Some tacky animated sequences notwithstanding, Youth in Revolt is smart, cool and frequently hysterical.

Suffice to say it's got plenty to do with corporate karma. And the word severance is more than just a double play on words - it's a triple whammy.

A far more trenchant - and funnier - satire of the fame-afflicted than Woody Allen's "Celebrity."

Illsley's fine cast, with a riotous contribution from William H. Macy as the sheriff who falls for Harry, plays out the comedy without condescension.

A lot of dark, Orwellian fun.

The film underscores the power of reading, and applying what we read to problem-solving. The story suggests that we don't really see the natural world around us, and if we did our lives, like Jared's and his siblings', would be immeasurably richer.

An elaborately presented feast that will taste familiar to the 'tween and teen audience for whom it is served. The four courses are love, war, faith and humor, served in no canonical order, and sometimes, simultaneously.

A big, kabooming sequel that plays sleight-of-hand with its audience.

A whodunit, a whydunit, and an excuse for Adrien Brody to mug it up like nobody's business.

Baird is a highly regarded editor of action films, and his debut as a director shows a sharp eye for the tensions and angles in individual scenes. But his grasp of pace is less certain, and it exposes the movie's more outlandish developments. [15 Mar 1996, p.03]

It does commit a cardinal sin of filmmaking. It's boring.

There is a sequence where his four felons parody a sitdown from The Godfather that is both inept and painfully out of place. But there's enough in Set It Off to set it apart and to argue that, when it comes to putting a new spin on the inner-city heist, you're better off with the ladies. [06 Nov 1996, p.E01]

Skin is both exasperatingly choppy and exceptionally moving.

42 doesn't shirk from showing how daunting it was for Robinson to turn the other cheek, as Ford's Rickey tells him he must do, in the face of the insults and hostility.

At a certain point, movies like Disturbia require suspension of belief. To its credit, that moment comes much later in the game than usual. Up until then, like "Rear Window" before it, Disturbia is sly and suspenseful and full of mounting dread.

Despite its familiar formula, feels fresh.

While it won't do much for those into cutting-edge computer animation, it won't disappoint parents looking for wholesome high-quality entertainment for preschoolers.

Cinematic dynamite.

For a film about suicides, Wristcutters: A Love Story is strangely life-affirming. This film about slackers stuck in limbo between life and death is upbeat in an offbeat way.

Both austere and garish, simultaneously dry and sentimental, tightly repressed and extravagantly expressive, bourgeois and bohemian. It's a seesaw, but Dorrie finds the balance.

Killer Joe is twisted pulp, and the actors chew on it bravely, boldly, and with varying degrees of success.

A black comedy, a character study, and a thriller, Lord of War lacks the gritty, hell-bent hilarity of David O. Russell's contemporary war pic, "Three Kings."

If you're in the mood for some enjoyable depravity, Bitter Moon is quite a trip. [15 Apr 1994, p.05]

A quiet, glistening love story - or not-quite-love story - adapted from Martin's novella of the same name, Shopgirl is such an atypical Hollywood affair that it's almost startling.

Luke, who had the title role in Denzel Washington's directorial debut, "Antwone Fisher," is that rare actor who can convey profound inner conflict with just a look in his eye; his performance is attuned, astute and remarkable.

A comedy of the old school. Depending on your view of the current state of screen humor, that's either a promise or a warning.

By the time the end finally arrives, you realize you haven't laughed in quite a while and, instead, have been thinking about the chores you have to do after you leave the theater. As diversions go, that's pretty diluted.

An entertaining, occasionally illuminating autodocumentary.

Favreau and Vaughn have chemistry to kill: comic, combative and engagingly goofball.

Refreshingly gritty and hard-nosed.

Overplayed by a toupeed'n'tucked Pacino, Bank is made up to resemble Hollywood mogul Robert Evans, who produced Pacino in The Godfather. It's an inside joke for outsiders. As are the many references to the Corleone family saga.

While I much liked The Duchess, this portrait feels unfinished.

There's more tenderness in Big Eyes, and a playfully framed but nonetheless emphatic you-go-girl spirit to the proceedings, as we watch Margaret - a magnificent Adams - slowly emerge from her shell.

At its heart, there's Blanchett, an actress whose instincts are unerring, and dead-on.

