Everything (not just the flesh) is vibrant with life.

Despite the negatives, I'm still recommending Fallen on the strength of its complex plot and especially its ending, which I loved. The final scenes are startling, audacious, and unexpected. It's not often that a plot development takes me by surprise the way this one did.

The two actors, Daniel Day-Lewis and Emily Watson (Breaking the Waves), give such forceful performances and interact so well that it's impossible not to be mesmerized by their interaction.

Despite some obvious overplotting, Oscar and Lucinda is a mostly effective and often affecting motion picture that touches our hearts while daring our minds to balk at its implausible coincidences.

While these may not be the most unusual themes to fashion into a motion picture, Rudolph's atypical approach to the characters and their situations makes for an intriguing, if not always pleasant, movie.

Tarantino keeps things moving along nicely, with a heavier dose of humor and less violence than in Pulp Fiction, but, on the whole, this movie seems more like the work of one of his wannabes than something from the director himself.

If you take The Postman at face value - that it's a straightforward, post- apocalyptic adventure tale, then it could seem like one of the worst movies of the year, if not of all time.

This is one of Levinson's best films, and the screenplay, co-penned by noted writer David Mamet (along with Hilary Henkin), is brilliantly on-target.

Most of the film is dull and soporific. Breathtaking photography without emotional involvement can take an audience only so far.

Not a positive triumph, but it does bring a smile to the face and, perhaps in some cases, a tear to the eye.

You don't just watch Titanic, you experience it.

Tomorrow Never Dies is a better film than Goldeneye. In fact, it's the best Bond film in many years.

MouseHunt is "'Home Alone" with a rodent in the place of Macaulay Culkin.

In his long and distinguished career, only his Oscar-winning performance in 1983's “Tender Mercies” was this raw. Duvall becomes Sonny. The energy and passion of a preacher are all present.

Paradoxically, there's a lot less gore. There is blood, of course, but nothing excessive by slasher-movie standards, and there are no depictions of spilled entrails. Craven has remembered that scares are more important that graphic displays of human insides and bodily fluids.

It's a movie of moments, some of which are side-splittingly funny. Arguably, this is the most uproarious comedy that Allen has ever done.

Thematically rich, impeccably crafted, and intellectually stimulating, the only area where this movie falls a little short is in its emotional impact.

An ordinary story told well. Taken as a whole, there's little that's special about this tale -- it follows a traditional narrative path, leaves the audience with a warm, fuzzy feeling, and never really challenges or surprises us.

Has a bold, inventive style that occasionally compensates for story weaknesses. And, admittedly, there's a certain visceral appeal to the action sequences.

In fact, there are times when this movie feels like the latest installment in the over-milked Home Alone saga.

And, while there's nothing revolutionary or extraordinary about the dramatic narrative, the subtext gives Winterbottom's movie its force.

This is truly a great film -- easily one of 1997's best.

Easily the best non-Disney animated movie in recent memory, and it is good enough to rival such titles as “The Lion King” and “Aladdin.”

Eastwood has captured a peculiar yet involving slice of life.

The intelligence and subtlety of The Rainmaker took me by surprise. I don't know if this is because the novel is better than any of the prolific lawyer-turned-author's previous efforts, or if Francis Ford Coppola has performed a near-miracle in transforming the written pages into a screenplay.

This film has no story, no characters, and no coherence.

Actually, the more distance the studio places between the two films, the better, because the 1997 production can't hold a candle to the 1973 release, and an attempted comparison only makes the new Bruce Willis/Richard Gere vehicle look worse.

Although none of the characters are fleshed out much beyond the comic book level, we nevertheless find our sympathies aligning with them.