While the animation is only so-so, Mamoru is a good storyteller with a firm grasp on both the story and characters.

What it lacks is the wit or even the cynicism to lighten the emotional load.

An entertaining slice-of-life documentary that gets ever more fascinating as it moves along.

There is a point, however, at which the movie becomes simply sickening. Between the electric shocks and hot-iron branding, feats of grossness are accomplished that are so vile even the hardiest among the cast cannot suppress the upchuck.

While Margot's casual cruelty and the scenes of squirmy discomfort are sometimes painful to watch, the rendering of this disastrous family reunion is seriously, savagely droll.

Rich with insight and cinematic style and beauty, the film tells a uniquely moving and inspiring story. Unfortunately, it takes some stamina to distill its message from its overly long, overindulgent love affair with itself.

The film can't decide between black comedy and bubblegum comedy, so it shoots aimlessly in between.

It may not exactly be a traditional love letter to his wife but actor-turned-executive producer William H. Macy has given her a plum part as Bree in screenwriter-director Duncan Tucker's offbeat road movie.

Much of the monologue feels more self-deprecating and politically intoned than laugh-out-loud hilarious, yet that's pretty much what segregates Cho from less personal stand-up comics like Ellen Degeneres.

Energetic and inventive, it's a satirical, smart, grown-up thriller.

It doesn't, as they say, really work -- but it's enjoyable enough in spots to leave one feeling passably entertained.

Jonathan Demme's long-awaited Philadelphia is so expertly acted, well-meaning and gutsy that you find yourself constantly pulling for it to be the definitive AIDS movie. [14 Jan 1994, p.13]

As it turns out, the movie is still very much about two well-dressed undercover cops who strike sexy poses, express plenty of attitude and drive expensive cars and fast boats as pop music plays on the soundtrack and palm trees sway gently in the tropical night.

Even if you don't like the stories, the filmmakers seem incapable of finding a corner of Paris that is not photogenic.

Olivier Dahan's sprawling portrait of the life of Edith Piaf is the kind of grand, passionate historical drama that no one seems to be able to pull off any more.

Anthony Hopkins is a great actor and he gives a resourceful, inventive, compelling performance that holds our attention over three hours. It never convinces us that he is Nixon: he doesn't look much like him, and he misses entirely that incredible shiftiness in his public manner. But it somehow works. [20 Dec 1995, p.C1]

An endearing comedy that could well end up being one of the year's big hits.

A cogent, optimistic and mostly entertaining slice of ghetto life.

Rodriguez has the chops of a smart-aleck film school brat and the imagination of a big kid, and they come together to remake the world in the image of its young audience. It's more amusement park ride than adventure, which in this case is exactly the demographic he's reaching for.

You've already seen this movie, right? Just a few months ago. It was called "The Score."

The real gift of Elf is the simple pleasure of a sweet and funny comedy that genuinely embraces its message of holiday cheer and still has fun goofing with it.

It may set itself up as a girlie film with "Ya-Ya" mystics (complete with candles and chanting), but sheds that motif for a much more grounded (and satisfying) film.

While all the "Mission" plots are convoluted and slightly preposterous -- the keyword in the title is "Impossible" -- the latest is just this side of insultingly stupid. The longer you think about it, the less sense it all makes.

Mystery Men must have seemed magically goofy on storyboards, but has somehow turned into unappealing mush by the time it made it to the screen.

The script sounds like literal diary transcripts, the camerawork tests the limits of eyestrain, and the soundtrack bleats with mediocre pop songs by unknowns.

Panayotopoulou casts a transcendent eye upon her downbeat subject matter, never dodging the unsentimental truth that growing up is about learning to live with the loss of those things we have loved.

Eloquent and informative.

The movie year's most expensive and ambitious sci-fi spectacular, I Am Legend, is three movies in one: a futuristic effects-o-rama, a zombie thriller and a survivalist parable. Each is better than average, and the experience is fairly gripping.

There's a real gee-whiz kick to the fantasy of being the brainiest kid on the planet, and a down-to-earth quality to Jimmy and his not-so-bright, but ever-so-stalwart best buddies.

Many will be left scratching their heads at the point of the entire enterprise, but fans of Jarmusch's askew view will clink coffee mugs and toast to the glories of human eccentricity.

It's epic, sweeping, and genuinely engrossing for awhile, but then it stumbles. [07 Nov 1998]

Suffers from a simplistic reductionism that suggests buying from local organic farmers might help avert the possibility of a worldwide famine triggered by Monsanto's suicide gene. It is a noble and quaint solution to a situation that won't be easily swayed by consumer votes.

