There's no disguising the fact that, beneath all its talk, this is a very traditional, very predictable romance; it's sorely in need of some comic relief; and, if you're a non-smoker, you will get very tired of its heroine blowing smoke in your face.

It's as if Gondry lets his performers settle into their parts and feel their way through their stories. It gives the film an ambling pace and a unique chemistry that bubbles with strange and unexpected flavors.

Director Zack Snyder uses his computers to create ferocious and painterly images, with as much attention to each frame as a hand-drawn panel.

After an excellent setup, the movie becomes bogged down in chase scene after chase scene on its way to its inevitable ending.

As always with Stone, the film has some gritty performances and a certain likable audacity.

The biggest tragedy about Milos Forman's foray into the life and times of Spanish artist Francisco De Goya is the waste of so much great raw material.

The film is uniformly well cast, directed (by Alejandro Agresti, who also plays Valentin's father) with a certain flair and a good eye for the nuances of Buenos Aires. I found it light, agreeably short (86 minutes) and mostly quite enjoyable.

Treu's sweet-spirited vision of life, and the winning performances of his ensemble of kid actors, gradually broke down most of my resistance.

Isn't very pretty despite its extraordinary look. In fact, the film is downright queasy and unsettling.

A delight and a surprise.

For all its impressive set pieces and breathless momentum, it's neither passionate nor urgent.

Can't find its rhythm and stride. It plays it far too safe and slick.

It's weird, clean, good-natured fun, and it's far too subdued for its madcap milieu.

Competently directed by Christian music producer Steve Taylor, it's a sincerely (if not exactly subtly) performed spiritual drama with a faith-based lesson in humility and the practical charity of offering a helping hand.

In fact, when not kicking butt, (Li)'s kind of a blank spot in the center of the screen.

Melancholy, haunting and riveting true-crime saga.

A sad, sad, sad, sad rip-off.

Diane Lane overplays many scenes, she tries way too hard to be ingratiating and, in many other ways, it's one of the least of her performances.

Time travelers, hobbits, ghosts? Those I can buy. The impossibly quaint world of small-town innocence and Hollywood harmlessness in Win a Date With Tad Hamilton? Now that demands a serious suspension of disbelief.

They try too hard to be funny. It's hardly a damning fault, but it has a tendency to drown out their satiric observations.

It's a surprisingly happy film, almost completely devoid of bitterness or cynicism.

Whatever else it does, it absolutely convinces us that the life of most women during this supposedly enlightened period of Renaissance history was little better than slavery, and the only level playing field in the war of the sexes was the courtesan's bedroom. [27 Feb 1998]

The film is dominated by computer-generated effects and they're most of its problem -- they don't give us anything to emotionally attach to or invest in.

Poetic Justice is much more self-indulgent and self-consciously arty and shows [Singleton's] directorial inexperience in almost every scene. [23 Jul 1993]

Finn Taylor's lark of a movie feels like two unfinished films awkwardly fused together and ever threatening to snap apart.

Imaginative and frequently thrilling, and the love-hate relationship of its protagonists is quite compelling; Woo is always at his best in portraying the complexities of male bonding under intense pressure and violence.

The result is a heartfelt film brimming with ideas and passion but hampered by a literal approach that douses the emotional heat.

The film attempts to put Zizek's philosophy into practical, accessible terms. Accessible, of course, being a relative term.