If you enjoy slightly awkward romance during wartime, Allied is worth a fling.

The film does look beautiful, and there's enough intrigue to inspire anyone to learn more about such a complex, fascinating life. It just would have been nice to see a little more of that complexity onscreen.

The movie rises thanks to an ace in the hole: Bryan Cranston, whose stirring star turn hooks us completely.

Drag Me to Hell is an eyeball-gouging lesson in how to make a genre flick and live to tell about it.

To underestimate actors of this caliber -- even in a popcorn action flick -- would be dangerous indeed.

Using telephoto lenses to bring us close to the characters, Techine directs Wild Reeds with an impeccable sense of tempo, unhurried by narrative pressures. The actors seem to find exactly the right, internal rhythm for each scene the leisurely rhythm of people discovering each other and discovering themselves. This is certainly one of the year's best films. [30 June 1995, p.54]

A sharp sendup of suburban conformity and American materialism, The Joneses does burn through its credit by the end. But it's flashy enough to catch our eye, and keep our interest nearly all the way through.

Few films take a look at the American male college tradition through such a dark, dramatic lens as Goat.

Stallion" has gorgeous cinematography with spectacular landscapes - plus a lazy script, forgettable performances and regrettably uninspired direction.

Michael Jackson is an alien? Tell me something I don't know.

While the boys' fates do seem a little too predestined, that may well be Arslan's intention. When you're idling in no man's land, it's all too easy to get uprooted.

A comedy that successfully plays with stereotypes, both racial and personal.

The very thought of humanizing Hitler makes me queasy. If he had a good side, I don't want to know about it.

High spirits and colorful hissy fits go a long way toward masking the inexperience of this cast of mostly nonprofessionals. It's a charmer.

It's like racing through a detective novel, only to find the last page has been torn out.

A natural crowd-pleaser, this year's big Sundance award winner is both overly familiar and surprisingly fresh.

Like all blond jokes, Legally Blonde is basically meanspirited, and that's when it's funniest.

There are some heartbreaking moments here, from the reactions of recent amputees to the tearful doctors and nurses trying hard to remain professional. And there is no question that Sanders has discovered a worthy subject. He just hasn't found the right way to approach it.

I don't mean to demean it; it's smart, inventive and well-crafted. But as a feature film, it's a novelty item at best.

It’s hard not to like these characters, or to come away without a little more sympathy for the nonlinear ways teenage girls can react to a world that often makes no sense and offers no apologies.

With a plot laden with mistaken identities, voyeurism, marijuana-laced brownies and even a cameo by Vanessa Redgrave playing herself, "Merci" tries too hard to be madcap.

The result is a bit of a mess: sometimes delightful, sometimes tedious, always creative.

The movie's pleasures are spare, and will appeal mostly to die-hard Rivette fans and viewers with slow pulses.

Oddest-of-the-year romantic comedy.

With some movies, you know exactly what you're going to see before you even enter the theater, and Michael Mayer's Flicka is one of them: You've got your girl, you've got your horse, and you've got your strict father trying to keep them apart.

Even with its first-rate cast, current political relevance and tangled mysteries, The Good Shepherd remains as remote as Wilson himself. But frankly, if the lives of CIA spies are really this dreary, they may as well keep their secrets to themselves.

Oddly, almost unrelentingly, grim.

This languorous art movie is somewhat like "Memento," with its narrative fragments and memory mixups. It never explains itself, which means that the audience, like the protagonists, must take a leap of faith.

With one exception (hint: Faye Dunaway), the actors seem remarkably at home in their milieu.

There are several small, startling moments of insight hidden amid the long, slow stretches of listlessness. But the balance is slightly off. We could have used a little more pleasure to get us through his grim adolescent unknown.

For the new film generation, some minor chills are offered in this well-done production. [08 Aug 1957]

Because Albertina Carri spends so much time skirting relevant issues, her self-consciously experimental examination into her parents' murder feels like a worthy movie that simply wasn't ready to be made.

