Nick Nolte plays a great shambling wreck of a wounded Hemingway hero in The Good Thief, a film that's like a descent into the funkiest dive on the wrong side of the wrong town.

As a source of information about his life and work, this interview is almost worthless, but as an insight into his style, it is priceless.

I have such an unreasonable affection for this movie, indeed, that it is only by slapping myself alongside the head and drinking black coffee that I can restrain myself from recommending it.

It's the kind of movie you know you can trust, and you give yourself over to affection for these characters who are so lovingly observed.

Stevie seems destined to end the way it does, and is the more courageous and powerful for it. A satisfying ending would have been a lie.

The movie is not quite successful. It is too secretive about its heart.

With style and energy from the actors, with every sign of self-confidence from the director, with pictures that were in focus and dialogue that you could hear, the movie descended into a morass of narrative quicksand. By the end, I wanted to do cruel and vicious things to the screenplay.

The underlying secret of the four comedians is the way they find humor in daily life, and in their families. In this they're a lot like the Kings of Comedy.

An imperfect movie, but not a boring one and not lacking in intelligence.

Adult audiences may be underwhelmed. Not younger teenage girls, who will be completely fascinated.

How could director Lawrence Kasdan and writer William Goldman be responsible for a film that goes so awesomely wrong?

Not that the film is outrageous. That would be asking too much. It is dim-witted, unfunny, too shallow to be offensive.

There is real wit in Glover's performance. And wit, too, in R. Lee Ermey's performance as the boss, which draws heavily on Ermey's real-life experience as a drill sergeant.

The movie is like the low-rent, road show version of those serious drug movies where everybody is macho and deadly.

Walking in, I thought I knew what to expect, but i didn't anticipate how William Friedkin would jolt me with the immediate urgency of the action. This is not an arm's-length chase picture, but a close physical duel between its two main characters.

A high-speed, high-tech kiddie thriller that's kinda cute but sorta relentless.

I saw more important films at Sundance 2003, but none more purely enjoyable than Bend It Like Beckham, which is just about perfect as a teenage coming-of-age comedy.

Troche's tone is so relentlessly, depressingly monotonous that the characters seem trapped in a narrow emotional range. They live out their miserable lives in one lachrymose sequence after another, and for us there is no relief.

Until it descends into mindless routine action in the climactic scenes, Tears of the Sun is essentially an impressionistic nightmare.

It is so rare to find a film where you become quickly, simply absorbed in the story.

Not a successful movie--it's too stilted and pre-programmed to come alive--but in the center of it McDormand occupies a place for her character and makes that place into a brilliant movie of its own.

Here is a movie that ignores the Model Airplane Rule: First, make sure you have taken all of the pieces out of the box, then line them up in the order in which they will be needed. Bringing Down the House is glued together with one of the wings treated like a piece of tail.

The fact is, the reverse chronology makes Irreversible a film that structurally argues against rape and violence, while ordinary chronology would lead us down a seductive narrative path toward a shocking, exploitative payoff.

The shame is that more accessible Iranian directors are being neglected in the overpraise of Kiarostami.

One of the things I like best about Poolhall Junkies is its lack of grim desperation.

The film itself is on autopilot and overdrive at the same time: It does nothing original, but does it very rapidly.

In today's political climate, this movie and its people all seem to come from a very long time ago.

The purpose of the movie is perhaps to show us, in a quietly amusing way, that while we travel down our own lifelines, seeing everything from our own points of view, we hardly suspect the secrets of the lives we intersect with.

Not a great movie, but it has moments that go off the meter and find visceral impact. The characters driving through the riot-torn streets of Los Angeles provide some of them, and the savage, self-hating irony of Russell's late dialogue provides the rest.

There must still be a kind of moony young adolescent girl for which this film would be enormously appealing, if television has not already exterminated the domestic example of that species.

The movie has been slapped together by director Todd Phillips, who careens from scene to scene without it occurring to him that humor benefits from characterization, context and continuity. Otherwise, all you have is a lot of people acting goofy.

The secrets of the plot must remain unrevealed by me, so that you can be offended by them yourself, but let it be said this movie is about as corrupt, intellectually bankrupt and morally dishonest as it could possibly be without David Gale actually hiring himself out as a joker at the court of Saddam Hussein.

