What is most wonderful about Man on the Moon, a very good film, is that it remains true to Kaufman's stubborn vision.

Uusually satisfying in the way it unfolds.

The story, having failed to provide itself with character conflicts that can be resolved with drama, turns to melodrama instead.

It is one of the year's best films.

Foster, I believe, sees right through this material and out the other side, and doesn't believe in a bit of it.

There is a cool, mannered elegance to the picture that I like, but it's dead at its center.

Its hero upstages anything the plot can possibly come up with.

A long slog through perplexities and complexities.

Begins with promise, proceeds in fits and starts, and finally sinks into a cornball drone of greeting-card sentiment.

The kind of film I instinctively respond to. Leave logic at the door. Do not expect subdued taste and restraint, but instead a kind of operatic ecstasy.

Brilliant and heartbreaking, takes place in the present but is timeless.

The story touches many themes, lingers with some of them, moves on and arrives at nowhere in particular. It's not a story so much as a reverie about possible stories.

It needs a study guide, and viewing "Citizen Kane" might be a good place to start.

A very bad movie and a genuinely moving experience.

As Darabont directs it, it tells a story with beginning, middle, end, vivid characters, humor, outrage and emotional release. Dickensian.

I laughed, yes, I did, several times during Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo. That's proof, if any is required, that I still possess streaks of immaturity and vulgarity.

Intense, erotic and willful.

Kevin Bacon stars in one of his best performances.

This is a modest but likable film, and Anjelica Huston plays a heroine who makes us smile.

If the movie were not so downbeat and its literary pedigree so distinguished, the resolution would be soap opera.

The movie is not tidy. Like its heroine, it doesn't follow the rules.

A smaller picture like this, shot out of the mainstream, has a better chance of being quirky and original. And quirky it is, even if not successful.

Sean Penn('s) performances are master classes in the art of character development.

Movies like Tumbleweeds exist in the details, not the outcome. Even a happy ending, we suspect, would be temporary. We don't mind, since the characters have been intriguing to know and easy to care about.

Not a very entertaining movie; it's a long slog unless you're fascinated by the undercurrents.

There are forces here you couldn't possibly comprehend...You can say that again.

This isn't a made-for-video that they decided to put into theaters, but a version intended from the first to be theatrical. That's important, because it means more detail and complexity went into the animation.

More fable than slice of life, and all these people and props give Robert De Niro and Philip Seymour Hoffman their opening to create two screwy characters from opposite ends of the great personality divide

A splendid comic thriller, exciting and graceful, endlessly inventive.

This is the best-looking horror film since Coppola's "Bram Stoker's Dracula."

The characters have a weight and reality, as if Almodovar has finally taken pity on them--has seen that although their plights may seem ludicrous, they're real enough to hurt. These are people who stand outside conventional life and its rules, and yet affirm them.

This is an uncommonly intelligent film, smart and amusing too, and anyone who thinks it is not faithful to Austen doesn't know the author but only her plots.

Emerges as an accurate memory of that time when the American melting pot, splendid as a theory, became a reality.

This series should be sealed in a time capsule. It is on my list of the 10 greatest films of all time, and is a noble use of the medium.

If the film is less than perfect, it is because Smith is too much in love with his dialogue. Smith is a gifted comic writer who loves paradox, rhetoric and unexpected zingers from the blind side.

You leave Felicia's Journey appreciating it. A week later, you're astounded by it.

The movie's interest is not in the plot, which is episodic and "colorful," but in the performances.

The movie is a mess: a gassy costume epic with nobody at the center.

If I can't quite recommend the movie, it's because so much of the plot is on autopilot. The dialogue spells out too much that doesn't need to be said.

It's just a sound-and-light show, linked to the marketing push for Pokemon in general.

The film has an odd subterranean power. It doesn't strive for our sympathy or make any effort to portray Rosetta as colorful, winning or sympathetic.

The quality of the acting is so much better than the material deserves.

As the final hour approaches for the characters in Last Night, there are moments of startling poignancy.

Power to absorb, entertain and anger.

About two men who both wanted to be dominant, who both had all the answers, who were inseparably bound together in love and hate, and who created extraordinary work--while all the time each resented the other's contribution.

A very funny, sometimes very sad documentary.

Has moments of great imagination.

This one basically just sticks to the real story, which has all the emotional wallop that's needed.

One of the most visually inventive films I have ever seen.

