Ostensibly a love story, the film is also handicapped by Téchiné's strong gay sensibility and clear lack of romantic interest in his characters.

A sweet little comedy, as easygoing and warmly innocuous as the benign irony of the title.

It has a tendency to overextend its outrageous arias, but this pop-art confection both spoofs and celebrates the crazy conventions of movie melodramas and genre cinema with pure affection.

Most disappointing is the ending, which, in projecting the possibility of a saner and more hopeful world, is a bit of a cop-out.

Dragon works just fine as a martial arts epic, with several extravagant and thrilling action sequences. [7 May 1993]

All told, the movie also is a tremendous downer. The script goes for a vaguely upbeat conclusion, but it has no spiritual dimension that the viewer feels with any emotion, and it conveys a hopeless, pessimistic future for the interconnected world that it portrays.

Griffin & Co. manage to be spectacularly outrageous, several of the gag sequences are hilariously imaginative and there's something almost deliciously liberating in the film's determination to make good-natured fun of what previously has been a very sacred movie cow.

It's a little visually precious and obscure but still a marvelously wistful film of regret and retreat, in which even the magic wine of forgetfulness erases only the memories, not the pain.

The results are being billed as a reunion of the "Titanic" star team, but anyone expecting a similarly gushy romantic idyll is in for a shock: it is an uncompromisingly dreary view of two self-deluded people incapable and unwilling to understand one another.

Director Len Wiseman, confidently stepping up from the smallish budget "Underworld" films to mega-budget Hollywood mainstream.

It's an eye-filling, sumptuously detailed historical epic that grandly re-creates the bloody gladiatorial spectacles and smoke-filled, spit-flying, claustrophobically crowded arenas of its bygone era.

It was also a miscalculation to make the film so sexually explicit. It doesn't particularly serve the story and, for all his gifts, Macy is just not the kind of actor most people want to see in a whirl of sweaty, naked sex.

Margaret Brown's honest and non-judgmental film captures the artist's high and low points, from early appearances on regional television shows such as "Nashville Now" to the drunken and disorderly performances that defined his later years.

It's by far the most faithful of the three versions, and beyond this integrity it also offers an ensemble of graceful performances and an epic evocation of 1920s China -- though, like its predecessors, it's far from a perfect crystallization of the novel.

There are shocking facts and supportive images, but the film lacks investigative spirit.

The movie eventually settles down to become a routine thriller, but its first hour has moments of sheer brilliance as Andrew Klavan's screenplay and first-time director Jan Egleson build an agonizingly detailed satire of the hypocrisy and self-devouring nature of corporate America. [23 Mar 1990]

Outside national borders, this naive vantage point is an entry into a country's history and culture, explaining without seeming patronizing.

For all its darkness and tragedy, Monster's Ball is a film that wants to be liked and Forster stumbles over his good intentions to win the audience over.

Doesn't offer much texture or depth of character.

Allen has avoided his usual stable of jokes and one-liners, and the result is a film that feels and looks fresh from the maestro of urban angst.

He (LaBute) pulls the farce and the violence and the fantasies together with a deft touch and a sweetness rare in American films -- especially his.

Hardcore remains, in the words of Minor Threat's Ian MacKaye, the voice of "kids who refuse to be slotted into generic kids roles," so fans of current groups such as Disturbed may feel shortchanged by allegations that it was all over by 1986.

Greenstreet captures all the hubbub on film but, while he makes the point that we are indeed a house divided, he can't quite persuade us that this particular situation is a metaphoric example of our national malaise.

Director George Ratliff plays pitch-perfect on the tautly wound strings of our innermost fears that nothing -- not love, wealth or intelligence -- can protect us from the monsters we harbor.

A botched job: the various relationships and personal histories of the characters are never made clear, the last act is glaringly disjointed, the writing and direction are all over the map.

There are some nice ideas floating around this ambitious film, as well as attempts to say them in a unique way.

Jacque's satiric comic take on swashbucklers extends to war in general and particularly to the men who lead their armies.

Whatever it is, it's totally Kubrickian: Its scenes have both an edge and an extraordinary visual perfection that could come from no other filmmaker.

Katharina Otto-Bernstein's oral history of Wilson's life and work, narrated by Wilson, with a handful of sycophants joining in on the choruses, is monstrously one-sided. It does, however, offer insights into the director's methods and motivations.