The movie exaggerates a common dynamic between men and women.

The film makes you squirm as well as empathize, but it does need narration.

The standout in the cast is James Todd Smith, whose acting talent may soon persuade him to shed his adolescent stage name of LL Cool J and concentrate on mainstream film roles.

It's no Runaway success, but Gere and Roberts still glow.

In Crazy Love, friends of Burt and Linda express as much confusion over their relationship as we feel, and the Pugaches themselves make an unconvincing case for theirs being a love that conquered all. On the contrary, love doesn't seem to have had anything to do with them. She married him out of desperation, and he pursued her out of a sense of entitlement.

Far from the smart historical epic some might have expected, is just another feisty summer shoot-'em-up.

Unrelentingly, admirably committed to its own grimness.

a despairing movie that you can't look away from, though you'll wish you could.

It starts pushing buttons immediately and never lets up. This proves to be both its strongest asset and, unfortunately, its biggest flaw.

Asylum is as dark as Dracula's mood on a moonless night, and people suffering from depression should think twice before opening the coffin. This thing would put off Mary Poppins.

As movie fiction, I guess it is entertaining enough.

Many of the right elements -- the '40s look, the melodrama, the love that transcends reason.

Visually arresting but thematically uneven, Gerardo Naranjo's fictional snapshot of a gritty Mexican beach is simply too desperate to shock us.

A magnificent looking and occasionally very silly Chinese Western.

The action periodically stops so the characters -= even the roughest grifters -- can break into song and dance.

The time-warp romantic fantasy The Lake House is a puzzle that is maddeningly obtuse, emotionally overstretched, and virtually absent a sense of interior logic.

Like Stone in "Basic Instinct," van Houten has an audacity to match Verhoeven's. Hers is a role that Bette Davis would have killed Ingrid Bergman for, and she is so good in it that it seems only a matter of time before she'll star in a real Hollywood movie - as opposed to this pretender.

So much is so good about The Recruit that you'll wish the ending were better. It's like opening the last lid in a Chinese box and having a clown figure pop out on a spring.

Bogged down by a lazy script and underwhelming performances. Fortunately, there's no hiding his jubilant passion for ritual and symmetry, which makes each perfectly choreographed band scene a genuine thrill to watch.

There are movies that are important, and then there are movies that simply look and act as if they're important. With its arthouse cast, hipster credentials and ominous atmosphere, Young Adam never bothers to reach for real significance.

Who knew a drama about numbers could be so thrilling?

Surprisingly poignant, thanks to its enduring sense of tenderness.

Written to skewer the upper class of its time, the script is now just a broad joke-fest, clever lines batted back and forth like badminton shuttlecocks.

Director Bezucha's eyes are as starry as Montana's sky, but it's pretty hard to resist such a determinedly utopian vision of love.

Does have a sort of endearing, earnest charm. But it would take much more than good intentions to save a film that rehashes cliches and concepts so unabashedly.

A metaphysical shaggy-dog story, whose unpredictable punchline is its only redeeming feature.

Plays strictly to formula, the only real surprise is its apparently ironic title.

Quirky, character-driven comedy.

Graham is lots of fun to watch, but it's hard to reconcile the split halves of her character.

The movie is so nervous about offending anyone that it's hardly any fun. Hanks delivers a few solemn speeches meant to deflect criticism. Meanwhile, he and Tautou barely hit it off. At least Mr. and Mrs. Smith got hot while doing their jobs.

An uncensored, often hilarious vision of spring break madness that is so perfectly positioned on the big screen, the only question you can ask its creators is, "What took you so long?"

Most of the film is way too goofy for all but the most thumbstruck Hitchhiker.

Offbeat, engaging documentary.

I watched A Good Woman with a fixed smile frequently interrupted by giggles, but I didn't believe a second of it.

There isn't a flicker of chemistry between these old pros in Andre Techine's peculiar melodrama.

Just as surely as the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, this domestic comedy follows a direct path through every crisis, every resolution and every sentimental heartbeat laid out in the script.

