Silly, simple and sophomoric -- and also intermittently hilarious and, surprise of surprises, directed with unexpected craft.

The chief problem with Shadow Boxers is that it's too short.

If it happens to lose you as you wander through this strange land, at least it does so to the accompaniment of captivating visuals and music.

A ghastly, unappealing mess that lacks a single absorbing character, engaging story line or entertaining snippet of dialogue.

For all its handsome decor, tasteful restraint and old-fashioned look-and-feel, is a stiff, lacking tension, sizzle, drama, energy, appeal and, finally, purpose.

Basinger herself doesn't have the vibrancy of a female hero.

A contrived and sentimental melodrama, the film takes a promising premise and crushes it with mind-numbing repetition, sophomoric conveniences, plastic acting and the worst score, perhaps, ever heard.

Frequently gory, often talky, almost always watchable, never quite thrilling, Gladiator is a cold and big film that mixes solid acting with cheesy digital effects and sweaty action with stultifying chatter.

It's not an art film. The movie is as mainstream as it gets -- which is just fine; the picture is both great fun and gently satirical.

Peter Facinelli, as Bob, isn't up to verbal sparring with Kevin Spacey just yet.

You need to accept the fact that practically everyone in the picture, particularly the leading lady, is a boneheaded nitwit.

The star, though, is the script, a rare enough occurrence in Hollywood that it merits special note.

May not carry great emotional or intellectual weight, but, in a slim and fetching way, it's peachy.

Cute and funny, with plenty of slapstick and cuddly creatures for the kids and enough adult wit to keep parents reasonably amused.

An audaciously unique and exciting film, not as successful as an A-to-Z story as it is mind-expanding as a vision of what the cinema can do.

Had Williams chopped away more pointedly at the rambling script, he might've had something memorable.

Icy and elegant, complex and gripping.

There's enough caustic wit, romance and dizzy whimsy to make The Last September, if not deep, at least diverting.

Despite the whiplike pace of events and the compelling realism of the martial effects, the film is dead in the water whenever it pauses to make a human gesture or consider, heaven help us, an idea.

Possesses a tone that wobbles masterfully between whimsy, dread, affection and horror, building on rich performances and an understated showiness to cast a queer and tingly spell.

The film's best sequences -- the troubles of the young woman -- are gems adrift in a sea of Jell-O.

Chock-full of the sort of levity that leaves you feeling you've been beaten about the head with a lead pipe.

A coming-of-age movie that stands apart from the rest.

It's so steeped in the coldness and inhumanity of its protagonist that it's ultimately more clinical than absorbing.

So shapeless, pointless and witless a film that it can be explained only by surmising that the people who made it were bombed at the time.

A light, old-fashioned, likable film that capitalizes on the personae of its three key performers and a sort of playfulness.

With its fiery tone and fierce intensity, East-West offers a profile of a country suspended in fear as well as of one woman's indomitable passion for freedom.

Finely etched and acted but too often limpid and punchless in its impact.

Plays like an episode of "JAG," the naval courtroom TV series. A L-O-N-G episode.

Some might call this cheap, formulaic and manipulative, but then again, it still might make you cry.

Takes a look at the bumpy path to self-discovery.

Too often monochromatic, programmatic and just plain lost.

Price of Glory won't make anyone forget "Raging Bull" or "Rocky."

It easily is the most beautiful picture released in America so far this year, perhaps one of the most beautiful films ever made.

It's so spry and lively and warm that you want to dance to it.

As so often happens, politics and religion add up to a double dose of self-righteousness.

Offers a charming reinterpretation of what it means to look for happiness and all the unexpected places that it may be found.

An odd, jumbled, beautifully wrought, often confusing work, this animated feature manages to be a compelling, exhilarating experience.

While it lacks the experimental razzle-dazzle of "Lola," the film is a similarly confident and fetching look at love, coincidence, tragedy and fate among the young, the bored and the beautiful.

To be fair, the film is trash and doesn't aspire to very much, but it's bad trash -- inept -- and that really isn't forgivable.

All the up-from-under satisfaction of an underdog getting over, with the added oomph of the truth.

Frighteningly, grippingly real.

Dazzling to look at but dreadful to listen to, the film is a tug-of-war of coolness and dreck.

After a cheeky, campy start, The Ninth Gate leaves you with a bitter and dull aftertaste.

A new political thriller, has an ending so egregiously stupid that not to reveal it would be a disservice to moviegoers.

The trouble is that the film forsakes one sort of energy for another, and the downshift is a drag.

A purely cinematic experience. You've got to see it, in other words, to understand.

