Nobody's Fool belongs to that hoary but no longer frequently seen genre, the slice of life. And for at least some of its duration, Benton - creator of more oleaginous cuts of celluloid, like Places in the Heart - slices keenly and artfully. We get a good sense of the nature of existence in snowbound North Bath, N.Y., where the advantages and shortcomings of small-town life are sometimes hard to tell apart.

This is grim material, but director Hilary Brougher -- working from her own script that won a Sundance award -- examines the lives of these two suffering women without sensationalism or preaching.

Director John McTiernan outdoes the previous "Die Hards" (McTiernan directed the first, Renny Harlin the second) with machinery, stunts, noise, bullets and guts. Hand-held camerawork tweaks the audience's sense of anxiety further, and for the most part it works well.

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

The best way to characterize "The Blues Brothers 2000" is as a fabulous concert film with incredibly bad patter between the songs. If you ignore the silly plot that links the extravaganzas together, you'll have a great time.

An edgy, hypnotic entertainment that's like a Club Med production of "Lord of the Flies."

Referring to his love of Hollywood musicals and a working-class background that fostered enduring dreams of making movies one day, Varda creates an homage to a filmmaker's imagination. It doesn't hurt that she was also in love with him.

Still, Singleton's willingness to take risks makes this a worthy, thoughtful film. Especially noteworthy: His sensitive handling of a love triangle between Kristen and her boyfriend and Kristen and another woman.

DeVito, whose singing sounds like a cross between coughing and Jimmy Durante on a good day, is a gruff and lovable mentor with a Brooklyn accent and a New Yorker's intolerance for sentimentality. Egan's Meg is a fiery dame with lots of gall. Tate Donovan gives voice to the adult Hercules, and he is just right as an almost Dudley Doright-ish lug who thinks heroics have more to do with physical daring than with big-heartedness. Alan Mencken's original score is boisterous and hummable, and lyrics by David Zippel perfectly suit the story and Disney's recent style for cleverness.

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

Hot-blooded.

Without much of a plot to speak of and relying almost entirely on the girls' star power and charisma - which they have in spades - turns out to be a truly entertaining movie for anyone with even a bare knowledge of the Spice Girls' history, which in this age of absolute over-saturation, is hard to avoid.

Dogma' is Kevin Smith's fourth film and it looks like his first but I'm not ready to quit him -- there's a landmark in him. I just wish the crafty, raucous Dogma was it.

Such an ambitious, well-acted film that it's easy to overlook its flaws as relatively minor.

[Nair's] sure touch with the details of social decorum carries the film through. [14 Feb 1992, p.D3]

Broadway-sized performances.

Flawed but scrappy, confusing yet exhilarating, the Brit-made Lock, Stock is far from a perfect movie. And it's not for anyone squeamish about violence. But it is, like Green Day, a rockin' good time.

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

It is both the best-looking James Bond film and the best-looking James Bond.

The good guys metamorphose into bad guys and back into good guys with dazzling efficiency in Brian Helgeland's disturbing, comic script.

Nunez's style is quiet, simple and deliberate, but the film never drags.

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.

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

At its best when it's hovering around the muted dysfunction between a father and a son, who never understood each other to begin with.

Gattaca is a welcome throwback to the days of good, low-tech sci-fi, stressing character and atmosphere over computer-generated effects and juvenile thrills.

In the attempt to rein in a cast playing a great assortment of exaggerated types, Schlesinger (who directed "Midnight Cowboy" and "Marathon Man" ) and Bradbury sometimes lose the tone of the movie.

The Spanish filmmaker goes back to what he does better than any other living director - post-modernizing the melodrama.

The film is alt-schmaltz, and it'll do.

Everything you would want from a Big Brother film: Good-looking, preachy in an Old West kind of way, wobbling between humor and murder, hellbent and periodically brilliant.

This sequel is much better than the original "Under Siege"...The real coup here is the discovery that when you eliminate dialogue, and thus eliminate Seagal's efforts to act in that rather high voice of his, the movie takes on a surprising gravity. When Seagal doesn't talk, he verges on the dignified. It's kind of scary.

The journey's a kick.

The sort of smutty scandalmongering the average moviegoer can really get behind.

The result is a thrill ride with enough plunges and turns and loop-the-loops to make it worth a spin. What the picture lacks is the magic and resonance you feel in the best of popular entertainments.

Bay has two great assets in Connery and Cage. The special effects give The Rock a James Bondian feel so Connery's wry, world-weary devil-may-careishness looks right at home here.

The Secret of Roan Inish freely mixes Celtic myth and everyday reality. But "Roan Inish" is a different kind of ride, less intentionally rollicking and more reverential.

An excellent human-interest documentary that unlike so many others has a genuine appeal beyond someone already interested in the subject matter.

The movie is strongest when Lee keeps his eye on the prize: the experiences of ordinary people in an extraordinary time.

