Less successful in exploring the long-term effects of mental breakdown than in dispensing short-term comic pick-me-ups, Ya-Ya wrings abundant laughter and tears.

If you like movies with plots, skip this review. If you like movies with realistic characters, ditto. But if all you want in a picture is a few smiles and two hours of toe-tapping music, Blues Brothers 2000 is a potlatch of blues, bluegrass, country, gospel and soul, a celebration of the awesome diversity - and uplift - of American music. [06 Feb 1998, p.03]

Lacks the visceral sweep of "Saving Private Ryan." But Spielberg's story, for all its gut-wrenching intensity, was a fiction. Dahl's movie, slower in pace and conscious of its own artifice, addresses the same issues of courage and sacrifice - and tells a true story. That's worth something. In fact, it's worth a lot.

Black Nativity offers a whopping serving of Yuletide emotion. And it's a musical - with plenty of wailing and rapping on the side.

If the filmmakers had a script half as good as their special effects, Night at the Museum would be a must-see.

While the movie feels shelf-worn, Efron's performance is fresh.

First Kid is a surprisingly apolitical comedy that settles for general purpose humor aimed unabashedly - and pretty lamely - at kids. [30 Aug 1996, p.03]

So powerful and tender are the scenes between Falk and Dukakis that by movie's end, I was wishing that the film had been more about the marriage of Sam and Muriel and less about the father and son.

Hilarious fun.

Like a grade-school version of an Indiana Jones adventure.

Less a movie than a collection of pretty cool action set-pieces, linked together with some seriously awful acting and dialogue that even Dr. Evil couldn't deliver with a straight face.

Although the sequel retains its predecessor's breezy retro spirit, The Mummy Returns is a mite darker and scarier and the effects a little spiffier.

Where Finding Nemo suggested that under-the-waves adventure was limitless, Shark Tale suggests that this sea is over-fished. The krill is gone.

An accomplished feature debut with stunning cinematography (by Elliot Davis), a jambalaya story line and yet another heart-stopping performance by Scarlett Johansson.

Anya Taylor-Joy, who delivered a heartrending breakout performance in "The Witch," is entrancing as this exotic being, Morgan.

Handles the strained daddy/daughter bond with sufficient lightness and laughs so that fathers won't mind accompanying their spawn.

No one is getting at anything in The Strangers, except the cheapest, ugliest kind of sadistic titillation.

A diverting action fantasy that modernizes the stories of demigods and monsters.

In mood and in content is just SO 20th century.

What are you going to do when your lead actress offers a performance that's as unlikable as the woman she's portraying? Maybe it's the script (flimsy, formulaic), or filmmaker Alejandro Gomez Monteverde's conspicuous direction, but Tammy Blanchard's Nina, a waitress with a dour disposition and an unwanted pregnancy, pretty much sucks the life out of this well-meaning melodrama.

Sgt. Bilko, from the late, great Phil Silvers sitcom about an incorrigible con artist scamming the daylights out of the U.S. Army, has been turned into a not-very-funny film vehicle, just as The Flintstones was transformed into a not-very-funny film vehicle, and The Beverly Hillbillies, and Dragnet before them. [29 Mar 1996, p.05]

A mild and merry romp about family, friends and sexual identity.

Paradoxically fast-talking and laid back, Long's Bartleby appears to be the illegitimate child of Groucho Marx and Ferris Bueller, one whose schemes are far more impressive than his deeds.

A winner.

When it works, which is often, Kitano's movie is an anthropology of the distinctions between Japanese yakuza and American gangsters.

Follows its heroines' rise and wising-up with a giddy, "Hard Day's Night" enthusiasm.

The film's intimations of bisexual romance have a certain innate drama that no amount of bad acting or cornball rugby matches can completely erase.

Unpretentious fun.

As scripted by Cathy Rabin and directed by Santosh Sivan, Before the Rains is never less than compelling, but never more than adequately realized.

As a thriller, In the Cut, with its red herring characters and plot twists, turns dopey and predictable. As a portrait of a single woman, burned by love and wary of what's in store, Campion's movie has its trenchant, telling passages.

