On a Clear Day is in most respects "The Full Monty," only with swimming, not stripping, and no bursts into song or dance - only the usual canny sequencing of tears and laughter, interspersed here with fetching underwater photography and father-son issues up the wazoo.

The Roost advances a nifty man-vs.-nature scenario that harks back to Fessenden's own "Wendigo" and provides a nice chaser to a summer movie season populated by cuddly penguins and benevolent cheetahs.

A superb film by any measure, as deep and harsh as the sin Dillon committed to become great.

Excellent performances.

Kawajiri's doom-laden action epic is a heady brew indeed.

Has moments of real interest, but they require wading through a lot of dead air.

Silberling and writer Robert Gordon have made the fatal error of trying to jolly up the novels, which are often funny but never, ever cute.

Off the Black gradually establishes its own peculiar cranky rhythm, fighting to resist the usual male-bonding sentimentality. But despite some nice touches, this is the sort of too-precious indie film that gives its characters unnecessary quirks.

C.S.A. isn't subtle, but its undisguised indignation places it in the same bold polemical tradition as Peter Watkins' incendiary "Punishment Park" (1971), that nightmarish slice of speculative sci-fi about government-sanctioned manhunts for hippies and dissidents.

Increasingly, reviewing the latest Woody Allen movie has taken on the feel of a dreaded ritual, an annual excursion into careless filmmaking, desperate shtick, and vainglorious misanthropy disguised as cuddly neurosis.

Although (Reeves) acting inclines toward the wooden, it's always been his weird genius (if that's the term) to exude a charmed aura, an uncanny sense of being the chosen one -- remember, he's been the Buddha. I'm not sure any other actor could play Neo nearly so well, for the others would all be working to seem like The One (as he's known), while Reeves conveys that quality just by showing up.

There are so many good ideas at the visual level that you can't help wishing the narrative elements had been more cleverly worked out.

The actors are superb -- especially Smith, who exudes some of the live-wire charisma of the young Sean Penn in Rosenthal's "Bad Boys," and the smoldering Brewster.

If you're out shopping with the brood and need a 40-minute break, you could do worse.

Seen in the bowl's metaphoric reflection, Nolte's Adam, with his patronizing wish to build a great art museum to "give something back" to the poor laborers who built his fortune, is a complex American monster.

A story as creaky as the sub that gives the film its name.

Though Saved! is funny and irreverent, Dannelly isn't just taking potshots at fundamentalism. He creates a viable world, then riddles its surface piety with underground transgressions that call into question not Christian belief but slavish, intolerant religious practice.

A serious work of analysis, rooting the resistance to reform in Third World government corruption and Western profiteering.

Kurt Russell is adorably self-mocking as the cluelessly enthusiastic dad in his dorky superhero uniform, and even the spiffy effects lack self-importance. "The Incredibles" it ain't, but Sky High will do nicely.

There’s precious little character development forward or backward.

Razor sharp and funny as hell, Incident at Loch Ness is the harpoon hurled into the hot-air balloon of “reality” entertainment.

Undeniably precious, it may make some viewers fidgety, but others will find that the reflective melancholy that overcomes both director and cast (all superb) is a sweet contagion.

By the time of its medical-operation climax, Stuck On You has focused so much on ennobling the disabled that it comes to resemble a segment of the Jerry Lewis telethon.

Leitman has unearthed a terrific collection of vintage footage - yet, as if doubtful about holding our interest, she skims too quickly over the historical background.

Our traumatized soldiers deserve better representation than this irretrievably ridiculous drama, which will do nothing to revive the flagging fortunes of the man whose career lay down and died after "The Exorcist" and "The French Connection."

The complex narrative counterpoint is anchored by a rock-solid performance by one of the world's great actors, the Beijing theater veteran Hu Jun.

How refreshing it is to see a studio picture where plot development is revealed not so much by grandiose action as by the small, interior shifts that are witnessed through a character's eyes.

Gaily seduces you into its fantasy life, then whacks you over the head with a finale that, intentionally or not, functions as a rebuke to the mad optimism of Benigni's pandering film