A slew of writers and an enthusiastic cast all do their jobs admirably enough to provide a couple of hours of unembarrassing entertainment.

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.

This is a Seagal movie without Seagal and a Jack Ryan movie without Jack Ryan.

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.

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.

Just another in a long line of blue-collar-kid-at-prep-school movies, and it may be the worst of the lot. Nothing, absolutely nothing, is original in this movie.

Particularly because unlike so many other boring movies one sees, Jarmusch films require many more words to explain the boringness than less certifiably artistic films would.

Determined to be inoffensively tidy and cute above all else.

Think of this as "Die Hard" in a suit, with an election coming up.

The movie is a big fumble.

The journey's a kick.

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

All the performances are good, the script is subtle and waste-free and Danny Elfman's score is evocative and appropriate, but the direction is what gives the movie its sweep.

As light comedy, Something to Talk About has some effective moments - including Eddie's interview with a hilariously cynical divorce lawyer, and virtually all the scenes with Sedgwick's Emma Rae. But director Lasse Hallstrom glazes the film with too much faux bluegrass music, and the equine fantasy-world of the King Ranch is so enveloping that it suffocates all aspirations to more serious drama.

The most refreshing performance is by Mortensen.

Certainly it isn't about to give "Das Boot" a run for its money - but nevertheless it is irresistible entertainment.

[Krishnamma] gives the story a dimension of pent-up anguish and melancholy.

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

A flyweight, humongously entertaining ensemble number.

It's not as good as the original - which was fresher, funnier and scarier - but if it were, then by the criteria of the film's resident movie scholar, it wouldn't be a genuine sequel.

If Restaurant feels like a high-caliber TV drama, it's one that tries to pack an entire season (plus pilot, plus backstory) into one episode.

When the mystery is unraveled and the frame-up is revealed, I, personally, had no idea what anyone was talking about.

This bloated, self-important and logically absurd movie, made by the director of the equally historically hysterical "Forrest Gump," pretends to the thrones of Serious Thinking, of Important Messages and of Intellectual Provocation. If there were truly anything serious, important or intellectual about this movie, this planet would be in big trouble.

As titillating novelty turns into tired cliche, the dyke-psycho-killer genre may soon burn itself out, but in the meantime, we have the grim Brit art-film variation on the gruesome genre, Butterfly Kiss.

A gorgeous sliver of grown-up ambrosia.

A remarkable study of the corrosive effects of fear and power on an establishment insider who puts duty above all else.

The Faculty deserves a week of detention, not so much for missing the point as for blunting it.

Broken Arrow isn't the ultimate fusion of Hong Kong surrealism and Hollywood realism, but it points the way to nerve-shattering possibilities.