The stars are appealing and the filmmaking is imaginative at times, but the picture never builds much dramatic momentum.

The acting is also solid, starting with Branagh's believable Georgia accent.

Paying homage to drug comedies of the '70s, Half Baked is high on getting high and low on laughs.

Salomon directed the silly but diverting action yarn, which benefits from the talents of Freeman, Quaid, Driver, and White.

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."

Fallen will sell tickets on the strength of its appealing cast and high-impact camera work, but will probably fade from the scene more quickly than its demonic villain does in the story.

Nick Nolte gives a superb performance and Julie Christie is positively incandescent.

Its greatest assets are imaginative camera work and top-flight performances from Pam Grier as the heroine, Samuel L. Jackson as the deadly boyfriend, and Robert Forster as the bail-bondsman who falls battily in love with her.

The story takes place in 2013, but you'd hardly know it from the age-old clichés Kevin Costner purloins to tell this overblown action yarn, which relies so heavily on ideas borrowed from John Ford westerns that the Hollywood giant should have been credited as codirector; too bad Costner can't invest them with Ford's kind of life and originality, though.

Barry Levinson's dark comedy is sly, funny, and unnerving.

Taking great commercial risks, director Martin Scorsese avoids movie-star performances and the psychological storytelling that Hollywood movies normally thrive on.

Nicholson's over-the-top acting gives an entertaining edge to the plot's feel-good manipulations.

The first half drags a bit, but the adventure scenes are exciting and the visual effects are as dazzling as Hollywood's most advanced technology can make them. Focusing as much on time and memory as on danger and disaster, it's an epic with a heart.

Pierce Brosnan wisecracks his way through the starring role with more aplomb than credibility.

Unnecessary profanity for PG, a little slow for grown-ups, but good for laughs and promoting sibling peace.

Avoiding the clichés and condescension that characterize many films on religious figures, the movie is at once a compelling drama and a thoughtful look at faith-related issues on personal, social, and cultural levels.

There are multiple murders and two gory scenes, but if you love getting scared, then you'll enjoy this thrill ride.

Woody Allen wrote and directed this inventive comedy, which has some good laughs but a very nasty edge.

Steven Spielberg's historical drama is more stilted and didactic than its fascinating subject deserves, gathering great emotional force only in a harrowing scene depicting the Holocaust-like suffering of slave-ship captives.

Matt Damon and Robin Williams give touching performances, but Gus Van Sant's filmmaking is surprisingly ordinary.

Heavy on violence and special effects, light on everything else.

Robin Williams is no Fred MacMurray, but he plays the hero with his customary energy.

In keeping with this background, the movie boldly incorporates actual newsreel footage - with authentic images of human suffering, some of them seen in TV reports on the war - into its conventionally scripted and acted story.

This poetic and compassionate drama by Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan combines the intricate structure of his earlier movies with an emotional power that raises his remarkable career to a whole new level.

Lavishly produced animation makes imaginative use of familiar formulas, filling the screen with handsome images accompanied by sprightly songs and lively voice-performances.

Kevin Spacey gives a richly nuanced performance as the accused killer, and director Clint Eastwood makes the sometimes sordid story less sensationalistic than it might have seemed in less accomplished hands.

Francis Ford Coppola has directed the legal drama with his usual keen attention to atmosphere and texture, although his adaptation of John Grisham's bestselling novel leaves out connective material that would have made the tale smoother and savvier.

Paul Verhoeven's movie takes more action than ideas from Robert A. Heinlein's 1959 novel, which is just as well, considering the book's goofy suggestion that military veterans should control society from top to bottom.

Thoughtfully directed by the versatile Iain Softely from Hossein Amini's screenplay, which reduces James's intricately structured narrative to feature-film scale without losing the book's rueful psychological tone.

But there's no denying the movie's frequent hilarity, abetted by Mel Smith's superbly laid-back directing and on-target performances by an excellent supporting cast.

In the end, however, the story is too contrived and melodramatic to reach its full potential.

Influenced by Billy Wilder's classic "Ace in the Hole," this dark comedy-drama rambles on too long and strains credibility at times.

Wong Kar-Wai, whose energetic and inventive style isn't enough to give the shallow story the substance and resonance it needs.

