Mantegna gives us just enough detail, enough exterior shots, so that we feel we're on a ship. All the rest is conversation and idleness. The lake boat is a lot like life.

Made against all odds into a funny and charming movie that understands the charm of the original, and preserves it.

The Circle is all the more depressing when we consider that Iran is relatively liberal compared to, say, Afghanistan under the Taliban.

Joe Dirt is so obviously a construction that it is impossible to find anything human about him; he is a concept, not a person.

Josie and the Pussycats are not dumber than the Spice Girls, but they're as dumb as the Spice Girls, which is dumb enough.

It might work on video for viewers who glance up at the screen from time to time. The more attention you pay to it, the less it's there.

Eric Bana's performance suggests he will soon be leaving the comedy clubs of Australia and turning up as a Bond villain or a madman in a special-effects picture. He has a quality no acting school can teach and few actors can match: You cannot look away from him.

Take away the drugs, and this is the story of a boring life in wholesale.

A few loopholes I can forgive. But when a plot is riddled with them -- I get distracted.

There is some dark humor in the movie, of the kind where you laugh that you may not gag.

One of the strengths of this film is that it never pauses to explain.

Preserves the flavor of the original and even improves upon it.

The movie is more concerned with the story line (premiere-fire-threat-rescue) than with painting the time and place.

A real movie, rich and atmospheric, savoring its disreputable characters and their human weaknesses.

Amores Perros will be too much for some filmgoers, just as "Pulp Fiction" was and "Santa Sangre" certainly was, but it contains the spark of inspiration.

An intelligent, upbeat, happy movie.

There is a bright spot. He (Poirier) used up all his doggy-do-do ideas in the first picture "See Spot Run."

As a movie, it knows little about men, women or television shows, but has studied movie formulas so carefully that we can see each new twist and turn as it creeps ever so slowly into view.

Rich and droll, and yet slight--a film of modest virtues, content to be small, achieving what it intends.

The movie's a mixed bag, but worth seeing for the good stuff, which is a lesson in how productive it can be to allow characters to say what they might actually say.

Heartbreakers is "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" plus Gene Hackman as W.C. Fields. I guess that's enough to recommend it. It's not a great comedy, but it's a raucous one, hard-working and ribald, and I like its spirit.

The movie doesn't understand that embarrassment comes in a sudden painful flush of realization; drag it out, and it's not embarrassment anymore, but public humiliation, which is a different condition, and not funny.

The Shapiros wisely focus on the mystery of this man, who was spectacularly ill-prepared for both of his jungle journeys, and apparently walked away from civilization prepared to rely on the kindness of strangers.

It's remarkable, a war story told as a chess game where the loser not only dies, but goes by necessity to an unmarked grave.

A diabolical and absorbing experience.

It placed second for the People's Choice Award at the 2000 Toronto Film Festival--after "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." That's about right.

Right now, she's like the grade-school girl at the spin-the-bottle party who changes the rules when the bottle points at her.

It has that unwound Roddy Doyle humor; the laughs don't hit you over the head, but tickle you behind the knee.

The more I think about Simon Magus, the less I'm sure what it's trying to say.

A cynical, savage satire about violence, the media and depravity. It doesn't have the polish of "Natural Born Killers" or the wit of "Wag the Dog," but it's a real movie, rough edges and all, and not another link from the sausage factory.

The story of herself (Varda), a woman whose life has consisted of moving through the world with the tools of her trade, finding what is worth treasuring.

To watch Samuel L. Jackson in the role is to realize again what a gifted actor he is, how skilled at finding the right way to play a character who, in other hands, might be unplayable.

It's not the idea that people will kill each other for entertainment that makes Series 7 jolting. What the movie correctly perceives is that somewhere along the line we've lost all sense of shame in our society.

Works because the story is sympathetic to the feelings of the characters, observes them as individuals, is not concerned with the sensational aspects of their household but in the gradual way practical matters work themselves out.

