Writer-director Deepa Mehta fuses the soap-opera elements of her plot -- which reveals one sexual secret after another of the variously betrayed, selfish, and self-actualizing members of the two couples' New Delhi household--into profound drama.

Dead-on imitations of some of the characters from the television series created by Bob Mosher and Joe Connelly will seem pointlessly stylized to viewers unfamiliar with the old sitcom.

The movie's no roller-coaster ride, but there isn't a boring moment either.

If you haven't lived until you've seen Laurence Fishburne and Sam Neill duke it out in a vat full of red paint, here's your chance; personally, my idea of hell would be having to see this stinker again.

Stylistically captivating, subtly nuanced, and structurally unpredictable.

This wonderful 1997 comedy--about an unlikely group of men who are determined to strip to music rather than get day jobs--is genuinely effective at inverting gender stereotypes and other assumptions, and it's not the slightest bit heavy-handed.

The story--written by Brian Helgeland and directed by Richard Donner--was just dumb.

It's virtually guaranteed to make us squirm.

Olympia Dukakis and Illeana Douglas come off poorly in silly supporting roles that make Aniston seem to have screen presence by default. Her character's habit of compulsively adjusting her bodice ensures our attention has the proper focus.

This hopelessly redundant action gross-out aspires to a form of hip vacuousness--and may achieve it.

Wolfgang Petersen and writer Andrew Marlowe, apparently afraid to really make fun of any American icons, challenge us to take the story straight no matter what, but the only thing this ponderous movie has going for it is its unintentional humor.

The received notion that kids want their movies fast and furious is barely in evidence in this 1997 comedy, a laboriously slow suburban adventure.

Director John Madden calmly dissects the emotions of a woman whose personal life is effectively nonexistent.

If spelling out stereotypes were inherently funny the movie would be a hoot.

An amiable, highly ingratiating piece of lowbrow entertainment.

Contact is so burdened with social, political, and religious issues that they infect and ultimately overwhelm much of the philosophical content.

There isn't an ounce of flab or hype, and the story it tells is profoundly affecting.

Don't expect any psychological depth here, but the cool wit and fun... are deftly maintained, and Sonnenfeld provides a bountiful supply of both fanciful beasties and ingenious visuals.

Woo's third Hollywood movie, Face/Off, is the first to balance his visual imagination with the emotional intensity of his Hong Kong films.

It's clear that writer Akiva Goldsman and director Joel Schumacher are bereft of ideas and using the MTV clutter as a cover-up.

The draggy narrative of this 1997 comedy is tough to sit through--there are even several overproduced musical numbers--but it does have an intriguing subversive element that I don't want to give away.

However one chooses to take its jaundiced view of history, it's probably the best film to date by the talented Kusturica (Time of the Gypsies, Arizona Dream), a triumph of mise en scene mated to a comic vision that keeps topping its own hyperbole.

"Speed" made millions on mindless, empty thrills; this laborious sequel is just as mindless and empty but lacks the thrills.

Leisurely pacing of this kind is likely to register as a form of respect for the viewer's intelligence and observation.

Director Simon West hits just the right note between self-conscious silliness and real dramatic intensity in this 1997 action thriller, which uses typecast actors to make the characters' one-liners and predictable behavior resonate.

Ryan's abrasive and rather creepy character is something of a departure for her.

Among the movie's many flaws are lackluster cinematography and leaden sound design. The Lost World also includes irritating little missteps in the plot.

The music's great, but frequent tight shots of actors ostensibly blowing their horns look phony enough to be distracting.

Starting with its romantic and inappropriate title, this is an old-fashioned melodrama, the same movie about police corruption and a cultural crisis of morality that Lumet has been making since the 70s, starting with "Serpico".

Even the revelation of what the fifth element is at the end is disingenuous--in fact, the archness of this whole project is repellent.

The mechanical possibilities are worked out with precision and relish, but [the director] is careful not to allow the comedy to linger too long in the realm of real feelings. A platitudinous ending restores a safe and sane emotional order.”

What's really fun about this silly but spirited comedy isn't just the ribbing of "swinging London" fashion and social attitudes but the use of the compulsive zooms and split-screen mosaics of commercial movies of the 60s.

Each set piece is effectively executed, but the characters and their motivations become progressively dimmer and more confused.

Equally impressive is Duncan's stylish handling of decor, dialogue, narrative ellipsis, and pacing, all of which call to mind the Hollywood master Ernst Lubitsch.

This unexpected masterpiece was assembled so quickly that it has an improvisational feel and a surrealist capacity to access its own unconscious—traits it shares with Feuillade's work.