Although it's often uneven and rambling, its sum conveys an unusual richness and satisfaction. While most films these days are about nothing, this film seems to be about everything that's plaguing the human spirit in a relentlessly globalizing world.

Fascinating and mostly sympathetic.

This one transcends the subgenre to be a respectful and very funny horror spoof. [11 Feb 1999]

Based more on rumor and supposition than fact. It's a highly entertaining set of hypotheses.

Hughes' push for Greene to succeed confronts the nettlesome issues of racial identity that most films vigorously avoid. The worthiness of Talk to Me will be proved if it gets us talking to each other.

The most sensuous and intimate work of cinema of the past few years, a film that luxuriates in the immediacy of the moment. There is no guilt to the act, only exhilaration, joy and freedom. At least for the moment.

Lee doesn't seem to have the slightest sympathy for his hero, no particular point is made, and the whole exercise seems cold and empty.

Mamet is more respectful than exciting as an action director, but his fascination with how things work, be it the mechanics of designing and promoting a big pay-per-view event or battling a world-class Jiu-jitsu master, makes it all quite mesmerizing.

Offers compelling footage, but its revisionism can be distracting.

Never more than an extended TV episode, the originality of its heroine and messages merit a recommendation for families seeking slightly more thoughtful animated fare.

It's bound to be the love-it-or-hate-it movie of 2003.

Despite the cultural and artistic differences among the contributors, the overall production design maintains a unified tone, helped in part by Laurent Perez's eerie soundtrack.

Romance has little to do with the bizarre tale, part true crime and part lonely-hearts drama, of Burt Pugach and Linda Riss. While the now elderly pair may have found some happiness, that absence is heartbreaking.

The joy is in watching a talented cast make something crisp and fresh out of material that -- though perfectly adequate and enjoyable -- trespasses little into territory that's new or out of the traditionally plotted points of the genre.

Even without the oral history, this trippy exploration of Cobain's earthy habitations would be worth seeing as a "Koyaanisqatsi" for the Puget Sound area.

Chereau's film is disjointed and abrupt and it rages when is should be deft. We're given too little too late and, despite the lessons that lie within the affair, the lines between enlightenment and nihilism blur.

A comedy of miscommunication that blends the humanism of Jean Renoir, the magic of Jean Cocteau and the absurdism of Eugene Ionesco.

This limited point of view, while effective in chronicling Gator's rise, is dreadfully inefficient in contextualizing his fall.

The movie just seems like one more Hollywood cop-out, and a waste of our original emotional investment.

A gracefully subtle, sweet-spirited French parable of the brotherhood of man that was nominated for a Golden Globe, won Omar Sharif a César Award for best actor and has been a surprise hit in Europe.

A clever, charming, laugh-out-loud-funny road comedy that works in almost every scene.

An impressive, adrenaline-boosted action showcase.

The only difference between the two films is that this one chronicles Capote's New York environment in more detail (and with humorous interludes), and it's a tad lighter in tone and perhaps a bit less high-horse condemning of its subject's literary ethics.

Overcooked and simplistic in spots.

Sticks in the mind and simply won't go away.

At times a bit stilted, a common quality of first-time directors who try too hard to sculpt every scene, but it's refreshingly bereft of slick cynicism and smart-ass snideness.

There's no particular tragedy or triumph, merely another step in the lives of two fallible people finding a little comfort while stumbling toward happiness.

Fascinates by its very premise: the fact that, on the basis of a Web site logo, these two bozos could so easily pass themselves off as important officials.

A moody adventure story set in Alaska that resonates with envrionmental overtones and is filled with delicate character studies, but ends up being a terrific little genre thriller. [04 Jun 1999]

For all its excesses, it's an absorbing, disturbing, savagely beautiful "trip" movie, and an extraordinary -- perhaps even outrageous -- personal vision of the one A-list filmmaker who truly deserves the adjective "maverick."

There is a ton of psychology and inference in this intriguing first feature by French director Anne-Sophie Birot.

Director Marcelo Pineyro imbues the film with mood and style and yet the violent climax holds little thrall as a lack of character development makes it had to care about the robbers' fate.

Techine has a delicate touch and these lovely moments flow with a life that Martin's heavy, stumbling psychodrama can't match.

Much ado about very little because it takes no stand and gives little insight into the Chopper's psyche.

It's a low-key, subtly inspirational drama that builds its charm slowly but surely.

The impressive marriage of CGI backgrounds and traditional hand-drawn characters gives Oshii more tools to sculpt his vision in color and light.

