Once again, the director's eye is faultless as he captures both the essence and beauty of the art of Jang Seung-up, Korea's legendary 19th-century painter. But he doesn't capture the artist's soul.

A disquieting, and somewhat disjointed, call to arms, Theodore Braun's heartfelt documentary is undeniably important. But it may not be quite focused enough to ignite the passion he so clearly wants his audience to feel.

The film is somewhat hampered by the refusal of the parents in two of the three families to participate in it. Though the children provide an eloquent, impassioned presence, their parents' absence is overwhelming.

This is an insider's tour - the uninitiated are, frankly, not likely to be converted.

It's frightening because it's so effective in fomenting fear and because it's so easy to recruit bombers among repressed and hopeless societies.

Day's primary mistake is an occasional attempt to get serious. With a deft comic touch and a topic that's still timely, he doesn't need to play it straight.

All the full-blown wackiness turns a rather sweet movie into one that's decidedly overripe.

The funny thing about RV - no, it's not the jokes, which mostly bomb - is that the characters are actually pretty likable. It's an odd achievement for a road-trip comedy that wants desperately to be loved for its potty jokes, not its humanity.

Some of the banter is fun, like Randal's debate with Elias over the relative merits of "Star Wars" vs. "The Lord of the Rings." But most is just trash-talk as shoptalk.

Green's aggressively whimsical autobiography, which he narrates entirely in rhyme, will challenge all but the most open-minded audiences.

Starts out as fresh as your popcorn, but turns stale before you finish it.

The result is a handsome, action-packed biographical drama with a credibility gap wider than the screen.

Coming from a big shot like Levinson, An Everlasting Piece feels like a gently amusing but undeniably minor diversion that, for whatever reason, needed to be gotten out of his system.

You know this movie is French (apart from the subtitles), because everyone looks great, gets naked and later breaks into a peppy musical number about the joys of lobster and shellfish.

The skiers' explanations, on the order of "no risk, no adventure," won't wash with people born without the daredevil gene and watching them fly down these vertical blankets of snow, often out of control, is a little like watching a train wreck

What makes this one stand out is the tugging, melancholy romance hiding behind the curtain of blood.

The performances are impeccable, but while director Joachim Lafosse carefully creates an atmosphere of suffocating dread, he could have let a little more air into this simmering hothouse.

Looking for plot holes? You can't miss them. But if you go in hoping for a good time, you'll find that, too.

Levin learned nothing that should surprise anyone who is both sentient and sane. But in tracing much of this contemporary anti-Semitism to a phony 19th-century document in which Jewish leaders lay out plans for taking over the world, we at least get some understanding of how some twisted people justify their hatred and fear of Jews.

Bright is pretty to look at, but it's a slow-moving, meandering work that isn't as complex or mysterious as it appears.

Polley, the paraplegic incest victim in Atom Egoyan's "The Sweet Hereafter," gives a mesmerizing central performance.

The result of Moskowitz's sleuthing is Stone Reader, a combination mystery, book celebration and -- sorry to say -- intrusively annoying self-portrait of the filmmaker.

The film is hampered by a somewhat shallow, soap-operatic climax. But Knoller is superb as a practical man trying to balance reason and emotion. Fox does an excellent job capturing the claustrophobia of army life, made all the more suffocating by having to hide one's true self.

Intermittently funny.

Berg has an excellent eye for violent extravaganza and the action - especially a 10-15 minute set piece midway through - is as cleansing as a high colonic.

Niccol doesn't always get the mix right, and the tone here is inconsistent. But the movie remains compelling, largely because of Cage's dry, deadpan delivery.

Miller's film shows how quickly Americans facing perceived foreign threats are willing to ignore basic liberties. Sound familiar?

Not a single moment of creativity or intrigue is to be found in the big-screen debut of the Disney Channel's most popular sitcom character.

At least Williams and Crystal, old pals off the screen, seem to be enjoying themselves.

Ultimately, it's a compassionate view of marriage and its stressors. But the filmmaker and actors do their jobs only too well. Watching "Secret Lives" can be as uncomfortable as sitting in the dentist's chair.

