Grand Canyon finds Kasdan in firm control of a restrained and intelligent style. Eliciting first-rate performances from a well-chosen cast, he brings these to the screen with graceful eloquence - giving words as much weight as actions.

It's a beautiful movie to watch, and the cartoony characters are as endearing as they come.

A pleasant little dawdle and yet another example, in these dog days for cinema, that dogs are a movie's best friend.

This is a film that starts out cynically and gradually morphs into sentimentality of a particularly high gloss.

If one's domestic environment is a kind of autobiography, then the five households visited by this entertaining documentary reveal fascinating lives indeed.

Lively acting and stylish directing make this an engaging comedy-drama, although its attitude toward guns and violence is disconcertingly romantic.

Although overlong, the picture has a fair measure of jolts and surprises.

The story is as rambling as the characters, but superb acting by McTeer and Brown goes a long way toward redeeming it.

The offbeat screenplay turns even the corny bits in unpredictable directions, and it's rare indeed to see such consistently superb ensemble acting.

Logue's magnetic performance is the movie's main virtue, supported by a good secondary cast and a sharply written screenplay.

The movie works well as a straight-out horror yarn, proving that the Hughes Brothers are more versatile than their previous "ghetto pictures" suggest.

Directed with the blend of moody atmosphere and punchy violence that has made Kitano one of Japan's most powerful culture heroes. [10 Apr 1998, p.B2]

A caper that rarely goes wrong.

It's a lovely oddity, and one that will probably hit home for preteen audiences all over the world.

The film begins strongly and violently, then simmers down to a standard-issue suspense story.

The picture is a little too pretentious to achieve its artistic and emotional goals, but its ambition and imagination are impressive at times.

Intermittently gripping, but overlong.

Loach has made more memorable films, such as "Raining Stones" and "Ladybird Ladybird," but his dramatic sense remains strong and his social conscience is absolutely unstoppable.

High-energy comedy.

A revealing, often amusing, sometimes disturbing look at the history and politics of marijuana use in American society.

Some will dislike its shaggy-dog screenplay and restless camera work, and others may find its finale too postfeminist for comfort.

The fine cast helps an old-fashioned screenplay seem reasonably fresh most of the time.

Sensitive acting and imaginative filmmaking help rescue the movie from potential excesses of its own.

Best of all, Ben Kingsley as the menacing man in the yellow suit, brings the picture pungently to life every time he flashes his enigmatic smile.

The screenplay by Tina Fey -- head writer for "Saturday Night Live" -- is marvelously smart, though, and the ensemble cast is uncannily in sync with it.

Alexander Payne's equal-opportunity satire persuasively argues that no ideological group has a lock on "values" or "correctness," and reminds us that fanatics can be found on every side of an issue.

An entertaining look at a genuinely offbeat subject.

Full of old tricks - cuts between worried faces and overheated gauges inching into the red zone - but director Mostow pulls most of them off with conviction and pizazz.

My favorite line in the movie comes when Gordon-Levitt, in a face-off with his mob boss (Jeff Daniels), informs him that he'd like to leave the business one day and move to France, to which Daniels replies: "I'm from the future; you should go to China."

Boorman treats this moving, important subject with restraint, tact, and candid views of horrors suffered by the nation.

The comedy is frantic and tasteless in the usual Waters mode, but it takes telling potshots at the Hollywood establishment, which isn't nearly so open about the tackiness of its products.

John Turteltaub directed the drama, which lapses into medical jargon and new-age clichés near the end, but it scores telling points with its respect for intelligence and optimistic view of human potential.

Girard invests each episode of this production with dramatic credibility and emotional strength.

As a piece of filmmaking, Munich is rarely less than gripping. As a political essay, as a brief against despair, it is far less convincing.

Fine acting and creative directing lend three-dimensional life to this absorbing story, which blends dreamlike elements with sharply etched drama and touches of pure cinematic ingenuity.

As the "Empress of Fashion" who was the fashion editor of "Harper's Bazaar" before editing "Vogue" in its 1960s heyday, Vreeland comes across in the movie as something of a cross between Auntie Mame and Godzilla. She was a true original in a world where knock-offs abounded.

Driver gives a winning performance in a human-scaled story that avoids romantic clichs and gender stereotypes, although a few of both creep in from time to time.

