The Bourne Identity
This is just one of a thundering herd of spy movies that are out during the summer of '02 and/or slated to be released in the coming months. It seems that one genre that Hollywood feels it can bank on post-9/11 is the action spy thriller, even if the villains of these movies don't resemble any of the anti-American organizations in the real world. (...then again, maybe that's part of the formula's success?)
I am not familiar with the book on which this movie is based, so this review won't be going through that kind of filter. What I can say is that this movie is less of a Bond-esque or Ryan-esque intrigue story (although there are certainly some elements of that) than it is a fugitive-on-the-run tale laced with paranoia. Matt Damon gets fished out of the ocean with no memory of who he is, but he does have information regarding a secret Swiss deposit box account. When he goes to investigate what is in the box, he unwittingly reveals his existence to some very persistent folks who would like to see him dead. Lots of action, and the paranoia works well... I found myself paying closer attention to random extras in the background of the city scenes as the movie progressed. Overall, Bourne Identity isn't a film of high art and meaning, but it is a good two hour thrill ride that works pretty well over its entire length. 

Elling
The Best Foreign Language Film category of the March '02 Oscar Awards was a really good crop... oddly enough, some of those films weren't scheduled for release in the US until months after the awards ceremony. This film is one of the contenders, and certainly deserved its share of Oscar attention.
Two state home patients become part of a new program designed to reintegrate some patients into regular society. The pair are given an apartment in Oslo and the result is partly like "The Odd Couple" but primarily just a story about "fitting in." The movie avoids Hollywood clichés that are trotted out regularly regarding the mentally/psychologically challenged and uses smart humor to draw in the audience.
Who says Norwegians don't have a sense of humor?

The Emperor's New Clothes
What if Napoleon Bonaparte didn't die in exile?  What if he exchanged places with a lookalike and secretly traveled to France to stage a coup?  What if his double got used to the good life and decided to not play along with the plan, leaving the real Napoleon stranded in anonymity in Paris?
While not particularly true to the real life Napoleon's character traits, this is a cute idea woven into a fun movie. 

Endurance
Some stories don't dramatize well and work better in documentary format.  Sir Ernest Stapleton's ill-fated 1914 expedition to cross the Antarctic continent is clearly one of them.  The crew's expedition ship becomes iced in and eventually crushed, stranding them away from civilization in a time when wireless communication simply didn't exist.  George Butler ("Pumping Iron") uses a combination of expedition stills and motion pictures, oil paintings, and rugged polar scenery to create a stunning illusion of time's slow passage, something that would be very difficult to do in a dramatic adaptation (although apparently Mel Gibson is going to try).   This is the feature-length documentary; there is also an IMAX which is (by Butler's own description) fluffier and more PC. 

House of Mirth
A female socialite (Gillian Anderson) in turn-of-the-century New York seeks to solve her gambling debts and get a husband.  Unfortunately for her, she desperately wants to maintain her personal code of ethics and honor, but those around her seem to surreptitiously be working against her.  The weight of the acting falls squarely on Anderson's shoulders.  Her body language and physical movements speak volumes, but most of her lines are delivered in a very wooden and pretentious manner... the moments when her vocal acting shines through are those in which the director allows her to express her character's emotions.  The really noteworthy acting comes from Laura Linney (no surprise there), Dan Akroyd (well-suited to playing his smarmy character), Elizabeth McGovern, and Pearce Quigley. 
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Memento
My recommendation is that you go see this movie *cold* without reading much about it in advance... so I'm going to be very evasive about this film's content.  Suffice it to say this is noir with an unusual twist in its storytelling approach.  Not so much of a whodunit as it is a whydunit.
Remember the word-of-mouth buzz that surrounded The Sixth Sense?  It's going to happen again for this flick!  See it as soon as it opens in your town and you'll understand why!