The ensemble actors give it their all, and that's as it should be in an absurdist comedy of this sort.

A resolutely awful film, it makes you want to swear off sex, comedy, Rupert Everett movies, flowers, yoga, children, roast beef -- many of the best things in life, in fact.

One of the most joyous, diverting and original mainstream American movies in years.

While you may like comedies and you make like thrillers, this film does neither of the above with any pizazz.

Between the tart dialogue, the compelling lead performances, the vivid violence and the stunning cinematography, it's complete and satisfying all on its own.

If dissonance is your dish, you'll find Beautiful People tempting indeed.

So drippy it really should be hung out to dry.

A rousing and agreeable movie that resurrects a small but important episode in baseball history that parallels the larger history of the nation.

A witless, listless muck-up that sends you reeling from the theater with thoughts of suicide instead of a chipper grin.

If it touches up against the syrupy at a very few moments, it's nevertheless consistently clear-eyed and convincing.

Suffers by invoking better films about similar themes.

The humor is on the level of flatulence by a chubby boy.

It's not that The Beach is a stinker, exactly. It's that nothing in it -- and that includes the gifted DiCaprio -- ever feels other than perfunctory.

Swings wildly but falls flat.

What's left is a husk with all the superficial features of a Scream movie and none of the heart, brains, guts or laughs.

It's peppy and cheesy and filled with life and humor in just the way, you imagine, that Susann might have enjoyed.

Director Stephen Elliott has acquitted himself admirably in creating this serious thriller.

Atmospheric and genial, and you've got to love the spectacle of a dog driving a car or parading around town like the unofficial mayor.

There aren't many works of art out there that so rupture your sense of the familiar. It may play slowly, but it blazes its way into your head. [14 Jul 2000]

This is some of the finest acting you will see on-screen, maybe ever. Single-handedly, Washington turns The Hurricane from so-so to must-see.

It's a handsome film with a palpable core of piety, but it isn't as successful in depicting secular events as spiritual ones.

The film is nothing much to look at and has trouble swallowing its own clichs and implausibilities.

It's a refreshing sensation, even if it makes you feel a touch seasick at first, and the fittingly eerie conclusion to a lavish and unsettling movie.

Though intermittently entertaining, it's too long and rarely insightful in new or meaningful ways.

At times an uneasy mix of cold-eyed neorealism and soft-headed sentimentality, but after its initial struggles it presents itself as a moving film, made with loving craft, a painterly eye and luscious language.

Strictly texture, a romp over the surfaces of Andy Kaufman's life with not much insight into its core.

For all the beauty it struggles to bring forth, Snow Falling on Cedars is painfully prosaic.

Fabulously acted throughout.

It's as full a movie as you can imagine -- exhausting and exhilarating and continually fascinating.

Leaves an unpleasant aftertaste: viewers will find that a musical can indeed help the medicine go down

A handsome, somewhat draggy and abrupt film that's more memorable in snippets than as a whole.

A treat for the eyes and the heart.

Possesses the open-ended, continual off-kilterness of Shepard theater.

You're likelier to shrink in astonished horror from it than laugh.

This multistoried historical plot is packed with almost three hours of nuances and hidden meanings, and the slippery smiles and sly innuendoes often seem lost in translation.

If you thought "Boogie Nights" blew it in its final third, you ain't seen nothing yet.

A masterfully varied set of images, paces and moods.

Has many affecting moments, but you may tire of the tugging on your heart strings.

A frustrating, pedantic, cacophonous jumble of a picture, peopled with as many straw men and caricatures as living, breathing humans.

Mingles bathos and pathos in unequal measures and instead of getting laughs, looks laughable.

An often pedestrian film, one that never inflates to the epic grandeur to which it aspires or transfers its own emotional trajectory off the screen and into the viewer.

It's as sullying and disheartening an experience as the movies can offer .

Effectively cast and shot with exciting immediacy.

"Sixth" achieves a rare hushed poetry where Stir, for all its strengths, is more earthbound and familiar.

Though the film occasionally rises to moments of genuine emotion and wit, it slips appallingly into corniness and hokum before coming to an abrupt and unconvincing end.

A gripping account of grown-up sensuality, obsession, loss and hope.

The two lead actresses are exquisite in their divergent ways.

It's an often lovely, constantly assured film that now and again burps forth a really remarkable vision. But it's also half-nuts -- maybe three-quarters.

Amazing as Penn is, Morton is his equal, creating a complete personality out of gestures, glances and unadorned bits of actorly business.

The humor isn't as sharp as it should be, and the story isn't as tight as it could be.

Comes to be dominated by the acting, and this is an unfortunate fate.