Costner is convincing as the hero, ably supported by Joe Morton as a short-tempered supervisor and Kathy Bates as a feisty neighbor. Dragonfly has little chance of "Ghost"-like popularity, though.

It's as forgettable as they come.

The credo of Italy's fabled neorealist movement was that movies rooted in real, unadorned experience carry more dramatic impact than studio concoctions can dream of, and this 1952 masterpiece exemplifies that argument brilliantly.

A smart and scary voyage into the uncanny realm where hard realities,mind-spinning myths, and hallucinatory visions blur.

It's refreshing to see a cartoon that looks like a cartoon -- and a lovingly drawn one -- rather than a conglomeration of computer-generated bits and bytes.

All right, it's far-fetched. But it's fun to think about, and Rubbo makes a merry case. Will the real Bard of Avon please stand up?

There's nothing special about this movie -- it's just business as usual for today's debased action-movie genre.

Results are illuminating, harrowing, and riveting.

Solondz is a courageous social commentator and a canny provocateur at the same time. He'll never get to Hollywood if he stays on this track, but cinema will be a lot duller if he ever mends his incendiary ways.

This doesn't mean Maelström is for everyone. It's a strange and quirky yarn, moving between deceptively calm scenes and episodes as tempestuous as its title.

Moretti's acting skills aren't up to the demands of the main role, and his portrait of family life is too simplistic to be credible.

It's a smart and creative comedy that skewers cheaply dehumanizing architecture and self-absorbed yuppie mentalities in a series of skillfully assembled scenes. See it in a theater that's waydowntown, and city life may never look the same.

Sail to the box office, swashbucklers. Dumas is back in style.

At times, the film meanders from its course and loses dramatic focus. But it's vividly acted and creatively directed.

The plot is predictable, the characters are cliches, and all the actors look and sound like refugees from a movie Martin Scorsese would have made vastly better three decades ago.

Its low-key charm shows that Dogma filmmakers have yet to run out of ideas.

Much of the historical horrorfest is more frenetic than fascinating. Look out for bursts of over-the-top violence.

Tsai's cinematic style is unique: He unfolds his stories in long, static shots that let you discover their surprises and mysteries on your own. And that's great fun. What Time Is It There? is perky, entertaining, and one of a kind.

The film would be more informative if it put Goldsworthy into the broader context of modernist art movements. It's visually ravishing from start to finish, though.

Perhaps they truly believe war is an inescapable aspect of human life. If so, why make movies that rub our faces in its horror? If artists have no antidote to war's evil or insight into the suffering it brings, their motive in depicting it must be merely to sensationalize its terrors and make money from the morbid fascination it holds for audiences. We deserve better.

The story has inherent emotional power, but Jeremy Brock's formula-bound screenplay rarely soars beyond cliches.

The film means well, but each scene gets clobbered by sappy screenwriting.

Its ethical and intellectual insights wane when the love story kicks in, weakening what might have been a much deeper movie. Still, its performances are wonderful to watch.

This territory is familiar if you remember the great BBC miniseries "Upstairs Downstairs," but Altman gives it a new twist with his restlessly roaming camera and incisively satirical approach. He's still near the peak of his powers.

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.

Spacey is endearing, bringing his shy character to life despite glaring psychological gaps in the screenplay.

While it's a splendidly acted film, A Beautiful Mind is also a wasted opportunity.

The film tries to revive the sort of good-hearted optimism associated with Frank Capra classics of the 1940s era, but pictures like "It's a Wonderful Life" and "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" were never so simplistic, syrupy, or tedious to sit through.