Movies like this demonstrate that when it comes to stupidity and vulgarity, only the best will do for our children.

Gandolfini comes in from left field and provides a character with dimensions and surprises, bringing out the best in Roberts. Their dialogue scenes are the best reason to see the movie.

Here's a movie without an ounce of human kindness, a sour and mean-spirited enterprise so desperate to please, it tries to be a yukky comedy and a hard-boiled action picture at the same time.

The movie never takes off; it's a bright idea the filmmakers were unable to breathe life into.

I like the way Last Resort ends, how it concludes its emotional journey without pretending the underlying story is over. You walk out of the theater curiously touched.

A beautiful and haunting film that tells this story, and then tells another subterranean story about the seasons of a marriage.

There is a place for whimsy and magic realism, and that place may not be on a cow farm in New Zealand.

An astonishingly bad movie, and the most astonishing thing about it comes in the credits: Written by Elaine May, Warren Beatty, Chris Rock, Lance Crouther, Ali LeRoi and Louis CK. These are credits that deserve a place in the Writers Hall of Fame.

It's an arch, awkward, ill-timed, forced political comedy set in 1959 and seemingly stranded there.

It's fast-footed and fun. "Rugrats in Paris" had charms for grownups, however, Recess: School's Out seems aimed more directly at grade-schoolers.

Passes off pathological behavior as romantic bliss. It's about two sick and twisted people playing mind games and calling it love.

One of the delights of The Taste of Others is that it is so smart and wears its intelligence lightly. Films about taste are not often made by Hollywood, perhaps because it would so severely limit the box office to require the audience to have any.

As a drama about the ravages of mental illness, the movie works; too bad most of the critics read it only as a romantic soap opera in which the hero is an obsessive sap. They read the signs but miss the diagnosis.

So bad in so many different ways that perhaps you should see it, as an example of the lowest slopes of the bell-shaped curve.

A carnival geek show elevated in the direction of art. It never quite gets there, but it tries with every fiber of its craft to redeem its pulp origins, and we must give it credit for the courage of its depravity.

The most ingenious device in the story is the way Chow and Su play-act imaginary scenes between their cheating spouses.

When flashbacks tease us with bits of information, it has to be done well, or we feel toyed with. Here the mystery is solved by stomping in thick-soled narrative boots through the squishy marsh of contrivance.

American teenage movies tidy things up by pairing off the right couples at the end. In Europe they know that summers end and life goes on.

Opens with 15 funny minutes and then goes dead in the water.

It's is not a great high school movie like "Election," but it's alive and risky and saucy.

Intriguing in the way it dances in and out of the shadow of Bergman's autobiography.

A plot like this is so hopeless that only acting can redeem it. Lopez pulls her share of the load, looking geuninely smitten by this guy and convincingly crushed when his secret is revealed. But McConaughey is not the right actor for this material.

Penn and Nicholson take risks with the material and elevate the movie to another, unanticipated, haunting level.

The movie should be praying to St. Jude, patron saint of lost causes. Maybe he could perform a miracle and turn this into a cable offering, so no one has to buy a ticket to see it.

Follows the "Lock, Stock" formula so slavishly it could be like a new arrangement of the same song.

Seeps with melancholy, old wounds, repressed anger, lust. That it is also caustically funny and heartwarming is miraculous.

I realized there was no hope for the movie because the plot and characters had alienated me beyond repair. If an audience is going to be entertained by a film, first they have to be able to stand it.

Above all, this is a movie where the characters ask the same questions we do: They're as smart about themselves as we are.

They might have been able to make a nice little thriller out of Antitrust if they'd kept one eye on the Goofy Meter.

Parsimonious with its plot, which is revealed on a need-to-know basis. At first, we're not even sure who is who; dialogue is half-heard, references are unclear, the townspeople know things we discover only gradually.

