Best of all is the ride through the architect's own domestic space in Santa Monica, dubbed by locals "the house that built Gehry."

It would be curmudgeonly to count all the ways in which The Hundred-Foot Journey is unsurprising, unrealistic, unnecessary.

Charming, emotionally resonant, yet nowhere as fresh and dramatic as its predecessor.

Ricci makes all this far more palatable than it should be. She is surely helped by the dismal level shared by most allegedly more adult afterlife fantasies. The kids will enjoy the high-spirited antics, but Casper ultimately is another reason to wish Hollywood would declare a moratorium on ghost writing. [26 May 1995, p.03]

While components of Eastwood's film are excellent, in particular Kelly's quietly tenacious performance and the evocative period details, Changeling is a film of parts, not a unified whole.

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

Raunchily entertaining farce.

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

Unfortunately, Mission: Impossible - which assembles a new Impossible Missions Force and plops it down in Kiev, Prague, London and Langley, Va. - doesn't have the momentum or suspense of De Palma's best pictures. It moves, awkwardly at times, from one elaborate set-piece to the next. [22 May 1996, p.E01]

A hare-paced, harebrained and, for the most part, amusing update of "Animal House." [29 Apr 1994, p.03]

The film leaves the viewer with a more vivid sense of Kerry the man, portraying him as admirable, if not lovable.

An undemanding and reassuring amiability that made it a crowd-pleaser at Sundance.

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.

Their chemistry goes like this: He cleans up real nice; she dirties down with gusto.

It is Rapace, the Swedish actress who gained worldwide recognition as Lisbeth Salander in the original adaptation of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," who ends up the true heroine of Prometheus.

However great Murphy is in this film, even greater is Liam Neeson as Father Bernard.

At one point, Dulaine takes the students to his studio and they look up at the mirrored disco ball glittering above the dance floor. "Corny, but cool," says one of the sweathogs. My feelings about the film precisely.

Since the main reason I go to movies is to engage with characters, I prefer "The Pledge," the film opening today by Madonna's first husband, Sean Penn, rather than this stylish fluff by her second spouse.

A campy homage to those days of malt shops, drive-ins, and saucer-shaped UFOs - you know, the ones that go crashing into nearby buttes, unleashing terrible terrors from another galaxy.

Harlin, with his customary visual brio, has created a film that is deliriously watchable. It's just not all that interesting. In the end, The Covenant is simply a glossier version of TV's "Charmed."

It's earnest, but it feels beside the point. Blood Diamond's real point: box office.

With Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Tim Burton gives new meaning to the term "director's cut."

The chief appeal of this affectionate story is its embrace of those who are not thinner, richer and more glamorous than the moviegoers.

It's a hokey piece of melodrama in a movie that cheats its characters - and its audience - out of some emotional truth.

Burton gives us SuperDude; Nolan gives us Sir Subdued.

The film is too formulaic and far too prone to melodrama, with outsize emotions as ridiculous as its comic-book villains.

The film only occasionally comes to life - it's too literal (and literary), too studied, too still.

Like Mickey Rourke in "The Wrestler," Malkovich plays a star long past his glory days in The Great Buck Howard, but continuing to do the only thing he knows. The tone of the two films couldn't be less alike, but the story arc of the central characters graphs the same.