At 126 minutes the movie is excruciatingly long, but it is still too short to pack in all the subtle changes in character he means but fails miserably to convey.

Ryan has an edge that is extremely becoming…This is her best work yet.

The thrill is most certainly not in the script by David Koepp, written from Michael Crichton's novel....Most of the writing is the blandest sort of twaddle, jokes you can practically recite along with actors.

Writer-director Mark Herman seems genuinely moved by the plight of the mining communities, but his attempt to translate those feelings into a story shows the effects of hard labor.

But what McNally, director Joe Mantello and a cast brought straight from the original New York stage production all accomplish is the creation of an honest, clever, poignant work about men who also happen to be gay, rather than a self-conscious polemic about gays who it turns out just happen also to be men.

The seriousness and simplicity with which he approaches his subject in Night Falls on Manhattan are refreshing even if the vivacity of the thing never really has a chance to develop.

This is a prodigious something. It's just difficult to say whether that something is good or evil.

It's that predictable sweetness that makes any of this more than just bearable.

As bad movies go, Gregg Araki's Nowhere is right up there with the best of them.

Austin is funny, extremely funny, because he is so ridiculous, and because Myers is a brilliant mimic who, like Martin Short, knows how to do ridiculous.

When you really think about Breakdown - and believe me, that would probably require spending more time thinking about the movie than the filmmakers did - it doesn't make much sense.

The scenes with Stalin and his frightened underlings, his giddy yes-men tip-toeing around him, are written and directed by Duncan with a grace, agility and comic deftness one rarely is treated to at the movies these days.

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

Congratulations to director Mick Jackson and writers Jerome Armstrong and Billy Ray for liberating themselves from the tedious demands of believability.

Especially fine are Spade and Louiso, the latter possessing a quality of injured integrity that is priceless here.

By the time you get to the end of the movie and our heroes and Regis' cop buddy Dennis Miller must sprint through a series of tunnels beneath the White House racing against evil to save the presidency, if your credulity hasn't been tested you'll probably find your heart racing pleasantly.

Directing his first movie, Jack Green, cinematographer on several Clint Eastwood films, shows an ease with the material (written by Jim McGlynn), but there's something a bit dull about the movie.

This movie has the jaunty good cheer of another great movie about hit men, "Prizzi's Honor." And that is high praise indeed.

If only director Luis Llosa and his cast could see the joke and seize upon it; instead, like its computer-morphed snake, the film doesn't have a clever bone in its body.

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

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

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

The veteran Baker anchors the proceedings, and you would like to see more of her character.

While the original conception of The Saint gave us a debonair, sophisticated and roguish detective, the new movie, directed stiffly by Phillip Noyce ( "Clear and Present Danger" ), gives us Val Kilmer as a greedy high-tech daredevil thief with the moves of Batman, the clunky disguises of Tom Cruise in "Mission: Impossible" and the morals of an alley cat.

Throughout, Croghan knows where she wants to go, but has no fresh ideas for getting there. The characters are reasonably appealing, but the jokes are mostly weak.

You can't help cheering for Selena, but the good feeling is diminished by the sense that her story's been simplified and sanitized.

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

Cronenberg has said that he made the film to find out why he was making it. You may watch it for the same reason.

The artificiality peculiar to moviemaking rubs up counter-productively against the artificiality peculiar to live theater, making the movie version of Gray's material seem arch, contrived and starchy, not the spontaneous eruption that his theater work manages to resemble.

In the case of Jon Robin Baitz's script, adapted from his play, in spite of the fact that he made considerable alterations in the text to open it up to cinematic possibilities, the movie disappoints in much the same way the play did.

There is a point of view here, a rather strong one. It may sound like slight praise, but Love Jones is a movie that is exactly what it wants to be, and that's an achievement in a homogenized, test-marketed vanilla-movie landscape.

Private Parts is a sparkling, nonstop entertainment written by Len Blum and Michael Kalesniko and directed by Betty Thomas, but sometimes it gives the impression that Stern is nothing short of Nobel Peace Prize material.

Trash is trash, even if it used to be in French.

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.

This is the kind of story that might have been interesting had it not been populated with dreary characters played by actors who were clearly coached to be as dull as possible.

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.

Eastwood is perfect as the bad guy (a thief) you root for.

Perhaps a bit miscast, and with a penchant for too many double-takes, Perry nonetheless is game.

I'm not sure someone with Shrader's pessimistic outlook ought to be making comedies. I think the strain is too much for him.

The new version has been speeded up and dumbed down, which does not reflect well on the mouse factory's view of its audience these days.

Then there are times when the humor and the pathos of these losers catch you off-guard. Those moments are nearly profound, and elevate the film above the slacker cliches in which it wallows.

Dante's Peak expands the concept of badness in movies.

Now and then the script reaches admirable heights of humor.

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.

Amazing comic performances...give this comedy its lovely manic pace, kept just within the realm of sanity.

But then, just when it appears the race is lost, Steve James' love for his character and art form kicks in and wins the day, and, though flawed, Prefontaine is an engrossing portrait of a complex figure.

With this marvelous premise to launch it, the film fails nevertheless. The trouble is that none of the dialogue is funny enough to fulfill the expectations that Brooks' full-bodied stand-up comedian delivery promises every time he opens his mouth.

A workmanlike effort. It's not startling and it's not incompetent.

A lot of noise and nothing to justify it.

It took four people to write the screenplay for The Relic. All I can say is that I hope these people have not quit their day jobs.

This flashy aloofness puts it in a league with the John Grisham racism-courtroom movie "A Time to Kill" rather than the more moving - and far superior - Harper Lee one, "To Kill a Mockingbird."

