Brest deserves credit for letting the story unfold at a thoughtful pace, but the drama falls apart in the last half-hour, gushing with exaggerated emotions and abandoning its fairy-tale premises for an unconvincing feel-good finale.

Acted and directed with great energy and imagination.

The story is an odd mixture of preachiness and paranoia, but the stars provide sizzling performances and the action moves at a lively clip.

The music and camera work are dazzling, and the story has solid sociological insights into a fascinating pop-culture period.

A deluge of funny, inane jokes.

Although the film doesn't probe Whale's personality as deeply as it might, the acting is excellent and movie buffs will enjoy its behind-the-scenes references and nostalgic film clips.

Norton's high-energy acting is the only element that saves the picture from being a total loss.

The plot is promising and the acting is earnest, but in the end the movie doesn't quite work.

Has good intentions, but its exaggerated celebration of quick-witted improvisation ultimately trivializes the human and historical horrors evoked by the story.

Ross's comedy isn't as inventive as "The Truman Show," which it resembles in some ways, but it explores interesting ideas with nimble humor.

This sensationalistic tale doesn't delve very far into the issues it raises.

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]

The movie's intentions are as serious and thoughtful as its content is timely and sometimes horrifying. For adventurous viewers only.

Much of the acting is solid, but earnest performances can't give the picture all the bite and excitement it sorely needs.

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.

Although the drama doesn't quite live up to its early promise, much of it is emotionally involving and intellectually stimulating. [22 May 1992, p.12]

The picture is ragged around the edges, but the acting is heartfelt and the raplike poetry sessions have astonishing vigor. [06 Nov 1998, p.B1]

Pure fun.

This visually inventive fantasy paints the wide screen with colorful effects, but its psychological and spiritual ideas rarely rise above "new age" fuzziness.

Much of the acting is energetically good. Moviegoers familiar with "Fargo" and "Red Rock West" will find this adventure eerily familiar.

Frankenheimer doesn't recapture the magic he once created in movies like "The Manchurian Candidate," but he does cook up an effective thriller in the "French Connection" vein.

Waters fills the movie with his usual touches of outrageously bad taste, but beneath the sophomoric shocks his story has a serious message about self-absorbed artists who care more about their own careers than the privacy of the people around them.

The story has some chillingly suspenseful episodes, although it's marred by overfamiliar themes and weak dialogue.

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.

This is not a happy tale, and its ending will have moviegoers reaching for every handkerchief they can find. But its compassion is as clear as the talents of the folks who made it.

Soldier's Daughter thrives less on Hollywood-style drama than on nuances of personality, details of everyday life, and emotions so commonplace that conventional movies rarely take the time to acknowledge them, much less explore them with loving care.

The acting is solid, but the story builds less drama and suspense than its high-stakes subject might lead you to expect.

The movie is lively, funny, and endearing until melodramatics and sentimentality take over in the last few scenes.

The characters are stereotypes and the psychology is simplistic, but the movie builds an effective sense of claustrophobic menace that thriller fans may enjoy.

The athletic scenes are so lively and the main performances are so magnetic that even moviegoers who resist sports-centered pictures may be won over. [11 Sep 1998, p.B2]

For most of its two-hour running time it simply flings a barrage of horrors at the audience, enhanced with the most imaginative science-fiction atmospherics this side of "Dark City," which incidentally was a far more original picture.

The movie gains a few points for its colorfully filmed Boston background and bright bossa-nova music. But it's filmed in a fake-spontaneous style that's as stale and artificial as the relationships between the characters.

The mood is often more coarse, crude, and nasty than needed to make his cautionary points and also by that "distancing effect," which diminishes whatever feelings of empathy or sympathy the story might otherwise inspire in its audience.

This dark comedy-drama has enough unpredictable swings of mood, story, and characterization to place it with the most original works by one of Japan's most deservedly praised directors. [21 Aug 1998]

Slums of Beverly Hills is less a hard-edged exposé than a mood-shifting satire, though approaching its subject with a wryly ironic touch.

