Like a Sally Field movie by Vittorio De Sica: Zhang wants to affect you with the subtle sting of his politics.

From both sides of the camera, Eastwood works the crowd better than he has in years.

Loose and funny with verve.

That's not to say the entertaining Antz" was made by Woody, just that it's full of his personality.

Despite the occasional uneven patch, the emotional punch of Slam leaves you wrung out as the credits unexpectedly start to roll. You want a happy ending, you realize the deck is stacked against it, but - thanks to the redemptive power of the spoken word - you have reason to hope.

Priceless enough to flush "Metro," "Dr. Dolittle" and "Holy Man" from memory.

Crassly funny passages.

Prince-Bythewood's movie is an occasionally clunky, mostly engaging coming out party for herself.

I'm not really sure who would enjoy this movie.

DeVito directed this wonderful fantasy about a brilliant little girl with strange powers and a sunny disposition. Using special effects DeVito creates a visual delight that seems more British than American partly due to the origin of the material and partly due to the playfulness of DeVito and writers Nicholas Kazan and Robin Swicord.

Ruiz has made the most ambitious adaptation of a Proust work yet.

Exotica is a worthy addition to an increasingly rich body of work by one of our most prolific and accomplished international filmmakers.

McTiernan's film mines what substance it has from its two stars, but is admittedly about keeping up its own appearances.

A guilty pleasure and one of the best films of the year.

The script by Ed Solomon is tight, well-paced and lighthearted. If this were a musical, Fred Astaire could have played the Jones role, although somewhat more dashingly.

Pi will not be for everyone, but for those who are fed up with the mainstream idiocy that gets dumped into theaters each summer, this movie willbe like a great big palate-clearing taste of sorbet.

The movie is well made by director Michael Winterbottom ("Jude"), with a minimum of overdramatics.

Nowhere near as funny as "Spinal Tap," but fans of this kind of deadpan humor are guaranteed to get a few chuckles out of this one. All of the actors are marvelously horrible, and in this movie, bad equals good.

The success of Felicia's Journey lies in the work of the steady and here understated Hoskins, who gives one of his best performances, and young Cassidy, who displays a weary maturity even through her deer-in-the-headlights character.

The ballad as it turns out is a duet between a dad and his girl, who'd often rather accentuate the positive than exploit pain, quietly proving that she is her father's daughter.

There's not much mystery here; there's only one outcome that could possibly make dramatic sense. And once you realize that, there's not much to do besides watch some very adept performers chew on their lines.

An ecstatic sensory experience so overloaded it hardly matters that the narrative has been placed on a back burner.

It's hard not to keep thinking that this movie is basically "Yentl" with a nose job.

Caruso doesn't leave much of a mark in the movie. On the smaller screen he smoldered. He seems to need the cramped space to seem sexy. The big screen isn't claustrophobic enough to pinch and squeeze the talent out of him.

Coppola again shines his intelligence on this bestseller material, rather than just shoving it through the Hollywood mill unsifted.

Leaves the audience on such a devastatingly dramatic ledge.

There isn't much to hold onto with this movie. If anything, Cry trivializes the plight of the South Africans in its breezy treatment of apartheid.

There's not a whole lot to Waking Ned Devine, but it may be enough for those who like their quirky comedies from the British Isles - a burgeoning genre now - both atmospheric and gentle.

The film's premise is totally implausible yet great performances, directing and script allow us to transcend the concept of believability and enjoy nevertheless.

If the movie crumbles under its own stiffness at times, at least it has the two old pros' good performances to cheer us along the way.

The intention is there, but the needed emotional maturity isn't.

Meanders around Holly Springs, Mississippi, with the fuzzy benevolence of a Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation.

It is a visual tour de force, but as a whole the movie slowly deflates into a cross between "Arizona" and "The Hudsucker Proxy".

While Birdcage has many isolated funny moments, long bits of slowness interrupt the energy.

While this movie hasn't many surprises, it does offer strong performances, especially from Gyllenhaal.

An engaging, well-written film that is surprisingly gentle in tone and easily paced.

It's the hypnotic long-form music video Smoke never got to make.

It's as sunny as you would expect a Hanks project to be.

You would think Towne would identify closely with a big young talent who flames out too early. But when Pre turns to Mary and says, "I can endure more pain than anyone I ever met," it seems forced, empty. Towne just doesn't capture his subject.

The weird thing about the films David Mamet has directed is that they have about as much emotion as a cyborg in a science fiction movie, yet by the end of the picture it isn't necessary; by then the audience has supplied their own.

Like a Les Brown tune, a really dry martini and a hug from a good buddy, Swingers makes you feel warm all over, baby.

What's on the screen may not be a letter-perfect Mansfield Park, but something true to its spirit.

While amusing and sometimes touching, Pleasantville is far from challenging.

It's one of the most beautifully unpleasant movies ever made - its reverse charge being that it is no fun at all.

Fallen Angels is proof that Wong will try anything, and the result is an eclectic mix of images and disjointed editing, sounds and rhythms that are at times as powerful as any piece of filmmaking likely to be seen all year. It can also, every once in awhile, be tedious and trying.

Beautiful, wandering little love story that wants to break your heart and probably will.

Save for some sentimental scenes, it's a powerful film, with a powerful performance by Alexander. [04 Nov 1983, p.E]

Lee seems to think that all his major characters are basically good people who deserve another chance, and so for the sake of an inappropriate happy ending, everyone important gets one.