Men In Black II
In a lot of ways, this movie isn't too different from the first MIB in terms of its style of humor and the kinds of interplay between Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. And therein lies my biggest nagging doubt about MIB as a franchise: if Jones has been out of MIB for five years, then why does Smith generally revert back to his largely deferential role as Jones' sidekick? Wouldn't you suppose that the intervening five years would have given him the sort of knowledge that might make Jones a wee bit behind the curve? If there's an MIB III -- and by all accounts there will be -- then this relationship needs to progress and move forward or else it will be too stale to sustain a long run.
If you've seen the first MIB, then you'll get this movie. If you haven't, then you'll need to figure out chunks of the basic premise as the film goes along.
Having said all of that, it should still be noted that this movie was fun. Like Chinese food, it left me hungry for something more substantial a couple of hours later, but definitely fun at the time. (and keep an eye out for those Martha Stewart cameos shot before her insider trading mess... probably creepier than originally intended!)

Mulholland Drive
David Lynch returns to some of the motifs and ideas he explored in his "Twin Peaks" television series and prequel movie without reprising old characters or resorting to derivative replay.  Many audiences will be left scratching their heads -- especially during the extensive non-linear ending -- but Lynch fans will feel at home with red curtains, mysterious boxes, discussions of prescient dreams, bizarre characters, and otherworldly *things* that play with human lives like toys.  Loved it, but then I always prefer Lynch when you think you can *almost* glimpse what he's all about..

The Mummy Returns
Not only does the Mummy return, but so do a whole bunch of other movies.  The first film was an Indiana jones wannabe.  This sequel is also an Indiana Jones wannabe, but it also seems to be groping around for more than just that.  I couldn't help but notice how many scenes and shots seemed to have been lifted from other movies:  Perfect Storm; E.T.; Titanic; JP2: Lost World; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; the original Scooby Doo animated series; Matrix; Twister; and I don't know how many more.  It's almost as if the producers, writers, editors, and director all sat around drinking a few beers and wishing they were actually producing a montage of cliched shots from their favorite movies. 
It is also worth pointing out that the CGI effects were not especially smooth.  CGI works best when the viewer cannot tell that they are looking at CGI, and unfortunately nobody seemed to make any effort to cover up their special effects tracks.  Skip this one!
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Signs
"Sixth Sense" was great. "Unbroken" was good, but stilted. M. Night Shyamalan's latest could be good ("War of the Worlds" as seen by an ordinary Pennsylvania family... who are never called upon to be super-heroes ala "Independence Day", and that makes it much more chilling), but the "twist" at the film's conclusion is preachy and telegraphed way in advance. While "Signs" isn't a poor film by any stretch of the imagination, it doesn't rise to the level worthy of Hollywood's "next Spielberg" (as Shyamalan was triumphantly crowned on the cover of Newsweek). The technical aspects of Shyamalan's cinematography skills are fantastic, and I'd be very interested in seeing him film a screenplay written by somebody else.

Spider-Man
The movie I've been waiting 25 years to see! Competently done, on a par with the original Burton Batman or the first 1970's Superman. Some of the CGI effects are a little obvious, but others are flawless! Overall, the look of Spidey and the choreography of his swinging across Manhattan is great!  And after seeing those shots of the Green Goblin on his glider, can there be any doubt that a Silver Surfer movie is on the way?
Tobey Maguire plays a passable Peter Parker, he just doesn't seem to have much room to develop as a character.  Much as in the initial entries in the Superman and Batman series, the movie has to introduce the characters, provide an origin story, and bring in a villain... the result is that the protagonist hero has very little leeway to anything but be thrust forward by the events of plot.  Many of the supporting characters are also swept up in the riptide of plot progression, so we don't have as good a grasp of them as we would like (big exception: Kirsten Dunst as Mary Jane Parker, who does an amazing job of showing her character's partygirl persona covering up her unhappy life at home).
This movie does a good job of laying the necessary groundwork for a franchise, though, and the real test of how this movie will be viewed years from now is how Spider-Man 2 develops all of the characters. 

