Caryn James

The director, Roger Donaldson, best known for the Kevin Costner thriller No Way Out, keeps the film moving. But there is only so much suspense he can generate from this stock story and familiar-looking special effects. Species may work best for viewers who don't like to be too scared by horror movies; it's reassuringly familiar.

While it lacks the ambition to turn its obvious plot into a film that feels new, it also avoids the pitfalls of moral smugness and stereotyping. It flows along easily, bolstered by Taraji P. Henson’s and Sam Rockwell’s vibrant performances.

The movie The Baby-Sitters Club offers the same comfort factor as the books, but suffers from a definite lack of excitement.

This huge cliche of a movie isn't even a distant relation of films like The Color of Money, which can actually make you root for hustlers. The Big Town only proves we've gone back to the 1950's one time too many.

Critters 2 piles up every stock movie idea you can remember about small-town heroism, macho sheriffs and alien invaders. But whenever it shows a glimmer of wit about those cliches, it leaps back to its safe, dull, derivative style.

Prison has a generic, low-budget name, and for once you can judge a movie by its title. This prison-drama-meets-ghost-story turns out to be an object lesson in how cheaply and badly a film can be made.

Richard Tuggle's new film wants to be a realistic thriller, but it merely acts out kids' fantasies of heroism and adventure, with drugs and rock music thrown in for a contemporary twist.

Some films can re-energise a genre, like last year's huge hit Godzilla Minus One . . . Godzilla x Kong is the opposite, a dazzling visual accomplishment that already feels old.

It is the laziest sort of action comedy, with lumbering chase scenes, a dull-witted script and the charmless pairing of Mr. Eastwood and Bernadette Peters.

This new Rebecca feels as if someone at Downton Abbey were having a bad day.

Their best moments are some throwaway routines; they weep in the car as they sing along to the Carpenters' "Superstar." More often, the movie goes for stale, obvious sight gags like Tommy's slow destruction of Richard's precious car. As mismatched-buddy teams go, Felix and Oscar have nothing to worry about here.

Death Wish 4 is as efficient and predictable as Kersey himself, and inoffensive as long as you can root for a sociopathic hero.

The very best I can say is that Witchboard should encourage struggling film makers. Watch it and think, ''I can do better than that!''

This slick movie proves how much fun it can be to watch first-rate actors challenge our credulity and rise above a second-rate script.

Satisfaction is a typical, low-budget summer movie, where everyone has a hot romance, a good body and an expensive haircut.

Foe plays to the strengths of its actors, two of the most natural and subtle on screen, and is endlessly engaging even though it eventually stumbles into head-spinning narrative problems.

Though ''Roxy Carmichael'' is never as fresh or powerful as it might have been, it is a sweetly engaging film in the Barry Levinson school: just when you think it might fall into a bottomless pit of sentimentality, it stops short.

Deadly Friend is stylish and sardonic enough to offer horror fans some knowing laughs and a pleasant relief from shrieking.

The best that can be said for the film is that it leaves Ernest behind now and then to focus on Santa, who is played by Douglas Seale with sweetness, sincerity and an amazing amount of dignity, considering his surroundings.

Captain Kirk and his crew go where too many film makers have too often gone before.

These robots transform in a flash; the colors are shocking pinks and electric greens; the film is packed with one-to-one combat, large-scale battles and exploding planets. Despite these improvements, though, the movie is not for anyone too grown-up.

The background is energetic; too bad the foreground is just as chaotic...Mr. Lowenstein - whose work includes many rock videos and ''Strikebound,'' a film about Australian miners - prefers sensory overload to coherence.

Elvira, Mistress of the Dark is a lame attempt to cash in on her character's success.

Shaped by a near-constant monologue from a golden retriever named Enzo, The Art of Racing in the Rain is watchable but flat, with only occasional flashes of wit and feeling.

There are some grotesquely stylish and scary moments in Phantasm II, the sequel to a 1979 film that Don Coscarelli made as a precocious 25-year-old. Unfortunately, these episdoes seem to take as long to arrive as the sequel did.

An uninspired circus film for children.

With a little more wit and a little less blood, Renegades could have been Lethal Weapon Jr. It is a fast, violent, implausible film about mismatched partners, and though it doesn't exactly break the bounds of its trashy genre, it's not at all bad for what it is.

Stargate is a clever adventure that should find its audience.