The kind of movie beloved by people who never go to the movies, because they are primarily interested in something else--the Civil War, for example--and think historical accuracy is a virtue instead of an attribute.

Music was the ANC's most dangerous weapon, and we see footage of streets lined with tens of thousands of marchers, singing and dancing, expressing an unquenchable spirit.

David Gordon Green's second film, is too subtle and perceptive, and knows too much about human nature, to treat their lack of sexual synchronicity as if it supplies a plot.

The movie is so gloriously bloody-minded, so perverse in its obstinacy, that it rises to a kind of mad purity. The longer the movie ran, the less I liked it and the more I admired it.

Thin and unsatisfying.

The movie is, in short, your money's worth, better than we expect, more fun than we deserve.

A meandering documentary, frustrating when Moskowitz has Mossman in his sights and still delays bagging him while talking to other sources. But at the end, we forgive his procrastination (and remember, with Laurence Sterne and Tristam Shandy that procrastination can be an art if it is done delightfully).

Bounds from one gag to another like an eager puppy.

It proceeds so deliberately from one plot point to the next that we want to stand next to the camera, holding up cards upon which we have lettered clues and suggestions.

The movie subtly darkens its tone until, when the horrifying ending arrives, we can see how we got there. There is a final shot that would get laughs in another kind of film, but May earns the right to it, and it works, and we understand it.

I am just about ready to write off movies in which people make bets about whether they will, or will not, fall in love.

Lost in La Mancha, which started life as one of those documentaries you get free on a DVD, ended as the record of swift and devastating disaster.

All of this is intriguing material, but the movie doesn't do much with it.

It's the kind of movie you can sit back and enjoy, as long as you don't make the mistake of thinking too much.

Perhaps movies are like history, and repeat themselves, first as tragedy, then as farce.

A mordant and bleak comedy, almost without dialogue, about Palestinians under Israeli occupation.

Breathtaking and terrifying, urgently involved with its characters, it announces a new director of great gifts and passions: Fernando Meirelles.

The success of Crimson Gold depends to an intriguing degree on the performance of its leading actor, a large, phlegmatic man.

There is one cool, understated scene after another.

It is as assured and flawless a telling of sadness and joy as I have ever seen.

Would it have been that much more difficult to make a movie in which Tom and Sarah were plausible, reasonably articulate newlyweds with the humor on their honeymoon growing out of situations we could believe? Apparently.

As for myself, I think he made it all up and never killed anybody. Having been involved in a weekly television show myself, I know for a melancholy fact that there is just not enough time between tapings to fly off to Helsinki and kill for my government.

The movie proceeds with a hypnotic relentlessness that hesitates between horror and black comedy.

The movie is a dazzling song and dance extravaganza, with just enough words to support the music and allow everyone to catch their breath between songs.

The closing scenes of the movie involve Szpilman's confrontation with a German captain named Wilm Hosenfeld -- Polanski's direction of this scene, his use of pause and nuance, is masterful.

A peculiar and intriguing film.

The actors assembled for Nicholas Nickleby are not only well cast, but well typecast. Each one by physical appearance alone replaces a page or more of Dickens' descriptions, allowing McGrath to move smoothly and swiftly through the story without laborious introductions.

For a movie audience, The Hours doesn't connect in a neat way, but introduces characters who illuminate mysteries of sex, duty and love.

This is not a major Spielberg film, although it is an effortlessly watchable one.

An energetic and eccentric animated cartoon.

I think the answer is right there in the film, but less visible to American viewers because we are less class-conscious than the filmmakers.

I WANTED it to be a typical romantic comedy starring those two lovable people, Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant. And it was. And some of the dialogue has a real zing to it. There were wicked little one-liners that slipped in under the radar and nudged the audience in the ribs.

The investigation itself must remain undescribed here. But its ending is a neat and ironic exercise in poetic justice.

Rips up the postcards of American history and reassembles them into a violent, blood-soaked story of our bare-knuckled past.

The details of the film and of the performances are meticulously realized; there is a reward in seeing artists working so well. But the story has no entry or exit, and is cold, sad and hopeless. Afterward, I feel more admiration than gratitude.

Antwone Fisher has a confrontation with his past, and a speech to the mother who abandoned him, and a reunion with his family, that create great, heartbreaking, joyous moments.

