The movie itself, defying all odds, comes close to a knockout.

Hilary Swank gives a powerhouse performance as a maverick high school teacher in Freedom Writers, an often gripping and sometimes even inspiring film drama taken from the real-life story of Erin Gruwell.

A sports bio movie that I really enjoyed about a sport and sports hero I barely knew existed: the World Hour Record competition for bicyclists and its gutsy, tormented and most unusual champion, Graeme Obree.

The result is something so old it's new, so corny it's funny. And while Tears of the Black Tiger is nothing more than entertaining, at least it's that.

Becket, now richly restored, is one of those '60s British theatrical spectaculars that we always imagine as a bit better than they were.

Mantel and Skrovan's documentary astutely reminds us of why we need the world's Naders. It's a reasonable movie about an often admirably unreasonable man.

Elaborately mounted, expensively produced and filmed with style and empathy, it's an adaptation of Paterson's Newbery Medal-winning book that manages to expand the original vision, yet preserve much of its intense emotion.

Starter for 10 is cute and smart, just like its star triangle, and it's also well-written, acted and directed.

The Cats of Mirikitani seems all too short; it has enough meat to be turned into an excellent dramatic film.

Reign works better much better than "Upside" because of the cast and because Sandler and Cheadle together keep it lighter. It's an easy film to watch, but less easy to be moved by.

In Color Me Kubrick, John Malkovich has one of the roles of his life, and he acts it up like a haughty gourmet who's just picked up a succulent treat.

Movies like First Snow rise or fall on characters and atmosphere, and Fergus gets them both. But though the story's resolution does have irony and even a certain power, it lacks the charge, the Serlingesque "gotcha," that it needs.

Dercourt, a very fine filmmaker, is a musician himself, a music teacher and one-time solo viola player with the French Symphony Orchestra. And he directs, with a musician's precision and an insider's sly wit, the world of classical music performance.

When it enters the future, it's a new-fangled, old-fashioned jim-dandy of a show.

Isn't all it could have been. But the filmmakers catch the right glittery look and paranoid intensity, and they make gutsy speculations about the story beneath the story.

There's nothing particularly original or striking about Ping Pong except its style. It's a breezy, likable story, and the director here, Fumihiko Sori, obviously enjoys his work.

A relaxed-looking expert piece that immerses us in another world. At the end, Hanson has a bonus. He and his producers hired Bob Dylan for the Oscar-winning "Things Have Changed" in "Wonder Boys," and Hanson brings Dylan back here, for a folky, bluesy number called "Huck's Tune."

A romantic comedy/social satire that, on a modest budget, manages to be hip, charming, funny and dressed to kill.

In Year of the Dog, there are dark moments that are both strangely poignant and bizarrely hilarious. The ending took me by surprise. In a way it's a cheat, a redemption that arrives out of nowhere. But it's also a cosmic joke, a perfectly funny, sincere salute to dog and pet-lovers everywhere.

It's a sordid but expert shocker.

The ending of Waitress is so beguiling and whimsical that it makes you, like its diner's patrons, hungry for more--and it makes you miss that red-headed movie auteur/pastry chef/heart stealer Shelly even more.

It's intellectual without being dry, dramatic without bombast, smart without posturing. Its characters and milieu are very well drawn, and Andre is one of the more intriguing and convincing fictional creations in recent film.

Ashley Judd as Agnes White, and a relative newcomer, the remarkable Michael Shannon, as Peter Evans. They're both spellbinding.

We've gotten perhaps too used to the computerized wizardry of our own cartoon features; Kon, like Miyazaki shows us some older ways that can still transfix us.

Though Day Watch seems less shocking and overwhelmingly strange than "Night Watch," it's another rocking mix of gritty thriller and glitzy sci-fi, once again in the vein of the director Bekmambetov's idols Quentin Tarantino and the Wachowski brothers.

It looks like a TV ad, or 200 of them strung together, with the same kind of gaudy virtuosity, lavish technique and expensive self-mockery tinging every shot.

