical--as a former conquest explains to the naive heroine--the movie's answers are too easy.

Persuasive stylized drama.

The eroticism is powerful, and the documentary candor and directness of the sex scenes make this well worth seeing.

For the first 100 minutes or so I found this hokey but serviceable; after that my watch became more meaningful than anything I could locate on-screen.

The usual valorizing of guns and vigilante justice and tedious action sequences to begin and end the picture.

The behind-the-scenes revelations are thoroughly convincing.

Makes for a tiresome antidrama populated mainly by unambiguously good characters who might as well be invulnerable.

The force of the social criticism is diminished by contrivance and the inclusion of peripheral material.

Instructive comedy, which is marvelously neutral toward a type of sexual and domestic relationship that's often exploited or overblown.

A brilliant satirical diagnosis of what's most screwed up about life in this country, especially when it comes to sexual frustration and kiddie porn.

Disarming-misfit story, which combines elements of a road movie, romance, small-town idyll, and police procedural.

Exploits all the cliches about shrewish women and pussy-whipped men without achieving satire.

Unfortunately the allegory tends to overpower the characterizations even as it deepens them.

There's something almost wearying as well as exhilarating about the perpetual brilliance of Bosnian-born filmmaker Emir Kusturica.

This serious if assaultively stylish meditation on faith uses traditional elements of religion-based horror in a way that's more innocent than calculating.

The narrative kept me glued to my seat.

Smug, uninsightful light drama.

The stunt work is pretty good, the brain work close to nonexistent.

Overwhelmingly grisly.

Full of meaningless tragedies left unjustified by the absurdly optimistic ending .. (an) intolerable story.

Slow, arty thriller.