A very well-meaning movie, and it will stand in future years as an eloquent memorial to the World Trade Center tragedy.

Mildly entertaining for a while; think "Stand by Me" meets "Alien," with a soupçon of "Starship Troopers" tossed in.

The screenplay aims high in terms of humanity and complexity, but director Hoge drains it of energy with listless meanderings that provide more yawns than insights.

The only performances worth discussing are delivered by the always excellent Michael Shannon, the Texas detective who tries to set things right, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the scurviest of the marauders.

Ultimately more ambitious than enlightening.

In its cinematic approach, though, the film is as slick as any Hollywood thriller, directed by Fernando Meirelles with visual flourishes - jazzy editing, lurid colors, crackling sound effects - that dilute the impact of what might have been an indelible cautionary tale.

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

The movie has magical moments, but it's too contrived to gather much comic or dramatic power.

Described in the film's production notes as a "classic French comedy" – although I've never heard of it – and perhaps this is the core problem. French farce doesn't mix well with English gooniness.

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 Kaijus make zombies look like wusses, so at least the fights in this film are battles royal. But overload sets in early, and it all turns into battle boring.

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

The result is hardly a subtle film, but it has a stronger sense of combat's real costs and consequences than more sensationalistic pictures like "Black Hawk Down" and "We Were Soldiers" provide.

There's not enough substance to support the sentiment of this longish comedy-drama.

Just a few years ago, the generally felt aspiration of ethnic groups was to blend in with the majority culture. Today it's to flourish in modern society while actively remembering old-country values...Bend It Like Beckham could cement the trend.

Bad movies invariably stem from bad ideas, and the worst of the several rancid ideas packed inside of Dan in Real Life is that Steve Carell could be the new Alan Alda.

An inchoate mass of half-baked (and sometimes blackened) Oedipal dramaturgy. Coppola has made some of the greatest films ever made in traditional narrative mode, but whenever he goes into his indie-outsider dance, he stumbles badly.

The story is shamelessly corny, and grown-ups will groan at its cliches. It's vividly filmed and energetically acted, though, so youngsters new to outdoor-adventure movies should find it tremendously exciting. [14 Jan 1994, p.13]

The movie is reasonably smart and touching when it deals with the plight of a family on the rocks, but it pushes too many emotional buttons when the ex-wife is diagnosed with a fatal illness that proceeds to take over the story.

The movie would be better as a 30-minute short, though, since its shaky camera work and fuzzy images get monotonous after a while, and there's not much room for character development within the very limited plot.

Music buffs may wish there were a lot more Puccini and a little less talking-head chitchat.

The story is winning but the telling, with Dai adapting and directing from his own novel, is too sentimental in the long run.

Strains too hard to seem smart and savvy.

The title means "The Swamp," and you may feel you're in one after 103 minutes with such a generally unlikable gang.

AT once an old-fashioned adventure and a postmodern pastiche, The Quick and the Dead walks a slim tightrope with impressive skill and humor. Its main reference point is the work of Sergio Leone, the Italian maestro whose "spaghetti westerns" reinvigorated the genre during its last major phase about 30 years ago. [13 Feb 1995, p.13]

No better than the first – which means it will probably be creamed by critics and make a jillion dollars. But really, standards are standards.

Skillfully acted, idealized, uneven.

For all the special effects – like its predecessor, this is in 3-D – the film coasts on Johnson being charming and Caine being Caine.