Star Wars Episode II: Attack Of The Clones
OK, so a lot of reviewers out there have indicated that this movie is only marginally better than Phantom Menace, and they go through a lot of pains to explain why this is the case. To them I say: if you go to see a Star Wars movie, you get a Star Wars movie. What were you expecting? Gone With The Wind???
Having said that, the record needs to show that Hayden Christiansen can't act, and the fact that Anakin Skywalker is an immature lout exposes this lack of talent. The romance between Skywalker and Amidala is supposed to be an important cornerstone to the Star Wars mythos, and there's no clue why she would develop anything but negative feelings for him. (maybe she's rebounding from a nasty break-up with Jar-Jar Binks?)
There are, however, lots of positives. The plot is definitely more sophisticated than for any of the other Star Wars movies, and you have to really pay close attention at the end to understand the extent of the galactic conspiratorial con job you've just witnessed. Samuel L. Jackson, painfully bad for the few lines he delivers in Episode I, is a more important character and does a wonderful job. Christopher Lee is exceptionally well-cast as the unfortunately named Count Dooku. The visuals are, astonishingly, even richer than for the previous installment... the DVD is going to be a blast, I'm sure! And the links between this movie and the original trilogy are *everywhere*! Every time you least expected it, you were presented with another bit of info or a character that dovetails with Episodes IV-VI.
If you enjoy Star Wars, this is not to be missed or dissed!

Tape
Sometmes a motion picture is scripted well, performed well, directed well, shot and edited well, but it's still not enough.  Such is the case with this tedious film.   The movie opens with two old high school friends meeting up at motel room.  Vince is a druggie loser, and John looks like he's the stable guy who's "done good", having become an indie film director.  Then it begins to look like he may have committed date rape against Amy, Vince's former high school girlfriend ten years ago.  Eventually Amy herself shows up at the room during the last third of the movie and things get even more uncomfortable. 
The writing is very good: all three characters and their points of view have a layer of ambiguity that mean each member of the audience will have a different opinion depending on what they themselves bring to the film.  Is John the mature guy who's struggling about how to face up to a past mistake?  Or is he a snivellling cowardly pseudo-intellectual?  Is Vince a total bottom-feeder or is he the unknowing and  ironic bearer of enlightenment?  Women will most likely believe that Amy is in denial about her rape and may have been pregnant in college because of it.  Men may well pick up on hints that she may well have not been a virgin before she and John had sex and that she may in fact owe her assistant district attorney job to the fact that her boyfriend is the D.A. in town.  It may be that all six are true.
But one of the main difficulties is that it takes too long to establish all of these "interpretation conflicts".  That isn't a fault of the script-writing... rather, it is a risk inherent to a movie that takes place in real time and never leaves the motel room at any time during the movie.
The other difficulty is that I have no reason to like any of these three characters, and I find myself thinking that there must be a more interesting room somewhere in this motel in which to a be a fly on the wall.. 

The Widow of Saint-Pierre
At last!  A French movie that isn't about adultery!  (...now if only they would get rid of the accordian in the soundtrack music!) 
St. Pierre is a French-controlled island off of Newfoundland.  This movie is loosely based on an incident that apparently occurred during the 1920's on the island, although the film "transplants" its setting to the early 19th century.  Neel Auguste commits murder and is sentenced to death.  The problem: there's no guillotine on the island, and other forms of execution are not allowed under Napoleanic France.  Paris eventually promises to send a guillotine by ship from the Caribbean.  Meanwhile, Auguste is placed into the custody of the local military commandant.  The commandant's wife, a very progressive woman played by the wonderful Juliette Binoche, takes it upon herself to reform Auguste.  She succeeds to the point where even when St. Pierre gets its guillotine, nobody among the island's populace is willing to serve as executioner.  This puts the local government in an even bigger bind since Paris expects Auguste to be executed in a timely manner. 
Beautifully done, but some viewers may wonder about victims' rights (Auguste, after all, freely admits that he committed the murder), but the film's characters are really intended to be archetypes rather than true flesh-and-blood historical figures.

With A Friend Like Harry
A strange blend of Lynch and Hitchcock with a French point of view.  Creepy and excellent.