There is no denying the emotional power of these scenes, but one wishes that Scorsese would end his Italian-American guilt trip and stop exposing mean-tempered, self-destructive characters like La Motta, whose personality problems, he apparently feels, stem from their cultural environment. Raging Bull ultimately has a numbing effect on the brain as if one's head had been pummeled by La Motta's so-called "girlish" fists.

The eccentric chocolatier Willy Wonka (Johnny Depp) can't feel pleasure, even though he's surrounded by it, so it's weirdly appropriate that the movie isn't "fun," even if it's amazing to look at.

There's solid chemistry between Cruise and the stunning Newton, a superb actress previously restricted to such ethnic roles as Sally Hemings in "Jefferson in Paris" and the title role in "Beloved."

Most of the film is so purposefully bound by its construct that it feels more like a creative-writing project (sure, give it an A) than a movie (B-).

This is an eye-opening story that doesn't quite hold together as a movie, but it deals with honor in men's lives in ways rare to mainstream film.

First-time feature director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo's dark, complex allegory about luck, chance and fate is one of the year's most morbidly fascinating foreign films.

Bannon's film makes good use of historical footage to show how a B-list Hollywood actor made the unlikely ascension to commander-in-chief.

There are too many familiar faces in this story, from kindhearted whores to street-urchin bullies. But even if circumstances edge toward the unlikely, Kravchuk and Spiridonov make an effective team, exploring the realities that lead to so much heartbreak for so many children.

But for what is at heart a thriller, Code 46 lacks both energy and tension.

It's weird and wonderful.

Unfortunately, Mad City merely pumps up the volume on material that has already been picked clean. [07Nov1997 Pg 74]

Kelly McGillis quite literally as you've never seen her -- as a manipulative, icy sex goddess in whose bedroom there are no limits.

A safety-first, tried-and-true inspirational story that stays the course right down to its "It's a Wonderful Life" ending.

A series of unfortunate events occurred during the making of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events and they all had to do with Jim Carrey.

Maybe Miss Potter will be best appreciated on video when you will intuitively know when to turn it off. On the other hand, Potter's pastel illustrations, which often come to life to her and to the camera's eye, deserve the larger canvas. Tough call.

Miss Congeniality would not be out of place as a TV series, so it makes sense that Candice Bergen and William Shatner appear as pageant co-hosts.

There's little to enjoy in this unsettling tale, but Doillan's unblinking depiction of manipulation and desperation stays with you long after the characters make the deals that seal their unjust fates.

Feeling very much like it is meant to educate students who don't understand the ruling's relevance, "Speed" doesn't boast much in the way of innovative storytelling. What it does offer is a story that still badly needs to be told.

Evan succeeds in drawing a parallel about the lack of racial and sexual tolerance in both eras, but Perry's inner turmoil is nowhere near as interesting as the lively flashbacks.

Gilliam's first fully equipped playpen and if he musses it up -- I mean, really musses it up --well, prodigies will be prodigies.

Feels less like history than a bad episode of "Mission: Impossible."

Despite the spectacularly cool opening credits and some first-rate animation, the story starts to flag about halfway through.

It's a decent Valentine's date-night flick, and should earn Reynolds the attention he'll need to snare stronger leading roles.

Actors Trevor Wright and Brad Rowe are good enough to turn a formulaic coming-out tale into a sweet romance.

Anything, Steven, anything would be better than making us watch the same movie again.

Farrell has the toughest role, playing a man who doesn't understand the powerful crosscurrents of his own emotions, the love, guilt and loyalty that become opposing forces and begin to destroy the relationships he covets.

And still the dialogue is astonishingly feeble, the acting unforgivably wooden. To paraphrase Yoda, the only creature with ­truly human dimensions ever since Harrison Ford's cowboy-mechanic Han Solo departed the galaxy: Bored I am.

Gerstel's efforts are a testament to her own humanity and a ray of inspiration for some ultimate peace. But it also speaks to the near futility of individual forgiveness in a continuing tinderbox of hatred.

As delicious as this premise is, Cats & Dogs is about as funny as a hairball left on your pillow.

Penn is projecting heroic qualities onto a young guy who simply got in over his head.

The old footage is definitely compelling, but once Moss trains his focus on the quotidian present, the movie takes on too much water to stay afloat.

The movie ever so slowly builds to a startling finale, one that puts new meaning into passive-aggressive relationships.

