But the movie doesn't quite work. In fact, despite some funny moments, "Honeymoon" has so many blown scenes and missed opportunities that it makes one suspect that Bergman may not be the best interpreter of his own material. [28 Aug 1992]

Re-creates the era convincingly, and, as usual, Penn is mesmerizing: a consummate movie actor at the peak of his game.

Part treasure hunt, part disturbia.

Since we never see Thomas, we can't care for him. And he's hardly a sympathetic "hero" in his treatment of women and his insistence that other characters honor his personal boundaries while he ignores theirs.

Best of all, the second Potter movie reunites its adult cast: Harris, Maggie Smith, Robbie Coltrane, John Cleese, Alan Rickman, Julie Walters and others -- a veritable Who's Who of British actors that single-handedly elevates the proceedings out of the kid's movie genre into something special.

As much a call to action as a documentary, it's a compelling and sobering lesson in the devastating effect of human industry on the planet. But a lesson nonetheless.

Hanson's real strength as a filmmaker is subtle suspense, and his film is even more eerie when his characters are out of the water. His setup of the situation is a small masterpiece of visual storytelling, and he sustains the psychological tension. [30 Sep 1994]

The film is lovely to look at -- so overflowing with lavish furniture, jewelry and interiors that it's almost like a visit to Paris' Musée des Arts Décoratifs. If you're a fan of such things, "Pettigrew" is worth seeing solely for its sets.

Despite picturesque episodes and nicely observed characters, the film lacks suspense.

The fact is no one has a better understanding of the corruption of ego and power, or is more qualified to encapsulate it in a defining moment of Hollywood Gothic.

By no means a good movie. Although based on a true story, the mathematical error that led to Daniel and Susan's predicament is handled with such dramatic slovenliness that the viewer is apt to be confused as to what actually happened.

Clearly not Zhang's forte, his directorial touch is neither light nor magical enough to bring off this kind of whimsy, his characters often seem contrived and unbelievable, and his movie comes off as slightly forced and naggingly unsatisfying.

The only downside is that Bier's vision of upper-middle-class America does not always seem authentic.

Cunha and Silva, both featured in 2002's similarly themed "City of God," have been playing these roles since they were 13, and the rapport between them is electrifying. Much of the sweetness of the film comes from what they bring to their roles.

Though the dialogue feels improvised and honest, the movie is less honest in creating its world.

The result is a painful and poignant film at once empathetic and critical, more soberly unnerving than exciting, but never less than compelling.

The boys and girls are so busy acting out their romantic fantasies or soulfully pining over impossible loves that, however photogenic they may be, they never seem to actually live their lives.

The film never earns the irony of the title or offers anything profound in its observations of fractured family dynamics in an atmosphere of lingering resentment, but Allen and Costner enrich and elevate the film and give the growth of their characters a hard-earned gravitas.

Unfortunately, there's no great performance here. Pitt (who looks like Leonardo Di Caprio) delivers nothing close to Brando's tour de force, and all three stars may have been chosen less for their acting ability than their willingness to disrobe for the camera.

It's an unashamedly old-fashioned and richly visualized evocation of a time when values were key, trust in your neighbor complete, and a way of life that should be simple is made unfathomably complex because of economic hardship.

Not a bad movie, per se. It's just harmless and bland and dull and predictable, and sometimes that's worse than a bad movie.

Just another low-budget effort from filmmakers who mistake cleverness for smarts.

One of the Coens' more playful projects, much lighter and significantly slighter than "No Country for Old Men" or "Fargo," but it's put together with such perfection that you can't help but be won over.

Wahlberg is effective in the role and carries the movie nicely.

Ends up being empty, anti-climactic and overlong.

The film manages to be an intriguing, grimly entertaining, strangely haunting little slice of heartland noir very much in the experimental tradition of such previous Soderbergh oddities as "Schizopolis" and "Full Frontal."

Robinson makes these characters breathe, and they bring the film to life.

The result is a cathartic hoot, relishing its own carefully doled out carnage.

A shapeless comedy that is enjoyable to watch and often clever with its barbs -- and doesn't have very much to say.

A fresh, well-written comedy that doesn't lag, casts its actors against type and has a real love for its characters.

It's the strangest comic-book superhero movie you're likely to see this year. For anyone looking for something totally different in this most overworked of Hollywood genres, this is it.

Maybe it's fantasy fatigue, but for all the pretty effects and breathless chases and goblin war battles, the sense of wonder and magic is lost in the shuffle.

In this sequel, magic still reigns but suspending disbelief doesn't come as easily.