Despite the aggressive silliness of this enjoyable comedy, the emotional focus on the painful social experience of high school makes the film real and immediate, and the flavorsome dialogue in Robin Schiff's script gives the leads a lot to work (as well as play) with.

Unfortunately, Volcano is also faithful to Hollywood's legendary lack of originality.

Pesci proves he can act his way through anything.

The subject's nice - a clan of Irish con artists operating in the rural south - but the movie breaks down into separate pieces, some fresher than others, without much cumulative force.

An unholy mess that becomes steadily more incoherent -- morally, dramatically, and conceptually.

Jon Voight, the all-purpose villain, does a pretty good job of imitating Marlon Brando imitating a Paraguayan snake expert, but the rest of the players--including Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, Eric Stoltz, Owen Wilson, Vincent Castellanos, Jonathan Hyde, and Kari Wuhrer--seem to be in a hurry to pick up their checks.

Its paper-thin characters turned into caricatures by egregious hamming, this 1996 Japanese comedy-drama about shy ballroom dancers is sentimental goo and downright interminable.

But the inspirational aspects of the tale--which mainly has to do with the determination of Close to form a vocal orchestra at the camp, despite the class divisions between the women--never quite carry the dramatic impact they're supposed to.

Given the audacity, it would be a pleasure to report that the results are hilarious, but most of it isn't even funny, and the sense of "anything goes" hangs heavy over the film as it develops.

Neither PC nor crudely anti-PC, this tough and tender movie, like its characters, is prepared to take emotional risks, and the comic book milieu is deftly sketched in.

Apart from the script, it's the actors who make this a film worth seeing; all of them look and sometimes even act like real people rather than types or icons, and behind their interactions can be felt the depths of lived experience.

This insufferable romance-adventure includes vague comedy as well as unintentional humor, and its target audience seems to be preadolescents who won't notice the calculated enthusiasm with which it sidesteps sexuality.

With minimalist and universal fantasies as their points of departure, the superheroic deeds evolve only incrementally beyond the realistic -- a deeply satisfying process.

As a well-directed star vehicle with a couple of good action sequences, this is good, effective filmmaking, but I was periodically bored; when Ford and Pitt aren't lighting up the screen nothing much happens.

I enjoyed quite a bit of it, in large part because of the energy and charisma of Jennifer Lopez in the title role.

Carrey's attempted self-immolation in a men's room, which weirdly recalls certain Fred Astaire routines, may be a small classic.

Compared with the novel, the movie might seem predictable. But compared with other movies, it stands alone.

But despite a compelling opening, as a movie it loses focus and purpose as it proceeds.

In Private Parts Stern is clearly presenting a sanitized version of his story--he had control over every aspect of the film and vetoed more than half a dozen scripts before choosing the one that pleased him--in an attempt to reach a whole new level of stardom.

The humor is often predictable--minor characters are stereotyped only to be demeaned for easy laughs--but the movie impressively fulfills its larger purpose of making you look at your culture's conventions as such.

Depp conveys his character's ambivalence and ambiguity with utter conviction, and though the annoying score tries to throw Pacino's monologues over the top, his persuasive, low-key performance puts the violins in their place.

Impressive for its lean and unblemished storytelling, but even more so for its performances.

By the end Smilla has become a formulaic action hero--equally at home in an evening dress and blue jeans--not a marginalized victim seeking to uncover the source of her wound, and the film collapses around her like glaciers of melting ice.

There are moments of high hilarity in the slapstick that results when the characters attempt to minimize mucus-membrane contact during sex.

Properly speaking, this isn't a movie with characters but with figures, each of them as overblown as a plastic inner tube.

As a director, Singleton shares with Furious a didactic streak. Singleton is no demagogue, but his fast-action style tends to erase the nuances of interracial dynamics.

A piece of cheese without much flavor.

The Griswolds, headed by Chevy Chase, are taking what could be one of their last family vacations.

Though the climax of the story is a little forced and sloppy, with both lovers behaving way out of character, this movie is aware enough of the conventions it's using that it's more moving than cloying.

Nevertheless, the cast of mainly unknowns is so good, and Linklater is so adept at playing them off one another, that the two-hour running time never seems overextended.

This corny and manipulative movie taxes your ability to suspend disbelief and predictably punishes characters for their hubris--earmarks of a great disaster flick, if the tone is just right.

Some of it looks like a TV commercial, and the characters' motivations could have been generated by a computer, but the cast--Ray Barrett, Julia Blake, Simon Bossell, Saffron Burrows, Pippa Grandison, and Aden Young--is attractive and energetic.

