The disappointing ending aside, there is much to enjoy in The Game, a creation with a sheen so highly burnished that sometimes you feel you must look away.

This movie is a pleasure, an entertainment and an admirable artistic achievement.

Excess Baggage aims to broaden her appeal beyond her established, youthful audience. It won't, because it's a messy mixture of so-so comedy and unmoving drama; its inconsistent tone suggests a production where no one was fully in charge.

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

It is familiarly old-fashioned, complete with montages of newspaper clippings fluttering past and calendar days slipping by. The sets, costumes, old cars and general atmosphere all beautifully recall moviemaking of a bygone era. And for that, hats off to Duke.

The most refreshing performance is by Mortensen.

If there is a reason anyone would voluntarily agree to make this movie it probably dwells somewhere in a realm only accessible to the thinking of ambitious actors.

The title comes from Indian legend in which Lord Rama tests the purity of his wife by a flaming ordeal (which we see enacted in an open-air pageant with comic overtones of Bunuel). This bit of mythology too handily prefigures a major element in the film's conclusion.

I wouldn't say this movie is actually harmful, but skipping it is probably the wisest policy.

Cop Land presents a fairly involved plot, and Mangold is not equipped to do more than blurt all the information onto the screen and let the nuances settle where they may.

But in its own overblown, melodramatic way, complete with hideous and obtrusive music by Michael Kamen, clanging sound effects that will leave your ears ringing and a penchant on the part of director Paul Anderson ( "Mortal Kombat" ) for quick flashes of blood-drenched gore, Event Horizon is kind of a hoot.

There isn't a whole lot of fancy subplotting, just a potpourri of funny and engaging characters.

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

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.

An independent film so enamored of itself it refuses to have any fun.

Otherwise, the movie, which borrows from a dozen pop sources and improves on none of them, is pretty much a washout.

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

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.

Neither offensive nor inspired.

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.

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

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.

One is hesitant to praise a movie that takes about an hour to get itself going, but it's important to report that once Out to Sea does get going, it makes you laugh.

The trouble comes when Woo's patented - that is, oft-repeated - style overwhelms any hope of discerning story or acting through the haze of burning, crashing, bleeding and exploding.

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.

Clooney's stiff cornball delivery and tendency to smile during the most tragic moments bring this as close to the cartoonish Batman television series of the 1960s as any of the movies have come.

I suppose Kusturica can justify the 167-minute length by the historical breadth of the movie, but it simply doesn't sustain one's interest, significant or not.

This is my idea of a nightmare.