Overall a well-played chess match of a movie.

Sometimes the movie lacks a quietness, an omission most egregiously felt at the end.

Hoffman proves himself a master of complex scenery, crowd control and graceful direction. He succeeds in making a conspicuously lush and rich movie out of what was reportedly a less than kingly budget.

Entertaining but predictable, and too long.

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

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

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

Works a familiar mine and produces more than a few nuggets. It's a good tonic, if one's still needed, for '80s-style cynicism: Greed is not good.

It's fast-moving, it's got fine special effects, the hero and heroine are pure and quick-thinking, the bad people die badly, and the script draws its fair share of laughs.

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

There is something nicely matter-of-fact about Greg Mottola's family comedy-trauma, The Daytrippers. This first-time writer-director has a breezy way of persuading us that seemingly unrealistic behavior is the most natural in the world.

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

A shockingly eloquent, nearly moving feat of Y2K-trendiness.

A Little Princess is a delightful film. Bring your children, or just bring yourself.

Fancher's placid, eerily subdued first directorial feature.

Shows how Tinseltown sensibilities can be well thought out even on a low budget.

Gets blue-ribbon results from its thoroughbred cast of improvisational comics.

Of course, turning a novel by Woolrich into a light romantic froth is a little like turning King Lear into a musical comedy. But Benjamin has the right comic touch to pull this off.

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.

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

A sobering documentary.

With an original score by Alan Menken and Gilbert and Sullivan-ish songs by Menken and lyricist Stephen Schwartz, the movie is the cartoon equivalent of a full-scale, high-quality Broadway musical.

A charming and moving film about a slightly racy subculture in a highly rule-bound society.

This is the old beauty and the beast tale, one that Disney has already done well enough. I guess they had so much fun the first time that they just had to do it again.

History rendered with enough brains and imagination to more than make up for its few stumbles.

If anything, the film drags a bit because the tour that Jarmusch chose to film, the 1996 effort, was following a Crazy Horse album that was, for them anyway, sub-par. But the interviews with the band members and the behind-the-scenes footage - as well as the vintage material - make for an entertaining and illuminating experience.

A hip, corrosive and often hilarious entertainment, the movie strikes another blow for the American independent film.

Deadly funny.

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

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.

Kaizo Hayashi's homage to noir B movies, both Japanese and American, is successful as a true labor of love.

It's a testament to what happens when all the right ingredients come together. Wag the Dog is the best political satire in years.

It's a beautiful movie. Too beautiful for its own good, really.

Ultimately affecting mix 'n' match weeper.

One of the funniest movies to come along in awhile.

The whole thing seems awfully familiar, not to say boring.

Nicolas Cage gives one of the best performances of his strange, courageous career.

Dreamy and elegantly filmed.

A movie drunk on its very existence, one that misses more frequently than it hits and couldn't care less.

The movie's primary narrative weakness is that its racism plot points seem ripped from the headlines of a "Geraldo" newsletter and stretched into a string of terribly executed car chases.

Things stay standard-issue French self-analytical from here.

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

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

Fans likely to rave about Living.

Now "Rod Tidwell," with Jerry Maguire as a supporting character, would be a movie to pay to see.

Too many questions are raised with no good answers.

Ultimately, though, the movie's charms are frustrated by meandering direction.

Regardless of how cheated out of a full-bodied motion picture you feel, you're still left with the year's sickest bathroom humor.

Multiplicity satisfies the need for a dumb summer comedy while remaining fairly smart.

A less confrontational, though positively gushing modernization of "Pierre, or the Ambiguities."

It's clever but not often original.

The most refreshing performance is by Mortensen.

Aside from avuncular Lewis and two-bricks-shy-of-a-load Dunaway, this movie's greatest asset is Depp. With his scooped-out cheeks, flower petal mouth and an innately balletic approach to communicating with the camera, he is as natural a performer as film has seen in many years.

Director Cassavetes may want to cut back on the slow-motion stuff, but he's unquestionably a talent.

A sweet but overly sober look at a child's coming to spiritual grips with the death of his grandfather, Wide Awake occasionally packs an emotional punch. But a meandering script, written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, and the candy coating it's wrapped in, undermine its effectiveness.

The glory of the picture is the eye-popping, surreal backgrounds that blast the conventional characters off the screen.

It's full of visual flash, and can be enjoyed as a giddy ride, but you would waste your time trying to puzzle out the nuances of the story.

What could have been an insightful, irresistible movie is instead a simple, self-contained fable, pleasing to look at but meaningless

It's a truly strange coupling of mooning romanticism and rank stupidity that fairly screams, "Teenage America, we love your money!"

Metroland is a provocative rumination on how relationships are warped by two people's inability to be truthful with each other.

The welcome hints at emotional excess are compromised by the blunt force of the movie's political point-making.