If you're in the market for a whimsical, incorrigibly weird movie that basically goes nowhere, try "Arizona Dream." But if you have little patience for self-indulgent movies that substitute scatter-gun blasts of surreal black comedy for dramatic structure and realistic characterization, steer clear of this curiosity from noted Yugoslav film-maker Emir Kusturica ("When Father Was Away on Business"). [9 Sept 1994]

It packs surprising punch as a biopic.

Smith has badly overextended his modest filmmaking gifts.

The battery of startling shock cuts can get repetitive and the plot has a few potholes, but the palpable atmosphere of vulnerability keeps the drama knotted in tension and the audience rooted to the teens in peril.

Outside of a smart performance by Shawn Hatosy as Tim Dunphy, there just isn't much that's enlightening or new in this intimate recollection.

Certainly kept the toddlers (including mine) at an advance screening engrossed, but for parents and reviewers, it was more of a struggle.

It makes an unsettling case that America is fast becoming the thing it professes to hate.

This delightful piece of whimsy uses its simple premise effectively to gain and keep our attention and to remind us simply that, while this world appears ordinary, it is still unbounded by reality.

Jacob's Ladder is also undeniably spooky. It creates and maintains a mood of paranoia, its special visual effects are original and nightmarish, and it has at least three sequences as haunting as anything I've seen in some time. [2 Nov 1990, p.9]

But the movie soars as docudrama. Niccol's model seems to have been Scorsese's "GoodFellas" and, like that film, the blitzkrieg of images and rapid-fire narration takes us on a breathtaking inside tour of a scary world. It's an extraordinary expose.

That play has made it to the big screen, but it has come so late in the moribund body-switching comedy cycle that it seems like a tired cliche, and a big-budget production and star cast just can't seem to breathe any life into it. [10 Jul 1992]

Roman Polanski's English-language film released internationally two years ago also lays claim to being a kinky sex comedy, but the sex is predictably darker, and the laughs few and far between. [18 Mar 1994]

Even if you know or care little about the sport, it's a fascinating saga.

Takes itself awfully seriously. It feels a bit like a grudge piece, laboring to grasp at large themes, but it is as trivialized as the capricious world it explores.

Without the saving grace of comedy, Martin's natural abrasiveness is off-putting, and he just doesn't have the stuff of a romantic lead.

The movie is flawed and doesn't completely come off as a convincing biography, but its heart is in the right place, it has moments of poignancy and power, and it makes a pleasant change of pace for a genre that essentially has become a cry of despair.

Never quite rises above its one-joke situation.

A good-faith effort, if not completely successful.

A rousing and gently inspirational story of an underclass kid made good, but it's in those cultural glimpses that the film shines.

A mix of H.P. Lovecraft madness, David Cronenberg biological mutation and David Lynch small-town weirdness, it teasingly dangles explanations never delivered and escapes never sought, while diving into one of the most gonzo horrors to twist onto celluloid in years.

All told, this thing has to be one of the dullest caper movies ever made.

Provided you don't take it seriously, it makes for an addictively entertaining diversion that's as hard to stop watching as the books are to stop reading.

Deepened by the socioeconomic undercurrent that suggests the lengths to which workers are forced to prostitute themselves to survive corporate downsizing.

The real joy here is the performance of Jean Dujardin, who, besides being very funny as the Gallic Maxwell Smart, is also enormously charismatic and is made to look uncannily (and I do mean uncannily) like the young Sean Connery of "Dr. No" and "Goldfinger."

A clumsy, heavy-handed and unnecessarily sordid occult thriller that somehow has managed to generate a big pre-release buzz.

What a rare pleasure to see a classic book adapted for the screen and walk out feeling neither bored, offended nor outraged.

Henry and June may be as sexually explicit as any major Hollywood production since the early '70s, but it is also intelligent, well-acted and expertly crafted. [05 Oct 1990]

Ultimately, City Hall is more evidence for the contention that the best movies these days are made from novels in which the basic story has been well worked out by non-Hollywood personnel. The gaggle of high-priced writers who toiled on this script seem to have four different ideas of where they were going, and even what their movie is about. [16 Feb 1996]

Washington brings it off with an unforced and well-earned emotional wallop, and whose strong hand, keen eye, sweet spirit and good taste are reflected in almost every scene.

More chic and movie-savvy than its predecessor.

It's often quite funny (when it's not spinning its wheels in rehashed skits and recycled gags), but when Myers gets his mojo working and his mind out of the toilet, he's capable of better.

An excessive, expressionistic, agreeably nonjudgmental period biography that carries with it an enormous emotional wallop. [01 Mar 1991]

The entire film is shot in split screen. Each of the unnamed characters is photographed separately in their own slice of space, the images sutured together with a purposeful imperfection, with occasional overlap and rare moments of union. It gives them the appearance of dancing around one another, almost touching but never getting past the years of emotional scar tissue, even as they work their way to her hotel room.

