Amistad

In Amistad, the story of a shipful of African slaves and their struggle for freedom, Stephen Spielberg pulls out all the stops, pouring on the pathos and the pity, spooning on the sympathy and drenching it all in melodrama. Spielberg has apparently decided to stop making films and instead to start performing "filmmaking." Despite a number of excellent performances, what could very well have been a poignant and emotional tale is so concertedly and self-consciously delivered as such that it just comes out muddied and misconceived. --Jon B. Dinerstein

Eve's Bayou

Samuel L. Jackson produces and stars in this gothic tale of infidelity and voodoo in the Louisiana bayou, but graciously hands the story over to the lesser known actresses surrounding him, including Debbi Morgan as a haunted clairvoyant and Jurnee Smollett as his precocious daughter. Director and writer Kasi Lemmons demonstrates impressive style and maturity in this dark, hypnotic film.   --Jeremy J. Ross

Good Will Hunting

In any other movie, we would hate young Will Hunting. His perfection would be nothing short of irritating and boring. Yet Harvard golden boy Matt Damon sheds layer upon layer of complexity until finally we reach the core of his character near the movie's end. The film itself is nothing particularly exceptional. Director Gus Van Sant prefers a straight up telling of the tale--there's little to distract you from the fable playing out on screen.   --Soman S. Chainani

The Ice Storm

The talented Ang Lee directs this film about uneasy family relationships in the restless, promiscuous '70s with crystalline precision. As the leaders of two archly funny but disturbingly bleak suburban clans, Kevin Kline, Joan Allen and Sigourney Weaver give refreshingly honest performances, but the film's ending offers their characters no hint of redemption. The ice storm, as a natural symbol of change and the wiping away of sins, is like Noah's flood without the rainbow.   --Erwin R. Rosinberg

L.A. Confidential

You know L.A. Confidential has ended when it is both daytime and not raining. In a fine version of the somewhat beefy Ellroy crime novel ostensibly about a strange murder, director Curtis Hanson portrays the cool, brutal world of Hollywood glam and corrupt police in '50s Los Angeles with all its gradations of questionable ethics. Guy Pearce and Russell Crowe turn in fine performances that give us two different approaches to policing, thinking first and hitting later, or vice versa. A reptilian James Cromwell and slick Kevin Spacey round out a fine cast and a finer tale. Could this be an Oscar contender? I'm not a betting man.   --Nicolas R. Rapold

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

Drag is the hallmark of this unwieldy film, and we're not talking about Lady Chablis. Clint Eastwood's lumbering adaptation of John Berendt's bestseller falls short of expectations, rendering the unique pantheon of Savannah personalities as mere cartoons and focusing too much on a long, drawn-out murder trial. John Cusack fumbles through the role of the script's too-young, too-straight stand-in for Berendt's narrator. But despite these flaws, Kevin Spacey shines as Jim Williams, the enigmatic gay antiques dealer who kills his lover in what may or may not have been self-defense.   --Scott M. Brown

The Rainmaker

Francis Ford Coppola missteps in a heavy-handed moralistic mess that has none of the storytelling grace he's displayed on happier occasions. In fact, he's succeeded in making John Grisham--the king of popcorn thrillers--lethally boring. There is no shameless entertainment here, no chance to be swept up in instant thrills. Instead, we see Harvard dropout Matt Damon lost in two hours of disjointed storytelling without a touch of drama.   --Soman S. Chainani

Scream 2

Scream 2 seems destined to have no small success among the masses of moviegoers looking for a quick, all-in-one fix. It's something that--we are led to believe by yet another media hooey-machine--plugs directly into our generational needs. Wes Craven doesn't seem satisfied with such commentary and fright-nighting; in Scream 2, he insists on going that one step more meta on our collective ass. Craven should move on; he's made his point. But look for Scream 3 in theaters next year, and don't come running when the cinema is engineered with a live-video hook-up of the audience occurring in an inset box on the screen...or something.   --Nicolas R. Rapold

Wings of the Dove

In a canny and generally successful appeal to the youth market, this film streamlines Henry James's notoriously dense novel, bringing its melodramatic and erotic undertones to the forefront. A well-bred but dowerless English girl (Helena Bonham-Carter), secretly engaged to an equally impecunious journalist (Linus Roache), persuades her lover to court a young American heiress dying of TB (Alison Elliott). The plot thickens as the three take a pleasure trip to Venice. The scenes in Italy are lovely, and the three stars give superb performances--esp. Bonham-Carter, who brilliantly captures the complexities of her character.   --Lynn Y. Lee