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