At its best, Shange's work is a lyric journey through the storm to the rainbow. At its worst, Perry's movie is a relentless dance between the victimizer and his victim. Shange's poetic flow gets choked by Perry's stilted prose.

McCarthy's screenplay, a tangle of doublecrosses and dead men, has just been published. Those who really want to know what's going on would be advised to buy a copy.

Summery and scenic, Ruins is this season's "Mamma Mia!," a diversion that dispenses the wisdom: Let go, let live, and let love. Not bad advice, and not a bad movie, exactly.

Blanchett commands the screen as she commands the royal navy. Her unforced majesty makes a so-so film worth watching.

While his movie lacks the psychological resonance of "Rosemary's Baby" or "The Sixth Sense," it easily equals their creep-out quotient.

It's not that Fay Grim isn't amusing. It is, in that deadpan, skewed way that indie auteur Hartley's pics always are. But there's not much else going on here.

Impossibly arty and, at times, narratively incoherent, Filth and Wisdom still has its goofy charms.

The kind of date movie that should do a lot to promote celibacy.

Lohan is superfluous to the qualities that elevate the film above other Clearasil comedies.

It is possible to bring substance, as well as poetry, to the vignette form, but more often Paris, Je T'Aime is merely mundane.

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

The Hornitor and Scorpitron vs. Ninja Falcon Megazord matchup, produced with a snazzy mix of models and computer animation, deftly evokes the spirit of good ol' Godzilla movies and Japanese cartoons. It'll have you standing in your seat yelling, Go! Go! Power Rangers! Or, at the very least, keep you from dozing off. [30 June 1995, p.05]

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 . . .

Isn't a cheap knock-off but an equally effective, deliciously disturbing movie. It's bound to delight genre fans (and dismay critics, who attacked the first as heavy-handed and sloppy).

I smiled for the first half of the movie and started laughing hysterically when a supporting character hijacked it from its stars.

This buoyant, multigenerational comedy that takes its title from the African American wedding ritual has other distinctions as well. It's relatively raunch-free, it has a sparkling cast that reunites "Waiting to Exhale" stars Angela Bassett and Loretta Devine as combative matriarchs, and it likes its characters well enough to forgive them their faults.

The $40,000 budget of The Blair Witch Project wouldn't cover a day's limousine bill for a production like The Haunting, but if you want a genuine chill on a hot summer night, that - not this - is the horror movie for you. [23 July 1999, p.03]

I would like to be able to report that Nelson's directorial vision is grim and uncompromising. Grim it most surely is. But his movie about morally compromised figures leaves viewers feeling compromised, unable to find their way out of the fog and the ashes.

One wishes that Chambers had more gracefully integrated the stories of the individual players into this celebration of Rush.

Do you dig the current vampire craze? Do you love "Twilight" so much you'd die for it? Then skip South Korean writer-director Park Chan-wook's violent, bloody Thirst, a genre-bending - if not genre-destroying - foray into the vampire myth.

Teeming with socially awkward misfits, Gentlemen Broncos is not without its absurdist charms, although Hess (who co-scripted with his wife, Jerusha) pushes the envelope in ways it doesn't need pushing.

Spoofing James Bond in the '90s may lack an original comic bite, but making James Bond in the '90s is positively toothless.

In focusing on the courtroom drama that finally culminated in a guilty verdict for murderer Byron De La Beckwith, Reiner and screenwriter Lewis Colick miss the potent human drama. [03 Jan 1997, p.03]

Lacks an essential sense of purpose.

Even when his technique is amateurish, Jones' belief in the material is refreshing. Pollak's gentle humor is well balanced by the blunt wit of Bonnie Hunt as the O'Malley matriarch.

The first Hollywood feature from Danish filmmaker Jonas Elmer, New in Town is so choppy that it would seem to have been edited with a pickax.

Fortunately, the actors are so likable that these wincingly unfunny moments don't spoil the party.

It says in the beginning of the film that Two for the Money is "inspired by a true story." Problem is, it's just not that inspired.