With creepy sound effects (thuds and clangs and groans, oh my) and a mounting - make that sinking - sense of dread, Black Sea is at once fist-clenchingly suspenseful and, well, dull.

What I most appreciated about the film directed by Matthew O'Callaghan is that it doesn't go for amped-up effects. No bells, whistles, or nudge-nudge, wink-winks to the adults in the audience.

The more Pacino overplays, the more Cusack underplays, which makes for a fascinating contrast in acting styles. True, Cusack's dialect is more "Louie, Louie" than Louisiana, but he projects such moral spotlessness that none of the film's cynicism can soil him. That's acting. [16 Feb 1996, p.03]

A deceptively simple movie with a deeply felt message.

Remarkably poignant (and pungent) when it comes to child psychology.

To paraphrase one of the few memorable lines in the movie, "Even stink would say this stinks."

Veronica Mars is a great deal more than a bonus episode, but slightly less than a movie.

A surprisingly moving drama - a throwback to the small, character-driven indies of yesteryear.

It is diverting but insubstantial.

It is also to Khouri's credit that she has written a movie that begins with the men on Mars and women on Venus and ends with their being able to share a planet. [4 Aug 1995, p.03]

Winterbottom also has the insight to share the novelist's suggestion that landscape can reflect and, to a degree, even shape character.

A genre pastiche that's fun to watch, although it's also frustrating.

A rewarding exploration of the knotty and often contentious relationship between teacher and protege.

Although respectful of its central subject, Comedian is not worshipful. Rather, it is curious about what in Seinfeld's hard-wiring allows him to maintain his equilibrium.

A pessimistic chronicle that even optimistic 8-year-olds can love.

Cats Don't Dance is pleasant middle-tier animation that will not cause anyone to lose sleep over at Disney. [26 Mar 1997, p.D07]

Forget its dubious ancestry as a popular TV show of the '50s. The combined charms of Maverick's genial cast, its sly script and its punchy direction make it the legitimate heir to escapist crowd-pleasers such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting. [20 May 1994, p.03]

If you're looking for quality prepackaged, predigested Hollywood family fun this summer, you could do a lot worse than Despicable Me 2.

Tonally, the film from director Anurag Basu has more personalities than Sybil. Basu strictly observes the B-movie convention of giving the audience an embrace, explosion, or chase sequence at regular intervals. If you don't like the genre, wait three minutes.

All of the elements that made The Matrix a mass-cult phenom -- breathtaking physical gymnastics wedded to the brain-cramping mental and spiritual kind -- resurface in Reloaded.

Ted is really a rather sweet examination of loyalty, friendship, and love. Wahlberg and Kunis are charming together (though not exactly in a Cary Grant / Audrey Hepburn kind of way), and both manage to play this thing - at least the challenges-of-a-serious-relationship part of this thing - straight.

Not an entertainment but an experience. And a kind of cinematic sensitivity training.

The Woman in Black has lovely period atmosphere. Unfortunately, it doesn't have much else besides atmosphere.

If The Golden Bowl -- isn't charged with electric emotion, well, that's not what Henry James or James Ivory is about.

It's still a submarine movie, confined by the ship, the sea, and a convention-laden script.

Despite a strong cast and a willingness to lampoon the fundamentals of fundamentalism, Saved! isn't as funny, or as wicked, as it should be.

A diverting family comedy that at its best aims to be a live-action "Incredibles" and at its middling a live-action episode of "Kim Possible."

Cool, clinical and not altogether convincing.

It's not impossible to address grown-up issues of commitment, of responsibility, of love, and have some fun, and some profanity, while you're at it.

Spiced with melancholy and magic, Micmacs is an imaginative live-action film with the playfulness of an animation like "Ratatouille." Similarly, it is a fable of subterraneans who change how life is lived above ground in a Paris that is both retro and modern.

Though Black Hat is not as tightly structured as Spinal Tap or as pointed as the blaxploitation-movie parody I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, in its rambling way it is the ultimate comic indictment of rap as a kind of equal- opportunity opportunism. Hats off to Cundieff. [15 Jun 1994, p.F02]

The line between ha-ha funny and sorrowful reverence has been crossed - more deftly than you'd think.

Like its characters, it has its faults. But overall, it is a movie of imaginative sympathy that gets into the skin of its characters, into their hearts, and, ultimately, into ours.

It's a view filtered through a prism of memory and emotion, but one well worth investigating.

