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.