Bassett and Diggs are appealing as the slightly odd couple, but the movie rambles on too long.

The story raises challenging moral and legal questions but loses energy in a miscalculated romantic subplot.

The real heroes are cinematographer Stephen H. Burum and editor Bill Pankow, who help the picture keep popping even when its plot and dialogue go into a slump.

It's campy fun, but if you've seen the previous sequels, the plot grows tiresome and lacks shock value.

There's no reason for stretching this tale to more than two hours, but Huston is amusingly tart as the stepmom, and it's hard to resist a movie that substitutes Leonardo da Vinci for the traditional fairy godmother.

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.

Lohan is sparklingly good as the look-alike little girls, and the movie as a whole has enough bounce and energy to overcome a few dull spots and a too-long running time.

The concept of dueling negotiators has strong dramatic potential, but Gray seems more interested in gimmicks and gunshots than in the psychological face-off between sharp-witted foes.

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.

Vladimir Nabokov's novel helped open society's eyes to the evils of pedophilia in the 1950s, and this pensive adaptation renews the warning for a later generation.

Proudly old-fashioned in every way except the often excessive violence that director Martin Campbell splashes across the screen.

This comedy is as down-and-dirty as you'd expect from the Farrelly team...but more than one sequence manages to be hilarious on its own outrageously crass terms.

This intellectual allegory would carry more punch if it didn't slip into melodrama so often, but it marks Aronofsky as an exceptionally promising new filmmaker.

The movie has homophobic touches, though, and with so many Asian characters, some viewers may wonder why every single one is portrayed as either a hapless victim or a wicked villain.

Armageddon may sell tickets, thanks largely to a high-powered marketing machine that's been conducting its own countdown for the past several months. But it's not a pretty picture.

The movie makes up in sincerity and goodwill what it lacks in originality and style.

The animals are cute and Murphy gives a lively performance, but as with his remake of "The Nutty Professor," the original is still the best.

Much of the action seems more like warmed-over Quentin Tarantino than first-rate Steven Soderbergh.

This high-quality Disney animation combines strong pictorial appeal with amiable voice-performances.

This is more than enough material for two hours of summer-movie fun, and The X-Files delivers said fun reasonably well. The action scenes are bigger and bolder than their small-screen counterparts.

Henry Fool finds Hartley assimilating Godard's ideas with far more assurance than in previous pictures like "Amateur" and "Flirt."

The filmmakers seem well in control of their chaotic material, but what can be said when the movie features wall-to-wall teenage alcohol abuse.

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

Labors mightily to be a frolicsome entertainment, but the results are - well, labored. The dialogue isn't snappy, the story isn't surprising, there's little chemistry between the stars.

Crass, juvenile, ribald. [19 Jun 1998, p.B2]

Weir's offbeat directing makes the most of Andrew Niccol's inventive screenplay, which includes large doses of surprisingly sardonic satire aimed at today's entertainment trends.

The cast is appealing and much of the action is wryly amusing, although Baumbach borrows so many moves from Woody Allen and Francois Truffaut that their names should be in the credits. [5 June 1998]

Stillman brings his usual sharp wit to this exploration of upper-middle-class angst, completing the comic trilogy he began with "Metropolitan" and "Barcelona."

The story is slow and corny, but Whitaker gives commendable dignity to his everyday characters, and the acting is emotionally strong as long as the male romantic interest (Connick) isn't around.

Gilliam's visual style has never been more energetic or inventive, and nobody could be attracted to dope after this portrait of drug abuse as a hallucinatory quagmire.

Uneven but always energetic and sometimes very funny.

The dialogue is dumb ('zilla has the best lines, "arrrrrggh" and "maaroarrr"), New York is waterlogged, and Godzilla isn't on screen enough.

Redford's storytelling skills aren't strong enough to make the tale appear as seamless as it should.

The tale is full of songs and action; still, it would be more exciting if the Warner Bros. animators came up with new storytelling ideas instead of relying on time-tested Disney formulas. [29 May 1998, p.B2]

Its best moments are as exuberant and insightful as anything the screen has given us this season, and its passionate concern for believable characters in a recognizably real world offers a refreshing change from the current spate of feel-good fantasies.