Lucidity, austerity and quiet compassion are peculiar virtues to ascribe to a movie about a horrific real-life murder case, but those are among the best qualities of Jean-Pierre Denis' Murderous Maids.

Bigelow gives this film edge, tension and something you aren't expecting: a woman's touch for teasing out the buried emotion beneath those stoic surfaces.

A simple, eloquent drama.

You'll find heartbreakingly star-crossed lovers, a heartless villain (Wilson) and a dazzling backdrop of aristocratic life before and after the Russian Revolution.

A delightful concert documentary that proves once more what a neglected masterpiece the Coen Brothers gave us last year in their Depression chain-gang odyssey, "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"

Doesn't really add up to much -- except a good time. But it's smart, funny and cute. With all that going for you, who needs to be money? [25 October 1996, Friday, p.H]

It's by far the best cast Burns has assembled -- so much so that, unlike his other films, he doesn't come near dominating it.

It's a moving tale of love and destruction in unexpected places, unexamined lives.

A children's movie done with genuinely youthful spirit and an easy self-kidding mastery of its own high-tech gadgetry.

It stays in your memory, will not leave you in peace.

If the real-life story is genuinely inspirational, the movie stirs us as well.

This is only a movie. But a good one. May Roddy Doyle give us many more.

A clever, amiably low-key mix of family drama and romantic comedy.[18 August 1995, Friday, p.C]

The artifice may be ancient, but the thought and emotions -- and especially Sorvino -- are beautifully, refreshingly modern.

Director Lee has a true cinematic knack, but it's also nice to see a movie with its heart so thoroughly, unabashedly on its sleeve.

Why should we keep seeing Austen fresh, through our own, modern eyes? Because she's a writer who has never really left our field of vision. And, as this new Mansfield Park proves again, she never will.

The new movie, like its predecessor, is a crime thriller with a moral viewpoint, an eye and ear for street color and a taste for macho movie fantasy.

At its best, this new film does mix grandeur with skepticism, excitement with reflection. In the end, like Harry, it redeems itself.

The film, like its lovers, is fond, giddy and poetic about love and death.

Never feels inflated -- and it builds to an ending of unusual power.

Suggests a raunchier, cruder version of a Coen brothers comedy, but it's also a kind of honky-tonk "Rashomon."

Shines whenever we see the performances of Phoenix and Caan.

The movie is funny, but it's also touching and poetic -- and Bertin's scenes are devastating.

There's a sass and bite to Winger's acting, a grinning intelligence, unabashed sexiness and total immersion that make her one of the movies' few hipster female stars.

This is a quiet thriller and a middle-aged romance, and it's full of desperation and oozing anxiety.

There's no denying that Undisputed delivers the action-movie goods, and so do Snipes and Rhames. It should have been more memorable, but at least it doesn't stumble in the ring.

I laughed all the way through it.

Beautifully produced: a moving film with a fascinating story and exemplary acting.

On a direct line with the whimsical small-town comedies of the '40s and '50s.

The movie, in the end, is devastating because of the banality it reveals, and because its terseness and plainness cut a mass killer down to size.

A movie about love, friendship and finding oneself, and it takes all its subjects very seriously while seeming to treat them with the lightest and most piquant of touches. Like its bizarre heroine, it irrigates our souls.

Finally, the film answers a question that obviously haunts Nachtwey: Is it immoral, callous or irresponsible to win fame and recognition from images of the terror, death and suffering of others?

Howard has a wonderful touch with actors, and almost all of them here have their moments. [26 March 1999, Friday, p.A]

Has great themes and great actors.

Like Workman's other films, it's a time capsule that sings.

Avoid it if you object to seeing people devoured by wolves, but see it if you want to howl at the moon.

The movie is an odd mix of tones and styles, and the thriller plot is casually introduced, shoved aside and reintroduced. But, like all Duvall's work, Assassination Tango breathes with humanity.

The film does succeed in making the story universal, giving us the drama as well as the history, the fire as well as cool examination. It's a movie that haunts you afterward.

