Episodic, pretentious, and more than a little silly.

By the film's end we feel neither sympathy nor, oddly, total disgust for this most loathsome of killers. We simply begin to understand, and perhaps that's achievement enough.

Sternfeld's script, developed at the Sundance screenwriters' lab, is spare to the point of stinginess; individual scenes play beautifully without adding up to anything, stranding the actors in an emotional vacuum that drains the life from their performances.

Yes, it's great that Goldie Hawn, Diane Keaton and Bette Midler -- all women of a certain age, though they've done their best to make sure no one's certain what it is -- get to carry a major motion picture, playing college chums reunited by the perfidy of men.

John Sayles' screenplay never takes itself seriously, so the badinage is relaxed and often funny, avoiding the ponderous.

The manipulative climax works, even as you feel like the jerk in tear-jerking.

The film is talky and much of what is said is didactic, but it is never really preachy. Washington brings tremendous intelligence, dignity, and charisma to his Biko. Kline is also very good as the editor who goes from talking a good liberal game to living it, giving up virtually everything so that he can make the truth known about Biko.

By the time it reaches its fiery finale, the film feels less mythic than self-consciously portentous.

The film, like its subject, is a hoot, both shamelessly entertaining and bursting with personality.

Delightful Bolivian comedy, which also works as a sly critique of mass media.

A feel-good movie with a gentle melancholic undercurrent.

Adventurous viewers will find this unusual genre hybrid an intriguing experience, and Donnie Yen's fight choreography is breathtaking.

While billed as "an intimate look" at Jay-Z, the film reveals next to nothing about him beyond the fact that he possesses a formidable ability to spin and remember lengthy rhymes, however vulgar and reductive their content.

This smart political thriller gets pulses pounding with no pyrotechnics and only one car crash. And it's a doozy.

It's all about as white and bourgeois as you can get, but the film does take a few risks, and some actually pay off.

South African director Mark Bamford's sweet-natured ensemble film doesn't shy away from addressing issues of racism -- both black and white.

Elegant, stylish, and ultimately boring adaptation of the James novel.

Vallone's production design is a knockout--the film is weakly scripted and scored.

Overall, Pocahontas is a triumph as a visual experience (though the music is unusually bland), but a disappointment as a film.

Overall, it's like watching a home movie of a charming relative.

Naturally, Big Bird meets some intriguing people going East. Lots of cameos are here to delight parents who take the kids to see this movie.

An utterly preposterous but entertaining sci-fi action brain-bender.

Cocaine cash financed Miami's renaissance, but the film never downplays the human cost at which that urban renewal was purchased.

King's stories are nothing special, and with the exception of the final entry, nothing in the film is particulary scary.

It's all too mawkishly life-affirming for words, the sort of film that wins Golden Globe Awards for its tear-jerking sincerity. And you thought -- hoped? -- they didn't make movies like this anymore.

Despite its drawbacks as entertainment, it remains one of the best technical cartoon features ever produced by Disney.

Chernick may not answer every question about this beguiling and enigmatic film, but you wouldn't want it to: Mystery is an essential part of the Barney experience.

One of many musical stinkers made during a decade infamous for them, FINIAN'S RAINBOW is sadly notable as the last screen musical of the genre's greatest star.

Phoenix gives a nice performance as a man caught between loyalties but blind to the realities all around him, but Gray's screenplay is filled with clunky, Dr. Phil-sounding aphorisms that stop the movie cold.

The series' breakout star remains Scrat (Chris Wedge), a scrawny, speechless rat-squirrel thing trapped in a Sisyphean quest for acorns, and while kids' movies generally could do with fewer scatological gags (the target audience for poo and pee humor needs no encouragement), writers Peter Gaulke and Jim Hecht managed to come up with a (relatively) sophisticated one.

Film feels like a parody of Mamet mannerisms, and the trouble lies with the play, which Mamet first penned some 25 years for an Actors Equity showcase.

Breezy, surprisingly poignant Spanish film.

The film's underlying themes dovetail efficiently with the action but don't generate the emotional gut punch the movie needs; overall it feels padded and logy.

Would be too long even if it were twice as funny. And that about sums up the movie.

A rare treat — catch it while you can.

Fresnadillo's film is little more than a gloomy and attenuated Twilight Zone episode, reminiscent of Alex Cox's portentous "The Winner" (1997) without the truly breathtaking conclusion.