Stephen Fry gives a convincing performance as Oscar Wilde in this biopic based on the 1987 Richard Ellmann biography. But the film focuses less on Wilde's talents as poet and playwright and more on the breakup of his marriage and family as a result of his infatuation with Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas. [12 Jun 1998, p.B2]

Neeson and Rush give emotionally rich portrayals of the main characters, and August's proudly classical filmmaking keeps the dramatic energy high even when the secondary performances sag in the story's second half. [08 May 1998, p.10]

The gimmick behind the screenplay is clever, but the filmmakers don't rise to the challenge they've set themselves, merely spinning two unimaginative stories for the price of one.

It boasts appealing performances, and it takes a reasonably tasteful approach to its subject, aside from a string of four-letter words that sound strangely out of place in this romantic comedy.

Uninspired thriller-comedy.

Many will welcome the movie's interest in spirituality, but some may wonder why it's couched in a celebration of sensual pleasures ranging from sex to cigarette smoking.

What ensues is a Halloween-style blood bath accompanied by graphic sex scenes.

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 thriller so tricky that figuring it out is half the fun.

The filmmakers can't decide what sort of picture they're trying to cook up, so they keep oscillating among shallow psychological drama, high-tech action sequences, and comedy scenes that are themselves an uneasy mixture of sitcom-style dialogue and self-mocking campiness.

The plot is familiar from decades of earlier bank-robbing sagas - the classic "Bonnie and Clyde" seems to have been a particular inspiration for its overall tone - and neither the action nor the dialogue rings meaningful changes on the genre.

Striking an excellent balance between wry cultural critique and crisp entertainment value, the picture is as smart and funny as any comedy-drama in recent memory.

Contains extremely graphic sex and many twists that are unpredictable but not very compelling.

This highly challenging, deeply philosophical Iranian drama focuses on a man who has decided to end his life but first drives through the countryside in search of a compassionate stranger who'll agree to give him a proper burial. At once a compelling human story and an utterly fresh piece of moviemaking, the picture reconfirms Kiarostami's growing reputation as one of world film's most original talents. [20 March 1998, p.B2]

O'Donnell portrays a hip nun, but the movie is more ponderous than pop. [10 Apr 1998, p.B2]

Although it doesn't always live up to its ambitions, the film provides an offbeat portrait of universally relevant human issues. [27 Mar 1998, p.B2]

Viewers with a taste for bizarre, even surreal, humor will have a ball.

Hurt gives an astonishingly sensitive and funny performance as the bedazzled intellectual, and first-time filmmaker Kwietniowski unfolds the story with an unfailing blend of humor and compassion.

Like its precursor, U.S. Marshals has lots of action and the Jones groupies are likeable. Though the overall picture isn't as fine-tuned or character driven, it still delivers what moviegoers want to see - a fast-paced and entertaining chase.

Lange and Paltrow give it their all, but they can't save this one from plot holes, continuity mistakes, and heartlessness.

The movie raises more interesting issues - often connected with the hazy lines between appearance and reality - than it's prepared to coherently explore.

The story is dark and often violent, but it's told with a remarkable sense of visual energy and imagination.

It seems to have had the opposite effect on the director's taste, as she strives for new levels of raunchiness.

Harrelson hits just the right sardonic note in this self-mocking crime drama, but look out for grisly touches along the way.

The camera work is pretty, but the drama is flat and lifeless, more concerned with titillating its audience than illuminating its historical background. [20 Feb 1998, p.B2]

The movie is surprisingly strong despite its potentially flaky plot, combining '80s-style humor with a sincere romantic story.

The result is a run-of-the-mill fantasy, competently produced but disappointingly familiar, from its "Forbidden Planet" premise to the digital-clock countdown near the end.

The story has more violence than brains, but Hong Kong action star Chow makes an interestingly moody impression in his first Hollywood role.