Constructed as a sequence of deepening, worsening bad dreams, Living in Oblivion sometimes runs the risk of feeling arbitrary, and the film loses some steam in its final section. But mostly it's a smart, funny send-up of the trials and joys of filming on big egos and low budgets - subjects that writer-director Tom DiCillo and his collaborators presumably know first-hand.

Nil by Mouth is slow to get going, and meanders before its impact scenes in the second half. Still, its final intensity can leave you exhausted. If you stay with the picture, it's a powerful experience you're unlikely to forget.

The finest element in de la Pena's carefully assembled account is how she doesn't simply state the obvious, but lets the meaty facts speak for themselves.

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.

It isn't as charming as "Beauty and the Beast" or "The Little Mermaid" (especially musically), but it's an easy-to-swallow entertainment.

Less ambitious than the highly successful "Secrets & Lies," Career Girls has its own modest merits - a real sense of wit, much of it expressed in Hannah's sharp verbal sallies, and a melancholy truth that both women realize.

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

Aspires to the boundlessness of a kid's imagination.

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 an unstable genius brewing beneath Mary Katherine's scarlet headband. As "SNL" women go, only Gilda Radner seemed as willing to rib so much of herself for our pleasure.

As formulaic, but occasionally outré multiplex-bound behemoths go, Gladiator is a foaming beast.

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

On the whole, the movie is a success. I still hope that children and their parents will read this wonderful book together, but it's nice that there's a movie they can see, too.

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

It is an important work, and a very good one.

While I was watching "Lone Star," I realized that what makes Sayles a good and socially responsible person - his ability to look at one thing a hundred different ways - is exactly what makes him a muddy filmmaker.

Quiet, moving and beautifully shot.

You find yourself absorbed in simply looking at them to the extent that it's hard to hear what they're saying. It's a nice dilemma for a movie to present.

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

Harris, Heche make unholy twosome.

Exists as a seldom represented American time capsule, and it's all good.

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

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

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

Where Never Been Kissed succeeds is in its unabashed refusal to stoop to choosing sides in the high-school hipness war.

This movie has everything.

Lou Holtz Jr.'s script is a clever, half-serious indictment of television.

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