Works its way under your skin, and then into your heart.

Despite its penchant for the crude and lewd, is gooey in ways that have nothing to do with bodily fluids.

Fails to bring Giger to life in any kind of illuminating way.

After nearly three decades of misfires, major and minor, William Friedkin, the creator of "The French Connection," "The Exorcist" and "Sorcerer," is back in true form with Bug. And heaven help us for it.

It's not often that Chinese cinema tackles same-sex relationships, and rarer still to see a film of such stark, muted emotion coming from mainland China.

This eccentric fairy tale with the feel of "Our Town" has a number of remarkable performances.

Far-fetched and utterly humorless, with a literally tacked-on conclusion (yes, more text on the screen), the only thing that's surprising about Unbreakable is how lame it is.

The Last Mountain, more than anything, asks us to consider where our energy comes from, and how we can bring about changes that benefit all of us and the planet we live on.

Like the old and creaky Belafonte, the film itself seems forever on the brink of drifting away. But it's the kind of drifting that's nothing but enjoyable. In fact, it's beyond enjoyable - heading into waters full of whimsy, mystery and odd, psychedelic fish.

Although there's nothing funny about addiction, Zahedi - a thin, bug-eyed fellow with the air of an R. Crumb sad sack - brings wit and self-deprecation to his tale of obsession and woe.

The Ice Harvest doesn't have much heft or resonance. But as an antidote to the sugary confections of the season, its hung-over cynicism works wonders.

The frenzy and off-the-cuff spontaneity of live '50s TV comedy is lovingly captured, and O'Toole won a best-actor Oscar nomination. [25 Dec 1998, p.22]

The film feels long, the editing is choppy, and the plot strands are at once convoluted and cliched.

Partridge portrays David with immaculate timing and meticulous attention to detail. We feel for the character's pain, but never quite trust him.

When it comes to sheer comic-book fun, few summer movies deliver a more consistent, satisfying, thoroughly enjoyable shot of cinematic jouissance than the delightfully adventurous actress Scarlett Johansson's latest bit of strange, Lucy.

Somebody should tell Ward that winning isn't everything. Character is. And this is what his movie lacks.

Setting her (Streep) face into a mask of composure that suggests Darth Vader by way of a Kabuki actor, the most expressive of American actresses shows how power is expressed in the lack of facial and vocal expression.

Heavyhearted without being heavy-handed, Corbijn's lyrical movie is about a man who has built his own cell and become his own jailer.

Though African Cats is G-rated, scenes of animals chowing down on other animals are not for the faint of heart or delicate of stomach. I don't think it's suitable for those under 6, and they should be prepared for real animal behavior. But it's deeply involving and primally moving.

What Zoolander does have, and this was enough for me, is a sublime comic performance by Owen Wilson, as the supermodel Hansel, positively radiant in its dimness.

Ridiculously funny, ridiculously charming.

Stop-Loss carries the emotional force and propulsive drama of the quintessential soldier's story.

Before Trollhunter is done with, the truth about these fairy-tale creatures - they gnaw on trees and truck tires, can be turned to stone by exposure to light, and have something against people who believe in Christ - is revealed.

An intelligent romance that cuts against the grain of the youth-pic genre, crazy/beautiful boasts a scarily good performance from Dunst.

Its themes and performances didn't stay with me, as did those in "Out of Time." I think this is because, with the exception of Hackman, the actors' performances illuminate strategy rather than character.

A cool-headed thriller, and a richly detailed character study that traces the birth and evolution of America's foreign espionage bureaucracy, The Good Shepherd also marks a significantly more mature, assured directing turn from Robert De Niro.

There are the bare bones of a plot, but the true purpose of this animated feature is to highlight Gibran's poetic essays, recited sonorously by Liam Neeson.

Besides Paquin, who delivers a once-in-a-lifetime performance as the maddeningly inconsistent Lisa, also wrenchingly fine are Jeannie Berlin as the best friend of the deceased and J. Smith-Cameron as Lisa's actress mother.

Diverting, if undistinguished.

A polished piece of advocacy filmmaking, He Named Me Malala begins - and is intercut with - beautiful animated sequences featuring Malala's 19th-century namesake, Malalai of Maiwand, an Afghani Pashtun poet who inspired her countrymen to rally against an onslaught of British troops.