Far from his best work ("Le Placard," "Le Jaguar"), but even off-form Veber has its moments of inspiration and the movie is definitely worth seeing.

It's remarkably bright, funny and sweet for a film that wades through so much sleaze, though it can't escape all of the weirdness it worms through.

But the main reason you might find the film a bad trip is that its 30-year-old Holden Caulfield-type hero is so harrowingly unsympathetic: unpleasant, unappealing, self-pitying.

Charlize Theron, playing the one woman member of the team, handily steals the movie from the guys with her no-nonsense display of verve and vulnerability.

For the most part, the film is a chaotic blur of disconnected movement that re-creates the feeling of an unforgettably bad concert experience.

Exploitive while it pretends to be empathetic.

the film is well cast and the script is mostly faithful to the novel. Visually, it's probably the most accurate evocation of Hardy's world ever put on film. [01 Nov 1996]

The funniest film you'll see this year about a political assassination.

Every frame of the way, it's eminently clear that Primer is the work of an engineer, not a film- maker.

It's a sumptuous mood piece.

It lives up to the hype. Gladiator has its creaky moments, but it delivers a particular kind of visceral historical spectacle that movie audiences haven't seen in decades.

For about an hour, the movie is essentially Budweiser ad humor writ long ("Dude!") but about halfway through -- after enough members of the "Knocked Up"/"SuperBad" dude squad have all made their requisite cameos -- the movie shows it has a little heart.

Lee's control and storytelling flair have never seemed more assured and there are moments so powerful and thrilling we feel we're in the hands of a master filmmaker at the peak of his powers.

For all the misery and emotional mess of Snow Angels, Green finds resilience and hope in the kids and even in some of the grown-ups.

A mesmerizingly suspenseful drama.

Sweet, sexy, and unexpectedly enchanting, Yana's Friends is the little feel-good comedy that could.

A delectable must-see.

A funny, freaky, fiendishly good flick that might just find a following beyond the standard cadre of horror fanatics.

A perfectly titled and thoroughly engaging -- if at times gleefully violent -- black comedy.

This is a film about brave women who left home as teenagers and have been on their own ever since. Now, nearing the end of that road, they face their inevitable decline with a cheerful vivacity.

For all its pronouncements, it's a frothy romantic lark.

As the voice of Bolt, John Travolta does a fine job and Disney star Miley Cyrus is fine as well, but neither one can overcome the lack of personality in their scripted characters.

It works as a fascinating and often very funny character study/satire of a famous author, though it loses interest the harder it tries to be profound and falls apart completely toward the end.

A quietly, somberly effective American indie drama.

Unfortunately, the film assumes viewers have such a vast knowledge of Fellini's life and films that it's likely to play best to graduate film students.

(Bacon's) most believable, heart-wrenching and charismatic lead performance in many years.

The sum of all this is moderately rousing and deliciously irreverent in the Moore style, but not earthshaking as journalism, and devoid of anything that the average person doesn't already know from reading the newspaper.

Makes the translation with all its wit, incisive dialogue and eccentric characters intact, and then some.