It's not the dance but the kids' passion, and the boisterous support of their friends and family in the audience, that makes the contest so entertaining.

Swicord has enough savvy to conjure up a terrific cast that compensates for her rote direction.

It takes a strong stomach to sit through its two-plus hours of non-stop brutality (much of it involving very small children).

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

Verbinski, Depp and company just want to make it the best ride you've had all summer. If that's all you demand of a frothy summer blockbuster, then this delivers the goods.

In the end, this could be the year's most sharply defined love-it-or-hate-it movie.

Often as stillborn in pace as it is conceptually compelling.

At its best, The Good Girl is a refreshingly adult take on adultery, where the dark humor and offbeat fringe characters don't get in the way of the consequences or the quiet declarations of devotion slipped between the words.

In no way is this a serious movie. Still, it's hard to resist.

A well-made but harrowing and extremely downbeat coming-of-age drama.

The lack of irony, let alone ambiguity, in an upside world in which mobsters are the underdogs, should sink the film, but Lumet's laid-back professionalism and Diesel's big-hearted performance give it an affable buoyancy.

How She Move is the latest urban music drama from MTV Films, and it manages to give a familiar story a vivid jolt of character.

Very surprisingly, Meryl Streep is not wonderful as Schreiber's scheming, incestuously possessive mother. She gobbles up all the scenery but, for whatever reason, she's just not half as chilling a portrait of demented mother love as the original's Angela Lansbury.

For all its somber heaviness and reverential gravity, it never quite pulls all the elements and themes together.

What Spottiswoode lacks in subtlety and restraint, he balances with a heartfelt passion for the material.

The result is a movie that washes down without much thinking or introspection, provides some laughs and a tear or two, and dishes up a little something to mull over with its messages about friendship and loyalty in the face of naked ambition.

As good as it is in places, Without Limits fails to be a totally satisfying biography or a riveting competition drama. It never communicates a clear vision of its hero's existential mind-set or makes a clear case for his unique contribution to his sport. It's hard to even know, from the evidence in the film, whether its title is ironic. [09 Oct 1998]

It's only half of a good comedy. After a delicious opening and setup, the movie really doesn't go anywhere very interesting, and doesn't come close to any epiphanies about the subject at hand, even in subtext.

Bound to seem, at best, a kind of CliffsNotes guide to the novel's highlights, especially if the casting is not all that inspired.

The film is an audience-pleaser, but very calculated and far from Curtis' best work: His script will go to any lengths to be cute, and his direction tends to be overly broad. In the end, he wears us out with the sheer volume of witty and endearing characters.

While its execution is fine, the movie is almost shockingly vapid.

Crash can't rise from the ashes of its pessimism.

A pretty dreadful affair -- ludicrous as history and a veritable gallery of visual cliches.

This may sound like a satiric comedy, and its intriguing setup carries a faintly comedic tone, but the movie becomes more straight-faced as it moves along and ends up being a fairly serious examination on the nature of, and necessity for, faith.

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.

Zack and Miri is funny, and Rogen is a natural as Smith's alter-ego, spewing profane dialogue like he was born to it.

Likely to provide many points of identification for many women.

It has moments of effectiveness, some of the performances -- especially Whitaker and Robert Ri'chard -- are moving.