What mainly registers is the quiet desperation and simple pleasures of ordinary midwestern lives, the fatuous ways that people cover up their emotional and intellectual gaps, and the alternating pointlessness and cuteness of human existence. This may be a masterpiece of sorts, but it left me feeling rotten.

This isn't the supreme masterpiece it might have been, but Nichols's direction is very polished and some of the lines and details are awfully funny.

Pedro Almodovar's 1995 comic melodrama seems in many ways his most mature work, in theme as well as execution.... Almodovar's control over the material and his affection for his characters never falter.

There are many fleeting poetic moments in The Neon Bible--moments so ecstatic that you may feel yourself rising off your seat. And if much of the rest of the movie tends to be clunky as narrative, that's a small price to pay for pieces of enlightenment you can happily carry around inside your head for months.

A mainly routine Hong Kong action film from fleet and floppy-haired action hero Jackie Chan. It's light on plot and character, but the stunts are well staged.

Too bad the overreaching script has to go after effects recalling "Alien," but as a stylistic exercise this still has its chills.

Fresh, character driven, often funny, and unfashionably upbeat (as well as offbeat).

John Woo directed this giddy, mindless jaunt with polish but only a modicum of personal investment from a script by Graham Yost.

The story has its corny aspects, but thanks to Scott's skill as an image maker and as a storyteller--proceeding from the very blue and very abstract water seen behind the credits to the climactic, extended storm--this is superior to both "Dead Poets Society" (as a tale about a boys' school and its charismatic teacher) and "Apollo 13" (as a true-life action adventure).

On a mindless exploitation level this is pretty good, but on other levels it seems to make promises that it fails to deliver on; none of the deaths carries any moral weight, and the climactic special-effects free-for-all tends to drown out all other interests.

[A] really awful, hysterical thriller...If you thought Schlesinger’s Pacific Heights was egregious, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

Brad Pitt has fun with his secondary part as a pontificating lunatic, but I wish I'd enjoyed the rest of the cast more.

Has its awkward and square moments directorially, but it's also uncommonly honest and serious.

The film is surprisingly mature in its depiction of community dynamics and its sobering conclusion, which addresses the real-life costs of environmental devastation. The visual design veers from fantasy to naturalism, depending on the tone of the story: the tanuki appear sometimes as Disneyesque cuddlies and other times as realistic-looking rodents.

This runs 192 minutes and has very few jokes, but there are many references to Citizen Kane to put us in the right frame of mind.

There's nothing really new...but it has craft, pacing, and an overall sense of proportion, three pretty rare classic virtues nowadays.

Directed by Darrell Roodt from a screenplay by Ron Harwood, this has a strong sense of dignity about its characters, and Jones and Harris are both effective. Whether it deserves to replace the Korda version is another matter.

Sadly, the technical logistics seem to have impeded the dreamlike flow a movie like this requires.

This is basically Hollywood nonsense with all the usual dishonesty, but it goes down easily.

I can't say I remembered this 1995 feature too clearly a couple of days later; but I certainly had a good time as I watched it.

Quirky and nuanced, this movie has a lot to say about sibling rivalry and the current music scene.

Alas, most of the surprise and the wit to be found here ends with the title.

The film ultimately comes up short when it has to deal with Hickok as something other than a legend; Hill is hampered as usual by his fixation on iconography.

Some of the most exhilarating camera movements and most luscious black-and-white cinematography you’ll ever see inhabit this singular, delirious 141-minute communist propaganda epic of 1964, a Cuban-Russian production poorly received in both countries at the time (in Cuba it was often referred to as “I Am Not Cuba”).

Simultaneously quite watchable and passionless.

Walt Disney Pictures and Pixar Animation Studios join forces on an entertaining computer-generated, hyperrealist animation feature that's also in effect a toy catalog.

A pleasant, inoffensive, and (quite properly) mindless diversion.

There's something a mite pathetic about our culture still clinging to 007, but it's hard to deny that this is one of the most entertaining entries in the Bond cycle, which started with "Dr. No" (1962).