It's all quite deftly played with a maturity and introspection that may take you by surprise, though Sachs is perhaps too restrained in parts.

The most noteworthy thing about the Iraq war home-front drama, Grace Is Gone, is that Clint Eastwood composed its musical score and title song, which have both been garnering all sorts of accolades, including dual Golden Globe nominations.

Surely played better on the page than on the screen. What's left is the same old drill driven by brutal master race fervor.

It makes for an unusual angle on the era, and a passionate paean to the power of books, ideas and art.

It's eye-filling, well-cast, often very funny and executed with great imagination and flair.

While its execution is fine, the movie is almost shockingly vapid.

An inspirational portrait of an unwanted kid who brought culture to a world that had known only violence.

Haggis drops exclamation points after his symbolic gestures, but in the rush to drive home his message on the confused mission in Iraq he offers a queasy revisionism that all but denies the legacy of Vietnam. Considering Deerfield is a Vietnam vet, it feels doubly false.

Patrice Leconte's new film, My Best Friend, is probably his lightest and sweetest to date. Fans of his serious historical dramas ("Ridicule") or raucous farces ("Les Bronzes") may be disappointed, but others should find it a reasonably enjoyable feel-good comedy.

Not the most thrilling of competition films. There are only two short debate scenes, and each time the team gets to argue (in sound bites of rhetoric) the politically correct side of the issue.

The supporting performers all shine, especially Irons in the thankless role of the clueless cuckold husband.

An engaging but essentially routine tragic romance.

Jindabyne is uniquely Australian, dealing with Australian issues, and it boasts a wickedly wry conclusion that -- for everything that has come before -- is karmically just.

A pointed satire of the dumbing down of network TV with a sour tone and a broad execution.

The film is also an impressive showcase for a large ensemble cast that also includes Josh Brolin, James Franco and Kerry Washington. The standout, however, is Hurt, who gives an almost unbelievably courageous performance as the movie's least sympathetic character.

The movie is exactly what it's billed to be: the successful blending of two distinctly different filmmaking sensibilities from two different generations. But the stronger, and more pessimistic, sensibility -- Kubrick's -- carries the day.

It makes for one of the best and most haunting of the recent Asian horror films.

Ingeniously engineered, self-consciously clever and directed with snazzy style, it's played as a violent black comedy with often-gruesome punch lines.

A clumsy and incompetent thriller for nine-tenths of its length, but it has an ending so clever and that goes so wildly against expectations it almost exonerates the film.

It's crammed full of the dash, filmmaking flair, swashbuckling magic, impossible stunts and tongue-in-cheek humor that made the series such a phenomenon of its time, and -- for those versed in its traditions -- almost every frame is enjoyable on some level.

An unusually satisfying and inspiring historical epic from one of contemporary cinema's best filmmakers.

A quirky little film with an offbeat trajectory that rattles through the bones of story with eyes open to the texture of experience and the dimensions of character.

Rather incredibly ends up being a kind of inspirational upper.

Absorbing, scary documentary.

Brosnan pulls out all the stops in his quest to be the last word in crude boorishness, only slightly relieved by the midlife soul-searching. Whether the public will buy him in this extreme role is another question. But it's a fearless, and fairly skilled, comic performance.

It's compelling, poetic, rebellious, funny and one of the few movies that feels like it's been culled from another time and place yet broodingly bends modern societal taboos.

Fumbling characters find that survival is not a matter of economics alone, it's also a matter of hope.

A highly original, often hilarious, what-if farce about Watergate.

Well-paced, well-structured nail-biter with precious little of the usual Hollywood nonsense, several virtuoso sequences, and a camera flourish that only occasionally gets silly.

This is simply another in a long line of utterly unnecessary remakes that, having nothing new to say, clutch at crassness and dumbness.

It induces a serious case of sensory overload that left me drained and edgy.

The good news about Alan Rudolph's new film, Mortal Thoughts, is that it is dramatically engrossing, brilliantly acted by its big-star cast and filled with the touches of a virtuoso director at the top of his form. The bad news is that it leads us to one of the worst shaggy-dog endings of any mystery story I can remember. It's so totally unsatisfying, in fact, that it almost spoils all the good scenes that have come before it. [19 Apr 1991]

The cozy, lived-in atmosphere created by the ensemble and the unlikely chemistry of Carell and Binoche are so genuine that you wish the rest of the film was just as effortless and authentic.