Either Being John Malkovich gets nominated for best picture, or the members of the Academy need portals into their brains.

I kind of like the idea: A cheesy '80s band called the Suburbans reunites for a tribute album. I kind of like the cast: Everyone from Jennifer Love Hewitt to Robert Loggia pops up. I even kind of liked their "hit song," and probably would have bought their album in my teens. But it's impossible to like this movie, and there's no kind way to say it. [29 Oct 1999, p.30]

Mired in a plot of such stupidity.

Suffers from a fatal misapprehension. It thinks it is about date rape, when actually it is about alcoholism.

An ungainly fit of three stories that have no business being shoehorned into the same movie.

A direct, spare, touching film.

To look at Bringing Out the Dead --to look, indeed, at almost any Scorsese film--is to be reminded that film can touch us urgently and deeply.

A sad-sack movie about the misery of a married couple who fight most of the time. Watching it is like taking a long trip in a small car with the Bickersons.

Too much self-pity.

It's a funny homage, a nod to the way that some movies are universal in their appeal.

It seems at first to be merely a jumble of discordant images ("Freaks" shot by the "Blair Witch" crew) but then, if you stay with it, the pattern emerges from the jumble.

The first time I saw The Straight Story, I focused on the foreground and liked it. The second time I focused on the background, too, and loved it.

But the second act is pandering and the third is trickery, and whatever Fincher thinks the message is, that's not what most audience members will get.

The fundamental problem is the point of view.

In its quiet and murderous way, it is like the delayed final act of an old movie about drugs, guns and revenge.

Too bad the Catholic League is so busy attacking good films, like "Dogma," that it can't spare the time to picket bad ones.

One of the best films of the year.

This is one of those comedies that doesn't pound us on the head with the obvious, but simply lets us share vast amusement.

Could metamorphose into an entertaining sitcom.

A film overgrown with so many directorial flourishes that the heroes need machetes to hack their way to within view of the audience.

Slight and sweet, not a great high school movie but kinda nice, with appealing performances by Hart and Grenier.

Some kind of weird masterpiece...one of the best movies of the year.

Not a successful thriller, but with some nice dramatic scenes along with the dumb mystery and contrived conclusion.

A sports documentary as gripping, in a different way, as "Hoop Dreams."

A feeling movie, a mood movie, an evocation of the kind of interaction we sometimes hunger for.

I prefer "Life Is Beautiful," which is clearly a fantasy, to Jakob the Liar, which is just as contrived and manipulative but pretends it is not.

The movie's heart is in the right place.

Cuts between a rich assortment of characters; it's like a low-rent, on-the-fly version of Robert Altman's "The Player" or "Short Cuts."

I did not really enjoy this movie, and yet I recommend it. Why? Because I think it's on to something interesting. Here is a movie about a woman who never stops thinking. That may not be as good for you as it is for her.

It's the most lugubrious and soppy love story in many a moon, a step backward for director Sam Raimi after "A Simple Plan."

A Martin Lawrence performance that deserves comparison with Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy, with a touch of Mel Gibson's zaniness in the midst of action.

Exactly the kind of documentary we all want to have made about ourselves, in which it is revealed that we are funny, smart, beloved, the trusted confidant of famous people.

Has too much docudrama and not enough soul.

Spacey, an actor who embodies intelligence in his eyes and voice, is the right choice for Lester Burnham.

Low-key, understated style. The suspense beats away underneath.

Told as a melodrama and romance, not docudrama, and that makes it all the more effective.

So concerned with being a film that it forgets to be a movie.

Possibly the funniest movie ever made about Catholicism. It confuses the phenomenon of stigmata with satanic possession.

Falls so far outside our ordinary story expectations it may frustrate some viewers.

So unsuccessful in so many different ways that maybe the whole project was doomed.

There are a lot of logical gaps in this movie.

Lumbering from one expensive set piece to the next without taking the time to tell us a story that might make us care.

Good but not great Brooks... but smart, funny -- and edgy.

I enjoyed the film more than I expected to. It's harmless, simple-minded.

There is nothing funny about the situation in Teaching Mrs. Tingle.

After the bite and freshness of "Analyze This," Mickey Blue Eyes plays like an afterthought.

The heart of the film is in the performances of Danes and Beckinsale after they're sent to prison.

One of those comedies where everything works.

The remake has a superior caper but less chemistry.