Gozu is prime evidence in the argument that gonzo gangster movie maverick Takashi Miike is a major director goofing on minor works.

An engagingly whimsical, sporadically charming, frequently very funny Southern Gothic fantasy that somehow doesn't quite come together to be as magical or meaningful as it's intended to be.

But it also works as a compelling thriller and whodunit; as a powerful political metaphor (the reservation is a kind of microcosm of the Third World and America's relationship to it); and as a piece of environmental mysticism, celebrating - like so many recent films - the psychic purity and spiritual superiority of its aboriginal characters. [3 Apr 1992]

Pape Sidy Niang is terrific as the cop, Z, who is viewing America through a new immigrant's eyes.

It has the low-budget look and feel of an indie dating comedy -- and not a very good one at that.

An intriguing concept, a storybook vision life in the great age of trans-Atlantic travel, a fine Ennio Morricone score and a credible performance by Roth.

In spirit and nuance, this is an amazingly faithful remake.

After a rough orientation, it kicks in to be a visually enthralling, viscerally rousing, politically fascinating epic of the old school that evokes the pleasures of the great spectaculars of the Hollywood past.

Farrell is badly miscast as an ethnic Italian with an inferiority complex, the star-crossed love story has very little emotional pull, and even the (heavily CGI-enhanced) period atmosphere ultimately seems rather forced and self-conscious.

It's the script -- by director Mark Fergus (who also wrote the adapted script for "Children of Men") and Hawk Ostby -- that lets everyone down.

A fairly underwhelming experience for man or child -- not so much bad as just more of the same, with little of the original's novelty or freshness.

The script offers neither character revelations nor plot twists. It unfolds by the numbers, like the product of an amateur screenwriter's salon. Its second-hand ideas originate in movies ranging from 1960's "The Apartment" to 1997's "The Ice Storm."

The film is a charming little romantic comedy based on a high-concept premise - one of those fraudulent marriages whereby an alien marries an American citizen to get his green card, or permanent residency. [11 Jan 1991, p. 6]

It scores few points for originality, but it's a fuzzier, less pretentious and more enjoyable movie.

Stars are particularly strong. Snipes' fatalism is totally appealing, and Rhames makes a curiously compelling antihero.

Lively but incredibly dumb.

Idiotic.

It wants to be a "Carrie" with a modern-day "Frankenstein" twist, but it lacks the smarts behind the weirdness.

As a caper movie, it's a travesty that's impossible to understand or follow, but it's quite funny and clicks along nicely as a giddy, self-deprecating showcase for its gaggle of stars.

The air of deja vu is thick as molasses in Glory Road, a lively but overly slick and grindingly predictable sports drama.

Though Wood is the star, it's Hutz who is the indelible presence.

It almost completely falls apart in a tortuous third act and ultimately leaves us feeling strangely empty and dissatisfied.

A fumbling attempt to create the European equivalent of a Japanese manga thriller in the conspiratorial mold of "Akira" and "Ghost in the Shell" has a stunning look.

There is potential for laughs in a satire of rich people spending big money on religious galas, but that is not even the real subject of the picture.

The pleasure of watching such well-crafted entertainment offsets the small disappointments.

This coming-of-age tale is ultimately about self, not sex.

It's entertaining if not exactly enlightening.

It's a funny, insightful film whose feminist undertones don't overwhelm the story and characters.

Surprise of surprises, it's a blast.

The Ring, is going to be this year's version of the "Blair Witch" and "Sixth Sense" phenomenon.

An absorbing slice of a lost world that's actually very reminiscent of Kurosawa's underappreciated 1957 film, "The Lower Depths."

While Gainsbourg and Stamp are charming, Attal's husband is difficult to like, to say the least. Must a woman as gracious and intelligent as Charlotte really settle for domesticity with such a near-abusive boor?

Despite a few places where the air of déjà vu is a bit too thick, it's a class act, with a textured script, one of the series' more stunning title sequences.

It is purely and fearlessly a girl-and-her-horse movie that isn't trying to be all things for all audiences.

