Director Curtis Hanson keeps the hugely complicated story zooming along the boulevard of broken dreams without losing sight of the details that make the trip worthwhile.

It can be funny, but the humor is too often based in stereotypical perceptions of Asians (they're short, they're laughably polite, they eat weird food), and Coppola shamelessly invites us to laugh along with Murray's character, who, believe it or not, thinks it's hilarious when his hosts get their "r"s and "l"s switched.

The manic energy of the lively and outrageous opening sequence sets a tone and pace the film can't maintain.

This sweet film is a genuine treat, even if there's little plot, no antic mayhem and its 90-minute running time is mostly consumed by nonstop, sometimes pretentious dialogue.

An excellent guide to some of the highlights of post-World War II Italian cinema.

Pekar's autobiographical chronicle of day-to-day banality is a rich, if dingy, tapestry of ordinary life in all its infinite, homely peculiarity, which filmmakers Sheri Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini bring to uniquely eccentric life.

Such a glorious cast, deployed to such trivial effect!

While the story is thin, Clouzot uses his immense skills to raise the picture above the standard for the genre.

The film has some of Disney's most spectacular animation yet -- particularly in the wildebeest stampede -- and strong vocal performances, especially by skilled Broadway comedian Nathan Lane. However, it suffers from a curiously undeveloped story line.

The story is simple enough for young children to follow, and the computer-animated images are both bright and surprisingly complex. Adults won't find the action heart-stopping.

This second installment is heavy on battle sequences, which will thrill some viewers more than others.

Simple but deeply touching documentary.

Literally, a slice of life.

They're answers that will either earn your respect, or further damn him as the architect of an American nightmare.

A bold, painful memoir that finds an innovative middle-ground between conventional documentary and a homemade, home-movie collage.

On the surface, nothing really happens, but to call it a nonevent would be to miss the point entirely.

Kristin Scott Thomas is the film's revelation. She takes center stage as a smart, fearless woman who's utterly irresistible.

Nicole Kidman does the best work of her career in a character that seems to fit her tighter than pantyhose. Swathed in camera-friendly pastels, she's dead from the neck up (a scene with uncredited George Segal confirms that) but she's got legs like scissors, ambition like a knife, and a will of pure steel.

A mighty strange movie, one that updates Chaucer's story to wartime Britain.

The result is a vivid record of live acts whose rough-edged immediacy is an integral part of their appeal.

Though full of atmosphere, mood, and attitude, THE FABULOUS BAKER BOYS is all dressed up with no place to go.

The writing is sharp and often blithely cynical, although not above using a shooting star to put a lump in the throat. The tone, however, is at times dangerously uncertain.

Often confusing, especially during the first half, but Gabin and Ventura are well cast as hoods.

Thought-provoking but proceeding at a crawl, the film suffers from performances that are virtually all pitched to the same note of existential ennui -- thank goodness, then, for Rush, who's arrives like a wake-up blast of compressed air.

Pure melodrama, but stylishly done, with finely tuned performances played out against meticulously realized settings.

Love Story is actually better than Segal's previously released best-seller (written from his screenplay in order to promote the film). But then that's not saying much.

Louis Malle's somewhat overrated My Dinner With Andre is a filmed conversation between two friends, and whether you find the movie profound, pretentious, or entertaining will depend on how interesting you find the talk.

Often thrilling, if overwhelmingly brutal, trio of interconnected short stories.

While flawlessly delivered, it's overkill--so loud and excessive, it makes our head swim... It's like a sumptous banquet composed entirely of fast food; fills you up but entirely forgettable.

The film is ridiculously overplotted, and very little of the plot serves any purpose other than to motivate what you can pretty well guess is going to happen from the outset.

Nobody shows much evidence of acting ability, and the script is full of holes. Nonstop action is what these films are about, and that's what you get here.

Vastly overrated Crooks-R-Us--this time you wear the moustache, enhanced by fine period trappings and flavor. Ultimately empty stuff, but preferable to "Butch Cassidy."

This rambling exercise in local color has been a pet project of Duvall's for more than a decade, and it's to his credit that he managed to get such a low-concept picture produced. It's also to his credit that he resists the temptation to take easy potshots at religion, particularly of the revivalist variety.