Though short on subtlety, A Walk on the Moon does offer the consolation of some decent performances.

Szabo doesn't bring the film to its senses until just past the halfway point.

The vibe is acoustic-cafe: cute, catchy and ironic given its wimpy point of view.

Hamlet finds in Hawke's greatish performance a Great Dane for this, or any other, modern moment.

Even those unfamiliar with the entire "Star Trek" phenomenon (it's now been 30 years since the original TV show sprang from the fertile mind of creator Gene Roddenberry) will find this a clever action movie, with a well-written screenplay and tight direction of a fine cast.

Turns into something like a screwball farce, an intimate, self-aware one.

What makes Shadow Boxers special is how Bankowsky restores the woman's touch that always seems intentionally excised from coverage of the sport without comprising their participation in the sport.

An exceptionally funny science-fiction comedy.

Woody Allen's questionable toe-tapping faux-documentary.

Voight's Wright is one of many examples of how Singleton and Poirier succeed in suggesting the ambivalence and shadings that make movie characters believable.

Because Wilde was a dandy and a wit, as well as a clever writer of daring plays, any actor who plays him must have charm. Fry has it in abundance.

There's a sense of genuineness throughout Girlfight.

The delight of the movie is Keitel, who finally gets to play someone who doesn't look like he's about to mug you.

Unfortunately, the movie never really goes anywhere. It's all pleasant enough to watch, but you never feel that Danny and Arthur's craziness (eventually Danny is committed), Sid's stoicism, Selma's selflessness and Steven's despair coalesce to mean anything significant or illuminating.

Even if the movie is not a work of comic - or philosophical - genius, its existence does foretell of tolerance gaining a foothold in a largely intolerant world.

A demanding, rewarding (if overlong) and - yes - a personally felt experience.

Sure, it's the same trite teenage fantasy it was 20 years ago when it was first released, but somehow now the energy seems infectiously giddier, the songs zingier, the camp higher.

Underscores everything that was utterly wrong-headed about the original material.

Fans likely to rave about Living.

The movie's afraid of [Stiles], turning Kat from riot grrrrl to Solid Gold dancer in the time it takes to drop one Notorious B.I.G. song at that house party - which is why it's the Spam of processed teen movies.

Gets diagnosably schizo.

What's best about this script is the premise: a lawyer who doesn't lie.

Happy Together is Wong's most fully realized work. It is a pleasure to watch an interesting mind feel his way, and the result is something more than just a passing fancy.

The acting and writing is a cut above the ordinary.

A movie that has an odd plot, quirky characters and a real edge, but it's not in-your-face, a re-invention of a genre or a smirky independent. It's different because it's flat-out great.

The movie is an ill-advised work of egomania by someone who clearly has some talent, but not as much as he seems to think.

Never has this war been filmed with such ragged glory.

Stooge-filled farce offers low laughs but lacks a point.

Groovy.

A supremely silly movie, which means that it has moments of boring idiocy mixed with moments of inspired hilarity.

Revelatory.

Surely there's a middle ground between a Bolshevik-style elevation of history over individual emotion and a Hollywood-style idolization of emotion over impersonal history. Surely it's possible to avoid either deifying or demonizing history, but rather to seek an understanding of it - as a force that shapes private lives even as they shape it. For all its grandeur and beauty, Dr. Zhivago denies the complexity of that exchange.

The Great Ziegfeld is a monument in celluloid to the great American producer, Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. He would have been proud to write his name across it as producer. [13 Apr 1936, p.18]

Works more as an object of pop curiosity than as a work of popular entertainment.

A runny intimate portrait that doesn't trust Tammy Faye Messner and her story to enthrall you. So they've all but spelled it out: k-i-t-s-c-h.

Smart and unsentimental as it is, Shallow Grave is more than a little forbidding.

The drawbacks to Little Voice might sink a lesser movie, but not this one.

The real trouble with this movie is that it represents the continuing departure of Almodovar from the chaotic, riotous and anti-social roots that gave his best movies their zest.

Driver, who is padded but not fat, is an actress with self-possession to spare. Her looks defy conventional rules about modern beauty, but the directness of her gaze and the honesty of her smile make it difficult to look anywhere else when she is on screen.

Some nice performances and modest laughs highlight this amiable British comedy.

Director Eastwood favors naturalism and sometimes the effort to reproduce what it is like to meet someone new bogs the picture down irreparably.

This overall good feeling helps smooth over the sometimes shocking lapses in logic.

Roth, though, is like a sociopathic arsonist, one enthralled with his ability to start little blazes and one who would even call the fire department, but wouldn't stick around to see whether anyone put them out.

An old-fashioned movie. It is simplistic, full of stock characters and easy solutions to difficult problems, and I absolutely loved it.

The comedy-drama is worth seeing for Christie's performance as a former B-actress married to a philandering handyman. She radiates a mature sexuality that's a rare treat on screen these days, and when the camera strays from her, you want to reach over and turn it back.

By aiming for something more ambitiously, ambiguously philosophical, [Sayles] forgot to include a heart and a soul.

Binoche is the ideal creature for that kind of cosmetic expansion, and, here, her thorough modernity takes on an almost cruddy, Italian sadness.

Her first feature, a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age comedy, is a nicely directed, well-written debut.

There are plenty of good sight gags here, and anyone who can work the phrase "ass clown" into a script is all right with me.

A tedious, soapy romp about overlapping lives and destiny.