May be amusing if you feel a pressing need to feel superior to somebody, but the aim is too broad and scattershot to add up to much beyond an acknowledgment of small-town desperation--something Sherwood Anderson and Sinclair Lewis did much better back in the 20s and 30s.

Combining the gentle with the vulgar as only the English can, this lively comedy is bursting with character and energy.

As the driven competitor who learns to make hubris work for him, Jared Leto gives a complex performance that suggests a deep, intriguing interior to the character even as he maintains a convincing one-dimensional facade.

The set decor is more intricate than any of the characters.

It makes me sick all over again just describing this--the most affecting scene in a sluggish would-be comedy that reflects the dubious state of the art of fat male comedians exploiting themselves in 1997, the year its star died.

A loud and often stupid action thriller in which director Thomas Carter (Swing Kids) has every screaming psycho killer and every hysterical hostage behaving identically. Lots of car crashes, one superb explosion, and the fleeting charms of Carmen Ejogo (Absolute Beginners) hardly compensate for the overall unpleasantness, in which sadism is taken for granted and no character is allowed to develop. The idiotic script is by Randy Feldman.

But Peter Hyams, who's both director and director of photography, forces us to constantly strain to see what isn't there, until ultimately the screen explodes in welcome light, a cathartic finale in broad visceral terms even if the drama hasn't inspired much emotion.

As directed by Rob Reiner from a script by Lewis Colick, it offers the most decent and convincing portrait of the contemporary south I’ve seen in ages (apart from Sling Blade).

Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski's script may in spots be as much of a skim job as their one for "Ed Wood," but it's almost as sweet and as likable, and if the movie can't ever practice what it and its hillbilly hero preach--the only "beaver" shot in the movie involves a corpse--its heart is certainly in the right place.

In what I saw, Madonna in the title role tries bravely not to buckle under the weight of Stone and Parker's sense of Stalinist monumentality and fails honorably, while the Lloyd Webber music goes on being nonmusical.

Before this turns to total mush, it's a quirky, fitfully effective fantasy periodically enlivened by the cast.

An exquisite, haunting movie for grown-ups about love and family ties.

[An] unsatisfying mess.

Tiresome, blood-filled comedy.

A hallucination sequence and a scene set in a Vegas nightclub are so engrossing you forget they're animated; even the showiest techniques don't detract from the story.

An appalling piece of junk that tries to redo The Odd Couple and Grumpy Old Men in presidential terms.

Perfect acting by Keaton and Streep outshines the screenplay by Scott McPherson (who wrote the original play), even as the performances are overwhelmed by cinematography so gorgeous and distracting it makes the drama seem like just so much wheel spinning.

The film is all but crushed by Tom Cruise's screen-hogging demand that everything collapse and swoon around him. If the star gave us more of a rest, we might have more of a movie.

I'm not sure what it all means, but, as in Ed Wood, Burton's visual flair and affection for the characters make it fun.

Payne is just as guilty of using her (Ruth) as a figurehead for his ideas--most of them about the stupidity and futility of politics--as are the targets of his satirical abuse.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing here is Thornton's nuanced performance, but the film has other rare virtues: all the characters are fully and richly fleshed out (with some unexpected turns by John Ritter and singer Dwight Yoakam), and the story's construction is carefully measured.

If the Disney animated original (1961) -- adapted from Dodie Smith's novel -- tried to approximate live action, this 1996 Disney live-action remake often tries to evoke cartoon.

The virtue of this play and the film of this play is that many readings and meanings are possible. The same can’t be said for the propositions of its detractors, who merely want to sweep an enduring and potent form of liberal protest under the carpet.

The script by Brannon Braga and Ronald Moore provides all the background necessary for viewers unfamiliar with the characters' previous movie and TV-series exploits, but not so much as to annoy fans.

The high-powered drive of both the storytelling and the music is riveting.

It's reasonably well told and well mounted but little more.

Simpler and cruder than Who Framed Roger Rabbit in terms of story and technique, this is still a great deal of fun, confirming that Jordan is every bit as mythological a creature as Daffy Duck or Yosemite Sam.

You won't come out of it indifferent, and even if it winds up enraging you (I could have done without most of the ending myself), it nonetheless commands attention.

Director Ron Howard makes too much of camera and editing tricks, as if momentarily confusing us about where a character is or which character's point of view the movie is taking will somehow deepen the narrative.

Fairly strong on period atmospherics, but it mainly adds up to yet another pointless adaptation of a literary standby.

The movie illuminates how the moral, economic, and spiritual concerns of its characters converge in situations that defy ethical platitudes. In less capable hands the brasher metaphors might have come across as trite, but director F. Gary Gray (Friday) generally manages to ensure that the line where technique meets meaning is marvelously blurred.