While it flirts with "After School Special"-ness, at least has the courage to address racial and cultural cliches with a degree of honesty.

Too bad the filmmakers didn't trust the material. For Ella doesn't need music and references to other, better, movies to cast its unique spell.

An engaging if transparent tearjerker of the first water.

The aquatic and surf scenes are spectacular. The story, a clichéed climb to inspiration. Soul Surfer is more parable than plot.

Then Death feels the need to intrude again. And again. If his accent weren't so charming, his voice so resonant, it would be depressing, all this meddling and mortality.

Tautou, who looks even smaller and more fragile alongside her towering leading man, conveys the hurt and hesitancy that are pulling at her character's heart - and does so with seeming effortlessness. It's as though she knows this woman, deep down.

Carpenter, an old hand at this horror stuff, delivers some convincingly creepy effects, but the narrative lacks any sustained dramatic pulse - its gallery of hallucinogenic scenes doesn't add up to much more than, well, a gallery of hallucinogenic scenes. [03 Feb 1995, p.5]

What's not to like about a girl detective who is a good citizen and better student, a leader rather than a follower, a resourceful seamstress who won't cut her clothes to fit this year's fashions?

Sitting in the theater, watching Knight of Cups, you hear an incredible amount of thought-balloon babble, but you don't hear anything approaching the sublime.

It's a bloodsucker's paradise.

Beneath the predictable serving of sex, lies and, yes, videotape - as his characters betray each other in and out of bed - is a satire of tabloid trashiness that is truly withering.

The four women couldn't be better - or better matched. As always, Parker is the standout, cracking your heart and cracking you up with equal ease.

Whether or not the story makes any sense, The Promise promises to transport - and does.

An uneven, mildly amusing, and highly derivative flick featuring a wonderful, quirky cast as a crew of art thieves who run a complex scam on the art world, and on each other.

Fans of Brooks and his wry, dry neuroticism will not be disappointed as he whines and whimpers around New Delhi.

It's an involving journey, remarkably free of sentimentality, deepened by the performances.

Overwritten, over-designed, and too clever by 200 percent, the film does offer the pleasure of actors enjoying themselves.

Unravels a bit heading toward its finale, as buildings explode and characters are forced to explain themselves and their nefarious motives. But the payoff at the end - at once kind of radical and gratuitous - delivers a wallop.

Scott's reimagining of the legend of Robin Hood has more heft than it does humor, more soulful brooding than snappy thrust-and-parry retorts.

A yawning affair that would be a perfectly fine video rental but doesn't really require the big screen.

Several notches above the usual gay-themed indie, and mostly manages to avoid -- or at least legitimately deploy -- the gratuitous throbbing beefcake scenes that are part and parcel of the genre.

Despite excellent elements - great actress, taut plot, slick visuals - Flightplan is like airplane food. No matter how good the ingredients the air chef has to work with, the entree inevitably ends up tasting like a Xerox of a facsimile of a meal.

If only RocknRolla's characters were at all believable - even in the context of its own cartoon universe.

It's old, old hat.

The gift of Imaginary Heroes is getting to know these anything-but-ordinary people.

As silly as Multiplicity is, there is an adult sensibility at work here. The movie gets some of its biggest laughs when the clones, one after the other, proceed to break rule number one: No clone nooky. There's nothing explicit about the sexual shenanigans, but the duplicates' respective dalliances with the missus serve as the basis for much of the comedy. [17 July 1996, p.E04]

A whimsical tale of serial murder in the English countryside, Keeping Mum benefits immensely from the charm and pitch-perfect gravitas of Kristin Scott Thomas.

What really matters is that the film works. It's a genuinely suspenseful, no-holds-barred masterpiece of sex 'n' horror exploitation.