The overall effect is one of a sumptuously laid table where the main course is overcooked.

In its long, punishing final act, Red 2 goes beyond its mandate as a lark to pose as a true action caper.

Apocalyptically awful romantic comedy.

The Night at the Museum tent pole has played fast and loose with history, and with our knowledge, or lack of knowledge, of the past. But I'm pretty sure a capuchin monkey never urinated on teensy-weensy figures of a cowboy and a Roman emperor as they ran for their lives from a lava flow in ancient Pompeii. That happens in Secret of the Tomb, and it seems like a fitting way to retire the show.

The result is Woody Allen lite, with some deft observations about how the social media designed to bring singles together are actually coming between them.

There are, to be sure, some impressive special effects here, and whoever Warner Bros. hires to make the new Superman movie should take notes.

Fresh, funny and perceptive.

As a horror movie, Jennifer's Body doesn't fully deliver. But as a comic allegory of what it's like to be an adolescent girl who comes into sexual and social power that she doesn't know what the heck to do with, it is a minor classic.

A raunchy comedy that's funnier to think about than to watch.

All in all, a resonant theme, poorly played.

Although it is based on a true story, the dramatization doesn't make much sense psychologically.

Dull plod.

It falls short of its tie-dye target.

Crudely entertaining comedy.

Just as a fistful of drooping stalks does not a bouquet make, director Charles Herman-Wurmfeld's random collection of think-pink gags, canine couture and smart/dumb blonde jokes does not a comedy make.

Fails as drama but succeeds as a "When bad things happen to good firemen" procedural. It's sensitivity training for civilians.

Burlesque is a preposterous and intermittently entertaining lesson in how to make a movie musical with a little brains and a lot of talent.

If illuminating dawns and dusks had basked Mia Wasikowska and Henry Hopper in a rosy glow, the mopey cuteness of Restless would have been too much to bear.

Somehow, Reacher gets under your skin with his mordant wit, razor-sharp intelligence, and existentialist intensity.

Shot like a Disney period piece (prettily, with spiffy props, shiny vintage vehicles, and costumes just back from the cleaners), Flyboys introduces its squadron the old-fashioned way: with character-establishing setups.

Swing Vote is messy and its targets are relatively safe. But its aim is true. And Costner's performance hits the bull's-eye.

While Choke, adapted for the screen and directed by Clark Gregg, is by no means a disaster, it is disappointing - and oddly dull.

A strange mix of showbiz whodunit and soft-core eroticism, with a couple of fine actors - Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth - wandering around stunned and stoned-looking, as if someone slipped them a mickey.

A knuckleheaded period piece.

Despite its haunting artistry and its winning eccentricities, The Shipping News is a vehicle that's still very much at sea.

An entertaining history lesson. That is, a history lesson that synopsizes and simplifies a complex life and complicated times into easily digestible panels of action, intrigue, martyrdom and sticking it to the papacy.

Cross "Get Shorty" with "State and Main" - Hollywood hustlers, colorful crooks, crafty poseurs, and a production crew on location - and you have the stuff of The Last Shot. One other thing: eliminate anything funny.

The new film compensates with Gere's wry performance as a man who lacks for nothing material but hungers for something spiritual. Even better is Stanley Tucci's delirious turn as Gere's balding, button-down colleague.

The feeblest kind of costume drama, where the costumes have more impact than the drama and where the period details serve only as distraction, reminding audiences that things looked different back then and not much else.

Kids under 6 will dig it - though the alligators and wildebeests might scare them. Certainly they scared this groan-up.

Never mind the cool, convincing effects (and they are cool), The Day After Tomorrow teems with illogical action, improbable coincidences. It's pure escapist fare, a popcorn gobbler.

Riddled with romantic and political cliches but is often redeemed by the charismatic performances of Braun and Sullivan.

The trouble with Nine Months is not that Grant's monologues sound like an apologia to his real-life paramour. The trouble here is that not even a comic actor of Grant's skill can tickle such tired material to life. [12 July 1995, p.E01]

A movie-movie - big, lush and sexy. And formulaic, saddled with more plot than it needs and more "Spy Kids" references than it should have, but still . . .

