Coppola does a fair job of capturing the fish-tank ambience of nocturnal, upscale Tokyo and showing how it feels to be a stranger in that world, and an excellent job of getting the most from her lead actors. Unfortunately, I'm not sure she accomplishes anything else.

Moss has an acute feeling for structure and juxtaposition and for the quality and sensibility of his friends.

This is certainly well executed, with a sense of fate and fancy akin to Pedro Almodovar's, but its glibness began to wear on me after the agonizing death of a Great Dane was played for laughs.

Spade claims he latched onto his snide persona to distinguish himself from the pack; it's served him well as an ensemble player and a big-screen foil to Chris Farley, but as a romantic lead he's hopeless.

If this were witty, it might have qualified as a downtown version of "All About Eve"; if it were believable, I wouldn't have come away feeling that the actors (including Dylan McDermott and Chloe Sevigny) were wasted.

This dialectical drama has plenty of creaky moments, but Harvey Keitel compensates with a canny, surprising performance.

Jean Gabin wasn't yet 50 when he starred as a big-time, high-style gangster hoping to retire, but he still looks pretty wasted, and this pungent tale about aging and friendship, adapted from a best-selling noir thriller by Albert Simonin, would be hard to imagine without his puffy features.

The comic juice tends to spill out in all directions.

The tag here is more silly than haunting, but this is still a pretty wild ride, with a fine, knife-wielding score by Bennett Salvay.

Corrupt warden, sadistic guards, new inmate debauched by her surroundings, prison-break hostage drama--could have come straight from an old George Raft vehicle.

Often seems like a Mike Leigh movie viewed in a fun-house mirror.

Despite a brisk opening and some agreeable (if sloppy) choreography at the very end, I was less than tickled by the premise of David Serrano's script, that the characters lie to and betray one another as naturally as they breathe.

I can't remember when I last hated an art-house movie as much as this one...Other reviewers have praised the film's alleged quirky humor, but I was repelled by the two heartless creeps who set the story in motion and baffled by the protagonist's fascination with them.

Occasionally provocative but frequently wearying.

The color-coded cinematography is nice but the jokes are obvious and the dialogue drags whenever metaphysics gets brought up.

Given the tension dogging her every step, I wondered if this would end in bloodshed, but Abu-Assad opts for a more hopeful conclusion, making his film -- strange as it may seem -- a comedy.

An exhilarating and terrifying journey through youth-culture hell.

It's no masterpiece, but I found it consistently good-hearted and sometimes hilarious, and the sparse crowd I saw it with was laughing as much as I was, especially at the outrageous rap numbers.

This is a complete mess, making up its story logic as it goes along, though in contrast to the sluggish "Shanghai Knights" its chief problem is having too many ideas instead of too few.

A fine supporting cast (Andy Richter, Molly Shannon, Michael Madsen, Dave Foley, Jeffrey Tambor) manages to keep this comedy respirating for 85 minutes, but personally I believe in a movie's right to die.

They often seem more bent on titillating or harrowing us than on helping us understand the characters.

This long-awaited monster mash should satisfy fans of the "Friday the 13th/A Nightmare on Elm Street" franchises.

Cutesy and unconvincing parable.

I can't say that this feature by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, about the life and art of Harvey Pekar, made me want to run out and buy his comic books, but it does offer a highly interesting and original introduction to them.

I have no objection to soap opera when it's delivered with conviction and a sense of urgency, but this sappy tale ... held my interest only moderately.

Storper is pretty good at playing with and against certain western cliches in his treatment of the good guys (including Annette Bening's character), but resorts to pure cliche when it comes to the villians (e.g., Gambon and James Russo).

Suitable entertainment for boys too young to shave.

A spirited crowd-pleaser.