The film is unusual for not having a plot or a payoff.

A rousing adventure, a skillful marriage of special effects and computer animation, and it contains sequences of breathtaking beauty. It also gives us, in a character named the Gollum, one of the most engaging and convincing CGI creatures I've seen.

There won't be a person in the audience who can't guess exactly how it will turn out. Yet it goes through its paces with such skill and charm that, yes, I enjoyed it.

Through superhuman effort of the will, I did not walk out of The Hot Chick, but reader, I confess I could not sit through the credits.

Told with the frank simplicity of a classic well-made picture, it tells its story, nothing more, nothing less, with no fancy stuff. We relax as if we've found a good movie on cable. Story is everything here.

About Schmidt is billed as a comedy. It is funny to the degree that Nicholson is funny playing Schmidt, and funny in terms of some of his adventures, but at bottom it is tragic.

Entertaining for what it does, and admirable for what it doesn't do. It gets us involved in band politics and strategy, gives us a lot of entertaining halftime music, and provides a portrait of a gifted young man who slowly learns to discipline himself and think of others. That's what it does. What it doesn't do is recycle all the tired old cliches.

I admired Intacto more than I liked it, for its ingenious construction and the way it keeps a certain chilly distance between its story and the dangers of popular entertainment.

Star Trek is over for me. I've been looking at these stories for half a halftime, and, let's face it, they're out of gas.

Comes so close to working that you can see there from here. It has the right approach and the right opening premise, but it lacks the zest and it goes for a plot twist instead of trusting the material.

What we get in Analyze That are several talented actors delivering their familiar screen personas in the service of an idiotic plot.

What a bewilderingly brilliant and entertaining movie this is.

Would be a mindless action picture, except that it has a mind. It doesn't do a lot of deep thinking, but unlike many futuristic combos of sf and f/x, it does make a statement:

The film is a glorious experience to witness, not least because, knowing the technique and understanding how much depends on every moment, we almost hold our breath.

The final scene of the film contains an appearance and a revelation of astonishing emotional power; not since the last shots of "Schindler's List" have I been so overcome with the realization that real people, in recent historical times, had to undergo such inhumanity.

Heaven help the unsuspecting families who wander into Adam Sandler's Eight Crazy Nights expecting a jolly animated holiday funfest.

The Soderbergh version is like the same story freed from the weight of Tarkovsky's solemnity. And it evokes one of the rarest of movie emotions, ironic regret.

Kevin Kline's performance shows a deep understanding of the character, who is, after all, better than most teachers, and most men. We care for him, not because he is perfect, but because he regrets so sincerely that he is not.

Die Another Day is still utterly absurd from one end to the other, of course, but in a slightly more understated way. And so it goes, Bond after Bond, as the most durable series in movie history heads for the half-century.

I guess there's an audience for it, and Ice Cube has paid dues in better and more positive movies ("Barbershop" among them). But surely laughs can be found in something other than this worked-over material.

No director since Fassbinder has been able to evoke such complex emotions with such problematic material.

It is a film with a political point of view, but often its characters lose sight of that, in their fascination with each other and with the girl.

The actors are gifted at establishing character with just a few well-chosen strokes (as a short story writer must also be able to do). We learn as much about each of these women in half an hour as we learn about most movie characters in two hours.

Plunges far beneath Todd Solondz's territory and enters the suburbs of John Waters' universe in its fascination for people who live without benefit of education, taste, standards, hygiene and shame. I

Brimming with invention and new ideas, and its Hogwarts School seems to expand and deepen before our very eyes into a world large enough to conceal unguessable secrets -- What a glorious movie.

Perhaps this movie was so close to Egoyan's heart that he was never able to stand back and get a good perspective on it -- that he is as conflicted as his characters, and as confused in the face of shifting points of view.

It goes through the motions of an action thriller, but there is a deadness at its center, a feeling that no one connected with it loved what they were doing.

Interlaces interviews with the surviving Funk Brothers with new performances of many of the hit songs, and some sequences in which events of the past are re-created. The flashback sequences are not especially effective, but are probably better than more talking heads. Or maybe not.

It's more of a melodrama, a film that doesn't say priests are bad but observes that priests are human and some humans are bad.

Eminem survives the X-ray truth-telling of the movie camera, which is so good at spotting phonies. He is on the level.