A refreshingly straightforward, conventional approach to the documentary form. (Review of Original Release)

Sharply acted and cheerfully coarse.

Features some strikingly intimate footage of Noonan's extended family, but lets Noonan himself drives the show and his colorful tales of villainy that cry out for more context than MacIntyre provides.

Witherspoon turns in yet another stellar, nuanced comic performance.

An occasionally surreal meditation on coping with loss, and a love story with a dark side the size of Montana.

Frothy, sentimental and thoroughly good-natured, Malcolm D. Lee's tale of coming-of-age at the roller disco doesn't have an original bone in its body, but it's as energetic, eager to please and endearing as a sloppy, wriggling puppy.

While none of this is meant to be taken seriously, the premise demeans Moliere's great achievement.

The fourth remake of this story, this is a fairly good, though overlong, film.

The result is a gracefully plotted spy film in the classic mode, with just enough self-consciousness to keep things interesting.

The aliens, meanwhile, are a fabulously nasty lot of slimy, tentacled, malevolent telepaths, but all their superior technology is no match for our red, white and blue ingenuity. Take that, space bullies!

Manages to create a great deal of ambiance and a few thrills on a shoestring.

The cast — a felicitous blend of character actors and up-and-comers — work together like a street-smart machine, and Hoffman's scummy turn as porn-peddler and all-around creep King is a reminder of just how sleazily funny he can be.

It's funny stuff, though most of the pimps seem like such buffoons it's hard to imagine how they actually make a living.

Dithery, nattering and a bit long for such a conspicuously airy trifle.

There's nothing unique about Zarhin's plot -- it's a standard coming-of-age tale with traces of "Good Will Hunting" -- but she portrays the intra-family dynamics with unusual honesty and accuracy.

Grateful fans so enamored of traditional Irish folk music that they don't care how they come by it may enjoy John Irvin's folk-filled feature, but while there's lots of great Ceili music on tap, it's wrapped in a story so traditional that it's not especially interesting.

A buzzed-up gloss on the original, it's entertaining -- if fundamentally shallow.

Film does show why so many young people raised in such communities find it so difficult to ever leave.

Neither a prequel nor a sequel. Nor is it really much of a horror movie: It's a bizarre, bloody family drama that puts its predecessor into a larger social context.

A rather pleasant period comedy that made quite a sum of money for the studio in its economically weak post-Walt period. A delightful cast of character actors helps the childish story, with Conway and Knotts beginning what would become a somewhat famous, but very simple-minded, film comedy duo.

Don't expect many answers from the movie, for Stone hedges his bets toward the end and vacillates, leaving the whole thing infuriatingly ambiguous.

Once Griffith and Andrews enter the lawless zone attempts at quirky humor fall flat and the film settles into a fairly conventional action yarn

Vile exploitation picture shot cheaply in the Philippines.

Silly premise allows sophisticated Grant to explode into side-splitting antics, aping the teenaged set. If you adore Grant, you'll enjoy this farce, but Loy's breezy charm is wasted and Temple has reached that age where her preciousness can be irritating to behold.

The only constant in Park's brilliantly cruel world is this: No matter how badly things seem to be going, there's a twist of fate lurking around the next curve that will make them worse.

This spoof of the great fictional-film detectives offers consistently funny scenes sparked by Falk, Niven, Sellers, and Guinness.

An enjoyable pastiche of martial arts, romance, music, and video, THE LAST DRAGON presents a likable young hero, Leroy (Taimak), who aspires to become a kung fu master.

It's a high-energy blast.

Considering its queasy subject matter, Junior is surprisingly restrained, although it doesn't carry many laughs to full term.

And while the film is unflinching in its depiction of the brutality of both the English and the Irish, Jordan pointedly dissociates his hero from any actual ugliness.

Never has the adage "You can't help who you fall in love with" been more lavishly illustrated than in this historical drama.

Combined with the Mamet-lite dialogue, a medley of all-too-deliberate pauses, smug literary allusions and calculatedly careless repetitions of the word "thingie" that obscure the meaning hidden in supposedly meaningless prattle, the result is a chic, vitriolic polemic that's as irritating as it means to be provocative.

Dense collage of digitally altered images often looks shockingly like some super-hip media agency's show reel.

