Charming, low-key ensemble comedy that recalls the films of both John Cassavetes and Woody Allen, which is to say it's a loosely structured, quasi-improvisational saga about a bunch of New Yorkers obsessing about relationships.

As thrilling as they can be on stage, Chekhov's plays have never been the stuff of great movies -- there's simply nothing cinematic about them.

Has honorable aspirations, even as it becomes mired in mainstream movie conventions.

A strong cast that flounders in profoundly unappealing material.

Despite Trevor Nunn's direction, this gorgeously photographed travesty of history doesn't omit a single cliche of the costume genre and feels even longer than its 142-minute running time. Fans of RSC-style scenery-chewing will not, however, be disappointed.

The film is dreary and attenuated, the tedium broken only by the occasional golden moment when one of the stellar supporting players - Ron Silver as the principled presiding judge who alternately tolerates and quashes Jackie's antics, Peter Dinklage as the lead defense attorney or Annabella Sciorra as Jackie's ex - manages to cut through the clutter.

(Tykwer's) unpredictability has become predictable, and the only thing genuinely uncanny here is the unsettling — and unintentional — sense of déjà vu.

Given the serious subject matter, this adaptation of Irish writer Brendan Behan's autobiographical novel is surprisingly light and exceedingly good-natured.

No one and nothing can be taken at face value in Beach's twisty tale of secrets and lies, which buries its very interesting idea in a welter of ludicrous dialogue and skin-flick imagery.

How engaging you find this loosely structured road movie will depend on how charming you find the over-aged slackers played by Josh Alexander, who also wrote the screenplay, and Robert Bogue.

The gorgeous Mole Antonelliana is the breakout star of Ferrario's fluffy valentine to the cinema.

William Rose, with a stilted screenplay, and Stanley Kramer, make this dinner hour stand still--a really safe, lame melodrama.

This very Disney treatment of the classic fish out of water story ought to satisfy its intended audiences: kids and the parents who must accompany them.

It may not be as epochal a piece of work as "Mean Streets," but packs what feels like a real-life punch none the less.

Suicide, child molestation, corruption, insanity and the faintest implication of incest are wound around the film's suggestion that the cure for modern-day alienation and anomie lies in embracing traditional Japanese culture, like ritual tattooing.

The story is slight and would probably be better suited to a short subject, but first-time feature filmmaker Pierre-Paul Renders gives it a striking formal twist: It's told entirely in the first person.

Director Jack Bender films all this with enough style that Child's Play 3 never becomes overly boring or tedious, and there's some nicely timed tension and comic bits scattered throughout.

Hackman's performance, beautiful photography by Stephen Burum and Ric Waite, and some effective action direction from Ted Kotcheff make this watchable, but the jingoist wish-fulfillment inherent in the material is ultimately disturbing.

The non-action scenes are so pedestrian that one suspects the good stuff is less due to workmanlike director Lee Tamahori than to one of the best second-unit crews in the biz.

If this were a more mainstream film with a shot at a wider audience, we'd probably be talking Oscar nominations for Futterman and Ball.

So silly it's best taken ironically. But the film, much of it shot digitally, is also astonishingly beautiful.

Although the on-screen rapport between Redford and Winger is a delight, the film itself is less than that. The script by TOP GUN writers Cash and Epps is muddled and unconvincing.

Director Gore Verbiniski delivers the best one can hope for: a cleverly nostalgic, high-tech copy of the real deal.

Wan's debut feature is a twisted, squirm-inducingly nasty bit of work, which isn't a criticism because that's exactly what he and cowriter Leigh Whannell had in mind.

Hawks used more than 10,000 extras and handled the DeMille-type hordes well enough. The problems arose in the shooting of the small moments, the times when actors had to speak to each other.

It's all passably entertaining, but there's precious little that will stay with you; like so many contemporary movies, this one self-destructs five seconds after you leave the theater.

All the performers either overact laughably or underact to the point of just standing in place and speaking lines in a monotone. Whether the film ever stopped anyone from smoking marijuana is doubtful, but it certainly turned out to be a greater success than its producers ever dreamed.

As an action picture, Missing In Action works fairly well. Norris is a worthy hero, shooting and kicking Asian enemies right and left, and the film is blessed with production values that make it quite watchable.