Contact aims to be a film of ideas but serves too many of them half-baked.

Sonnenfeld deftly orchestrates the intricate two-part harmony, and Smith and Jones -- a powerhouse comic pair -- make it all look easy.

Exciting and then some, Face/Off blends the director's supercharged images of balletic brutality and spiritual catharsis with an off-the-wall humor that allows John Travolta and Nicolas Cage to really let it rip.

Julia Roberts glitters like gold dust, and she is ideally partnered with Rupert Everett, who gives a witty, wicked, bust-out performance.

Nunez finds a striking lyricism in simple lives that inspires an uncommonly fine cast and ranks him as a world-class filmmaker.

Con Air has all the signs of a hit. That's depressing.

Duncan zips through five decades and dozens of characters without reducing the participants to cliches or slogans. A remarkable cast helps him to keep focused on the core of the piece.

Kudrow's Michele is a deadpan delight as she joins fellow misfit Romy (a deliciously funny Mira Sorvino).

A bright burst of action and comedy with a cast that makes for rousing good company.

What should have been an affecting film becomes a rank blend of sentiment and sadism in the hands of Bruce Beresford, the Australian writer and director.

The film belongs to Phoenix ("To Die For"), who is terrific. He has the gift, shared with his late brother, River, of conveying emotions without pushing them at you. The delicacy of his scenes with Tyler lets you enjoy the film for what it truly is: a heartbreaker.

The Saint leaves star Val Kilmer and director Phillip Noyce (Patriot Games) fighting to enliven an exhausted character.

Pitt and Ford try to dig deeper, but the script undercuts them with preachy dialogue that might as well read, "Insert stereotype here."

Missing is a sense of the interior life behind the smiling face that Selena showed the world.

What can I tell you? It works. Private Parts is a comic firecracker with a surprising human touch.

One terrific movie... Pacino and Depp are a match made in acting heaven, riffing off each other with astonishing subtlety and wit.

Though Hollywood hyperbolizes the Gregory Poirier script -- Mann is a fictional character -- John Singleton ("Boyz N the Hood") directs the film with riveting urgency.

The fierce and funny film version has been directed by Texan Richard Linklater (Slacker, Dazed and Confused, Before Sunrise) with rare grace and compassion.

I lost it just watching Corky show off such memorabilia as "My Dinner With Andre" action figures and a "Remains of the Day" lunch box. Priceless.

With this cast, you are guaranteed moments of inspired lunacy. It's still fun watching Cleese get caught with his pants down. But the material seems familiar and overworked.

Spacey's deft directing can't offset a script that wants to be Chinatown and ends up as indigestible chop suey.

The movie is such a chore because watching actors strain to wrap their mouths around prerecorded songs for 134 minutes is irritating and, worse, alienating.

The Crucible, despite some damaging cuts to the text, is a seductively exciting film that crackles with visual energy, passionate provocation and incendiary acting.

"Waves" is a spellbinder.

Slick thrills and the star's blue eyes are enough to make Ransom the fall's monster hit. Instead, Howard and Gibson stake out a Moclock side in all of us that won't be banished, not even by a happy ending. I'll be damned.

The four actresses supply enough humor and heart to light any movie’s fuse, even this cliched retread of Thelma and Louise. Like the characters they play, the sisters deserve better.

Amid the clamor from outraged purists and Shakespeare spinning in his Stratford-on-Avon, England, grave, you should notice that Luhrmann and his two bright angels have shaken up a 400-year-old play without losing its touching, poetic innocence.

One might think that a movie featuring Bill Murray, Matthew McConaughey, Janeane Garofalo and an elephant couldn't be all that bad. Think again. This is a terrible, terrible movie.

Sleepers, for all the doubts it raises, is the work of a man who speaks for absent friends and "for the children we were." It's his secret heart.

Geena Davis and her director and husband, Renny Harlin, recover from their "Cutthroat Island" fiasco in grand style, and screenwriter Shane Black ("The Last Boy Scout") juggles jolts and jokes with a mad fervor that almost earns him his $4 million salary.

The script by William Goldman (Misery) is based on fact, and when the movie sticks to fact (in an unprecedented bout of man-eating, the lions took just a few months to slaughter 130 bridge builders), the result is a hypnotic spectacle. The natives fear that the lions are unkillable demons. The hunters — Douglas and Kilmer spar splendidly in their roles — aim to prove them wrong. Hopkins, unfortunately, won’t leave well enough alone.