However intriguing from a theoretical perspective, this gorgeously shot film is first and foremost and purely sensual experience. Filled with the sights and sounds of Rio of a bygone era, the whole thing virtually pulses with excitement.

Ice Cube is so genial and laid back it's hard to believe he's the same snarling thug who ass-kicks his way through action pictures, let alone the seethingly angry rapper who emerged from NWA in the early 1990s.

Although Sonny is computer generated, Tudyk supplied his voice and body language -- provides the story's emotional core, an irony Asimov would surely have appreciated.

The Mack is lacking in narrative drive and logic, but offers an entertainingly exploitative portrait of a self-made gangster.

Terrio keeps the multiple stories flowing smoothly, and the setting goes a long way to justify the web of fortuitous interconnections -- New York is the ultimate two-degrees-of-separation town.

For parents who were unable to secure tickets for the young fans in their households, it's nothing short of a godsend.

One of the largest wastes of money ever. More than $33 million was spent on this futuristic version of THE DEFIANT ONES or HELL IN THE PACIFIC, both infinitely superior films. The basic flaw is that its premise is older than your great-grandfather's hat.

Running a substantial 140 minutes, the film does, at the very least, give fans a chance to see many of their favorite players hamming it up.

To a post-Vietnam War generation put off by militarism, David Puttnam's inspiring account of the final and most-harrowing WWII mission of the B-17 bomber The Memphis Belle may seem hopelessly dated, but older viewers are likely to find much to enjoy in the film.

People who actually recall 1942 will more greatly appreciate the waves of nostalgia that bathe this affectionate coming-of-age drama, set on a tiny island off New England.

March has the requisite child-woman quality and evinces some sly humor but she, too, is stymied by the schematic screenplay. She is far more convincing as an emblem of nostalgic, adolescent eroticism than as one of France's most distinguished future writers. Small wonder, then, that Duras herself has publicly disowned this adaptation.

A lot fresher and bit more sophisticated than the ordinary run of maudlin chick flicks and crude gross-out sex farces that now pass for romantic comedies.

It's strictly for the kids, and they'll be tickled.

Imagine "Hansel and Gretel" by way of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre."

It's easy to see why this violent, thrilling tale broke all box-office records in Thailand: Not only does it stir a sense of deep national pride, but Thanit delivers the goods when it comes to action.

This is a terrifically witty, refreshingly unpretentious science-fiction film with the least likely and most likable heroines in memory. All the performers are excellent, especially Maroney, who can veer from petulant to heroic in the blink of an eye.

This comic extravaganza starts off funny, but exhausts rather than delights.

A lightness is maintained throughout, which leads one to believe the makers were not too concerned about taking their material seriously. The result is an unpretentious, sometimes funny, but not quite scary effort.

The film is, in fact, an adaptation of Anton Chekov's "The Seagull." This provenance also explains why there's something slightly old-fashioned about the whole business.

A vivid and carefully produced work of poignancy and loss.

If THE REF lived up to its early scenes, it would be a very funny movie indeed, but it soon sinks into a blandly commercial rut that slowly drains away what bitter energy it has.

The Las Vegas locations sizzle and the script at least has the good sense not to take itself too seriously.

Sometimes stumbles into the trap of excessive predictability. But its amiable (and largely fictionalized) heart tugging still makes for charming all-ages entertainment.

While not every artist Aaron Rose profiles in his documentary about one colorful corner of the 1990s New York Art scene is "beautiful," they're all "losers" and proud of it.

What charm the movie has is almost entirely due to Grant and Barrymore -- the master of smarmily irresistible self-deprecation meets the sweetly vulnerable queen of awkward self-sabotage. While they have no romantic chemistry, they're certainly appealing.

Whether or not The Magician rises to the level of its cinematic predecessors may be up for debate, but thanks to a smart, cleverly constructed screenplay and a compelling lead performance, Ryan’s film displays a flair for storytelling that’s notably lacking in many first-time features. It’s a great addition to the Blue Tongue catalogue, and it’ll be interesting to see where Ryan turns up next.

The violence is bloody, nonstop, and as pointless as the script.

Cliffhanger offers us breathtaking mountain scenery, some occasionally gripping action sequences, and a lot of gags--mostly unintentional and mostly courtesy of Sylvester Stallone.

This quirky, uncommonly intelligent adaptation is a strange delight.