Creepy and grotesque rather than terrifying. It's more distasteful than anything stronger, a sour bottle of a celebrated vintage that a gourmet like Lecter wouldn't hesitate to send back with the sommelier.

A flawed time-travel love story, benefits from Meg Ryan's reliable perkiness and establishes Australia's Hugh Jackman as a potent romantic leading man. These and other pluses, however, cannot overcome the film's inability to come alive for a full hour and 20 minutes.

A pleasant diversion, a lightly amusing criminal comedy with a plot so complicated even the people in it can't quite believe what's happening.

Neither the script nor the direction nor the acting has been able to make these characters into ones we want to invest ourselves in. The Truth About Charlie is one very busy film, but it's really not going anywhere.

Although it starts off vaguely amusing, 8 Women grows progressively sour, curdled by the filmmakers' bad faith and lack of compassion. It isn't just the tone that's off; it's the point.

What Ed Neumeier's script provides instead is a cheerfully lobotomized, always watchable experience that has the simple-mindedness of a live-action comic book, with no words spoken that wouldn't be right at home in a funny paper dialogue balloon. Not just one comic book either, but an improbable and delirious combination of "Weird Science," "Betty and Veronica" and "Sgt. Rock and His Howling Commandos."

With Manhunter, there seems to be some danger that style has overrun content, leaving behind a vast, chic, well-cast wasteland. [15 Aug 1986]

Sadly the film is so elusive, so distant, that it never seems more than half-alive.

Director Rob Schmidt, working from a screenplay by Alan McElroy, manages to keep the suspense up through the final hour of the film. Cast members acquit themselves agreeably, carrying off horror archetypes without much fanfare.

Began life as a comic book, and screenwriters Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Voris, ever respectful of that lineage, have not allowed the film's dialogue or plot points to rise above their cartoonish origins.

It would be foolish to deny that Unbreakable has scenes that make you jump, but without anything resonant to apply that skill to, the film has no option except squandering its technique.

High Art is, unfortunately, full of itself and its artistic pretensions.

Though what he does here pretty much defines coasting, Nicholson just fooling around adds an energy to even the kind of hopelessly contrived material that lets you know that the lowest common denominator just got lower.

It just doesn't add up to anything -- or break down -- to anything special. For good or bad, there's hardly a memorable scene in it.

Everything in Matchstick Men moves and looks right, from John Mathieson's cinematography to Tom Foden's production design, so it's puzzling that the film fizzles rather than fizzes.

Clocking in at a self-important two hours and 59 minutes, this elongated romantic fable is impossible to sustain at a running time better suited to the fall of the Roman empire.

Manages to sustain a sweet, funny groove for, say, 65 of its 85 minutes.

Did you miss "Pretty in Pink," with the glowing Molly Ringwald? No problem. Some Kind of Wonderful, which has the same director -- Howard Deutch -- also has the same story... The real complaint, however, is that Hughes has absolutely nothing new to report -- no fresh perspectives, no gratefully received maturity, nothing added or depleted. [27 Feb 1987]

Dahmer moves with a slowness that's meant to be compelling but is largely merely glum. This becomes a hindrance to building suspense in telling a true story whose outcome is already well known.

There might have been a better, more involving method of telling Hoffman's story, but it is expressed with a firm sense of commitment to accuracy and authenticity.

It is not a terrible movie, and Stallone has appeared in far worse. It's just that, although diverting, it's too routine for its own good.

With a body built for action and a smile made for comedy, Smith eases through his scenes -- cool but never scary, a touch hip-hop and thoroughly audience-friendly. And unlike Lawrence, he can act. Smith's ability to put over a scene, combined with his matinee charm, goes a long way to making the film's violence palatable.

It has the awkwardness that characterizes many first features and, as befits a culture that does not always prize refinement, some of its performances and situations are not as subtle as they should be.

There are moments in Kaena that are absorbing, but too much of the time it simply becomes tedious.

Tremendous energy, outrageous humor, dazzling technical finesse -- and a numbing amount of violence, brutality, bloodshed and all-out savagery. It is downright depressing to think about all that vigorous cinematic artistry and expertise aimed so low.

Starts out as such a deliciously savage satire of TV kiddie shows that it's a shame it swerves out of control and over the top, sliding into tedium before pulling together for a clever, if protracted, finish.

Likely to be best appreciated by dedicated sci-fi fans, admirers of Dick in particular. It hasn't the stupendous razzle-dazzle of a mega-budget picture like "A.I. Artificial Intelligence."

Only a teenage boy could find this kind of stuff continually diverting, and only a teenage boy would not notice flimsy emotions and underdeveloped acting. It seems George Lucas, like Peter Pan, has never really grown up.

