Held together by the intensity of its focus.

Isn't much of a movie, but it's a whale of a story.

Like the bitter cold in which it's set, Affliction bites hard and true.

May be too much suspense for some, but it's vividly powerful.

It gets frenetic, in the French way, but it never stops getting amusing. This is what happens when you let grown-ups make movies.

Manufactured Landscapes makes an inelegant point elegantly. The point: Humanity is altering the landscape drastically and by implication irrevocably.

The movie is exquisitely directed by Anand Tucker in an anti-documentary style that sometimes fractures the time sequence, sometimes re-creates moments impressionistically instead of objectively and is vivid in style.

Its images of the destruction of the cities is far more powerful than in American films, where the cities are trashed for the pure pleasure of destruction, without any real sense of human loss.

It's clean and transparent, with no movie director tricks. The characters, not the montages, speak the loudest.

One of the year's best films.

A big, fat, gorgeous, mesmerizing mess.

Genuine, amusing and, best of all, humanly scaled and humanely oriented.

Far from an amusing romp.

First and best, it's got a rip-roaring story. It sweeps you along, borne effortlessly by believable if flawed characters, as it flows toward the inevitable tragedy. But it's also got a heart: It watches as a child harsh of judgment learns that judgment is too easy a posture for the world, and it's best to love with compassion. [07Nov1997 Pg G.01]

In this film, Nolan seems overwhelmed by the budget, the egos of the stars, the thinness of the script, and he doesn't impose much personality on the picture. It's all Pacino.

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

That's exactly the problem with this movie: It's not about a killer, or his victims, or the manhunt or the cops. They're all in it, of course, more or less. But it's about a writer.

Incisive and possibly a bit melodramatic as it lays out the reasons and the results of the violent campaign and marshals indignation on behalf of the victims while crying out for Western engagement.

The movie avoids sensationalism. What it requires and what it delivers is performance.

Sad and lovely.

It takes what could be called the Chinese equivalent of chutzpah to make a movie with three of the world's most beautiful and talented women -- Gong Li, Maggie Cheung and Zhang Ziyi -- and to be more interested in the male character.

This film is much more atmospheric; it builds, not so much logically as viscerally, until you feel you can't escape. Lurid and overdone as it is, it's still a real disturber of the peace.

Kind of like watching a John Waters film on fast forward with all the good parts cut out. It's empty of charm and meaning, but it certainly kills time, for those who wish it dead.

It's an astonishing movie, with a real-life feel.

One of the excellent attributes of Shut Up & Sing is that it lets the cards fall where they may and really doesn't try to spin the Chicks themselves. It's quite possible, then, to watch the film and come to the conclusion that Maines has a big mouth. Spectacularly talented, the young singer is also a spectacular blowhard.

Clever as it is, the film lacks charm. One problem: too many bugs. Second, bigger world for two purposes: to feed birds and to irk humans.

Though 45 minutes longer than the original release, still feels thinner, less complex, more mythic and far less compelling.

The films are bloody, stupid and buoyant in a kind of infantile way, celebrating mayhem, flesh and gore. Planet Terror is by far the livelier.