The girl's blindness may have been meant to symbolize a trusting populace, but she's the one character who clearly sees what's what and who is trustworthy.

The special effects here are surprisingly smooth, and everyone seems to be having fun.

The dialogue between the captive and the captors gets a little didactic, and the ending is as contrived as it is cynical. Weingartner obviously has more in common with the rich man than the kids.

That's a lot just to justify a cute title, but cuteness is the engine driving the slight, obvious but occasionally very funny film.

Given the tragic events that actually happen, "Nickleby" ends not knowing what it was supposed to be. But those first two acts are nearly worth the price of admission.

The Spanish writers-directors often overreach for humor, and really overreach for a happy ending. But there's a strong heart beating beneath the foolishness and one wonderful performance from Leonor Watling.

Footloose turns out to be a sort of Boy Scout version of “Flashdance,” a carefully toned-down, overly respectable piece of schmaltz.

Visually, Robots is fun and imaginative. The wow factor is enhanced in the IMAX version, also opening today.

It's a triumph of the human spirit that so many people in deadly jobs are able, nevertheless, to marry and have a few happy moments despite lives of hellish labor. Glawogger's intrepid camera finds both the shame and the grace in it.

If it's not quite the best Will Ferrell movie he never made, Balls of Fury is, at the very least, a lot funnier than it has a right to be.

If you're game for something different, it's worth a few giggles.

Like previous films by the literary-minded auteur John Sayles, Honeydripper takes forever to develop its characters, its period and its location. But once it's done all that, the payoffs are rich.

As junky as the movie is, you've gotta love its immersion in the preposterous and its naive hope that street credibility and attitude, along with a need for speed, are all that's really necessary in this big, bad world.

A world designed for children, and most of the grownups involved don't quite understand it - on or offscreen.

Zingaretti does a fine job shading a character that is written as an unalloyed saint.

Bai Ling plays a resourceful prostitute from a Malaysian refugee camp who grows harder and more alienated by the day. Nick Nolte, Tim Roth and Temuera Morrison offer strong supporting performances.

The movie does have one very perplexing major flaw. It throws in some minor-character narration toward the end, as if test audiences had lost their ability to concentrate, and this was the filmmaker's only solution for getting us back on track.

The sepia-tinted palette of Ask the Dust drips, reeks and creaks of the seamy side of a city that takes more often than it gives.

Despite a relatively paltry $40 million budget, Stormbreaker has the sheen and special effects of a Bond movie, and the ambition as well.

An unexpected delight.

Minghella has certainly mounted a gorgeous movie and the battle scenes are brutally spectacular. But overall, "Cold Mountain" is like a fine piece of hand-crafted leather, where the stitching shows its quality. That looks good on a handbag, not so good on the big screen.

Meandering, overlong digital soap opera.

A meandering, amusing trifle, Werner Herzog's latest film is as cheekily flaky as his recent "Grizzly Man" was sharply down-to-earth.

The actress' [Julianne Moore's] goodwill, alone, holds this schizophrenic story together - if just barely.

Humorist and liberal radio talk-show host Al Franken is a funny guy, and most of the people he attacks - Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Dick Cheney - are not. But the joke was on him when George Bush won re-election in 2004.

Think you're too tough for a sentimental comeback story? Well, a few minutes with Rocky Balboa might just knock the cynic out of you.

Chéreau keenly understands both his characters and their unwanted world, from the dehumanization that occurs the moment one enters a hospital to the hope and fear that take over when one leaves.

I'm no psychologist, but it took about half this film's overlong running time to figure out that Metallica's problem is that Ulrich is a major pain in the butt.

As a story, Burton's Planet of the Apes is more of a comic-book creation than either of his "Batman" movies.

For each joke that is fresh, there are at least three that fall thuddingly flat. Rock suffers a problem common to comedians moving from sketches to features; he hasn't quite been able to get his performance level above caricature. To his credit, he's made more of this than you'd expect from the lame premise.