Indeed, it is a uniquely dreamlike, lushly romantic, highly erotic and prototypically Coppolaesque version of the story - a movie that does for the vampire genre what "The Godfather" did for the gangster saga, and what "Apocalypse Now" did for the war movie: raises it to the level of grand opera. [13 Nov 1992, p.5]

An edgy comedy with heart.

The nuttiest big-screen video game you'll ever have the pleasure of seeing somebody else play.

As good as it is in pieces, its protagonists are distancing, its story is tangled, its film-noir cynicism is oppressive and unglamorous, and it just doesn't leave us with the satisfying unity of the kind of great movie it wants to be.

Ball's snide humor and cynical arrogance undercut his message at every turn.

Director Mitchell Lichtenstein finds new ground in the over-tilled suburbia of David Lynch and John Waters.

The Groomsmen, while as corny as a Staten Island marriage proposal, rings true on many levels.

It's an ambitious, eye-filling and thought-provoking work, but it manages to be frustratingly uneven and doesn't really represent Bertolucci at his most fluent. [27 May 1994]

Much of the film is funny and alive.

A cheerful and stylish romantic comedy that's easy on the eyes and ears, and makes few demands on the intellect.

Garner's vulnerable, winning performance strikes emotional chords (not to mention nostalgia) in this fantasy comedy.

As fresh as a highlight reel of day-after replays, Mr. 3000 is a case of major-league talent stuck in a minor-league story.

Don't let the title trick you. The British comedy Kinky Boots is probably the most kinkless film featuring fetish wear ever to strut its stilettoed heels across the silver screen.

After its rough opening, Smart People settles down to be a funny, wryly enjoyable, effortlessly poignant parable of family life and a splendid showcase for its cast -- especially Page, who handily steals the movie and proves that her "Juno" success was no fluke.

Ledger mumbles his entire performance (some of it barely legible) as a fuzzy, friendly, happily passive heroin addict and sometime poet, as if he's too blissed out to even open his mouth as he simply drifts along with his addiction.

Dennis Quaid gives what may be his best performance in the stylish thriller Flesh and Bone, but the movie around him is so cold, quirky and ploddingly predictable that it's hard to recommend. [05 Nov 1993]

While not a grand-slam comedy, the offbeat humor and easy byplay gives The Grand a winning hand.

The result is joyous and exhilarating.

If Chadha never quite overcomes her cliches, her good-natured humor and familial faith gives it a warm, winsome dimension.

The best thing the movie has going for it is Kidman's performance.

It's the strength of the actresses and their nurturing community that makes this Eden so satisfying.

In many ways, a magical little movie in its own right, and a thoroughly pleasant experience.

Plays like a pilot for a situation comedy about a 40-year-old carpenter who decides to return to the boxing ring.

It could be more involving, but it's funny enough that you won't care.

Gorgeous in its gore and, for all its destruction, despair and death, concludes on an optimistic and vibrantly alive note.

After all of these years playing smug street thugs, cocky idiots and patsies, can you blame Dillon for giving himself an elegant girl (Natascha McElhone), a devoted guardian angel, and a little redemption?

Has almost none of the nail-biting suspense and fascinating character interplay that made the original so authentically terrifying.

Despite several touching scenes, the script comes perilously close to being maudlin and, while competent, Polley doesn't have the flair to make anything special out of her big role.

This sci-fi film noir craves a passionate center, an intoxicating core or some pulse that makes us want to keep taking that first step into dark waters, but it leaves us drowning in its quiet tedium instead.

A jargon-filled documentary less interested in culture and history than mechanics, machinery and the rush of speed.

The movie is sporadically funny in an anarchistic way. But Cho and Penn don't have the needed personality or comic identity to sustain a franchise and their non-drug humor is so crude and scatological that -- to say the least -- it leaves a very bad taste in the mouth.

Clever, often hilarious, inside-Hollywood farce that makes the most of... a delightfully absurd premise.

It's harmless fun, and it makes for an often impressive display of the latest generation of computer-wizardry. But the enterprise is utterly void of substance: instantly forgettable and about as enriching as a rerun of "Johnny Quest."

