Veers wildly from slapstick comedy to melodrama, but writer-director Rahul Bose, making his feature debut, handles the transitions more effectively than is usual, and the film is generally entertaining even when it's being utterly ridiculous (or maybe especially when it's so).

Unlike "The Matrix," all fights and stunts -- including a 14-minute freeway chase -- have a disturbing tendency to repeat intricately choreographed action. Thus, computer technology and overkill supplant the ingenuity of the original film's action.

In his feature debut, writer-director Eric Byler demonstrates a refreshing trust in his material and his audience, crafting a compact, intriguing drama from understated performances and a subtle visual sensibility.

The 3-D footage of Titanic does speak volumes, and sometimes the sheer fussiness of all the ghosts and archival images get in the way. As huge as the Imax screen is, when six different images vie for one's attention, it looks cluttered.

It contains terrific sequences, and Nicholson and Sandler team up better than one might expect. But the film plays like two characters in search of a story and runs a good 15 minutes too long.

A flawlessly executed character study.

The Hours makes for a fascinating and ultimately successful stunt in its cross-cutting among the decades.

Marshall, a veteran stage director/choreographer who proved his cinematic skills with his television adaptations of the musicals Cinderella and Annie, does a superb job here, beautifully contrasting the gritty storyline with the hard-edged musical numbers.

Catch Me If You Can represents a distinct change of pace for director Steven Spielberg. This is a lighter movie than he has made in a long while, and you sense his relief that nothing much is at stake.

What strikes one more than anything in Towers is the material's dreamlike quality.

While the supporting players fall victim to their broadly conceived roles, Baio and Minter underplay charmingly, and actually manage to make us care about their characters despite their less than credible aspects.

One's appreciation of this film depends largely on one's ability to be amused by a Dadaist prankster and interest in the Pop Art scene in the middle of the last century.

Gratingly unfunny groaner littered with zero-dimensional, unlikable characters and hackneyed, threadbare comic setups.

Spirited dazzles and entertains like no other movie this year. It also comes to a satisfying conclusion and never once seems to take shortcuts. Miyazaki is one of world cinema's most wondrously gifted artists and storytellers.

The result is something quite fresh and delightful.

Although not without a certain cheeky, outrageous charm, Chris Kennedy's film isn't nearly as much fun as it seems to think it is.

The film feels contained — its design, visual effects and cinematography all in the right balance and proportion. Spider-Man is the hero, and not some element in the filmmaking process.

Yet another feature comedy that began life as a TV show sketch and is still stuck in infancy (not to mention infantilism), "Run Ronnie Run!" has about 10 minutes of sharp, funny satire to its name before running out of laughs. [15 Jan 2002]

Along with his writing partner, actor Owen Wilson, who also plays (hilariously) a supporting role in the film, Anderson reveals himself to be a highly original comic talent, impressive both for his strongly controlled deadpan style and for providing a sense of emotional heft lacking in most mainstream film comedies.

The film, while slavishly faithful, contains little innovative juice outside of its visual richness.

There is no denying the passion or intelligence of this work, which is meant to be an encouragement to explore the films for ourselves rather than a dry history lesson. On that level, "Viaggio" fully succeeds.

Denzel Washington ventures into the dark side as a seriously corrupt narcotics cop in Training Day, and the results are electrifying. So is the picture, thanks to taut, sinewy direction by Antoine Fuqua and a compelling script by David Ayer (The Fast and the Furious).

A valuable cautionary tale that serves as a handy correlative to the many fictional films in which the biggest problems depicted about the music biz are the pitfalls of having too much drugs and sex.

Stiller performs a good balancing act not only with his many jobs on this movie but also in keeping the big picture firmly in mind. It's not always easy to be both silly and smart, but Stiller for the most part pulls it off.

Perhaps returning to Apocalypse Now will reinvigorate the once brilliant storyteller. Certainly, the images, colors and design still astonish. And let's hope that Apocalypse Now Redux will become the definitive version. For the movie hits home even harder now. [14 May 2001]

Predictable, cutesy and surprisingly short on genuine humor, Legally Blonde gets by thanks to the magnetic presence of Witherspoon.

The fun of a movie like this is not found in its logic, but in scary stunts and supercharged emotions.

A sweeping romantic epic with a strong feminist backbone, the thoroughly entertaining Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon also happens to boast a generous offering of seriously kick-ass action sequences that make 'The Matrix' seem downright quaint by comparison.