Though Reign of Fire's concept of a humans-versus-dragons smackdown is a good one, the way it's worked out on screen is more silly than compelling.

The film is perhaps best enjoyed as a minor work with some major pluses, notably in the characterizations and in their adroit portrayals.

A potato chip of a movie. Tasty and lightweight, it's fine for a cinematic snack, if that's what you're looking for. Making it an entire meal, however, really isn't advisable.

A peppy affair that works in fits and starts but is unable to put its successful moments together in any consistently satisfying way.

Unsteadily pitched between horror and comedy, Secret Window turns out to be neither terribly scary nor especially funny.

The film's plot gets so convoluted no nongamer older than 14 will be able to follow it all.

An elegant Merchant Ivory production, it is too slight and perhaps too precious. But it will be a witty pleasure for admirers of its grande dames: Dianne Wiest, Jane Birkin and Bulle Ogier.

Neither funny enough to be a comedy nor serious enough to pass for drama, and it ambles along aimlessly before grinding to an unconvincing halt.

Paradoxically, it is Shawshank's zealousness in trying to cast a rosy glow over the prison experience that makes us feel we're doing harder time than the folks inside. [23 Sept 1994]

Lacks freshness and vitality.

May be too heady for some tastes but can stir you deeply, if you're open to it.

A middling, so-so thriller about a murder investigation on an Army base, it falls to Earth somewhere between failure and success, inconclusive to the end.

Director Peyton Reed gets the film's look and, in moments, its disingenuous innocence, but you have to wonder what he and the screenwriters, Eve Ahlert and Dennis Drake, thought they were parodying. The actors clearly haven't a clue.

The hard-sell comic delivery one expects from contemporary date movies is pleasantly tempered here.

A fast and clever con-gone-wrong comedy that reflects the writer-director's characteristic blend of the intellectual and the criminal. But it lacks anyone to care about--even the repellent characters are less than fascinating--and the result is a crisply made movie that is no more than mildly amusing.

Keeps its filmmakers behind the camera and does without the personality-driven "Fahrenheit's" sarcastic sense of humor.

A standard-issue Hollywood family film about a boy and his dog growing up in a Southern small town during World War II.

Will divide audiences between those whose hearts have been tugged into going along with the picture way past common sense and those who find it impossible to accept the film's credibility-defying developments.

Leigh piles up woe wider and higher than ever before. That he has done so with his usual skill, perception and alertness to relieving gestures of human tenderness and care does not keep All or Nothing from being a pretty glum, overly familiar business.

For much of the film, Berg is content to act like a Michael Bay wannabe, orchestrating large action set pieces that get increasingly tiresome and WWE-like as individuals get mindlessly slammed into the dust.

While the new film is certainly serviceable, it's noticeably lacking in warmth and humor, and though its visual strengths are real and considerable, from a dramatic point of view it's ponderous and plodding.

A tedious, precious fantasy.

If Welles was unhappy at the prospect of the human race splitting in two, he probably wouldn't be too crazy with his great-grandson's movie splitting up in pretty much the same way.

It is moving and has been well-crafted with much care.

It once again confuses a kind of juvenile titillation with insight and treats the ability to make audiences squirm as a pinnacle of film art.

A blithe and unapologetic fairy tale about affairs of the heart, it's a spun-sugar confection that's so light and airy it threatens to simply float away.

May make you weep, but not in the way anyone intended. Handsomely made, well-meaning but finally frustrating and unsatisfying, this perplexing film is an example of a previously unseen hybrid, the socially conscious, humanitarian action movie. It doesn't appear to be a genre with much of a future.

If you're willing to suspend a barrel or two of disbelief, then Happy Accidents has its moments.

It's no great surprise that after a tough beginning, Saved! soon starts to sound a lot like the inspirational TV movie (with Valerie Bertinelli).

Illustrates what happens when a viable premise is spoiled by sheer preposterousness.

Feels like it was written by an oddball artist-temp type with an ax to grind - which, as it happens, it was.

Unfortunately, Garner doesn't have as much screen time as her prominence in the advertising would indicate: Daredevil has a hard time staying alive when she's not on the scene.

There are lots of hilarious, off-the-wall incidents, and the film has a likable freewheeling spirit to go with its knockabout plot. But the film isn't as remotely funny as it means to be.

Consistently sleek but works best if no more is expected of it than a mild diversion.

Kattan and Ferrell do their best to fill out the shallow Butabis.

An earnest but overly contrived and overly long tale.

Though Pitt is as attractive as ever, "Seven Years" offers other things to look at and in fact functions better as a travelogue than as a drama.

