Director Roger Donaldson has a lot of fun with his premise. The top-notch special effects, which use a lot of seamless computer animation, make the climax look very nice. The rest of the film is essentially one long chase sequence with a couple of nude scenes and maulings added to liven up the proceedings. No matter what genre you identify Species as, it's not top of the line, but there's also quite a bit of room beneath it.

Sean Connery is perfect for the King Arthur role. Too bad he isn't given more to do than stand around looking regal.

Perhaps the most impressive feat of this film is sustaining white-knuckle tension even though the chain of events is well-known.

Taking advantage of the studio's breathtakingly intricate animation, directors Mike Gabriel and Eric Goldberg have breathed vitality into this, the fifth "new wave" Disney animated picture.

Safe does not succeed at everything it attempts. The film is overlong and there are times when more aggressive editing might have improved the pace. However, despite certain dramatic shortcomings, Safe is an insightful and darkly comical social commentary.

It's lighter, brighter, funnier, faster-paced, and a whole lot more colorful than before.

A charming piece of cinema that takes several comfortable formulas and expands upon them in ingenious and emotionally-satisfying ways.

Each conversation has at least one memorable line, and it's always delivered in such a casual manner that it blends right in.

This is easily the worst filmed version of anything penned by the prolific author.

A beautiful film, not only in the way it was photographed, but for the manner through which the characters are revealed to us.

Johnny Mnemonic is brash, flashy, and loud, but it lacks a few key ingredients -- namely heart, soul, and intelligence.

Offeris an exhilarating, and occasionally touching, experience that has viewers leaving the theater caught up in an afterglow of wonder. These days, heros like William Wallace are as rare as motion picture displays of this high, uncompromising quality.

To be sure, A Little Princess has a few missteps. For one thing, Miss Minchin could have been played with less villainy, but younger viewers will probably appreciate the one-dimensional nastiness. There are also a few moments of overt sweetness, but these are easily forgiven. Actually, there's very little this movie has to apologize for -- it's the rare kind of picture that can be enjoyed by viewers of eight, eighteen, and eighty.

All the explosions and fights are filmed with consummate skill, and are thrilling in their own right. But that's where it stops. The pacing is erratic and the level of tension ebbs and flows.

Amateur is a curious mixture of high art and delicious campiness, and the result is a funny, insightful, and almost-hypnotic motion picture.

Little Odessa is an extremely complex motion picture, layered with powerful themes and fascinating characters.

It's a thrill-a-minute ride that concludes with a whimper, like a roller-coaster that has all the drops and twists early. Make no mistake, this is a good source of early summer fun, but with a little extra imagination, it could have been a whole lot more.

This is a slice of life with an imperfect beginning and conclusion, but what transpires between those two endpoints is strong enough to leave an impression on anyone with the patience to commit to a movie of such unhurried temperament.

The delicate air of romance that often makes this sort of film worthwhile is absent. French Kiss does it by the numbers, not from the heart.

Crumb is a rare and powerful documentary that completely absorbs the viewer and leaves an impression so blindingly clear that the afterimage cannot be blinked away even when the theater is far behind.

The strengths of The Underneath -- its atmosphere and character-centered basis -- are also its weaknesses.

The plot runs out of steam just past the one-hour mark and the charade, although necessary to the story, goes on for too long. The ending is, of course, the requisite happy one, but it seems a little anticlimactic.

The tale related here isn't all that original, but the honest presentation lends impact to a wrenching scenario.

With a theatrical trailer far better than the actual picture, Schroeder's film delivers little more than a healthy dose of disappointment. The picture is watchable, but nothing about it will linger, except perhaps the feeling that, with a more polished script, it might have been significantly better.

There's only so far a movie can go on loud music, nicely-framed shots, testosterone, and adrenaline. Bad Boys takes the often-traveled road, and leads the audience to a dead end.

Writer/director Jeremy Leven takes pleasure in clouding the division between what's real and what isn't, but he never stretches matters to such an extreme that Don Juan DeMarco is reduced to a mindless farce.

As embodied by Liam Neeson, Rob Roy is a tremendous protagonist -- a naive man whose belief in honor and whose love for a woman, family, and clan make him a figure to cheer for.

Regardless, though it may be occasionally slow-moving and perhaps a half-hour too long, this film is put together with care and a mindfulness of quality.