Hanks works like a sketch artist feeling his way before attempting a large canvas. His material is slight, but his writing and directing have an unforced humor and an unhurried grace that suggest he may be a natural.

It’s too bad the script never allows their ethical battle over human guinea pigs to rise above the level of plot device. With these actors, the debut film from Grant and Hurley should have soared above TV mediocrity. What the hell were they thinking?

A feast of a film done on a low budget with a menu featuring top-grade acting, writing and direction.

The movie, from the 1992 best seller by Olivia Goldsmith, isn't deathless art. But as pure entertainment, this witty revenge romp is sinfully satisfying.

If you see one Minnesota movie this year, make it "Fargo." This botch job should be stamped direct to video.

Enough Burns pungency remains for She’s the One to qualify as a setback, not a drop into quicksand.

It’s a power house.

Most movies stress the agony of art (think of Kirk Douglas' Van Gogh in "Lust for Life"). Schnabel's exceptional film honors his friend by showing the act of creation as a natural high.

McGrath's script is faithful: fierce when it needs to be and devilishly funny.

Audiences expecting more Bullock or more weighty import from A Time to Kill will have to adjust expectations and settle for the kick of a good yarn.

By the fourth clone, played as a babbling simpleton, Keaton has exhausted the gimmick and the audience. I’d trade a dozen Dougs for one Beetlejuice.

Eddie Murphy is funny again. Sadly, he lacks the guts to follow through on the cathartic self-satire that gives the film its distinction.

The performances are uncommonly fine...Lone Star isn't built to ride trends. It's built to last.

The problem for Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise, who also co-directed Beauty and the Beast, is turning a tale of violent love and death into a family film with a happy ending.

In contrasting the sexuality and rebellion of Lucy's generation with his own, Bertolucci clearly yearns to rekindle his creative spirit.

Carrey knocks himself out trying to make The Cable Guy different, then neglects the quiet, telling moments that would make it real.

It's a popcorn-movie deluxe.

Zane, a good actor in the right circumstances (Orlando, Dead Calm), is trapped by screenwriter Jeffrey Boam (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) and Australian director Simon Wincer (Free Willy), who don’t give him anything to act.

Immensely entertaining and provocative.

In Washington's haunted eyes, in the stunning cinematography of Roger Deakins (Fargo) that plunges into the mad flare of combat, in the plot that deftly turns a whodunit into a meditation on character and in Zwick's persistent questioning of authority, Courage Under Fire honors its subject and its audience.

You'd get more of a jolt from Angela Lansbury on "Murder, She Wrote" and more intellectual stimulation from a cozy game of Clue.

Girl 6 is shameless stuff -- pompous, sentimental and attitudinizing. To swat the Spikeman with his own symbol, the film feels like he phoned it in.

Timely and smartly entertaining.

What saves director Ted Demme's comic talkfest from sitcom slickness is a quirky script by Scott Rosenberg and an appealing cast.

Broken Arrow delivers the hippest action fun around. Travolta's "Dr. Strangelove" exit will blow you away. Ditto the movie.

Amid the action heroics of White Squall, Bridges creates a character of consequence.

Forrest Gump lives in spirit in this overbearing tear-jerker that takes two and a half hours to cover three baby-boom decades in an effort to prove that nice guys finish first, at least in the hearts of academy voters.

It’s early in the new year, but I doubt that 1996 will produce a film more unthinkingly insidious than Eye for an Eye.

The saddest element of Two if by Sea is watching Bullock get dragged down in the drivel.

Gilliam, along with the gifted cinematographer Roger Pratt and production designer Jeffrey Beecroft, fashions a disturbing and dazzling lost world.

It's gripping psychodrama -- just don't confuse Nixon with history. The revelation that comes with unbiased research remains a Stone's throw away.

I am really sick of people going easy on this dud remake...Instead of the luminous Audrey Hepburn as Sabrina, the awkward chauffeur's daughter who goes to Paris and comes back a swan, we have Julia Ormond, a decent actress without an ounce of the movie-star glamour the part demands. Instead of Humphrey Bogart as Linus, the elder boss-man brother on the Long Island, N.Y., estate where Sabrina's father works, we have Harrison Ford at his most dour.

