Charmer of a comedy.

Cage, who gives a blazing, imposive performance, uses his haunted eyes to reveal the emotional scars that Frank can't heal.

Turns into a bogus drivel courtesy of a sitcom monster.

Lynch takes us on a journey of shattering understatement -- a remarkable accomplishment.

Pulls you in, challenges your prejudices, rocks your world and leaves you laughing in the face of an abyss. It's alive, all right. It's also an uncompromising American classic.

Even a search party would be hard-pressed to find a spark between Harrison Ford and Kristin Scott Thomas in Pollack's latest tear-jerker.

A mesmerizing mood piece.

No dice...But no apologies are needed for Shannon--she earns her star spot.

A shockingly intimate and deeply affecting film about the roots of sexual role playing.

Keeps the laughs coming, and a dynamo named Steve Zahn is the cheif reason why. It's a one-joke movie, but the cast knows how to sell it.

When it comes to rousing action, whip-smart laughs and moral uplift that doesn't pump sunshine up your ass, Three Kings rules.

Judd is slumming again in ths lame suspense yarn that could barely pass as a TV quickie without the bankable names of Judd, Tommy Lee Jones and director Bruce Beresford.

A fine case ... but none weighty enough to keep this fluff from evaporating as you watch it.

The self-congratulatory histrionics of Williams, lower lip trembling as he triumphs over torture in the name of the human spirit, represents a trend in Hollywood to make accessible melodrama out of unspeakable tragedy.

Offers something magical in the haunting and hypnotic performance of Sarah Polley...(the film) cuts deep.

Never adds up to anything more substantial than shrewd observations. There's no dramatic core.

A cheerless exercise.

Plays like an unholy union of "The Natural" and "The Prince of Tides." Too bad...Build a movie as a shrine to baseball and they will come. Suckers!

Quite a spectacle, but the movie falls flat.

A triumph of acting, writing and directing that defies glib description...the kind of artful defiance that Hollywood is usually too timid to deliver: a jolting comedy that makes you laugh till it hurts.

A potent thriller that grows in intensity as the audience realizes that the character it likes most is most likely a nut job.

Director Mike Barber springs a twist ending that makes you sit up and stifle those yawns.

There should be a place in hell for hacks who turn out derivative terror trash and then pretend they're doing an important investigative piece on Vatican corruption.

Baldwin is a marvel in a casting surprise that pays off.

Built on a slender, one-joke whimsy -- and a tough one to buy into, at that.

Inspired funny business that allows Martin to hilariously torpedo Hollywood's corrupt heart.

Propelled by Mark Mancina's percussive score, this Tarzan swings.

Watching John Travolta ease into a role is always a pleasure, but this film version of Nelson DeMille's 1992 best-selling mystery novel is a lurid mess.

What shakes the dust off this period piece is the vibrant acting.

Limbo is vital personal filmmaking from a world-class practitioner of the art.

Toothless satire relatively inoffensive and relentlessly mediocre.

Altman clarifies a convoluted plot with a magician's ease, creates an atmosphere that brims with the pleasures of the unexpected and explores character nuances.

Whenever the drama drifts into soap opera, the actors restore the balance.

Satire in a blanket of bland.

You don't want to see this bilge. Director Milcho Manchevski, who was fired in midproduction, is the only one with cause to celebrate.

Sandra Bullock and Ben Affleck as star-crossed lovers, is the cinematic equivalent of Styrofoam: a weightless romantic comedy of synthetic feelings.

At first it's a kick to watch Clint Eastwood play Steve Everett, a horn-dog newsman...Is Clint being Clinton-esque? Even if he's not, these scenes are the liveliest part of this dog-tired movie.

The film ultimately gives in to a case of TV-movie blahs.

What you get in this cop drama is NYPD Blue lite. That's not bad. In fact, it's compulsively watchable. But there are no leaps, just fits and starts.

Watching De Niro take Paul through his first panic attack ("I'm crying like a woman") is an unalloyed joy.

It's not the trite talk that sends Cruel Intentions into a tailspin, it's the lightweight casting.

A dynamite bundle from British writer-director Guy Ritchie. Even when the accents are as indecipherable as the plot, Ritchie keeps the action percolating and the humor on high.

Hit-and-mostly-miss.

It's not the emphasis on tics and grimaces that mars their essentially well-meaning performances, it’s the sitcom crassness of director and co-writer Garry Marshall.

The film is rich in period flavor and refreshingly unhip.

It's love with tragic complications, and director Luis Mandoki drags the torture out for two-plus hours.

Payback is a brutally entertaining crime drama that should have been a little more brutal and a little less entertaining.

When studios plant these stink bombs in theaters, do they really think that audiences won't notice the stench?

May be only loosely true, but it is thoroughly Hollywood.

Director Brian Robbins ("Good Burger") and screenwriter W. Peter Iliff ("Prayer of the Rollerboys") have wrapped their moral fable in a glossy package of hard football action and towel-slapping, hard-body fun that might seem exciting if you've never seen a movie before.

Taking it's framework from classic fairly-tale characters like Cinderella, the British story of Little Voice is one of compassion, humor and music.

This is Berg's debut outing as a director, but other first-timers, namely Joel Coen (Blood Simple) and Danny Boyle (Shallow Grave), had it all over him for blending horror and hilarity.

Suffers from lulls and lapses and one lulu of a casting gaffe, but this keenly observant spoof of the fame game is hardly the work of a burnout.