Surprisingly, first-time director and co-writer Andrew Scheinman relentlessly fails to find anything magical or especially funny here. Little Big League seems to have no sense of the absurdity of its situation and uses the premise mostly as an excuse for one more by-the-numbers competition movie. [29 Jun 1994]

The "guest cast" includes Philip Seymour Hoffman, Allison Janney and Sarah Jessica Parker, but all are upstaged by Greg Hollimon's cheerfully corrupt Principal Blackman and Sedaris.

Not a comedy of guffaws and goofy gags, but a wry, underplayed little piece with an undercurrent of loss and abandonment.

While the movie may border on teen exploitation in many scenes, its heart and values are mostly in the right place, and it qualifies its thrill of victory with a very sober message: few high school athletes become NBA millionaires, many are cheated out of an education.

No spoilers here, but there are enough hints that the incoming class of happy-go-lucky theater folk will have plenty to do in the already-in-the-works fourth installment.

The humor is sweet-spirited, the dialogue (all improvised by the cast) is acerbic and witty, the celebration of unbridled tackiness is often hilarious.

An exceptional Italian film becomes an average American one in this bland remake of Gabriele Muccino's "L' Ultimo Bacio."

A disturbing, and disturbingly funny, twist on adolescent love, and Shiota captures the emotional avalanche with understanding.

It has some wonderful moments and a handful of delicious Maughamian characters.

Wonderfully cast but underwhelming and never especially believable.

It's a pleasure to see mature portraits of adult characters who put their vulnerabilities on the line. I enjoyed my time in the company of these strangers.

While careful not to denounce the religion, the film fires a powerful broadside at fundamentalist Islam in general and revolutionary Iran in particular. [11 Jan 1991]

It's more clever than smart, but Paul Fox directs with the same easygoing attitude of its slacker hero and finds some modest truths (also lower case) behind the props.

It's a passionate film powered by the righteous anger of injustice.

Another harrowingly cynical dirty-cop movie in the recent tradition of "Training Day" and "Narc." Yet it's so much more complex, engrossing and satisfying than those films that the comparison is not entirely fair.

Looks simultaneously ahead of its time and delightfully quaint, a simple romantic comedy that revels in the dreamy artifice of a meticulously re-created fantasy Las Vegas.

It is a pretentious and incoherent blend of ghost story and frontier adventure that becomes more preposterous and idiotic with each passing scene.

An uncompromising and ultimately chilling look at individual creativity trampled by corporate greed, and its timing could not be more appropriate.

Unfortunately, the goofiness never quite finds its groove. The romantic chemistry is tepid, the comedy misses as often as it hits, the picaresque plot keeps dogging down and even actors as skilled as Platt, Irons and Lena Olin fail to register strongly in their roles.

It's Waters' way of saying: It's only a movie.

This is a film about anger, shame and helplessness, and it offers no answers, merely hard questions and angry challenges.

At 140 minutes, the film becomes a humorless, long-winded spectacle.

As a movie, it's respectably well-acted by everyone, directed with Reiner's usual panache and intelligence, but fits so snugly into the Grisham-movie formula that it's hard not to be a bit suspicious. [20 Dec 1996]

And despite Kellyanne, at times, coming off as more annoying than sympathetic, the film succeeds because of the great lengths to which Ashmol goes to bring her peace of mind.

Foxx is magnetic in the lead, and the subplot in which he bonds with his Saudi police liaison (Ashraf Barhom, giving the movie's best performance) is touching.

For its intention to promulgate the compatibility of Christianity with homosexuality, Save Me deserves a footnote in the political battle between these traditionally adversarial groups. As a movie, it doesn't amount to much more than an after school-special with sex and profanity.

In some ways it suffers from the same unredemptive afflictions as Elwood and his gang: It's a bit flaccid and flabby and lumbers gracelessly along without self awareness or humanity.

Low-key but smart entertainment. Its modesty is one of its biggest virtues. [30 Apr 1993]

The film is downright repulsive in places, and otherwise pushes the envelope for an art film, but it's a dazzling piece of filmmaking that wins us over with its boldness and artistry.

A reminder of the offbeat comic sensibility and visceral charge that marked him (Sabu) as a director to watch.

So fluffy and sitcom shallow that it makes "Gidget Goes to Rome" and its other many predecessors in the young-American-girl-goes-to-Italy-and-falls-in-love genre look like high art.