There are fewer laughs and more lectures -- but there's plenty of sass and soul in between.

The result is gorgeous, if ultimately shallow -- much like Simone herself.

Just a little shy of twisting the knife that extra twist.

Packed with more information than can possibly be digested in a single viewing, the film will be a bracing eye-opener to anyone who hasn't considered the full implications of recent Congressional debates advocating further media deregulation.

An entertaining and well-crafted political satire that is definitely worth a look.

A real bore, with the director seemingly incapable of creating suspense.

Given the controversy, which strongly suggested that the filmmakers had it in for President Bush, the film's biggest shocker may be how kind Range and coscreenwriter Simon Finch are to him.

A well-acted character piece.

Far and Away plays like a theme park attraction: viscerally exciting but detached, impersonal and dull.

Sturges's direction, given the confining nature of the settings, is masterful, and the cinematography headed by Howe and pieced together by many others is sometimes stunning.

Like its star, Howard's movie is affable, but has limited range.

The kind of movie for which the term "video baby-sitter" was coined.

But for all the profane language and sexual frankness, Soderbergh's film is no more cynical or world-weary than its inspirations, and in the end, it feels like a clever trick wrapped around a hollow center.

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.

Most of the cast of accomplished actors are wasted in these roles, although two do manage to stand out: Ryder as the innocent-savvy Myra and John Doe, in an underplayed performance, as her father. The musical sequences are entertaining and energetic.

Violent update of The Blackboard Jungle.

There are people who eat this kind of thing right up -- if you're one of them, dig in.

This dogged journey of self-delusion is interrupted periodically by snippets of footage...that promise a dark revelation that would give an edge to the otherwise tedious goings-on but, sadly, never materializes.

A vivid telling of a familiar story -- the rise and fall of a street criminal -- bolstered by exceptional performances and a clear-eyed take on the economics of dealing and the pathology of ghetto fabulousness.

An intriguing mix of the familiar and the alien. DaFoe's distinctly American speech patterns are a little jarring amid a tangle of British inflections (French actor Cassel's accent is justified within the story), but it doesn't spoil the film's overall effect.

Chinese director Ann Hu follows-up her tepid 2000 debut "Shadow Magic" with another luscious historical drama that, thankfully, is a lot more interesting. The plot is no less melodramatic, but here melodramatics work along with the film's theme, not against it.

The film ends before Franken can actually take the step from commentator to participant, which adds to its overall unfinished and unfocused air.

Pure trash, based on a trashy book, filled to the brim with trashy performances, now becoming a trashy cult film.

In his last role, the late Tupac Shakur shows once again that he had considerable natural talent as an actor, and while Jim Belushi is always in danger of sliding from sleaze into shtick, he always pulls back.

For all its contrivances, the film is cheerfully rude and surprisingly generous to the mothers, most of whom find sizzling new romances at an age when their American counterparts are reduced to sexless dithering or played as humiliating punch lines to jokes about horny old hags.

Screenwriter Matthew Tabak's directing debut is carefully plotted, well acted and surprisingly free of cheap thrills.

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.

The movie isn't "Blade Runner," but it's got some provocative ideas about the implications of cloning in a market-driven, capitalist society.