Andrew Niccol wrote and directed this intelligent and suspenseful science-fiction drama featuring strong performances by Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman, Alan Arkin, and Gore Vidal.

Danny Boyle's dark comedy has stylishly filmed moments, but overall it's a queasy blend of amusing, pointless, and sometimes quite nasty material.

The screenplay by Kevin Williamson ("Scream") keeps the lighting low and the tension high, though a bit more wit would have helped.

Taylor Hackford's thriller makes a mischievous assault on today's legal system, but its points would be more telling if the story didn't veer so often into needless sensationalism and eye-catching effects.

Different viewers might find different portions worthy of anything from zero to four stars, but anyone with a faint heart or weak stomach should stay miles away from it. [24 Oct. 1997, p.13]

Joe Eszterhas's screenplay is vastly more thoughtful than his scripts for "Basic Instinct" and its ilk, but the storytelling is too spotty for the movie to become the effective moral tale it might have been.

Heavily influenced by Quentin Tarantino's brand of quirky sensationalism, this high-energy saga by Paul Thomas Anderson goes a long way toward exposing the greed and stupidity of the pornography trade, then loses its moral compass and steers toward a sadly superficial ending.

Written and directed by Mark Waters, who strives for David Mamet-style punchiness but doesn't develop the quirky momentum that would carry the deliberately out-of-kilter story past its implausibilities.

The movie is a star vehicle at heart, aimed more at marketing Pitt's popularity than probing complexities of empire-building and cultural clash that trouble the Tibetan region to this day.

Sensitive acting by Morgan Freeman and stylish directing by Gary Fleder can't overcome the bottom-line pointlessness of the movie's melodramatic material, which never achieves the dark resonance that helped "The Silence of the Lambs" get under the skin of many moviegoers.

Oliver Stone's imaginative style runs rings around John Ridley's idiotic screenplay.

Directed by Ang Lee, whose exposure of middle-class hypocrisy would be more effective if it weren't rigged to provide evidence for the story's take on contemporary values.

MESSAGE Nuclear blackmail is a horrible crime but can be defeated by vigilant and courageous authorities.

The story is so complicated that the movie can't quite make it clear, but the picture has impressive energy and high-intensity performances from Kevin Spacey, Danny DeVito, and Guy Pearce.

Combines a celebration of tolerance with an affirmation of family and community values, and a surprising amount of laugh-out-loud hilarity.

The characters are sharply etched but the plot is made deliberately ambiguous, suggesting that family life is so emotionally intricate that no single story can contain or explain it.

On the surface, The Game is an unusually imaginative thriller that bends its offbeat plot into so many twists that you actually have to pay attention - something few Hollywood movies demand nowadays - to understand its evolution and enjoy the multiple payoffs at the end.

In all, She's So Lovely is second-best Cassavetes but still one of late summer's more adventurous releases, helped by strong performances from its talented stars and from the great Rowlands in a minor role.

Laurence Fishburne and Tim Roth play the main characters with conviction, but Bill Duke's punchy filmmaking style banishes any hope of storytelling subtlety or psychological nuance.

The adventure is well-acted by Mira Sorvino and Giancarlo Giannini, among others, and imaginatively directed by Guillermo Del Toro, who gives a new twist to old science-fiction effects.

Written and directed by Deepa Mehta, this Indian production is not filmed very interestingly, but reveals much about conflicts between traditional and modern attitudes in Indian society.

James Mangold follows up the promise of his excellent "Heavy" with this smartly written, superbly acted melodrama.

The settings and visual effects are imaginatively done, but the dialogue is silly and the plot is a mishmash, with echoes of everything from the "Aliens" movies to Michael Crichton's novel "Sphere," which pushes similar buttons a little more intelligently.

Peter Cattaneo's comedy has brash and boisterous scenes, but its message about the humiliations of unemployment is serious and insightful, and applies far beyond the English setting of this story.

Mel Gibson and Julia Roberts contribute major star power to the uneven tale, but it never becomes as convincing as a real conspiracy theory should.

The tale doesn't always seem sure where it's going, and for once in his career, Leigh doesn't always appear to have a firm grasp on his project.

