A scrappy independent film that packs the same emotional punch as "Rocky."

May lack originality but makes up for it in sheer bravado and really nice clothes

The story (adapted from Andrew Neiderman's novel by Jonathan Lemkin and Tony Gilroy) is surprisingly well-handled, given its rather crazy premise.

May not be great cinema, but it's a guaranteed crowd-pleaser.

A solid second film from director Gary Fleder ("Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead"), it's sure to set pulses racing and spines tingling. Too bad it's at the expense of the dignity of young women everywhere.

The experience overall is like laughing down a gun barrel, a little bit tiring, a lot sick and maybe far too perverse for less jaded moviegoers.

Any film where a beer baroness's glass leg (filled with beer) shatters when a high note is struck is okay by me.

A decidedly medieval enterprise, darker in text and tone than a Gothic cathedral by the light of the moon.

Cameron captures the majesty, the tragedy, the fury and the futility of the event in a way that supersedes his trivial attempts to melodramatize it.

It's also genuinely moving to see disenfranchised individuals discovering self-determination from the hard ground up.

This one has crossover hit written all over it.

This heavy-hitting fist lands with calculated deliberation. Despite Spielberg's obviously genuine commitment, "Schindler's List" feels strangely controlled -- more than impassioned. It's officially artistic, an engineered project of pride, Little Stevie's growing-up project, rather than an organically brilliant masterpiece.

It's plenty entertaining, but the ending is disappointing, given the buildup.

It is piffle done well. A (literally) lighter-than-air story, full of goofs and creeps and fools and silliness, it manages to delight without simpering, make points without lecturing and break hearts and mend them again without turning you weepy.

By going back to its origins and dusting itself off, the King Arthur story has proved itself to have a very contemporary resonance.

Fraser is one funny, mixed-up guy

Enlightening, if structurally relaxed documentary.

Give credit to Berg for keeping Bissinger's all-too-true ending intact. It's a doozy.

It's a clever plot with a minimum of the already tired standard kids-on-computers sequence and a maximum of silly face-to-face deflation.

A hilarious, inventive and goofy breath of fresh air.

A provocative experience that lights you up even as it brutalizes you. And I don't even like Brad Pitt very much.

Low-tech inventiveness at its best.

This little charmer both celebrates and kids the corny conventions of family sitcoms.

An anti-capital-punishment polemic that won't change a single mind anywhere on Earth but will entertain well enough everywhere on Earth.

Always entertaining. But someone seems to have thrown away the metronome into the Spanish moss outside. "Midnight," which finally draws to a halt after two and a half hours, has a lot of acting, a bit of soul and no rhythm.

It's always nice to see Clint, and especially nice to see him play someone whose humanity -- no, whose mortality -- is all too apparent.

May not be the ultimate word on the Tibetan situation, or even the Dalai Lama, but its heart seems to be in the right place; and it's entertaining enough to give audiences an emotional sense of the story. [16 January 1998, p.N32]

For the first half-hour, the movie is pretty crummy. Even Spielberg appears bored with the script's lame setup, its quick evocation of the first movie and its wan establishment of human villains and heroes. Like any 50-year-old adolescent, he can't wait for the dinosaurs. And when he gets to them, the movie ceases to bear any relationship to conceits of narrative and becomes a sheer adrenalin spike to the brain stem.

Director Phillip Noyce, who made "Dead Calm," "Patriot Games" and "Clear and Present Danger," keeps things moving at a kinetic, involving pace. And writers Jonathan Hensleigh (who wrote "Die Hard With a Vengeance") and Wesley Strick create a diverting human steeplechase.

The atmospherics are wonderfully dark and film-noirish, if overly violent.

Jensen's tone is admirably dry, and the film offers its pleasures through small, writerly details.

It's a brutal, demonic film with a grip like a vise; it grabs you early, its fingers around your throat, and never lets go.

Spielberg has made a small and charming story out of The Terminal.

Isn't particularly scary. No, it's much harder on you than mere fright: It's . . . creepy.

It's enough of a spectacle to enjoy. It's too bad the stars are little more than serviceable and give the movie title an irony it could certainly do without.

Malkovich's lead performance digs in its heels, deadening the movie's speedy exhilaration. The result is a highly diverting but ultimately unsatisfying production that doesn't perform -- so much as paraphrase -- the script.

In Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore largely stays out of the picture, and the film is the better for it. But otherwise his style hasn't changed.

As glossy and overproduced as the thing is, it's a GOOD Big Stupid American movie.

The movie is not exactly an upper, but Hartley fans won't want to miss the latest creation of this consistently intelligent director.

It's enough to send you home with jiggly knees and a tummy ache.

True to IMAX form, the high-tech graphics and sounds are great.

As cinematic storytelling, it works.

It's a brilliant movie, fluent, spectacular, breathtaking and basically, uh, wrong.

In the end, it may leave its audience, young and old alike, just as charmed as its bewitched young heroine.

The movie is both exhilarating and depressing. The trouble is, I can't figure out which is more important.

Wittily scripted, engagingly sappy, completely implausible and unabashedly Capraesque, it's a rather wonderful crock.

It's one of those "I-can't-believe-I'm-enjoying-this" kind of things.

Impressive, big-scale scenes, such as a train derailment from a snow-covered bridge. And the vocal performances of Ryan and Cusack give us a real sense of romance.