"Willem Dafoe is Max Schreck." I put quotes around that because it's not just a line for a movie ad but the truth: He embodies the Schreck of "Nosferatu" so uncannily that when real scenes from the silent classic are slipped into the frame, we don't notice a difference.

Soderbergh's story, from a screenplay by Stephen Gaghan, cuts between these characters so smoothly that even a fairly complex scenario remains clear and charged with tension.

There is noting quite so awkward as a film that is one thing while it pretends to be another.

I call the movie a thriller, even though the outcome is known, because it plays like one: We may know that the world doesn't end, but the players in this drama don't, and it is easy to identify with them.

You can see how this movie could have been jacked up into a one-level action picture, but what makes it special is how Thornton modulates the material.

Wicked and cheeky.

There is a little something of the spoiled masochist about Arenas. One would not say he seeks misery, but he wears it like a badge of honor, and we can see his mistakes approaching before he does. This is not a weakness in the film but one of its intriguing strengths

The movie will seem slow to some viewers, unless they are alert to the raging emotions, the cruel unfairness and the desperation that are masked by the measured and polite words of the characters.

Here is a strong and simple story surrounded by needless complications, and flawed by a last act that first disappoints us and then ends on a note of forced whimsy.

O Brother contains sequences that are wonderful in themselves--lovely short films--but the movie never really shapes itself into a whole.

Sweet, light entertainment, but could have been more.

It isn't bad so much as it lacks any ambition to be more than it so obviously is.

It's Mamet in a lighthearted mood, playing with dialogue, repeating phrases just because he likes them, and supplying us with a closing line that achieves, I think, a kind of greatness.

The scenes between the old man and the teenager are at the heart of the movie, and it's a pleasure to watch the rapport between Connery, in his 50th year of acting, and Brown, in his first role.

Ingenious in its plotting, colorful in its characters, taut in its direction and fortunate in possessing Cate Blanchett.

If the movie is imperfect, it's not boring and is often very funny, as in a solo dance that Nick does in his apartment, to Frank Sinatra singing "I Won't Dance."

The movie doesn't crank up the volume with violence and jailhouse cliches, but focuses on this person and his possibilities for change.

Pollock is confident, insightful work--one of the year's best films.

When the Looney Tunes trademark came on the screen at the kiddie matinee of long ago, the kiddies would cheer in unison because they knew they were going to have unmitigated fun. The Emperor's New Groove evokes the same kind of spirit.

The movie is charming and whimsical, and Binoche reigns as a serene and wise goddess.

Strong performances, particularly by Glenn as the hard-bitten climber with a private agenda, Vertical Limit delivers.

I was interested all through the movie--interested, but not riveted. I cared, but not quite enough.

Dungeons & Dragons looks like they threw away the game and photographed the box it came in.

Transcends its origins and becomes one of a kind. It's glorious, unashamed escapism and surprisingly touching at the same time.

Doesn't really seem necessary.

Finds a tone that remains more entertaining than depressing, more absorbing than alarming.

Even if the ending doesn't entirely succeed, it doesn't cheat, and it comes at the end of an uncommonly absorbing movie.

I am not a mind-reader and cannot be sure, but I think a lot of children are going to look at this movie with perplexity and distaste. It's just not much fun.

In movies with this story structure, all depends on the precise timing of the delay and the revelation, and Bounce misses. Not by a lot, but by enough.

A well-crafted entertainment containing enough ideas to qualify it as science fiction and not just as a futurist thriller.

The point is, adults can attend this movie with a fair degree of pleasure. That's not always the case with movies for kids, as no parent needs to be reminded. There may even be some moms who insist that the kids need to see this movie. You know who you are.

Grips the attention and is exciting and involving. I recommend it on that basis--and also because of the new information it contains.

Sandler, at the center, is a distraction; he steals scenes, and we want him to give them back.

It's rare to get a good movie about the touchy adult relationship of a sister and brother. Rarer still for the director to be more fascinated by the process than the outcome. This is one of the best movies of the year.