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.