The Apostle

The Apostle doesn't have much depth; as a study of spiritual crisis, it falls short. Robert Duvall has long wanted to make (and star in) this intimate epic about a preacher forced to reappraise his life when he commits a crime and is compelled to leave his Texas flock for a mysterious calling in rural Louisiana. Duvall doesn't acquit himself at all, either as an actor or as a filmmaker. But he coaxed true performances from Farrah Fawcett, Billy Bob Thornton, John Beasley and June Carter Cash. But the fine supporting cast does not have much to do. Every scene, every frame of the overly long Apostle centers on Duvall. --Alexander Laskey

As Good As It Gets

Anyone who thinks romantic comedies are formulaic hokum is probably all too easily proved right. But every once in a while a gem comes along to silence the cynics. Director James L. Brooks has crafted a warmhearted modern fable with a prickly sense of humor. Jack Nicholson plays an obsessive-compulsive curmudgeon named Melvin Udall, whose isolated life is complicated by developing relationships with two acquaintances: a gay painter who lives in the apartment next door and a lovely, down-to-earth waitress who serves him lunch every day. The film's genuinely funny, moving script will make the audience feel as if it's earned a pleasant afterglow (and perhaps a Kleenex or two).   --Erwin R. Rosinberg

Dangerous Beauty

Catherine McCormack delivers a refreshing, funny and inspired performance in Marshal Herskovitz's new period piece. As Veronica Franco, a lower-class beautiful girl turned high-class court prostitute, McCormack leads a well-assembled cast in this slightly flawed--yet worth-seeing--film about life as a courtesan in 16th century Venice. Prefaced by both opening and closing textual summations, the film clearly advances a social agenda--in this respect, it slides by with an average grade. The cleverness of the rest of its script and the excellence of the acting, however, save Dangerous Beauty and makes it shine.   --Marc Resteghini

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 '92 sheds layer upon layers 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

Krippendorf's Tribe

Krippendorf's Tribe centers around widowed anthropologist James Krippendorf (Richard Dreyfuss) and how, after spending grant money on rearing his dysfunctional children, he is forced to present his findings on the "undiscovered" New Guinea tribe that he was supposed to have used the money to study. The resulting mess that follows is a formulaic farce filled with poor acting, an even poorer script and obnoxious, one-dimensional characters with barely anything sympathetic about them. Occasionally, the film tries to get warm and sweet, but concludes with a contrived and impossible ending. Leaving the theatre, one cannot help feeling that Touchstone Pictures took a cue from Krippendorf and his false tribe by stealing ticket money, and handing over this excuse for a movie in its place.   --Marc P. Resteghini

Kundun

Kundun may be Martin Scorsese's most daring film to date. There isn't much talk in Kundun, and what talk there is isn't especially revealing or eloquent. However, this ceases to matter very much as the breathtaking cinematography tells its own story, accompanied by a sonorously haunting score by Philip Glass. Kundun's slow pace may cause occasional restlessness, but never boredom. It's too much of a feast for the eyes to lose its power of fascination, and its poetry of color, perspective and motion lingers long after what's actually said is forgotten.   --Lynn Y. Lee

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 Russel Crow 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

Mrs. Dalloway