Rife with beautiful imagery and loads of symbolism, though none of the stories is particularly compelling on its own.

The film makers are so anxious to please their audience that they turn the last act into a preposterous cat-and-mouse game that nullifies the integrity of the story.

Inexplicable human bondage is a literary staple of film as well as literature, but Kurys ("Entre Nous"), usually so sure-handed with her actors, has trouble making this bond compelling.

Although the period feeling is convincing, Forman doesn't seem to know exactly what he wants to say about this intensely complex era - and that leaves his cast floundering.

This is an important New York story, and Spaisman makes an inspiring subject.

There's plenty of passion beneath this movie's unadorned surface.

There's no avoiding the fact that it's a one-joke movie, 86 minutes in the telling, and without any serious social underpinnings, it grows old pretty fast.

The film's asset, in a walk, is Bening, whose comic timing puts Shandling to shame.

Dayan's weakly structured biopic Cet Amour-là is, to be kind, less than inspired. But as a showcase for legendary French actress Jeanne Moreau, it's a tour de force.

Much of this is pretty funny, in its perverse, disorienting style, and there's an irrepressible sunniness to the relationship between Lola and Hlynur's mother.

Its leisurely pace and reliance on Ambrose's pale-lashed gaze make it more of an interior monologue. That may not please viewers who crave action, but those with patience will be rewarded.

Trixie has "cult favorite" written all over it. That is to say, the general public is likely to say ixnay.

Gosling's performance is a stunner, although the story-telling is otherwise pedestrian. It is the movie's blessing and curse that it does not shy away from Danny's murderous, inexplicable contradictions — or explain them.

The veteran Cranham and young Bill play their incompatible characters with dead-pan aplomb, and Derek Jacobi adds heft as Churchill's chief intelligence officer.

Though intermittently shrill, Shopping does have enough moments of insight to blunt charges of sexist stereotyping.

A movie with better parts than a whole. But where it's right, it's really right.

It's beautiful to look at, and marvelously edited, but it's hard to know exactly what he's getting at. [28 May 1999]

Though it's ultimately rather heavy-handed, this drama about an Iranian-American family is heartfelt and topical.

Only slightly less awkward than its young protagonists, Todd Stephens' earnest coming-of-age drama is able to coast a long way on two engaging performances and some endearing moments.

Farmiga is excellent as a woman who is like the mouse she feeds to her son's pet snake - trapped and about to be eaten alive by ordinary circumstance.

Will Rugrats fans love it -- Wee, we -- er, oui, oui.

Gram Parsons' last rites were among the most extra­ordinary in rock history. Too bad this retelling of the singer's final adventure is so tame.

The parts are more valuable than the whole in Angelina Maccarone's Unveiled.

A sports movie for people who may not care about sports but can't resist a heart-tugging underdog story.

The performances by Smith, Brewster and veteran David Morse, as a morbidly depressed widower, elevate Nearing Grace to something near grace.

While Shelly's stylized vision and sentimental intentions don't always gel, they do result in a warm, often charming fantasy.

It's certainly not scary; it's not even suspenseful. The tension in Hannibal is purely sexual.

Not a great movie, but it certainly does justice to the great historical event it dramatizes.

The play's most acclaimed performance - rotund Richard Griffiths as the closeted teacher Hector - is great in the movie, too.

The first two stories are so well-drawn you hate to leave them. But Miller's femaleempowerment anthology carries a smart whiff of other literary looks at ordinary, extraordinary women, such as Grace Paley's "Enormous Changes at the Last Minute."

Craggy oldsters Mick Jagger and James Coburn steal the show from the young uns in The Man From Elysian Fields, a mostly entertaining twist on the Faust story about a writer who sells himself cheap.

Might be thought of as "Memento" for people who didn't get "Memento."

Even when their picture wanders from any reasonable path, it's never less than stunning to look at.

Even with the requisite melodrama, it's a rollicking, optimistic movie.

No matter how silly the situation, each member of the uniformly strong cast creates a nice balance between sentimental and sweet - which is just how every holiday gathering should feel.

The film's only dialogue is composed of Young's songs lip-synched and acted out by the cast. This makes for a very literal, somewhat stilted experience.