For all its wit and intricacy, the film is often ponderous. [31 Dec 1999, p.038]

An expertly crafted, deeply moving film.

A flawed drama offering a rare look at the Catholic Church's canonization process.

Morris' most gripping film since "The Thin Blue Line," is the year's scariest movie.

It's bone tired.

Rescues a rarely performed tragedy and makes a brilliant case that it is the Shakespeare play for our time.

An affectionate, often clever and unflaggingly funny satire.

This film of mistaken identity, murder, class envy and (bi)sexual tension doesn't live up to its own promise.

A testosterone- and cliché-fueled epic that will have some hoping for sudden death as it stumbles toward the three-hour mark.

Lacks the humor and charm that fills the book and makes it so much more than a catalog of suffering.

Less a conventional biography than a performance film - one that stuns and delights.

The year's most beautiful movie -- and surely one of the dullest.

It's an odd mixture of an unsentimental, darkly humorous take on mental illness with the usual Hollywood loony-bin cliches.

Revels in the sensual pleasure of music while capturing brilliantly the tension that grips any theater company before the curtain goes up.

The kind of unsophisticated family entertainment they supposedly don't make anymore.

The pace slackens a little after the first hour, but the photography by Remi Adefarasin and music by Magnus Fiennes keep the emotion stoked.

Such astounding computer-generated effects you'll suspend disbelief and root for the hero, a 3-inch talking mouse.

A non-starter.

The once-funny Robin Williams is still stuck in his excruciating touchy-feely mode.

Meanders along in a confused, confusing way for what feels like hours.

Hands-down the best movie of the year.

A relentlessly grim, rather heavy-handed drama of family dysfunction.

A major disappointment, The Cider House Rules pales by comparison with the gutsier, more full-bodied adaptation of Irving's "The World According to Garp."

There is hardly a moment during this overlong, stunningly smug exercise in moral self-satisfaction when you actually care about a character, real or invented.

Thanks to (Douglas), Diamonds is quite affecting -- even if it's not a particularly good movie.

A reminder of just how good Hollywood storytelling can be.

It's not to say that the adolescent humor isn't funny; some of it is hilarious. It's just that this movie lacks the overarching comic sensibility that made "Mary" and even Adam Sandler comedies like "Happy Gilmore" and "The Waterboy" so satisfying.

This intense psycho-sexual drama doesn't easily lend itself to the camera.