Artfully structured, combining old-school MGM-type musical numbers with occasional postmodern flourishes to keep the narrative moving.

Spiked with some genuine show-stopping musical numbers, and the sheer pluck of its young cast is nothing if not admirable.

Ferrell provides just enough humor to get us through the familiar fare and enjoy the ride.

So good it breaks your heart for not being better. It is kept from brilliance by a soggy climax and a clumsy central narrative device.

Becker handles the film's comedy with fluency.

Nothing from the book is left to wither away. That should please the vast reading audience that'll watch the movie.

With razor-sharp performances, zingy one-liners, broad slapstick humor and a message of sorts, there's enough to distract the viewer from becoming hopelessly lost in the lint-filled chaos that is the umbilicus.

Isn't scintillating, but it's sort of embraceably funny.

The path taken by the film is somewhat labyrinthine and obscure, but it offers enough rewards to counterbalance its frustrations.

Offers audiences a real rarity in theaters these days: a good, honest cry.

A wonderful movie: inspired, hilarious, visually inventive. Just don't take your kids to see it.

Cleverness can be overrated but it can be underrated too, and the best thing about National Treasure is how clever it is.

Until a disappointing tailspin in the last hour, Pearl Harbor is the best piece of popular entertainment to come along in years.

Often wickedly funny, but about halfway through, the premise becomes -- shall we say? -- intestinally overextended.

It is to the film's credit -- and Foxx's -- that we are able to see, behind the flash and fury, a man who didn't know how to love, and was so much the lonelier for it.

You may find some of the story developments melodramatic -- I did -- but the film itself is quite powerful.

Enter the world of the sociopathic killer and enjoy.

Garden State features some wonderful performances, chief among them an engaging, even courageous turn from Natalie Portman.

You may soon forget the specifics of the plot, but you'll always remember the world it came from.

It's at once too restrained and too perversely funny to have emanated from the play-it-big-but-play-it-safe sensibilities of Hollywood, U.S.A.

This is a smart movie, full of astonishing reverses and switchbacks, and it adroitly walks the thin line between too clever by half and not clever enough by three-quarters.

A film whose far-fetched foundation is overshadowed by the endearing story.

There's no doubt that Eminem has the talent and presence of a star. It's just a shame that the filmmakers didn't capture his power with mad skillz of their own.

Seems like a pretty cool movie -- at least, for a remake of a 1970s Saturday morning TV show.

It's not perfect, or even close, but it delivers on the promise of J.K. Rowling's novels to a far greater extent.

Surprisingly effective re-creation of a Latin American Bing and Bob on the Road to History.

Mind you, there's lots to like, if not love, in this London-set, star-studded comedy. Unfortunately, there's a little bit to hate, too.

In this sprawling oglefest, such things as "narrative" and "story" are remote little abstractions indeed.

Far from great, but much farther from awful, Troy offers several popcorn buckets' worth of good old-fashioned time at the movies.

An amusing enough romp through his familiar undersea universe.

Isn't just for music fans. It's more accessible than that, thanks to Joel Schumacher's bright direction and a few storytelling embellishments.

Hovers frustratingly somewhere between charming and only mildly amusing.

Lee elevates herself from the lower echelon of mere international super-babedom to the loftier realm of pulp myth. She is "It" with an exclamation mark.

A spirited remake of the French drag farce, has everything in place, from eyeliner to one-liner.

It features a pleasing mix of good-guy gumshoeing, smart-alecky dialogue and courtroom surprises.

Tin Cup works for viewers of any handicap.

Takes the spirit of their late night TV show and flies with it.

Delivers the entertaining goods without fuss or frills.

The movie is wry, touching and fun to sit through, thanks to Rosenberg's amusing script, Ted Demme's vital direction and zesty performances from everyone.

An absorbing, if overlong adaptation of Tom Clancy's bestseller.

The movie feels stretched out and thin.

The name is enough to clue you in that this is not highbrow humor. In fact, it will appeal mostly to those who can appreciate basic juvenile humor.

Jonathon Mostow, who wrote the script and then directed the movie, travels mostly familiar backroads and crosses bridges when he comes to them, actually managing a pretty good cliff-hanging denouement on the latter.

While the plot is thin and there's little action till the big blow some 60 minutes into the film, a volcano offers a greater variety of thrills than your basic cyclone ever could.

Flubber, the substance, has more personality than many Hollywood actors. And if Flubber, the movie, isn't quite a slam dunk, at least it's a relatively bouncy way to spend an hour and a half.

This is a great performance from Pacino, who has the good luck here to work with Goldman's mostly wonderful, edgy script, but it might not become a beloved one because the man he plays is such a bitter pill.

But because the filmmakers stray from the facts, presumably in hopes of gaining a wider audience, there is a cheapness at the core of the film that comes perilously close to undermining it.

But if the modestly budgeted film (loosely based on journalist Michael Nicholson's factual narrative, "Natasha's Story") lopes along a formulaic, often heavy-handed track, its pictures and subtext make a powerful statement. [9Jan1998 Pg. N.41]

Murphy owes much of his success to the amazing special-effects makeup by Rick Baker ("An American Werewolf in London"), but he brings a tenderness and dignity to the performance that he has never shown before.

Though the film gleams with Howard's customary spit polish, there's no denying that the story is pitted with plot holes.