With its fine courtroom scenes, excellent performances, great writing and superb direction it reminds me more than anything else of Barbet Schroeder's "Reversal of Fortune."

Unfortunately, this movie needed an attractive, irresistibly charismatic performer to give us some reason for watching. Madonna is made up to look like Eva, but this is hardly enough to carry the movie.

The best movie she ever directed was "This Is My Life," a biting comedy she also wrote that was soundly defeated by both critics and audiences. I think she's lost her nerve and her edge ever since.

Like many French movies, in the retelling this one boils down to an unremittingly silly set of characters and situations.

A harmeless concoction.

An artificial and hypocritical effort to escape the artistic limitations of teenage slasher flicks.

The picture seems to have been intended as a political satire, but only a Hollywood executive could mistake it for the real thing.

Here and there, a good idea or scene erupts, as when the antagonists accidentally switch cellular telephones and start taking each other's emergency calls. And Jack keeps his shrink appointment but must speak in code so his daughter won't understand. But these are anomalies and subside just as suddenly as they appear.

Add to that a perfect cast and one's only complaint will be that this is, at heart, another tear-jerker about how good it is to love and be alive and all of that.

Huston manages to bring the unavoidable brutality of this story to the screen without seeming exploitative. And she gets good performances out of Malone, Leigh and Eldard. Glenne Headly gives a great performance as Leigh's saintly sister.

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

Nicholson squeezes every wretched drop of buffoonery from this character, and it's distressing to watch him play an easy role for easy laughs.

Dern is nothing short of brilliant here.

Speaking of bangs, the special effects include one of the better mega-blasts in recent memory: vast fireballs tear through the busy tunnel at dizzying speed and with devastating results. This is the money shot, what the Stallone audience is paying for. It remains to be seen if they'll buy a Stallone who's been downsized and reformulated - about a teaspoon's worth of added complexity.

I can't help thinking, though, that maybe Thornton was too ambitious in trying to wear three hats.

Dalmatians proves an apt playground for Hughes as one could surmise that his inspiration for treating comic bad guys in his movies so violently comes from a cartoon sensibility.

Hytner uses 360-degree camera turns and strange angle shots to inject this largely lifeless business with some drama. Ryder tries to do the same by nearly working herself into cardiac arrest in several monologues. Day-Lewis is acting so hard you can see his lower teeth, which, by the way are sometimes horribly decayed and other times white enough to blind a dental hygienist...See this movie at the peril of your soul.

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.

Not even his gap-toothed charm and willingness to make fun of his usual take-no-prisoners persona made it easier to swallow the mess of pottage that is Jingle All the Way.

What the story lacks in tension, Waterhouse's writing and Leconte's direction make up for in entertainment.

The movie is meant to be uplifting and to the degree that you can ignore its unquestioning treatment of mental illness, I suppose it is.

Minghella is an artist and he has painted himself a masterpiece.

Ransom is every bit as taut and expertly directed, and it's another in the emergency genre, one in which Howard excels.

This is a piece of gloriously literary and serious filmmaking, but again it falls prey to misjudgments in pacing and rhythm.

You've seen Set It Off several times before featuring male characters: The proven popularity of boy-dominated 'hood movies has made this female variation possible. Just the fact that four worthy African American actresses get decent staring roles gives the story a purpose it wouldn't ordinarily have.

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

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

Get On the Bus might just be Spike Lee's best work yet.

Hackman is, as ever, a master performer, an actor at the peak of his powers. However, he can't carry the whole movie.

A filmmaker of Jordan's capability is not likely to make anything less than a competent, watchable movie, and that Michael Collins is. I think content rather than form detracts from the cogency of the finished product in this case.

One of the most blithely, giddily ridiculous movies to come along in ages.

Buscemi is after a slice of life with a grown-up slacker. The trouble is that, in the end, this isn't terribly interesting.

Most of these scenes are long, boring shots of the men aiming their rifles nervously into the mist. Truth may be stranger than fiction, but fiction is more artfully arranged.

The movie is magnificent and stunning the way few spectator events are.

The Wachowski brothers are to be applauded for a film that is also nearly as stylishly funny as it is sexy and fast-paced.

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

Leigh has a gift for demonstrating character from the outside in.

Somehow, although this film's unevenness tends to take us out of the action now and then, there's something kind of agreeable about it. Aiello is extremely funny and so, in his creepy way, is Spader.

The action moves along at a good clip, and Apted, who made "Gorillas in the Mist," "Nell," "Coal Miner's Daughter," and the "7-Up" series of documentaries, doesn't allow the plot to bog down in details. But the so-called moral dilemma that Myrick's work poses - kidnapping the homeless and torturing them to death in the name of medical science - is laughable.

Big Night's beauty is the fact that it is about passion.

It's funnier, and bitchier, than Clare Boothe Luce's "The Women," and, best of all, it showcases three wonderful actresses who have rarely been better.

A big, silly movie about the famed goatish painter that stars the nearly perfect Anthony Hopkins.

It has the distinctive look of a Walter Hill picture, but in the end boils down to little more than a Bruce Willis action vehicle.

Unfortunately, it stars Keanu Reeves and Cameron Diaz, so it has, more than anything else, a sense of ridiculousness.

Fly Away Home" is directed by Carroll Ballard, who made "The Black Stallion" and "Never Cry Wolf." In other words, it was directed by a filmmaker with talent, taste and subtlety, working from an understated script by Robert Rodat and Vince McKewin.

The only remarkable feature about this otherwise routine movie is that it vilifies two current icons of American life. One is The Internet and the other is The Mall.