There's the script -- and that's the problem.

A rare thriller - and a rare American film - that centers on both dramatic and moral issues, crises of conscience. And thanks to a superb central performance by Nicholson as detective Black, it's a film that compels, thrills and ends up coming very close to tragedy.

Tape may not be a great movie, but it's a great demonstration of creativity within severe limitations.

Though not as good or as massively innovative as its predecessor, is still a mountainous undertaking.

Witherspoon goes further, pouring so much humor and pizzazz into Elle that she lifts up the whole movie.

Sweeps us back into a terrifying and desperate string of events and makes us feel them - and, more crucially, understand them as well.

Beside its major virtues, it contains a vice: that one flat lead performance. Who would have thought Kevin Spacey would ever go dull on us?

A movie that will act like a smack in the face to some audiences, while others may simply laugh in recognition.

A wry romantic comedy set among Bruno's targets, the Grenoble bourgeois.

This smart, hardscrabble, very likable film has a heart and spirit all its own: a rollicking, earthy flair and lusty intelligence.

Maybe the problem with Analyze This is that it isn't enough of a Ramis movie. [5 Mar 1999]

The first hit movie western of the new century - wins us with a wink. It leaves you in a bright, happily cross-cultural mood. Adios, amigos. And vaya con Jackie Chan.

It's a film that is mystifying and haunting -- a cool, brotherly vision of the last day and the coming flood, of American dreams and the vanishing frontier.

Even though the actors are good, their characters stay stock.

The film mixes unashamed kitsch, thrilling airfight scenes and dark historical drama. But what gives it a special charge is its portrait of the Czech RAF group: what happened to them before, during and after the war.

Inspirational biographical movie that really works.

Immersed here in both the fair, dreamy air and chilly, deeper waters, Rampling and Sagnier make Swimming Pool a fine sunlit noir, oozing sensuality and menace.

Brimming over with affection and humanity, this memory drama about the destruction of one family and the birth of another is nostalgic in a good sense: funny, bittersweet, poignant.

Unlike almost every other sexy modern thriller (especially most recent studio blockbusters), this one gives you a lot to think about.

(Matthau's) is a truly magical performance: hilarious, unguarded and deeply touching.

Few recent movie romances have a more chilling and peculiar feel -- and a more sobering aftertaste -- than Neil Jordan's heart-rendingly cold adaptation of Affair.

It's a warmly realistic comedy-drama that pulls you right into its lively, well-drawn L.A. milieu.

Engrossing as it is, The Hunted is more a showcase for formidable talent than anything else. It's a brainy, exciting but shallow show -- an expert's action movie that almost runs out of breath.

Swedish cinema has been famous for a number of things: beautiful actresses, fine sexy psychological dramas, natural settings, cinematic bawdiness and a touch of melancholy. Under the Sun fits that profile well.

It's one of those movies that are unfortunately so technically well done, it's hard to tune out on the senseless story.

One Hour Photo is a piece of often masterly image-making, a half-brilliant film with a revelatory lead performance by Williams. But it's also a thriller that gets trapped in surfaces: shiny, exciting, full of dread but often only tricks of the camera.

It's a good small film for intelligent audiences who like to watch the movie camera explore other regions and other communities -- something all our movies should do more often.

At once proudly conservative, passionately idealistic and beautifully assured.

A breezy, elegant charmer of a movie.

For all its craft and achievement, The Gift -- which has a script that may have needed more rewriting and deepening -- is a good, minor effort; it has some real conviction, even anguish. And it has Blanchett, whose gift as an actress is sometimes transcendent.

As a ride, this Tarzan succeeds. As a pop myth, it needs more jungle fever. [18 June 1999, Friday, p.A]

The movie, a keen look at the way passion unravels and obsession destroys, creates a black mood, a sense of truth and an enduring chill that stay with you.

It's a corker of a story - a polished yarn full of desire, desperation and despair.

One of the most intriguing prison dramas ever put on film.