This engrossing animated thriller (2000) somehow displays realist gore, nudity, and sexual violence in a tone not too far from that of a children’s adventure; its innocence stems in part from the convincing naivete of the heroine.

Snippets of the band's brutally percussive music punctuate the endless encounter sessions, which expose the musicians' boundless self-absorption (the 9-11 attacks come and go without so much as a mention) and cowed obedience to their psychological guru.

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.

Sheridan gives this a pacing and depth one doesn't often find in "urban" product, though Jackson, reliving his own life traumas, is handily upstaged at every turn by Terrence Howard (Crash) as his oddball manager.

The tension is intriguing and expressive (perhaps this is what Beineix had in mind for The Moon in the Gutter), though the unstable mixture is clearly limited as a sustainable style. 

Agresti has more on his mind than tugging at heartstrings.

Krause is completely believeable as the solid old man, and though the story moves slower than molasses, it leaves the same dark aftertaste.

Remains mired in a smart-alecky film-school sensibility.

It's full of pain and quirky characters standing at oblique angles to one another, and while it doesn't add up it held me throughout.

Steve McQueen as a tres chic San Francisco cop, though the real star is his sports car. There isn't much here, and what there is is awfully easy. With Jacqueline Bisset, Robert Vaughn, Robert Duvall, and a chase sequence that achieved classic status mainly by going on too long; Peter Yates directed this 1968 feature.

It's rich, stimulating thought in spite of itself. Lots of elegant clothes and settings, weirdly linked to a shock rhythm of tension and release. It's a movie dream turned into a movie nightmare, a wonderful idea the film doesn't know it has.

A quirky, lyrical independent feature by writer-director Michael Almereyda. It's shot in luscious, shimmering black and white.

First-timer Peter Masterson directed; his notion of film is to point the camera in the general direction of the actors.

As bad-taste comedies go, this is more clever than gross.

In a recent "Sun-Times" article Jeff said he purposely avoided taking a son's perspective, which leaves him without much perspective at all.

Though it isn't so much funny as clever, the parody will hopefully discourage some aspiring teen-movie makers from doing the same old thing.

Less pretentious than Platoon and more attentive to the Vietnamese than The Deer Hunter, this picture proposes with a great deal of skill and sincerity that we honor and respect the men who suffered on our behalf without even beginning to consider why they did so, or to what effect.

As an avid media watcher, I didn't come away from this with any new insights, but the movie is a pretty good snapshot of the daily newspaper business in transition and turmoil.

This meticulous but ultimately rather pedestrian drama gradually won me over as a minor if watchable example of the "victory through defeat" brand of military heroism that John Ford specialized in.

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

None of it is very convincing, thanks to Tuggle's shaky storytelling: on the one hand, he sets up his plot twists with such elephantine emphasis that the payoffs are invariably anticlimactic; on the other, he relies constantly and shamelessly on the most outre coincidence. Still, the action scenes do have a certain punch and vigor, and there are a few fresh, offbeat views of the City of Angels. Part of the point of the project seems to be to prove that Hall can “act” (as if his comic roles were something else), and he does move honorably if not remarkably through a mumbling Method performance.

The direction is often questionable, but the screenplay (by James Agee, John Collier, Huston, and Peter Viertel from C.S. Forester's novel) is a model of tight construction.

There are times when this leisurely movie seems so much in love with its own virtue and nobility that there's not much room left for the spectator.

Ben Stiller produced, and the movie is so reminiscent of "Zoolander" that I wish he had rounded up Owen Wilson and starred in it himself. Farrell and Heder are pretty funny, but they're consistently upstaged by supporting players William Fichtner, Will Arnett, and Amy Poehler.

A handsome, ambitious film that fails to satisfy—perhaps because the director, Ivan Passer, insists on an ambiguity on the plot level that muddies and dilutes the thematic thrust.

The characters and themes are redolent of earlier and better Williams works, and the story unexpectedly putters out at the end--but seeing it now, you can't help but treasure the simple, lyrical dialogue and sure-handed narrative thrust.

Highly recommended if you want to see a distinguished cast of British character actors tarted up in garish Victorian costumes and badly executing a Three Stooges-style cake fight.

It's full of scenic splendors with a fine sense of scale, but its narrative thrust seems relatively pro forma, and I was bored by the battle scenes.