Does a solid job of dealing with the problem but with enough originality that it's not an exact duplication of the Gore film.

Mullan is a great choice as Frank, playing the silent guy with all kinds of baggage perfectly.

It fulfills a lot of the criteria for a successful oater: spectacular scenery, an evocative frontier atmosphere, an ensemble of enjoyably tight-lipped performances, and plenty of stylish violence.

Like all of Hallstrom's American films, "Something to Talk About" has a distinct European "feel," and is less interested in being a star vehicle for Roberts than a freewheeling ensemble piece that balances her in every scene with strong supporting work from Quaid, Duvall, Rowlands and especially Sedgwick.

Beautifully acted and conceived -- even if the final vision is not always totally satisfying.

Its power and bite come from the contrast Seinfeld makes with Orny Adams, a younger comedian on the verge of success who is everything Seinfeld is not: hungry, vain, petty, mean-spirited, desperate for recognition.

I walked out of it feeling much the same way I did after "The Cat in the Hat" and "The Polar Express" -- jarred by its excess, undernourished by its lack of heart and bored by its lack of originality.

Not since Spike Lee's "Bamboozled" has such an irreverent carnival of African American stereotypes been so irreverently sent up.

Were it not for its pat resolutions, Mister Foe might deserve a mention alongside such classic psycho-sexual thrillers as "Vertigo" and "Peeping Tom." Instead, Mackenzie has reined in the strangeness to deliver a conventional, if better than average, mystery.

Moves like a bullet and, even if they're overblown, the action sequences are still mostly exhilarating and hypnotic. Moreover, the film's human dimension and character development is richer and more rewarding than the genre requires, and its philosophical underpinning more intellectually audacious and seductive: The film is more of a mind-trip than I expected.

Isn't exactly adult animation but it's more complex and ambiguous than the usual Hollywood live-action blockbuster, and just as splashy.

A coming-of-age movie in which nobody comes of age.

More clever than smart and isn't always emotionally convincing, but the cast brings a palpable, persuasive awkwardness to the social tensions of this not-so-romantic getaway, and there's a sly wit to the way the filmmakers mix and match and upend genres.

The restraint so magnificently applied in "The Remains of the Day" has simply fallen into disconnection.

Definitely works as an action piece, it's often surprising and never boring, and several sequences had me positioned well on the edge of my seat.

The skewering of spiritualism, dogma and passive-aggressive prayer groups has an exaggerated absurdity that borders on cartoonish and Dannelly's satire is more clever than cutting.

More silly than funny.

Sadly, it's still a plodding affair that's low on plausible character motivation and compelling action scenes, and it's still not much of a showcase for its star, Charlton Heston.

Ozon's greatest special effect is holding the camera in tight on the faces of Bruni-Tedeschi (one of the most expressive faces in French cinema) and Freiss.

The movie as a whole seems pointlessly ugly. And with a gang rape that includes more than 50 participants and a homophobic bashing that results in a crucifixion, complete with heavy-handed Christ symbolism, it also opens itself up to a charge of being a tad overblown. [11 May 1990]

The movie is frequently hilarious, and, for a first feature, Cundieff has done a remarkably accomplished job of directing. Without trying very hard, it also manages to lay out some of the absurdity of the white-hating-paranoid/macho sensibility of rap culture. [17 Jun 1994]

In its final scenes, when truth and superstition collide, the film becomes more preposterous than anything Penn may have contrived earlier.

As usual, Albert Finney gives a towering performance in his new movie, "A Man of No Importance," and, as usual, the movie around his performance is not much. [03 Feb 1995]

The film is a hopeful, rollicking, rocking, humorous, heartbreaking journey.

Full of compassion and good intentions, but Kirkman never spins the stories into compelling cinema.

Westfeldt's screenplay and Cary's direction combine to make it the best Manhattan love story since "When Harry Met Sally."

Next to "Bad Santa" or "Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat," it's a paragon of sophistication.

The film dwells more on the sensationalistic aspects than the sport itself but it's impossible to deny the tawdry entertainment value in this compelling film tabloid.

As near as I can tell, it's the smallest-scale, lowest-budget, most experimental film Friedkin has ever made, as well as the most thoroughly unpleasant and off-putting -- though it builds a grisly, masochistic fascination as it powers along.

Low-voltage and forgettable.

A potentially interesting idea deflated by the absurd proclamations of an arch screenplay and smothered under the ponderous gravity of M. Night Shyamalan's dreary direction.

There's such a good-natured heart beating beneath the cliches that it's easy to appreciate the film's willingness to poke gentle fun without a whiff of nastiness or judgment.