The film comes to life when Cohen is on screen.

The most imaginative and delightful computer-animated movie of recent years outside of the Pixar brand, Monster House is a Halloween ghost story by way of monster-movie adventure.

A proud and optimistic testament to the youthful spirit of seniors who refuse to let such a trifle as their failed lives get in the way of a bit of fun.

In a disarmingly entertaining fashion, this multiaward-winning German bittersweet comedy seems to encapsulate all the emotion and drama of that profound geopolitical event.

Compassionate, potent documentary.

It's a rare film that gets smarter as it goes along, injecting a satisfying dash of pragmatism every time it seems ready to slip into either unearned idealism or cynical fatalism.

The movie also is designed to be an actor's showcase for Norton and Giamatti, two of the best movie actors of their generation. Each has his moments of fire, but some element is missing from the script that would make this duel of the titans riveting.

Kurosawa leaves much of the explanation enigmatic but he fills the film with an eerie emptiness, where suicides erupt out of nowhere and mankind dissolves in an oily smudge of hopelessness, adrift between life and death.

What results is, for a film purporting to reflect the nobility of a beloved book, the propensity to slip occasionally into the fart and belch slapstick that passes for humor in just about every present-day animated movie. It's a misstep that pulls us out of our awe for the carefully studied world the filmmakers have lovingly labored to create.

A rare flub for the usually spot-on director and cast.

Speaks in the raw mumble of the dirty South. A regional film in the truest sense, it does for Memphis what its producer, John Singleton, once did for South Central Los Angeles.

A sweet-spirited, extremely well-cast little comedy.

Touching, transcendent love story.

Somehow the movie works like a clock. Its scenes and sensibility are all more than familiar, but it exudes a kind of nostalgic spy-movie charm and, at the same time, is so fresh and free of the usual thriller nonsense that it all seems to be happening for the first time.

An extraordinarily exciting, absorbing and satisfying movie. Not quite "Seabiscuit," but comfortably close.

Works best of all as an epic. It wonderfully creates a world of fractured deco elegance and endless human duplicity in which everyone is on the run -- exactly the kind of incisive, seemingly effortless historical spectacle that the French have learned to do so much better than Hollywood.

It's well-written, well-cast and skillfully directed in every scene, and, at the same time, it doesn't come together with enough impact to be hugely memorable.

Fascinating.

There's plenty of ammunition here for liberal conspiracy theorists, which surely will limit the audience to those already in Jarecki's political camp. Which is too bad, for it is a sobering history lesson as well as a political polemic on foreign policy and the growth of war into America's biggest business.

Its overall effect is haunting, hypnotic and moving in a profound and unexpected way.

The film below it is such an entertaining and poignantly bittersweet take-down of a good man's midlife crisis that the translation still works like a charm.

There's a dark and demented little psychodrama of self-inflicted madness beneath the narrative contrivances. Vigalondo's direction makes it work more like a waking nightmare than a genuine experience, and he gives it the quality of madness.

While most of the film is well-written and acted, there are some difficulties. Aniston's Olivia is hard to figure.

It also boosts the punch of the movie that so many of its action scenes evoke the Iraqi War news footage of the past month, and the "X-Men" premise -- people persecuted because their difference makes them seem threatening -- carries even more relevancy and weight than it did three years ago.

A tasteful, richly textured, exquisitely nostalgic drama that carries with it an enormous emotional punch. [09 Oct 1992]

Caro Diario is an alternately charming and unsettling mood piece that communicates well the offbeat world view of a self-confessed '60s-style rebel. [21 Oct 1994]

John Sayles ventures into August Wilson territory with Honeydripper.

An often touching and always intriguing look at the fall and rebirth of a nation and the resilient spirit of its women.

It's pure fluff, but as irresistible as cotton candy.

Rich with emotional turmoil and searing beauty, but it could have used a little more time in the editing room to make sense of it all.

[Jarmusch] seems...to introduce gratuitous bloodshed that is out of sync with the engaging, offbeat tempo and dark, comedic moral fable that has come before.

The movie grabs us from its heart-pounding opening sequence and pulls us inexorably along its trajectory with the grip of the last gruesome act of a Greek tragedy. Its fascination is not what happens but HOW it happens.

Pitt won the Best Actor award at Venice for his Jesse...Yet it's Affleck who impresses most as the wary, skittish Bob.