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.