Particularly unsuitable for cinematic adaptation, but when has that ever stopped anyone.

All the new plot stuff is way old hat, as though straight from a textbook chapter called "Conflict Drives Your Narrative!" And at times the motivations are either unclear or senseless.

(Washington's) performance is halfhearted, soft.

An affecting film, but it just may not be everyone's cup of cyanide.

A road movie trapped in a cul-de-sac.

Taymor moves Titus completely out of time and into all time.

The makers of this film are clearly fans, and they've put more heart and genuine humor into this piece than Paramount has into the original franchise in years.

Numbs as much as it unnerves.

A football film made by a man who apparently has seen little of the game outside of movies, and not very good ones at that.

A sharp and pungent distillation of the book. However, as far as the theme of childhood under duress goes, I found "My Life as a Dog" or the stridently Irish "Into the West" to be significantly more fulfilling.

If this movie is a pedestal, it is far too tall and wide for a performer of Kaufman's stature.

This badly muddled adaptation of a complex novel chases after Guterson's many skeins and themes with no unifying principle in mind.

Doesn't come close to matching the emotional depth and power of Frank Perry's 1962 "David and Lisa," the most involving and affecting film I've ever seen about teenagers and mental illness.

A masterful film about the magic of performance and the foibles of the artists behind it.

Grand entertainment in the old-fashioned sense.

Forces its snuggly weirdo upon us and instructs us from the get-go to love him.

Proves only intermittently engaging as its twisted plot loses energy and becomes confusing in the latter half.

It's not really a kids' film, nor it is particularly funny, by either design or execution. It is, rather, Columbus' latest attempt at a comically tinged tearjerker.

For those with a taste for epics that integrate the historical and the intimate.

A brilliant piece of garbage -- mesmerizing, but only because you can't believe someone has the temerity to put so much into so little.

A bleak, beautiful film.

Rich in story, character, and design, The Cider House Rules is obviously a collaborative effort, but above all it is a triumph for director Hallström.

In the end, it's all just too damned much. It's more exhausting than edifying.

As by-the-numbers as VCR instructions. And, inexplicably, it's also a blast.

A loud and ghastly movie to sit through and not short on gratuitous hideousness, but Darabont has also done his best to baste it with humanity and sweetness.

A strong contender for Worst Picture of All Time.

The scares early on are potent and get Stir of Echoes off to a chilly horror-movie start.

Those needing their Irish fix will be satisfied and no doubt will leave the theater in far greater spirits.

Satisfying in its setup and execution, and the Catholic guilt streaked through its dank, rainy atmosphere serves it well. Nonetheless, the story's subtleties in this version are often outweighed by melodrama, sometimes verging on sap.

Sigourney Weaver and Julianne Moore share their pain in a depressing World.

If Campion has a message in all this -- something about the eternal battle of the sexes -- it is far from clear.

It is engaging, touching, and frequently funny. Maybe because his hero is inarticulate and his heroine is mute, Allen relies far more than usual on physical comedy than on the verbal jokes that are his strongest comic suit.

The most liberating thing about this funny, touching, heartfelt little movie is the way it defies the rules and, in the end, begins to set its heroines free. They've earned it.

In this, Lee's most ambitious and successful work yet, his celebrated gift for psychological shading and complexity is on proud display.

Nothing worse than a silly movie that takes itself seriously, that bores us to death while we wait for the finale that comes too late.

The story is just as funny and touching. The only problem is the inevitable one: The freshness -- the novel delight -- is a little faded now.

One of the season's biggest delights.

Whatever its flaws -- and it has some lulus -- it's a textbook model for how to structure action of this kind.

Hasty pacing makes for a rich and exciting movie, but not an especially spooky or spellbinding one.

The unfettered comedy of life bubbling up from the Spanish unconscious continues to be proudly liberationist, gloriously extreme, and achingly human.

O'Connor as Fanny is irresistibly appealing.

A disarmingly funny, clear-eyed, and affectionate memory piece.

Smith has fashioned a complex, contemporary Bible epic on his own terms. By turns crafty and clunky, pious and profane, it's clearly a labor of love.

As far from crowd-pleasing as you're going to get these days.

Slick, glossy, and artificial.

The ludicrous casting of Hoffman is just the fatal bit of kindling on this Joan's fire.

The real find-- is Rosario Dawson, who has appeared to good effect in previous smaller roles ("Kids," "He Got Game") and just about walks off with the movie.

Far superior to either "Life Is Beautiful" or "Jakob the Liar."

An engaging preapocalyptic fantasy.

The final product is great populist entertainment and may even leave audiences with a feeling of comfort, however fleeting, in the knowledge that corrupt corporations don't always win

Touching, frequently hilarious.