How much you enjoy the experience will depend on your take on Gallo. If you think he's a brilliant, satirical cut-up, then The Brown Bunny is an elaborate and successful art prank. If you think he's a pretentious, self-obsessed, tedious weirdo, then The Brown Bunny will back you up 100%

An ambitious film that aims to examine the human equations behind the abductions. But for all its good intentions, it's not as subtle as it might be, and it's finally pitched too broadly to achieve the level of emotional truth it aims for.

This single cautionary tale of how drug innocence gives way to woeful, hung-over experience proves to be way too predictable to effectively caution or even involve anyone.

A lovingly rendered visual treat struggles with indifferent direction and torpid plot.

This is the biggest surprise of all -- it's hard to watch Going Upriver without wondering, frankly, what became of the young John Kerry, who comes off so exceptionally well in this film.

Courageous but uneven The Hidden Half landed the director in jail.

Brief enough, clocking in at 83 minutes, but its story is too predictable to make an impact even in such a short space. Unlike "Toy Story," the dialogue here, written by Todd Alcott and Chris & Paul Weitz, is pro forma all the way.

Does have its pleasures, but the feeling is inescapable that the person most pleased is Bertolucci himself. In essence he is the dreamer of the title, as eager to retreat into this hermetic world of his own creation as his characters are into theirs. Fair enough, but why does he have to drag us along with him?

You may want to take a chance on this new Out-of-Towners because of its stars, but keep in mind that while its characters take chances, the picture itself plays it awfully safe. [2 April 1999, Calendar, p.F-12]

Sporadically playful, it ends up wearing as thin as any film geared to a preteen sense of humor is bound to do.

A standard-issue numskull comedy that aims low but is high in energy.

With its improvisatory tone and loose, rambling structure, which often approaches a total breakdown of coherence, the story takes about half an hour to emerge.

At their best, they're closer to the Three Stooges; at their most banal, they're as original as the Red Hot Chili Peppers performing nude with socks on their penises -- It's a hoot.

Does benefit from Gibson's charisma...Whether it is quite good enough is another question.

Contrivance and a horrendous body count combine to yield a morbid effect for discriminating filmgoers, despite a comic tone. Still, there's enough ingenuity and scariness to please plenty of fans of the first film.

How did something that started out so cool get so dorky?

A perfectly mediocre horror film. There is some hoot-inducing dialogue and cheesy effects, but the film's workmanlike narrative marches gamely forward, managing a handful of respectable scares along the way.

The movie is like a promising date that goes nowhere.

Marred by a flat, conservative script and an overreliance on the tried and true. It feels like a movie we've seen before.

A greatest-hits collection of plot devices and emotional cues from such films as "Gorillas in the Mist" and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," making it something of a trained chimp, one that apes a lot of good movies while making itself look ridiculous.

A movie we might like to buy into if left to our own devices, but that idea is anathema to Turteltaub, intent on pushing us so hard that we end up pushing back.

Certainly acceptable. But no one seeing it is going to feel as spooked as executive producer Roy Lee. To make an audience feel that intensely, you need a different kind of director and a different kind of film.

It's a pleasure to watch Lane's delicately lived-in face tremble with feeling -- it's the truest thing in the movie -- but the character's desperation feels wrong, the worst kind of sellout.

Relentlessly inoffensive, innocuous and vacuous, From Justin to Kelly is nowhere near as bad as its pre-release publicity would suggest.

All the imagination and effort (including 18 months of pre-production) that went into making the dinosaurs state-of-the-art exciting apparently left no time to make the people similarly believable or involving. In fact, when the big guys leave the screen, you'll be tempted to leave the theater with them. [11 June 1993, Calendar, p.F-1]

Though it wasn't planned this way, it's an amusing exercise to view A Man Apart as an allegory for the war in Iraq.

A blandly diverting, chastely conceived and grammatically challenged fairy tale for our bland, chaste and grammatically challenged age.

For all its surface verisimilitude and for all its focus on a problem that couldn't be more current, this film can't manage to feel more than sporadically real.

This energetic and diverting sports soap opera throws a few head fakes in the direction of an iconoclastic examination of the dark side of professional football.

So unashamedly confusing, so intent on piling twist upon twist upon twist, it makes your head hurt just trying to figure out what's happened.

As advertised, A Knight's Tale does try to rock you. The problem is, it doesn't rock you nearly enough.

It is solidly crafted enough from inherently powerful true-life material, however, that WWII buffs and religiously inclined audiences won't be disappointed.

If you're in the mood for a hip-hop film with more happy faces than "The Partridge Family," Honey will divert you.