Bruckheimer and director Tony Scott have wisely set their course by Will Smith, who is sensational in a dramatic role that leans on him to carry a movie without the help of aliens or Big Willie-style jokes for every occasion.

A movie about death that stubbornly refuses to come to life.

The film belongs to Blanchett -- this hellcat Virgin Queen is something to see.

The Siege is not a documentary but a glossy Hollywood entertainment that is prey to all the exaggerations, simplifications and acting histrionics that come with the genre.

The plot only slows a film that works best as a feast of sight and sound.

Offers dumb fun without apology.

Elegantly witty and haunting . . . McKellen gives the performance of his career . . . and Brendan Fraser excels.

LaGravenese may be unsteady at the helm, but his film insinuates like a torch song that keeps messing with your head.

What is surprising -- remarkable even -- is that Beloved arrives onscreen with a minimum of dull virtue, gagging uplift and slick Hollywood gloss.

Any cornball contrivances in the plot dissipate in watching the knockout talent of Williams, a performance artist with the exhilarating fire that only the best actors possess.

Refreshingly naughty and nice.

How can a film look so radiant and be so hollow?

Ronin represents an exhilarating return to form for Frankenheimer.

Even director Carl Franklin, an artful purveyor of sterner stuff in "One False Move" and "Devil in a Blue Dress," can't prevent One True Thing from descending into chick-movie hell.

Stylish entertainment and smartass fun when director John Dahl ("The Last Seduction") plays his strong suit (a gifted cast) instead of his weakest (a derivative plot).

Admirers of Irving's sprawling tome are sure to find Birch a botch.

Towne defines Pre not by the freak car accident that killed him but by his willful need to keep on pushing. It’s Pre’s defiant spirit that makes Without Limits something worth cheering.

LaBute achieves a bracing originality by observing human folly as a means to understand rather than condemn. Love or hate his films, LaBute is one of the most challenging filmmakers to emerge in years.

Jenkins shows an innate gift for lacing laughs with the pain of experience -- Slums is based on her own life.

Whether you regard Stella's getting her groove back as a feminist battle cry or as a silly wish-fulfillment fantasy, the movie delivers guilt-free escapism about pretty people having wicked-hot fun in pretty places.

What if director Joseph Ruben didn't resort to B-movie suspense tricks? What if the fine cast wasn't saddled with a shamelessly contrived script by Wesley Strick and Bruce Robinson? Then Return to Paradise would be a better movie, that's what if.

The radiant Barrymore energizes Cinderella with a tough core of intelligence and wit.

This little-hyped thriller emerges as a dark-horse winner by reminding us of how pleasurably exciting a popcorn movie can be when it's populated by actors who are in it for more than an exorbitant fee.

Lavishly produced swashbuckler that should have been far more entertaining.

Sensational, sicko fun -- you won't believe your eyes -- and just the thing to shake up the creeping conservatism that is draining the vulgar life out of pop culture.

How do I hate Armageddon? Let me count the ways.

Beach and Adams give remarkable performances that grow in feeling and intensity.

The film shines at capturing the watercolor delicacy of China's past.

What the film lacks is suspense, surprise (the new ending is a dud) and passion.

The last days of guilt-free glitz had consequences for more than two white chicks and their boyfriends, and Stillman shows how with delicious malice and unexpected compassion.

The Big Lebowski is the best movie ever set mostly in a bowling alley.

Nil By Mouth is a shockingly intimate portrait of entrapment that may leave you wincing. It’s Oldman’s Raging Bull.

You can see most of the plugs in the trailer. As most fans of the early, better Bond films know, the only life left in the series is in the gadgets....As for humor, Brosnan can deaden a double-entendre faster than he can change outfits.

Duvall is a blazing wonder in a film that ranks with the year's best.

The movie damn near lives up to that promise. Picture the Marx brothers and the Coen boys collaborating on a valentine spiked with mirth and malice.

Seven Years in Tibet, however flawed, has feeling and purpose. It bears witness.

This emotional climax of the film, with its warring glints of despair and hope, typifies the stunning achievement of The Ice Storm and confirms Lee as a director of the first rank.

The butt of the hilarious and heartfelt screenplay by Paul Rudnick (Jeffrey) is homophobia, and his sting is wickedly on target.

This engrossing blend of humor and heartbreak only hints at the causes, from betrayal to child abuse, of this family's dysfunction. Hang on. Attention is richly rewarded.

By any fair standard, this lushly produced film is a long, bumpy ride to a major letdown.

The film has been clobbered with complaints: John Cassavetes, Rowlands and their frequent co-star Peter Falk would have played these roles better; the script is old hat; the improvisatorial style smacks of self-indulgence masked as raw truth. Blah, blah, blah. The detractors should shut up and drink their beer or at least accept She’s So Lovely for what it is: a gift.

Down in the mud with the guys, Moore finds the heart of her character and a career beyond vanity and hype. She's never looked better.

Branching out in a bold new direction, Stallone is quietly devastating. James Mangold has directed Cop Land from his own ardent, audacious script, and despite some draggy, overdeliberate moments, it's the strongest piece of material to come Stallone's way since he invented himself as Rocky 21 years ago.

Instead of a scalding brew of mirth and malice, served black, Donner settles up a tepid latte, decaf.

Jennifer Aniston is a friend in need of a movie script that will really let her talent blossom. Picture Perfect is too TV-ish and timid a romantic farce to do the trick.