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.

Hong Kong superstar Chow Yun-Fat is so charismatic in his second Hollywood outing, The Corruptor, that he almost makes us forget that the movie itself is one of the more pretentious, muddled and incompetent action films to come along in some time. [12 Mar 1999]

All told, this first Bond of the new millennium may be far from the best of the series, but it's assured, wonderfully respectful of its past and thrilling enough to make it abundantly clear that this movie phenomenon has once again reinvented itself for a new generation, and is very likely to outlive us all.

It's a mixed blessing.

Scream 3 also has wit and intelligence, but at their core the Scream movies are still slasher films and this one is no exception.

Passably entertaining.

There isn't a spark in the familiar emotional situation or a reason to care how these amiably bland characters end up.

There are some ingratiating moments in "Heart and Souls," but the comedy is mostly a misfire - derivative and emotionally calculated and never as cute or funny as it wants to be. [13 Aug 1993]

The film is a strange, nostalgic, suitably outrageous ode to a very real revolution in consciousness.

Well-intentioned but not very well directed, it makes for a better psychological profile than a film.

The film's one saving grace is Ledger (Mel Gibson's son in "The Patriot").

The movie never gets off the ground. Kaufman's script is never especially clever and often is rather pretentious.

It may not be art, but A Dirty Shame is shameless fun.

The film probably should have been a comedy. It would be a lot more cathartic - and a lot more entertaining - to laugh at the grim modern world of Falling Down than it is to have a heavy-handed filmmaker rub our faces in the hopelessness of it all. [26 Feb 1993, p.14]

A very good movie could probably be made about the black experience in the Old West, but Mario Van Peebles' Posse is not it.[14 May 1993]

When the spectacle turns ridiculous, the movie just becomes another big-screen video game.

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.

In place of the dysfunctional family Christmas story we've come to expect for the holidays, The Family Stone gives us a cheerfully uncensored, generic counterculture clan and tosses a tightly wound control freak into the center of their holiday celebration.

And Mackenize Astin (brother of Sean, son of John Astin and Patty Duke) is so likable in this part that his modest success here may represent the advent of a new acting dynasty in Hollywood. [14 Jan 1994]

It's an elegant nail-biter.

Completely -- and quite cleverly -- contrived, a cascade of stupid mistakes and miscommunication stirred into a visceral stew of gooey blisters and flaying layers of bloody flesh.