It's a perversely comic movie ride into the wild blue of crime and punishment.

Whether or not Casino meets your expectations, it delivers the rush you only get from an audacious gamble.

It's a revamped Cinderella story with power as the aphrodisiac, and Douglas and Bening play it to the classy hilt. The courtship scenes in the film's lighter, more deft first half have the bounce of a moonstruck fable.

An uneven blend of mirth and malice.

Foster keeps the party hopping, although more dark humor would have helped before she winds it down with sentiment and bromides.

Fair Game, written and directed by men, allows model Cindy Crawford to make her screen debut as Miami lawyer Kate McQueen.

A uniquely hypnotic and haunting love story sparked by Nicolas Cage and Elisabeth Shue at their career best.

It’s a savagely funny ride fueled by Araki’s insight and blunt compassion.

One of the best movies of the year and by far the most entertaining.

What a bold notion for a movie, and what a bust in terms of execution.

Undeniably thrilling and troubling...Dazzling, era-defining.

Scenes move from hurt to resigned laughter and ring poignantly true. The heroically unfashionable result is a minor but distinct pleasure.

Writer and director Carl Franklin ("One False Move") scores a triumph in using the brooding atmosphere and racial tension of the sun-kissed, seedy City of Angels to reveal character and reclaim a neglected past that ace cinematographer Tak Fujimoto brings to vivid life.

To Die For, sparked by a volcanically sexy and richly comic performance by Kidman that deserves to make her an Oscar favorite, is prime social satire and outrageous fun.

It's not the identity of the killer that gives Seven its kick -- it's the way Fincher raises mystery to the level of moral provocation.

Keaton has crafted something rare: a screwball comedy that cuts to the heart.

When Leguizamo lets go, this cautious crowd pleaser of a film takes on a defiant shine that shows just where the rest of Wong went wrong.

Cautionary tales aren't new. What sets Kids apart as daringly original, touching and alive is its authenticity.

The stunts dazzle until you miss the low-key charm and cost-conscious inventiveness of the original. Desperado is best when Rodriguez lets his playful side cut through the blare of a born filmmaker indulging his first chance at high-end Hollywood fireworks.

The women's characters are as well drawn as the men's in a splendidly acted film that captures the confusion of love in ways that are ardent, affecting and wonderfully funny.

And Pfeiffer gives a funny, scrappy performance that makes you feel a committed teacher's fire to make a difference.

Take this walk for the appetizing scenery, which includes Reeves and Sanchez-Gijon. The rest deserves squashing.

Though Virtuosity connects all the dots to give audiences a roller-coaster ride, the movie begets nothing new: It's stillborn.

At times director Lasse Hallstrom lets the film slip into an upscale version of Brett Butler’s Grace Under Fire sitcom. Even when melodrama threatens, Roberts’ steadying, sharply observed performance keeps things touchingly real. Khouri’s script has the buoyant wit to deal with Grace’s anger without turning her into a lethal avenger.

OK, the plot is inane, Val-gal-speak is a clichT, and Heckerling was more incisive covering similar hormonal ground 13 years ago in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High." But there's still wicked good fun to be had.

Whenever Zucker stops piling on battle scenes as if he were directing Braveheart, his film casts a romantic spell.

Howard lays off the manipulation to tell the true story of the near-fatal 1970 Apollo 13 mission in painstaking and lively detail. It's easily Howard's best film.

Disney deserves praise for raising the ante on its ambitions in animation. Next time, though, a little less civics lesson and a little more heart.

Schumacher's method is to use a lighter touch, to stay closer to the cartoon that Bob Kane created for DC Comics in 1939 and to temper Burton's nightmare world with an accessible, brightly colored TV palette.

A sharply observant and witty film that plumbs unexpected depths of feeling.

What makes it delicious fun is Posey, a party girl for the ages.

It's a tense, terrifically funny action dazzler with a wow level in special effects that will be hard to top.

Amateur is Hartley heaven, a sharp-witted thriller that takes off into dark and uncharted territory.

A brilliant chronicle of the life and twisted times of a most unlikely bad boy, a skinny, four-eyed, sex-obsessed misanthrope with no weapons to fire back at the society that rejected him save one: The nerd can draw.

[Kalvert] best serves the movie by simply focusing on DiCaprio, who communicates the spirit and blunt truth of the diaries even when the movie keeps trying to soften the blow.