The cast is OK, and LaBute still has an eye, but the uses they're put to seem contrived and arty.

This limp 1998 comedy tries hard to be both irreverent and ethical by suggesting that deceit motivated by self-interest is OK as long as no one gets hurt.

The film brims over with various eccentrics (the barber's ufologist neighbor and a former prison mate who harasses the hero and delivers drunken tirades), and Imamura views them all with mixed amusement and curiosity; he also does striking things with dream sequences and visual and aural flashbacks.

The grasping novelty of the visuals doesn't rival the uncharismatic leads or the hopelessly, unironically banal plot.

Though hypocritical in the way it sensationalizes sexuality, this serious and funny 1998 movie about a 15-year-old coming to terms with her body and her family in 1976 is, refreshingly, never coy or ironic.

All the comedy, tragedy, and various obstacles to romance seem to have been contrived to divert the story from its tendency toward pulp erotica.

None of the moral ramifications of this dilemma is avoided, and to the film’s credit the behavior of the American press seems more questionable than the machinations of third-world justice.

For me, part of the fun of Snake Eyes is the genuine satisfaction of seeing Brian De Palma finally arriving at his own level.

If you can accept the flouting of logic and credibility that usually goes with this kind of horror picture, this scary and suspenseful genre exercise, chock-full of false alarms and brutal shocks, really delivers.

I was bored well before the end, but found the first half hour pretty funny.

Their blossoming love is thwarted at every opportunity by wicked stepmother Anjelica Huston, whose practical motive -- she wants her own daughter to become queen -- is part of an unusually nuanced characterization.

Goldbacher's story is not always convincing as history, but it's absorbing as a sort of gothic romance and sensually quite potent, and Driver carries it all with grace and authority.

This 1998 romantic comedy mostly bores with its cumbersome exposition and close-ups of trivial objects scattered throughout lackluster montage sequences.

This is fairly efficient if you can square efficiency with being twice as long as necessary and overly familiar to boot; at least Jackson and Spacey keep it afloat.

Nothing that suggests an independent vision, unless you count seeing more limbs blown off than usual.

A rambling but ultimately rather affecting comedy-drama by a talented filmmaker who's almost completely unknown here, this has a deft feel for lower-middle-class life in rural France that registered strongly on its home front.

Though Adrian Lyne's clodhopper direction, underlined by a mushy Ennio Morricone score, predictably runs the gamut from soft-core porn in the manner of David Hamilton to hectoring close-ups, this is perhaps Lyne's best movie after Jacob's Ladder--a genuinely disturbing (if far from literary) adaptation of Nabokov's extraordinary novel, written by former journalist Stephen Schiff and starring, predictably, Jeremy Irons.

Antonio Banderas signs up for charisma lessons from Anthony Hopkins -- but they just don't take.

Their gross-out humor is basically sweet tempered, for all its tweaking of PC attitudes, and though this film looks slapdash, its script (by the Farrellys, Ed Decter, and John J. Strauss) is surprisingly well put together.

With this odd mixture of elements the film's tone is gloomy, portentous, and hysterical, yet at the same time strangely earnest and square, as if David Lynch had tried to somehow make a movie version of Scientific American.

Danny Glover and Mel Gibson make a gently contrasted (and nicely self-reflexive) odd couple in this action-comedy sequel.

Not wishing to spoil the fun -- pretty hard to come by anyway in this 1998 blockbuster's 150 minutes -- I won't tell you the outcome, but I'll wager you can guess.

For me the film creates more embarrassment than sympathy, but at least it's a kind of embarrassment that's instructive.

Its particularities are the best thing about it.

Nat Mauldin and Larry Levin's screenplay, indifferently directed by Betty Thomas, is simply an excuse for tired scatological jokes involving animal characters with the voices of well-known actors.

Out of Sight engaged me less and less, until by the end I no longer cared which of the characters lived or died. Not even the engaging Jennifer Lopez, George Clooney, Albert Brooks, Don Cheadle, and Ving Rhames or the talented secondary cast can survive the abbreviations and last-minute shoehorning their characters receive.

Disney's retelling of the popular Chinese folktale, may seem its gutsiest choice yet, but on closer examination it's obviously less a matter of guts than careful calculation.

What eventually emerges isn't nearly as achieved or convincing as the neighborhood portrait, but even when it ultimately overwhelms the characters, it's full of juice, humor, and nuance.