Leaving Las Vegas is special. A courageous plane wreck of character study.

Clearly a great event, Forrest Gump is not, however, a great film. It has the form of an epic without real depth or resonance; the trappings of satire without a coherent attitude; and the semblance of historical revisionism without a critical sensibility.

The title refers to a diorama at New York City's American Museum of Natural History that depicts a whale and a giant squid locked in mortal combat.

The kids -- most of them first-timers cast for natural charisma and musical ability -- steal the show, and a talented supporting cast helps take the edge off Black's manic antics.

Though it unfolds like a thriller, it's ultimately a tragedy.

Cuaron lets his enthusiasms show.

Stunningly beautiful scenery and the nearly unbelievable true story of a mountain-climbing expedition gone awry to chilling effect.

Bindler's slice of the American pie is a slim one, but it's fascinating none the less.

The film burdens itself with too many story lines and an overlong (though beautifully photographed) prologue, but things really get moving when Reeve takes the screen.

Expertly captures the details and textures of the time without condescending or lapsing into cheap-shot parody.

Anyone who remembers Harrison fondly will enjoy this musical tribute, though it assumes a level of familiarity with Harrison's associates that not all viewers will have.

At 155 minutes, this screen adaptation of Shakespeare's most celebrated play bears scars from deep cuts in the text.

Stylized to the point of poetry.

Get Shorty's assortment of lowlifes and high rollers is a familiar one, but it's still deeply satisfying.

With the exception of a brief sequence on the Galapagos Islands, where Maturin briefly indulges in some pre-Darwinian study of its unique ecosystem, the entire film takes place aboard the ship, and Weir's greatest accomplishment may be that it never feels claustrophobic.

(Rohmer's) simple script and methods capture a sense of place and character that eludes far more conspicuously stylish directors.

There is much to enjoy in this movie, but just as much to yawn over. One has the feeling that this was a play that was never produced on stage but went directly to the screen from the typewriter. Since so much of it is dialogue with very little cinematic action, it just feels stagebound.

On the downside, it's slackly edited -- comedy is, after all, all about timing and there are way too many lengthy shots of Cho waiting for her audience to respond.

The documentary is undeniably entertaining, but it suffers from an uneven selection of clips, sloppy historical research, and, ultimately, an overabundance of riches.

The interactions between the raspy-voiced Hurt and various shallowly cheerful Americans are genuinely charming and dynamic.

Davaa and Falorni's film does suggest that camels have inner lives as rich and complicated as the human beings with whom they live in such intimate proximity. But they're also wholly camels, matted, goopy-eyed, gritty with sand and quick to knee an adorable calf in the snout when its demands become annoying.

Mark Moormann's documentary tends to the worshipful, but Dowd, a charmer onscreen, was by all accounts just as appealing in real life.

It's sometimes hard to breath for the sheer volume of acting sucking the air out of the room, and keeping three narratives movie without muddling them all is a hugely ambitious undertaking for any director, let alone one on his second film.

Morrison brings an amazingly sure hand to MacLachlan's prickly screenplay.

Insightful, Oscar-nominated documentary.

This minimalist meditation on loneliness and loss is so spare and drained of color that it seems always on the verge of fading into invisibility.

Beauchamp reconstructs the actual crime with disturbing immediacy, and his treatment of how Till's death galvanized a country makes this short film a good way to commemorate the 50th anniversary of a crime that still has the power to outrage.

Though Bittner's slacker charm may not be to all tastes, the parrots are natural-born scene-stealers with more than enough charm to seduce the most dubious viewer.

With British-American culture clash as its dominant theme, A Fish Called Wanda bristles with wit, enlivened by delightfully over-the-top ensemble acting.

The script is shapeless and it all goes on far too long.

They don't make movies like they used to, and this Oscar-winning Italian-French co-production spends the better part of three hours proving it.

This is a film worth seeing, and LaBute is a filmmaker well worth watching.

Comprehensive and reverential.

It's an extremely violent and brutal film, featuring a fine performance by Newman. He's a blunt, practical man who favors action over words. Cilento is appealing as the worldly landlady, and Boone is chilling as the sadistic bad man who is ready to murder anyone standing in his way.

Sarandon is terrific and Penn is in top form, but the film is an achingly earnest message movie with a curiously muddled message.