The adventure is vulgar and violent, although the special effects are impressive.

The movie wastes a good opportunity to look at important questions, such as who's responsible for American policy when the president is busy killing terrorists.

Poignant, witty, historically illuminating.

The plot is predictable, and the humor is uncreative and often crude. The heroine, however, is endearing in her quirkiness.

Its discussions don't go very deep, and moviegoers with strong religious values may wonder why it comes down for humanism over spirituality.

The film's approach is highly instructive, deeply moving, and geared to deploring the racism that breeds violence rather than reactivating old hatreds.

Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith give uproarious comic performances as government agents ordered to keep New York's monsters in Manhattan, where they'll blend right in with the rest of the confusion.

This is the ultimate Woo movie, but while his fans will enjoy every minute, others will find it too long, repetitive, and violent.

George Clooney looks great in a cape, but this fourth installment in the series has invested so much capital in razzle-dazzle special effects that it hardly matters whose head is under the pointy-eared helmet.

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

It's all idiotic but energetic, directed by Jan De Bont in his usual techno-action style.

Nicolas Cage, Ving Rhames, and Steve Buscemi are among the few performers who emerge with a shred of dignity at the end.

Peter Greenaway's unorthodox drama treats the movie screen less as an entertainment device than a postmodern canvas upon which he writes, photographs, and records an intricate multicultural collage. [06 Jun 1997]

The story is as contrived as it is comical.

Steven Spielberg's blockbuster whips up superficial sorts of excitement, and unlike the original "Jurassic Park," the picture looks tacky around the edges.

There are endearing and powerful moments which thankfully overshadow the occasional clichéd passages.

The story is nonsensical, the filmmaking is monotonous, and the acting - aside from Marlon Brando's brilliant cameo as the cultist - is weak. [14 May 1997, p.14]

The action is fast, furious, and as wacky as science fantasy gets.

Likable performances, but the story's brash and hyper, though sweet, delivery grows wearing, especially the sexual innuendo.

The drawn-out, lowbrow humor is either "love it" or "hate it," so it may not be your bag, baby.

It starts slowly, but builds to a spectacular climax with hearty sound effects and deftly directed stunts.

Writer/director Peter Duncan's first film is darkly humorous, with dashes of slapstick, brilliant, and original material.

This disaster film has action from the get-go; but its awesome special effects hide a laughably corny plot, and for a picture about terror from the depths, its characters are ridiculously shallow.

So stupid you'll wish you'd brought a duffel bag of your own.

Wesley Snipes is terrific as the hero.

This clever and original movie is like a John Hughes comedy for the '90s.

Coil up with a tub of popcorn, get a stranglehold on your soda - this is a creepy, action-packed boat ride down a jungle river with lots of huge snakes dropping by for man-sized snacks.

The story has charming and uplifting moments as well as strong performances by an impressive cast.

The filmmaking technique of writer-director Kevin Smith has matured since the raunchy "Clerks," his popular debut movie; but although his dialogue is often witty, he still relies on blunt sexual humor to get his point across.

The drama is long on 1950s atmosphere and complicated feelings, short on emotional depth and real psychological insight.

Val Kilmer is fun as the mercurial hero, and Elisabeth Shue would be great as the physicist if she didn't waste so much time making googoo-eyes at her handsome new boyfriend.

The dramatic situations aren't intense or knotty enough to match the moral issues behind them, however.

The picture has energy to spare, but children won't get the movie-buff references that provide much of its humor. [04 Apr 1997, p.13]

The dialogue swings between platitudes and clichés, but the acting is lively and the music will set even lazy toes tapping.

Jim Carrey proves that he's the most inspired clown in movies today, but parents should be warned that much of the picture's humor is extremely rude and crude.

David Cronenberg's movie is a chilly meditation on this theme, carrying some cinematic interest but surprisingly dull given the story's outrageous subject.

This sensitive, sometimes troubling family drama is one of the rare movies dealing with intelligent adults tackling lifelike problems.

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]

Some scenes paint a convincing portrait of Stern as a witty opponent of stuffiness, prudery, and hypocrisy. Others mix gross-out humor with nasty doses of racism, sexism, and homophobia that reveal a dark side to Stern's professional personality.