Kathleen Maher

Unfortunately, the film begins to fall apart when it leaves film parody and strays too close to reality. This film is so timely, it has the young pilots flying a bombing run on Saddam Hussein's nuclear plant. Either these filmmakers were lucky, or they made it last week. It almost seems as if the latter is true, because Hot Shots handling of Middle Eastern bad guys is just a little too heavy handed -- no, make that insulting and insensitive.

The sequel is not as bad as the original, but it doesn't have to be much to accomplish that small feat and it isn't.

The film's ostensible support for a woman's right to self-expression is undercut by the notion that it doesn't matter what a woman does, anyway, so long as she has a nice ass. Still, there doesn't seem to be much point in getting hot and bothered about a movie that's so poorly-crafted it's going to have a hard time garnering any kind of audience.

Honeymoon in Vegas is what every stupid comedy should be to justify the price of admission, sadly it is no more than that.

Apted manages to say a lot by cutting between the squalor of life on the reservation to the magnificence of the land around it. Unfortunately, when the characters speak for themselves, they are often forced to deliver lines that are unspeakable. There is an element of misty romanticism about Native Americans that Apted just doesn't manage to pull off. His yarn, however, is a good one even if it could be told a little better.

What's missing is absolutely nothing. No joke is passed up or thrown away. There just might be a little too much.

I didn't care much for this movie. It's brutal and it's brutalizing. It seeks to make the audience an accomplice rather than a rational observer.

Sometimes it works, but more often than not, it's just cute. In the editing, the characters, general style and attitude, Crowe seems to have drawn heavily from Slacker for inspiration, but in his insecure reliance on traditional narrative and Hollywood convention, he undermines his more interesting experimentations. As a result, Singles winds up being a date movie with pretensions.

At a time when conspiracy theories, in their relentlessness, their humorlessness and in their assumption of the monolithic, seem almost to protect the conspiracists by promulgating a sense of hopelessness, Sneakers's sense of fun, by contrast, seems empowering and almost subversive.

The movie's light, easily forgotten and very good for a few laughs. I sure hope that eating thing comes true.

One wishes Beatty would stay out of the epic business, but in that poor man's defense, he's become too large, too much of an icon on the screen to do much else. Perhaps he's doomed to play cartoon characters as he did last time out in Dick Tracy. His Bugsy is not anything close to a fully realized character. Bening, as his starlet/moll, does a better job, but her role doesn't give her much to work with.

The movie isn't about the band, really; it's about having a chance when the cards are stacked against it. It's about climbing out. When they sing those great soul songs, it feels like a better world for everyone and that's how Parker manages to get us into his box with him.

Predictable as sunburn on the 4th of July, it is a film as ingratiating as its star. Visiting the town of Grady is a fairly pleasant pastime, but there's no excuse for a film this light to last over two hours as this one does.

Stallone makes good-hearted fun of his street-wise Italian-American persona and also of himself as big shot. I'm not used to having much good to say about the guy, but Stallone has evidenced a nascient sense of humor before, and here he allows it to blossom.

Toy Soldiers is little more than macho posturing for young men searching for their identities. As such the image of a beefy Astin sporting a machine gun is not especially healthy nor is it especially imaginative. There is an attempt at balance with the younger, nerdier intelligent kids having a role in their own salvation and a representative cast including kids of all colors. For those concessions and for directorial competence, I am grateful.

Home Alone meets Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure and then visits Working Girl – none of it works.

There are two powerful movies here, unfortunately, they don't coexist easily. Lee has to fight his way out and he opts for narrative stopping violence when perhaps he should have continued the dialogue. He's a man on a tightrope and it's hard not to watch him without worrying about him.

Producer Joel Silver and Willis keep trying to remake Die Hard. This time they call in Top Gun director Scott. The result is mildly interesting, but there are so many weird and gratuitous scenes of insane violence that the effect is drained of impact.

Landis has a lot to work with here and he misses few opportunities for sly commentary, but he blows it on a much grander scale. Innocent Blood is way too long. It loses steam and coherence about midway through, leaving us rooting for it but doomed to disappointment. Combining comedy, horror, romance and chase scenes, Innocent Blood finally begins to collapse in on itself but not before we've had more than a few good laughs and a frightened yelp or two.

1900 is a marvelous movie, Bertolucci is one of the best directors who has ever lived.

The plot twists and turns on itself endlessly and incriminates everyone. It's as if the filmmakers are trying to incorporate all the plot details from all the classics they so obviously love. But love isn't enough either. You gotta have brains, baby, and a heart and soul would be nice.

Oddly enough, Unlawful Entry can keep you from sleeping but when you wake up the next moring, it's hard to remember much about the movie.

One brother grows up to be a dashing smuggler, the other is a dork and it's a tribute to Van Damme's acting ability that it's frequently impossible to tell which one is which. I could go on, I'm having a pretty good time at this, but I think I'll save my usual rants about homophobia, racism, and generally insensitive stupidity for a movie that attracts an audience that reads film reviews.

It takes love to bring all these elements together into harmony, and Nair makes it look easy even when it's most difficult for her characters.

It rings true. Living in the twilight, between right, wrong, legal, illegal, good, bad, is dangerous but it's sheer hypocrisy to deny its attraction.

What starts out promisingly enough continues considerably beyond the end of the world and wears out even the most determined Wenders fan.