On one level it is highly intimate, yet it is also universal, a modern metaphor for the human condition and the precariousness of life itself.

A blender full of all the juicy nuggets that define Troma films: monsters, mayhem, syrupy bloodletting and gooey head-squishing, transgender mutilations, loads of bad acting by complete freaks, and even more pointless nudity by attractive and unattractive people alike.

So utterly awful, you're tempted to build a time machine, then go back in history and try to make sure Ward's parents never meet.

So uplifting, it's almost...gross.

While Mononoke is often gorgeous to look at and has a far more sophisticated story than most Japanese animated features, it still feels overlong and dramatically unengaging.

Smart people will relish its temerariousness, average people will smile awkwardly and comment that it's "kinda different," and dimly lit people may mistake it for the Elmo movie and drool quietly in the back rows. It's a movie for everyone.

Unhampered by imagination and driven solely by libido.

Feels like two films that aren't closely related enough, either tonally or narratively, to warrant their intertwining.

Lee's pace is slow enough to try viewers' patience.

Despite moments of gritty greatness that rival Scorsese's best, the movie is severely hampered by please-everyone syndrome, especially in the editing and choice of music.

A work of hilarious, nearly Ed Wood-worthy ineptitude.

Snappily directed and edited, and there are moments of funny acting...but the script is all homiletic commonplaces, in quip form, and the wisdom is both stale and dubious.

Whatever else is weak or indulgent in this fledgling effort -- self-consciousness and a certain grim solemnity come to mind -- it has the jolt of truth about it, like a lot of thinly veiled fiction.

Undeniably interesting, but not entirely successful.

At times it's overly calculating, indulgent, amateurish, and, well, boring. Ultimately, a surprisingly personal memoir, and just maybe the best gift a father ever received from his daughter.

Indeed heartwarming, though not simplemindedly so.

Fight Club is to intelligent men what Catherine Breillat's "Romance" is to intelligent women -- an insult.

You'll get that $8 nap you've been craving.

More involving and intriguing than any by-the-numbers studio thriller. In large part, it holds our interest because of its stylistic boldness, not despite it.

In Mary Katherine Gallagher's dogged perseverance, it's easy to find not only cheap laughs but real soul. In her way, she's a saint.

That's possibly Peirce's best trick of all, telling a true story so well that you can't remember how it ends. And when you remember, you hope that you were wrong.

Screwball mistaken-identity crapfest...it's just utterly plain, a confection so bland you don't even care that it doesn't really make any sense at the end.

Its loose-limbed sweetness and gruff irreverence are just right.

Its greatest flaw is the casting of Miller ("Trainspotting," "Hackers"), who continues to have virtually no screen presence...For all that, Plunkett & Macleane is fun.

Actually quite agreeable, but only because of a group of actors who are able to salvage the paper-thin material.

A nifty little war movie that defies convenient categorization.

A solo "Thelma and Louise" crossed with a gender-reversed "The Fugitive" with a dry twist of "Fletch."

Comes straight out of the Forrest Gump School of Interpersonal Magic, and that's not necessarily a good thing.

The supposedly funny quips and shrugs that fill Jakob the Liar are tepid at best and embarrassingly shticky at worst. Some are simply in bad taste.

Rea hits just the right balance of sympathy and self-interest.

Sugar Town's tunes are terrific, and the writing is sharp. But the typecasting is a work of genius.

The fact that Romance was written and directed by a woman doesn't make the film any better; it simply makes it objectionable on other grounds.

The game is cool to watch, and the love story is assertive enough to hook even the stodgiest ESPN man.

While the idea may be good, its execution is awful.

Berri's film lacks both suspense and a heroine who actually breaks a sweat while hurling herself in the path of one of the 20th century's most merciless juggernauts.

An adaptation that can rightfully be called brilliant.

It gracefully defies the usual categories, gets under your skin in ways you cannot anticipate, then works its way straight toward the heart. It's far and away the bravest and best movie of the year.

Doesn't show us much of anything we haven't seen better already.

If a movie is going to be so totally derivative, it should at least do a better job of it.

Surprisingly tender and resolutely unpostmodern.

As worthless a piece of garbage as we've seen this year.

The material turns out to be far soggier in the execution.

Isn't great; it doesn't come within a Yukon mile of its TV namesake. But it's agreeably bizarre.

Not too far from the version of "Serpico" staged by the Max Fisher Players in "Rushmore."

Flecked with delicious malice, and the kids, especially newcomer Coughlin, performs with verve and high energy.

All set-up, no soul... Nothing here is that inspired, that clever.

With the exception of Murphy . . . the rest of the cast Oz has assembled acquit themselves only adequately or worse.