Don't give the kids any sugar before this one -- it's so hyperactive it'll send them into overdrive without it.

A convincing and compelling community of characters with a sure comic sense and an at times screwball sensibility.

The movie's biopic aspect is multiplied by the sheer number of players who made Chess the first family of Chicago blues, R&B and rock 'n' roll...That all of them were later inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame attests to their enormous influence on popular music and culture.

Could there possibly be a worse time for a movie celebrating a draft-evader who embraces Islam? You wouldn't think so.

Low-production values, including glaring inconsistencies in the makeup department, add to the bargain-basement atmosphere of this kidsploitation quickie.

The attitude is older, maybe a tad sentimental, and as adolescent and reckless as ever. Whether that's a good thing depends on your appreciation for dead-end conversations, geek debates and the Smithspeak sandbox of creative vulgarity.

While a fascinating subject, Bruce is a bit of a poseur, keenly aware of how he comes across on camera.

The lack of irony, let alone ambiguity, in an upside world in which mobsters are the underdogs, should sink the film, but Lumet's laid-back professionalism and Diesel's big-hearted performance give it an affable buoyancy.

Even with the good performances, the paces are just agonizingly familiar. [24 Oct 1997]

Despite its flaws, Walk on Water is a sometimes engaging story of emotional opposites who become mystifyingly attracted to each other.

With the story's vivid and passionate women and the power of emotional healing (not to mention the intense eroticism of his hothouse romance), gives Sex and Lucia a dynamic, vigorous life.

It all comes together to be a remarkably dull movie.

Director Emanuele Crialese captures a stifling, dead-end rural culture awash in nature's beauty but seething with pent-up sexual frustration.

The movie is 23 minutes longer than the Lean version, yet it somehow seems much less evocative of the novel's immense scope and texture. And its Cockney accents are such a strain to understand that as much as a third of the dialogue is indecipherable.

The truth is this is an amateurish student film, marred by poor sound recording, stereotyped characters, heavy-handed direction, a mild racism (the two white characters - a shallow yuppie and an insensitive Jewish teacher - are harsh caricatures), and an unconvincing, tag-on happy end. [16 Apr 1993]

A powerful experience, filled with dazzlingly executed action sequences that generally avoid the rock music and drugged-out conventions of "Apocalypse Now," and even exude a certain core of humanity.

This community finds its balance with an easy effortlessness.

Terence Fisher directs with efficiency, manifesting a feel for atmosphere with an occasional lyrical touch, creating modern gothic horror at its best. [29 Oct 1998]

The film is thrown off balance by the weight of Norton's compassion for this troubled soul.

Altman always manages to pop up with another masterpiece -- and darned if he hasn't done it again.

Surprisingly sweet and infectious.

If you're sick of the gross-out gags and sex jokes of contemporary teen comedy, this defiant blast of idiosyncratic individuality just could be your tonic.

For 12-year-old boys, period.

The cast is uniformly non-French, and restrained to the point of rigor mortis. Dunst is the movie's strongest and weakest element. Her natural charm carries us through the scenery, at the same time her distinct Americanness rings false in every scene.

Buscemi gets a fine performance from Miller and plays his part with a murky mix of self-pity, opportunism and arrogance. A few scenes crackle with their intensity. The rest of it wallows in glib acrimony and cynicism.

A thrilling and scary ride.

As fast and exciting as it is, there's no gratuitous MTV razzle-dazzle in Where the Day Takes You. Virtually every choice made - from the shrewd selection of the music to the always-original camera set-ups to the subtly cumulative pacing of the sequences - is indispensable to the film's vision and gives evidence of the skilled hand of a born filmmaker. [11 Sep 1992]

A bare outline of the plot reads like a space-adventure thriller with end-of-the-world stakes and a hint of celestial spirituality, and the haunted spaceship twist in the third act is pure B-movie madness.

It's grim, humorless, uncompromisingly hard-edged, and marred by a handful of scenes that are clumsily staged and acted. And yet the film has an honesty and sincerity that is magnificently embodied in the always believable performance of star Plummer. [07 Nov 1992]

The Beautiful Country has an epic bearing, but a trite and troubled script makes it more a visual tirade than an engaging odyssey.

Has enough simmering beneath its sweaty, grimy and disconsolate surface to be more than just another rite-of-passage missive set in the '70s.

Somber and violent but undeniably stylish and unsettling thriller.

A frothy and deliriously enjoyable souffle.