A difficult time rising above the level of a reasonably nice TV-movie.

I would rather have been scraping gum off my shoe than sitting there another minute.

Though the film is generally weak, treading very familiar ground, those dashes of insight and humor - along with Griffiths' performance - pull you into the film.

When your characters are only skin deep, so is your message.

It's not easy to go 12 rounds against a cliche-ridden story like Price of Glory and remain standing. But somehow stars Jimmy Smits and Jon Seda, and first-time director Carlos Avila, manage to survive.

A too-familiar road.

Not quite good enough to leave more than a vaguely pleasant, vaguely disappointing aftertaste.

For anyone who wants to see wildly inventive, peerless filmmaking that's oblivious to market-place formulas, Beau Travail is an absolute must-see.

(Cusack)'s genius, however, is in his continual ability to be the most likeable of everymen.

Don't be surprised if you exit Here On Earth feeling both moved and incredulous.

Crudup tends to take average parts in standard genre films and turn them into something special.

Westerners may find the religious aspects wearying and a little fantastic. The Color of Paradise is both parable and fable, a retelling of Isaac and Abraham.

Lost its chance to be anything but an endurance test for the viewer.

It's a notch above average, but Whatever It Takes can't get too far above that notch.

As he did in "Run Lola Run," he has clearly patented an original combination of cinematic eye and ear candy and a profound, irresistible fascination for the role of chance in this world.

The gravity-defying harness maneuvers popularized in the U.S. with "The Matrix" -- ... look really cool, but seem out of place in a realistic gang-style action movie.

Retains enough of Soderbergh's usual indie sensibility to make some sly but contentious points.

Takes an easy target and turns it into something naggingly weird.

It's hard to root against Death when the people involved are never brought to life in the first place.

For a good 40 minutes or so in the middle of this movie, De Palma is in his element.

A nonsensical mishmash.

Almost unbearable.

Steadfastly conventional.

A long portrait of someone who outstays his welcome fairly early on.

Let your children have their childhood while you have a rare, grown-up experience at the multi-plex for a change.

What makes the film so special is that while tickling your postmodern funnybone, it never forgets to make you care for its characters, in a welcome, and almost traditional way.

An endlessly contrived exercise in self-referential "black comedy", can't help but strike me as no kind of triumph of anything over anything.

A dismal film, a flop as both 21st-century romantic comedy and gay "Kramer vs. Kramer."

Could have afforded to be a little loftier and still be quite funny. Instead, it's a waste.

When it counts, this film is absolutely successful.

The audience for this film would be those people who like their cinematic fare pre-digested and painfully familiar.

An acerbically comic fable.

For those seeking even a little adventurousness in their filmgoing experiences, the movie will wear thin very quickly.

Comes across as a deceptively streamlined comic-drama; an unnervingly violent, gritty film noir with a wink.

Unlikely to draw the audience it deserves, but those who do see it will have a hard time shaking its gentle, ghostly echoes.

Quite shameless in imitating its predecessors.

More whimsical than gloomy, for all the horrors it alludes to or depicts.

This is basically a movie about one neurotic woman and her neurotic L.A. life. .

What director Aviva Kempner has done is shine a light into the past and recover a classic American hero, one with all the integrity, decency and largeness of spirit that we have been taught makes up the American character.

A dark comedy that squanders its potential and never quite, as they say, suspends disbelief.

Simple but charming.

Mostly this film skims by on the surface, its conflict and climax visible from the opening five minutes.

Exemplifies the subpar state of movies today.

Not a waste of time, but not quite in control of its destination.

A largely unenlightening work.

Obvious in its observations, predictable in its conclusions, and a little dull in the telling.

Gun Shy can't rise on wobbly legs, and its real potential is lost for good.

Simply can't sustain interest for much of its final hour.

Does a lot of little stuff right, and it sparkles at times.

Too slow-moving and too understated in much of its humor.

A Mexican film that reaches for a very weird and risky tone, and, I think, fails.

What on earth is Stockard Channing doing in this mess?

