Kassovitz keeps the film zipping along with solid pacing and just enough action to clear the credibility gaps as long as the film is rolling.

The film shoehorns in every memorable character from the original film.

Condon's direction is steady and fearless, Neeson and Linney are individually excellent and together they create an inspiring chemistry for a truly adventurous marriage.

A quietly, somberly effective American indie drama.

Doesn't necessarily offer anything new to the male/female dynamic, but it refuses to let Coles off the hook with an easy epiphany and a painless happily ever after.

The director's tenacity has resulted in a breathtaking as well as heartbreaking adventure of life and death.

Its only constant is that it's strangely eloquent and quite original.

To its credit or detriment (depending on your point of view), the film doesn't have an agenda, or make any kind of systematic argument as to how quantum physics likely will impact the 21st century. It just looks at the wondrous evidence and asks us to imagine the possibilities.

Behind the sad and vulnerable eyes of Bernal's damaged Elvis is both a fierce rage and a desperate need for his father's recognition, but he's more enigma than person. Hurt is more nuanced as the sincerely spiritual man faced with a past that threatens his family and his future.

A few scenes are a bit coy and the "big secrets" threaten to pitch into melodrama, but Birmingham keeps bringing the film back to the delicate dynamics of the relationships at its heart.

McNamara finally gets to tell his side of the story -- and is somewhat humanized in the process -- but still comes off looking like a tragic character living in a state of denial.

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.

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

It's a twisted but beautiful love letter to a city, not factually correct but emotionally true.

Stylistically, Religulous is very much like a Michael Moore documentary, in that most of the scenes have a comic structure, end with a punch line and are designed to make Maher-the-interviewer look sane and rational while his subject comes off as a complete fool.

Because the subjects are all mellowing into grandparenthood and their abrasive, wilder days are behind them, this particular "scrapbook" isn't as heavy hitting and hard-edged as its predecessors.

States straight off that the man's legacy has been tarnished in most of the liberal world's eyes by his being the spoiler of the 2000 presidential election. "It will be engraved on his tombstone," says his friend Phil Donahue.

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

It would be easy to categorize the Lebanese women's picture Caramel as a Levantine combination of "Sex in the City" and "Beauty Shop," but it's actually a lot smarter, sharper and deeper than that.

Winterbottom carves his own intimate tale out of the sprawling material, a modest miniature with witty flair and moments of humility.

Though Signs & Wonders loses its bubbles and runs flat in its anticlimactic final moments, it's far more inventive and demanding than any movie of recent memory.

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

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

Has the power to transport us to a different place. The spark of special anime magic here is unmistakable and hard to resist.

Effective piece of election-year propaganda.

The film is so explicit (endless swinging parties and porno scenes, more bouncing breasts than a Russ Meyer movie) that it finally becomes the thing it fears.

The most totally appealing and seemingly heartfelt performance of (DeVito's) career.

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]