Like a thick slice of ham - tasty, elegantly prepared and served - that aspires to be gourmet fare but in the end turns out to be only half-baked.

In most respects, The Iron Giant is one of the better animated children's films in recent memory, which makes its strident political correctness all the more frustrating.

(Osment) delivers what may be the greatest performance ever by a child actor.

A gleefully cunning comedy.

A runaway bore.

The whole film could use a jolt of caffeine, and a lugubrious woodwind score doesn't help.

It's shocking only in its banality, impotence and utter lack of heat.

May be the creepiest and most original horror film since John Carpenter's classic "Halloween."

But on evidence of the likable but draggy and awfully thin Muppets from Space, Kermit & Co. are showing their age. Miss Piggy is about five years away from Norma Desmondhood, and Kermit is ready for his pipe and cardigan, Mr. DeMille. [14 July 1999, p.048]

Vulgar and lewd and raunchy like you wouldn't believe, and absolutely hilarious from beginning to end.

Late August, Early September is less a living, breathing movie than a dry exercise in theory. [07 Jul 1999, p.048]

It all gets repetitive, and after about the halfway point, you get the feeling that Myers and Co. don't know where to go next, and are making it up as they go along.

The frothy, feel-good Notting Hill is about as enchanting as movies get these days.

Forget the hype, and the backlash. The Phantom Menace is captivating.

At first, it seems stagy and slow and even to verge on the pretentious, but the film steadily accumulates dramatic power as its carefully sketched characters reveal their internal lives. By its end, After Life has developed into one of those haunting movies whose scenes can pop back into your consciousness hours or days after you have seen it. [12 May 1999, p.56]

Cheerful, slightly cheesy entertainment that uses the latest special-effects techniques to breathe life into a venerable film tradition.

[Refn] mixes jittery hand-held camerawork, improvised dialogue and available light to create a nightmarish world of sex, drugs and horrific brutality that will turn off many viewers while delighting others.

A terrific work of political and social satire set in a Nebraska high school that has the intelligence of (the less coherent) "Rushmore," while painting a much darker picture of politics and human relationships.

Breakneck, raucous and thoroughly exhilarating.

It's like animation come to three-dimensional life, and f/x addicts as well as sci-fi fans will not want to miss a split-second.

Only sporadically amusing. (review of re-release)

It tries to be an update of "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" crossed with "Pygmalion," but while it has some funny and even original moments, it's too predictable to be "all that."

A compelling, at times bone-chilling study of the male character in crisis.

Greengrass' direction is uninspired, but there is powerful chemistry between a workmanlike Branagh and (real-life girlfriend) Bonham Carter. And her original, seductive and always believable turn as the difficult-but-lovable Jane raises the movie above all its flaws. [23 Dec. 1998, p.44]

Shot in luminous black and white, John Boorman's The General is an off-puttingly adoring homage to a complete savage [18 Dec 1998, p.65]

If she (Paltrow) were the only good thing about Shakespeare in Love, it still would have been worth seeing; that she is the crown jewel in a glittering tiara of a film studded with writing and acting gems testifies to the deep pleasures to be found in this remarkable movie.

The picture is smothered by solemn right-mindedness, and hobbled by scripter David McKenna's simplistic, knee-jerk liberal take on suburban white racism.

Scene for scene, it's like a gorgeous painting come to life, magically illuminated with a warm, orange glow. Unfortunately, those very sets and costumes take priority over a plot that - at best - is glacially paced. [06 Oct 1998, p.070]