The whole thing has the air of a parlor trick, but it's a good trick, beautifully acted.

Delivers some powerful emotional wallops alongside the chopsticks-up-the-nose violence, and manages the remarkable feat of making venerable American genre conventions seem eerily alien.

Let's face it, it's about a dead boy who falls in love with a real live girl. The high-tech animation is completely persuasive; nothing else is.

Stunning production design, smart pacing, and a well-handled romantic angle make for a seamless, if undemanding, entertainment.

Very entertaining, if thoroughly silly.

An honorable and well-acted version of Victor Hugo's classic book bag-buster (not the Broadway musical), a sprawling melodrama whose prodigious length and scope have bedeviled all previous adaptations and hang heavily over this one as well.

But fabulous though the allusions, sets and costumes are, Busch's performance is the movie's heart, and like the screen idols whose every gesture he's lovingly absorbed, Busch can pack a world of meaning into an arched eyebrow and a slight crack of the voice.

Though it ultimately devolves into megabudget Hollywood action-movie cliches by way of John Woo, Lee's handsome blockbuster is an entertaining variation on the American formulas that have colonized world cinema.

Like its title, the film is ultimately an affirmation in the face of catastrophic negation, a bit obvious at times but nonetheless welcome.

Distinguishes itself from other such projects by dealing less with the event itself than its devastating aftershocks.

Extensive attention to detail of sets and costumes, superior photography, and standout performances by Taylor, Ferrer, and Woolf put this a cut above other Arthurian legend films.

A refreshing alternative to the hypertrophied spy thrillers in which exaggerated action sequences, over-the-top super-villainy and high-tech gadgetry trump character and plot.

The result, a dissection of the complicated dynamics of sexual and economic exploitation, is pitiless and occasionally inspired.

Huston, with a flawless Irish accent, is simply wonderful as the tough, foul-mouthed and very funny Agnes Browne.

Sumptuous historical melodrama.

An interesting variation of the Frankenstein theme presented with fine production values.

And while Ivy League-educated psychologist Green considers himself a natural teacher, his teaching technique involves pitting students against each other and haranguing them with rants that run from gentle, good-natured ribbing to flat-out verbal abuse, delivered at an ego-crushing volume.

By trying to be both a portrait of Rijker and an introduction to women's boxing, it shortchanges both subjects.

A high-wire spook show without a net -- half the fun is watching it teeter between the tastelessly amusing and the unforgivably gross.

A thin plot heavily laden with many of Neil Simon's best one-liners makes this a pleasant way to spend 102 minutes. Chase contributes a somewhat frantic turn, and Hawn does her cute thing. Some nice work from the secondary players--including Harold Gould, Robert Guillaume, and Yvonne Wilder--adds to the fun.

A fine, straightforward tribute to a sports giant who faced blatant prejudice and paved away for the likes Jackie Robinson, Hank Aaron and other minorities who dared make a place for themselves as heroes of America's greatest pastime.

No doubt captures some of the horror and the chaos of the actual situation, but it makes for a loud, often confusing, and always bloody two and a half hours.

It's refreshing that there's any moral at all, and that despite its warm and fuzzy trappings, the film floats actual ideas and sprinkles serious questions of ethics and morality atop the usual Hollywood syrup.

Brilliant, in its own twisted way.

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

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.

A well-crafted exercise in urban paranoia that's so controlled it never achieves the reckless, visceral immediacy its subject matter demands.

The film's bleakly inevitable ending packs a wallop and its hauntingly desolate images linger long after the story is told.