Informative documentary.

The result is a confused mess of mixed signals that substitutes a brutal climax for any kind of satisfactory resolution. Parents should be warned about the frequent gunfire and a grisly death by hanging.

Fails to capture the essence of Hesse's book, try though it may. It is more a series of filmed events than an interpretation of the story.

This is a psychological study that rejects psychology, an erotic drama of surpassing coldness, and a story of amour fou in which the madness is calculated and the love frozen.

The funny lines fall flat and the relationships and conversations among adult characters are straight out of 1950s sitcoms. Now that's scary.

The penguins' matter-of-fact victory over some of the Earth's most punishing conditions is astonishing enough without the epic airs.

Bighearted and wistful, but with no fresh spin or anything new to say.

Tom Gilroy's debut feature is a little obvious, but it's an excellent showcase for the criminally underused Ned Beatty.

The combination of Lee's discomforting subject matter and distancing style -- calculating artlessness punctuated by occasional flights of lyrical fantasy -- makes this slow-moving drama a challenge that doesn't seem entirely worth the effort.

Despite the Lear-like trappings and the talented young cast, which does its work with considerable grace, it has little momentum or punch.

Set in the New York milieus Mazursky knows so well, AN UNMARRIED WOMAN has some great insights and is superbly acted by all involved. The director populates the film with his usual, very real and attractive modern characters, but you may think it cops out in the end.

Although the film's small budget and tight shooting schedule (lensed in 15 days on Super 16mm) is betrayed by sloppy editing, unpolished sound and an occasional flat performance, particularly Johns in the lead role, She's Gotta Have It still bursts with the energy and technical command that have quickly established Lee as a major force in American cinema.

By focusing on one period in his life, this film chronicles the bulk of Kinsey's experiences while barely scratching the surface of his personality.

Equal parts soap drama and ham-fisted morality tale.

Kurosawa's farewell film is full of sentiment, tears, toasts and songs.

The film ends on an ambiguous note that will infuriate some viewers and strike others as the only possible finale to Don's sad absurdist journey.

Handsomely appointed and faultlessly acted, but no more alive than a well-dressed corpse.

The multitalented Jaoui and Bacri excel on every level; her direction is efficient and unobtrusive, their script dissects the nuances of corruption by celebrity with a razor-sharp scalpel, and they deliver a pair of subtly unsparing performances.

Despite an intelligent title performance by Ben Kingsley and impressive cinematography in the manner of David Lean, this huge, clunky biopic offers less than meets the eye. Director Attenborough seeks not to understand but to canonize his subject; as a result, both Gandhi's teachings and the complexities of Indian political history are distorted and trivialized.

Martial arts spectacles don't come more spectacular than this, and Yuen bestows a quality of grace on the entire production.

Although occasionally bleak, the film affords many pleasurable moments, showing early man learning to laugh and expressing delight and amazement at the sight of fire.

The problem is, some of the truly horrifying moments slip through the censorship cracks, scaring little kids (and their parents), leaving POLTERGEIST a very disjointed, uneven movie.

A gallon of grade-A filmmaking fuel squandered on unoriginal material, but serious moviegoers will want to take a look.

Nicely shot with a good youthful cast.

Brilliantly acted and lugubriously paced, Liv Ullmann's fourth feature as director — the second written by her mentor, Ingmar Bergman — will no doubt be manna to those who miss the brilliant acting and lugubrious pace that characterized Bergman's late-period films.

Caustic and despairing, Shrader's film lacks the delicate beauty of Atom Agoyan's "Sweet Hereafter," but has just as much bitter power.

Thirty years down the line, not everyone looks as they once did, so even fans will have trouble putting names to aged faces. Newcomers, meanwhile, will feel hopelessly shut out.

Nolan's intention was clearly to cast the material in a more conventional Hollywood mold without turning it into namby-pamby nonsense, and he succeeds admirably.

It's as hard not to ask what former New York Doll David Johansen is doing in their company, prancing his way through an irrelevant version of Howlin' Wolf's "Killing Floor," as it is not to wonder why the audience is so overwhelmingly white.

Swinton lends Margaret an air of grace under pressure, and fleshing out feelings of domestic dissatisfaction -- a key element that otherwise remains buried in the subtext.