Self-conscious clunker.

Floating this material slightly above the assembly-line level is the energetic cast and the efforts of writer-director Kris Isacsson.

Looks and moves like a film whose vital organs were yanked before shooting commenced.

The film has smarts, but what really makes it fascinating is its huge heart...and the film soars because of that.

But it's the boy and the dog who make My Dog Skip resonate. The formula may be an old one, but it's still a good one.

Will eventually be remembered as a disposable farce, but one that leaves a happy memory.

Expertly done, and a real joy to watch.

An often affecting, if standard-issue, Hollywood biopic.

A very competent film, but it barely pulls you in.

Morris seduces us into stepping into Leuchter's world of delusion and ego.

This is still Ron Shelton in good -- not great, but good -- form here, and the rewards are plentiful.

An often gorgeous, dizzying assault of ideas and visual flourishes...it's just not very good.

For fans of science fiction...Galaxy Quest is a sweet, funny valentine to their obsessiveness.

A dark film that raises more questions than it answers -- and it's meant to.

The kind of minor work that may very well speak greater volumes about (Stone's) thoughts and feelings right now than another masterpiece would.

Never more than a dull, paint-by-numbers, overly literal transcription of the book.

Regretfully, the beginning of this movie is as good as it ever gets.

You just watch one carefully constructed but emotionally vacant image piled up on another - sometimes with regard to an overall effect, but often just for the sake of style over substance.

An excellent coming-of-age story that is, for once, and very happily, focussed on a teenage girl.

Leigh and his solid cast make sure that inside jokes translate to a broad audience, and that their rendering of the back-stage drama is smart, engrossing and often very funny.

It is Foster who presents the biggest single problem, delivering a monochromatic performance that finds her character not much more than flinty and strained.

A deliciously romantic story, in all senses of the word.

The single best thing about Stuart Little is Nathan Lane.

Tired, overcomplicated mix of macho bullshit.

Captivating an audience from the get-go and drawing our attention and emotions ever deeper into the layered mysteries of a dreamy fable.

It's epic in every sense of the word, and like most of Chen's historical dramas, not easy to follow.

What leaves you breathless, though, is the knockout acting by the cast.

Its grimness is so unrelenting that I can only recommend it to filmgoers who need a movie to tell them that incest is bad.

Part of the appeal of John Irving's writing is its sense of bounty, the way the world is offered up as a horn of plenty. The Cider House Rules movie, by contrast, feels narrowed down to small slices of experience.

Thoroughly artificial and overly schematic, to the point of caricature even, but often lively and witty nonetheless.

There's nothing here but a messy lump of coal.

While writer-director Frank Darabont often fails to make King's story plausible, that's no fault of the actors. The performances are the movie's strong suit.

Rob Schneider's stab at an "Ace Ventura"-like gamble for stardom.

Using current hand-held camera technology to ape the political and esthetic sensibility of the 1960s.

It certainly has a place among the year's more accomplished productions.

It is -- in mood, execution, and shameless sentimentality -- a Bette Midler movie with an Irish accent.

It's swell when a film really does capture a book in some exactitude.

There's not a single moment when you forget it's Weaver; she always seems to be inhabiting this poor character's soul for her own purposes.

I'm not even sure the movie makes sense at times, yet Campion's offbeat rhythms and eye for startling images always made me happy to be looking at the screen.

But the movie is so confused about where it wants to go, it suffers from the same identity crisis as its protagonist.

This is independent acting (and movie-making) at its best -- true, tight, anything but trite.

A gorgeous and enduring piece of work.

Full of sound and fury, signifying absolutely nothing, End of Days is the loudest and least of the year's end-of-the-world movies.

Doesn't have the purity, the sense of discovery, of the first Toy Story, but it's still an utter delight. Its images and gags keep replaying themselves in the mind well after the film is over.

Crass and depressing drama.

Puts the Bond film series (this one makes number 19)-- back on track by stressing the fundamentals and applying a bit of authentic drama for a change.