The English cast is fun; but this is more spectacle than story, and the Steve Kloves script deserves better handling than director Chris Columbus -- plus any number of studio deliberators -- gave it.

Its poignance and urgency are undeniable.

Morrow and his collaborators so clearly believe in this project that I was carried along, often charmed and never bored.

[Farrellys'] great achievement is forcing those of us addicted to eye candy to see we have a problem.

More entertaining than "The Spanish Prisoner" -- it also turns out to be more conventional and predictable.

The fragmented compositions isolate the characters, trapping them in walled-off worlds -- which makes the brief kiss between Otomo and the grandmother all the more touching.

Instead of a credible main character this 1999 button pusher has lots of showy cinematography and generic dread.

Like several recent films, Happenstance draws on chaos theory as an inspiration, musing on the slim difference between random chance and fate and trotting out the old chestnut about the flapping of butterfly wings causing a tsunami.

An unprecedented friendship between a monster and a child leads to an amazing chase scene.

The ease with which the perky, big-eyed heroine ingeniously succeeds in improving the lot of everyone around her and the painterly manner in which reality in every inch of the frame is "improved" constitute both the "quirky" charm and the pure fishiness of the film.

None of the characters emerges as very sympathetic.

It's predictable stuff, though with a nice old-fashioned edge.

Experimental films are frequently criticized for being boring because they say and do too little, but the best of them put us in exhilarating overdrive because they offer too much.

Thornton seems born to play the sort of slow-witted poet of the mundane that the Coens find worthy of their condescending affection.

Both actors are so good that one might easily overlook the Pollyannaish subplot.

The consistency with which the plot turns on characterization instead of contrivance makes this movie better than many of its supposedly grown-up competitors.

Some of the film's situations and motivations seem convenient or underdeveloped, but Ascaride and Darroussin are riveting, and Guediguian's frankness and empathy illuminate this kaleidoscope of lonely lives.

Big, schmaltzy melodrama with mini melodramas.

Offers so much frenetic fast cutting to so little purpose that it becomes an ordeal.

Kelly is a supple and courageous storyteller, boldly free-associating as he mixes parody and satire with earnest psychodrama and coming up with plot points no one could anticipate.

The tectonic shifts in this camp-horror extravaganza are unsettling.

DuBowski focuses on religious faith as much as sexual preference, which may be the most interesting aspect of the film.

Jensen's use of the conventions of documentary making -- and his undermining of them in ways both bold and subtle -- seems too canny and consistent for the form. Yet the harder I try to decide whether this is a documentary or a parody, the more I wonder why it matters.

Chereau's film is both an observant portrait of class-bound London by a foreigner and an empathetic look at sexual passion that completely avoids cheap prurience.

This insidiously complex satire is filled with apparent digressions, and our complete identification with the man occurs so gradually that it's impossible to pinpoint just when our previous disdain becomes a position of relative comfort.

Labyrinthine yet oversimple, the story seems to hide a more provocative one. But perhaps this is the nature of the beast.

Engrossing if standard-issue prison drama.

It's a bitter story played for humor, in which a callous character is never quite allowed to see herself as such.