The ultimate challenge of making a first-rate caper movie is dishing up often-used ingredients with enough novel twists to make them seem familiar and fresh at the same time. Mamet soars over the hurdles with energy and imagination to spare.

Smart and entertaining almost every step of the way.

The good news is that, even though one must pace oneself through the dull parts, usually involving Mr. Popper's dullish family, he's in pretty good form whenever he's getting physical.

The ensemble acting is impressively in tune; and Michael Nyman's surging score adds an extra measure of emotional power.

Grant is a fine actor ("Withnail and I," "Gosford Park") and, although he doesn't appear in Wah-Wah, his spiritedness as a performer carries through to some of the others in his cast.

More of a testimonial than a documentary, but it weaves together a portrait of a remarkable Irish-American friar, who was gay and a recovering alcoholic, and the many lives he inspired.

The humor is uneven and sometimes crude, but much of the mock-documentary is surprising and amusing.

Marion Cotillard’s Lady Macbeth, however, is a triumph. She seems transfixed by her own capacity for evil, and her mad scene is one of the most unhistrionic, and therefore spookiest, ever filmed.

The fast-talking Tucker and quick-kicking Chan are a surprisingly good team that manages to deliver a fun combination of highly choreographed action and comedy.

He intercuts documentary sequences from a French news crew and also includes Arab website footage of insurgents and YouTube confessions from soldiers who witnessed a barbarous act, which we also see, involving the platoon and a young Iraqi girl. The concept is audacious but the actors are too theatrical.

Intolerable Cruelty is a romantic comedy, but it has enough dark, strange, and cynical moments to qualify as a full-fledged part of the Coen canon.

A disconcerting melange, Tokyo Sonata begins rather conventionally before spinning into black comic, almost fantastical, terrain.

The hardy fools - I mean, visionary pioneers - in this movie are so gravity-defying that I had to look at the press notes afterward just to make sure no computerized special effects were used.

It is one continuous fight sequence from opening scene to final credits, but lacks the blood, profanity, and gore that would have merited a more adult rating.

An extension, temperamentally if not altogether thematically, of such earlier films of his as “The Squid and the Whale,” “Greenberg,” and “Frances Ha.”

The film is actually fairly entertaining once you get past its overweening desire to be the bearer of bad tidings. A more adventuresome movie would have treated the down-and-dirty world of politics as its starting, not its ending, point.

This half-baked fairy tale always seems to be on the verge of becoming charming but despite a good cast it never quite succeeds.

The story is thin, but it's fun to spend time with more likable African-American characters than most Hollywood movies ever put under the spotlight. [21 Mar 1997, p.13]

Lively acting, eye-catching cinematography, and funny dialogue lift this fantasy a notch above the average until love-story cliches and horror-movie shocks bog it down.

The animal action is often gripping and suspenseful. As a whole, a giant step beyond Annaud's earlier animal movie, "The Bear," a more gimmicky film of 1988.

Has there been a more upfront title since “Snakes on a Plane”?

What keeps the movie from championship status is a sense that the filmmakers see Ali's social and political contributions as extra added attractions, ultimately less important than his greatness in the ring.

Its most vivid scenes -- a visit with an insane ophthalmologist, a showdown at Anderton's supposed crime scene -- have the kind of anything-goes creativity that set "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" apart from the crowd last year.

The story raises hard moral questions relating to the relative value of human lives and the overwhelming debt that may be felt by those who benefit when others sacrifice. But the movie falls short of excellence because it doesn't so much explore these issues as finesse them in an action-filled climax.

Julia Roberts is brighter and spunkier than usual, and Rupert Everett steals the show.

On its own limited terms, The Infiltrator, like its hero, delivers the goods.

Victimization of homosexuals during the Holocaust era has often been overlooked. Epstein and Friedman lucidly recount this woeful history, with help from Everett's articulate narration.

What’s clear is that many of Weiner’s supporters within the mayoral campaign stuck with him only because of Abedin’s connection to the Clintons. Hey, it’s politics.

Fascinating footage goes beyond the boxing ring to document Ali's brilliance as a public personality.

Since 9/11-style terrorism is very much on display here, I suppose it’s fair to say that Star Trek Into Darkness is a sci-fi blow-out with overtones of the real. Series founder Gene Roddenberry would, I think, approve.

