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.