Obviously, Barrymore is not ideally cast outside modern times, but her presence is so good-natured that she makes an audience want to work with her.

The real wonder becomes how British filmmaker Sandra Goldbacher was able to write and direct such an accomplished, touching and original movie her first time out.

The movie has finesse, and the actors have charm, but there are no surprises.

Ignoring these lapses in logic, The Parent Trap' is hugely enter taining and more relevant than most family entertainment.

An overwhelming experience.

Director Manuel Poirier (Antonio's Girlfriend) is easygoing in the way he uses Paco and Nino to poke through veneers of machismo.

Entertaining, but it's about one notch below being something anybody really needs to see.

In the person of Cameron Diaz, Mary is an island of sanity, good-natured humanity and genuine sweetness in an ocean of anarchy. Without her presence, There's Something About Mary would be merely sophomoric and tasteless.

It proceeds, weirdly enough, from the truly annoying to the absolutely fascinating.

One could argue about which "Lethal Weapon'' is the best, but No. 4 is certainly the funniest, warmest and most idiosyncratic.

It's engaging as a non-drama of people doing nothing, but suffering a lot.

There are barrages of fast cuts to distract us from the fact that the director is showing us no real action.

[Soderbergh] plays with time and narrative to reveal character, mood and longing in ways you just don't find in a mainstream crime picture.

Beautiful in both its brevity and its vision of contemporary Indian culture, the film abounds in easygoing humor.

All bets are off. For my money, Vincent Gallo wins the Triple Crown of indie filmmaking -- for writing, directing and starring in Buffalo '66.

Runs out of ideas long before the projector runs out of film.

Director Breathnach is in no hurry to pump up the action in this easygoing, episodic on-the-road adventure, and the slow pace may wear thin for some viewers. More than anything, I Went Down is a cleverly observed character study of two losers who find they suddenly stand a chance at winning.

Neither true believers nor newcomers to the phenomenon will be disappointed.

The payoff is a consistently rich piece with impressive visual vitality.

Henry Fool is far and away writer-director Hal Hartley's best movie.

Edge of Seventeen is sweet and affectionate, but it also has "first effort" stamped all over it. Director David Moreton never made a feature before this, and has yet to learn how to compose a shot or block his actors.

It is wonderful to see how Sheedy gives shape to this performance -- her eyes, a photographer's eyes, carefully sizing everything up. [18 June 1998, Daily Notebook, p.E1]

Action in an action comedy is supposed to be funny, too, as Jackie Chan well knows. The refitting of the crashed plane is so tedious we feel as if we're doing the work ourselves.

Can't Hardly Wait has freshness, comic invention and an engaging romantic spirit.

Dirty Work was directed by Bob Saget, who always seemed slightly embarrassed by his enormous success as the host of America's Funniest Home Videos. Now he's got something else to be slightly embarrassed about.

There's nothing about this thriller to prevent it from soon becoming enmeshed in the memory with others in which Michael Douglas wears a starched collar and grits his teeth.

An original, inspired piece of work.

Where the movie goes wrong is that it sets itself up as a study of a pathological personality but never delivers.