Riveting stuff.

A splendid adaptation that will be hard for the others to match. The Portrait of a Lady, directed by Jane Campion, brings intelligence and sensitivity to a story rich in psychological subtlety and sociological detail.

Färberböck has directed the story with a canny blend of liveliness and taste.

Violence Hitch would have found way beyond what's necessary. Horror fans will find effective shivers, though.

This energetically acted, creatively directed comedy-drama has every ingredient for success except a satisfying finale.

This offbeat Chinese production is at once an innovative art film, a traditional suspense yarn, and a moody voyage through Shanghai's gritty back roads.

Directed by Tom Holland, who serves up the oldest horror-yarn clich'es with a straight face, keeping the action good-natured and even humorous until the gory climax.

Adams has a good camera eye and a fine feeling for the regional mores of the South, where she's from. Judd, who for a change isn't being terrorized in a thriller, is more nuanced and intense than she's ever been.

Milos Forman's drama is full of outrageous material that will offend liberals and conservatives alike, but it's positioned on the cutting edge of contemporary debates about free speech, feminism, and the effects of mass media on modern society.

Some of the action is as lurid as the title, but passionate performances and ingenious visuals make this the most absorbing movie by Spanish director Almodvar since his great comedy "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown."

The story is sweet by animé standards, although it has harsh elements as well.

Wilson is the main reason to see The Big Bounce, where he's perfect as a reasonably smart guy who often seems to have no idea what he's getting into. The other reasons are a solid supporting cast.

Writer-director Rebecca Miller never wrests her movie free of its associations with the films of Woody Allen and Noah Baumbach, and some of it plays like a generic indie film rom-com.

One of the most inventive offerings so far this season.

The kind of breezy teen-pic that youngsters flock to nowadays, and this particular specimen is imaginative enough to explore an environment off Hollywood's beaten path. It's also broad-minded enough to portray the evangelical milieu with flair, satirize its foibles with restraint, and respect its ideals even as it shows how individuals may fall short.

Compassionate and marvelously acted, although a subplot about the gay grandson slows the story down for a while.

The movie has no profound insights to offer, but its nimble acting and lifelike dialogue make it entertaining as well as thoughtful. Think "Stand by Me" meets "Ghost World," and you just about have it.

Scurlock's filmmaking style leans more heavily on woebegone personal testimony than facts and figures, but politicians willing to go up against the credit industry's lobbyists would be well advised to take a look.

Stylishly made, if less intellectually resonant than first-rate Mann films like "Ali" and "The Insider."

Snow is a full-fledged genius who enlarged the fundamental horizons of cinema with his classic "Wavelength," but here his aesthetic and philosophical ideas don't quite keep pace with his technological boldness.

Poignant and well acted, though not very memorable.

This atmospheric story unfolds through leisurely shots that invite us not just to watch the characters, but to live and breathe along with them.

While the result is visually brilliant, it's oddly disjointed and packs less emotional force than Richard Price's novel.

A series of vignettes...Some are weak, some are superb -- there's a priceless one with Alfred Molina and Steve Coogan as Brits with different feelings about learning they're cousins -- but they get better as they go along.

Michael Douglas and Annette Bening head the well-chosen cast, but what gives the movie substance is its willingness to take real stands on real political issues.

The Imposter has too many reenactments for my taste, and Bourdin is glorified by Layton more often than he is condemned. Still, this is one creepy mystery.

Clooney shows strong filmmaking imagination in his directorial debut, but the movie's driving force is Charlie Kaufman's screenplay, a genre-bending romp that blurs all boundaries between the factual and the fantastical.

Although their responses too often seem rehearsed, their innocence is touching and redemptive.

Colorful, if not exciting.

The paradox of Tarantino’s oeuvre is that it is highly derivative of other movies, mostly genre pulp, and yet the films seem distinctly his. He is the most influential director of his generation because he ranges promiscuously through pop culture and brings to his borrowings an incendiary force.

This first-person account of suffering and survival among Hungarian victims of the Holocaust contains much stirring and revealing material, although the conventionality of its style diminishes the freshness and urgency of its content to a degree. [05 Feb 1999, p.14]