When the films sticks with heart-tugging soldier stuff, it's not bad. When it goes beyond that premise, it becomes so entirely outlandish that it's not enjoyable anymore.

Much as I gnashed my teeth during 27 Dresses, I genuinely enjoyed the warmth of Heigl's and Marsden's confident ease. While both might be a few minutes past their star-is-born moment, these troupers with more than 30 years of professional work between them have never shone so brightly. It may sound contradictory, but loved them, hated IT.

Masterminds is filled with the sort of idiotic bathroom humor that has become standard in big-screen comedies, but it is enlivened by the surreal slapstick touches that made Napoleon Dynamite so good. Even though it isn't the sharpest comedy, it had me in stitches.

A syrupy and extraordinarily ridiculous adaptation.

The premise, which initially has a certain interior logic, grows implausible and then nonsensical.

A disaster of a disaster movie that veers from the parodic to the preposterous. [6 Dec 1996, p.03]

Stiles is lovely, forthright and believable, so much so that when the scene shifts back to storybook Denmark (actually shot in Prague), she grounds this fluff in recognizable reality.

It is a good hour too long, although it does boast Christopher Walken.

Essentially a series of walking character sketches. The storytelling is slack and lackluster, the cliches rampant.

This remake is about half of a very likable film. But in movies (as in auto races) it isn't how you start, it's how you finish. And Herbie should have kept something in the tank for the late going.

A must-see for genre fans. Jaa in action is poetry - even in a disappointing film. Let's just hope he regains his senses for Ong Bak 3.

It's nothing more than a sophisticated clone of the original, and it really overdoes the shaky-camera thing - even more than in some of the worst found-footage movies The Blair Witch Project spawned.

Stylishly spooky and featuring a hammy, cigarette-sucking performance from Gena Rowlands.

There's enough here to entertain - and gross out - the kiddie crowd, and parental units, too

A jukebox musical that's astonishingly cornball one minute, winkingly sardonic the next.

Anderson, who's turned Brit in a number of TV series and films, including "Bleak House" and "The Last King of Scotland," is compelling in her white lab coat and surgical scrubs, and she brings some real tenderness to her tete-a-tetes with Mulder.

It's basketball Fantasy Camp for the cost of a movie ticket.

The folks at Disney's Touchstone Pictures would have been wiser, however, just to have forgotten all about this hyperactive farce.

Ultimately, this movie cowritten by Shelton and former L.A. police detective Robert Souza has more laughs than suspense, but not enough of either.

For its first hour, it's a delightful cloak-and-dagger comedy starring a brave Beagle James Bond and a depraved Persian Dr. Evil.

Except for a handful of scenes, Hancock's film isn't good enough to be memorable. Neither is it bad enough to be entirely forgettable. It's just one of those compromised movies that makes one look forward to the director's cut.

Mildly diverting and utterly dispensable.

Lakeview Terrace's pretense at exploring racial intolerance has been exposed for what it really is: a B-movie copout.

De Niro's minimalist performance has maximum emotional impact and succeeds in unifying the episodic film.

Hickernell's film aesthetic is straightforward, narrative-driven.

Ambiguous in a satisfying, puzzling sort of way, November offers a triptych of scenarios revolving around a grim moment.

Ultimately, 44 Inch Chest has very little on its mind.

A groaningly awful romantic comedy.

Feels like the cinematic equivalent of the BP disaster in the gulf: It's a big-screen oil spill, a needless gushing of macho bluster and wild set pieces, and a waste of millions and millions of dollars.

Too much Good Friday and not enough Easter Sunday. Emphasizing Jesus' agony over His ecstasy, Gibson has delivered a blood-drenched epic more stunning for its brutal violence than for its depiction of the calvary.

Thanks to director Roger Kumble's breathless pacing, Just Friends manages to outrun most of its flaws. And its likable leads - the coolly clownish Reynolds and the feline-faced Smart - fill this empty Christmas stocking with glee.

If your kids are old enough to safely see the movie by themselves, drop 'em off and pick 'em up after. You don't need to see this one.

An appealing, low-budget musical.

Around the Bend doesn't inspire one to care.