Janet Maslin

Wonderfully funny behind-the-scenes look at the perils of film making, no-budget style.

Once Bitten affects a glossy, sophisticated look that does little to upgrade the film's adolescent humor. As directed by Howard Storm, it has a lot more stylishness than wit. Miss Hutton looks great in black, but her predatory vampire grows tiresome very quickly, as do all the Bloody Mary jokes.

The best western in a long while is Barbarosa, a film that uses one American legend, Willie Nelson, to create another.

It is a great disappointment, halfway into the movie, to find The Star Chamber so far off the track that its credibility almost entirely disappears...The Star Chamber has a well- meaning urgency, and it is an entertaining film even when it becomes so thoroughly misguided.

Mr. Rifkin's direction does display, in addition to an appreciation of Mr. Lynch and perhaps John Waters, a promising eye for design and a taste for the unusual. With less noxious material and a less patronizing manner, those talents would amount to a lot more.

Mr. Diesel could not have succeeded as a genre-switcher without the proven television talents of the film's able ensemble.

Miss Dunaway gives the uncanny, meticulous Crawford imitation that is at the heart of Mommie Dearest. The movie itself has nothing like the brilliance of the impression, which is why it remains an impression and can't altogether rise to the level of a performance. But on its own terms Miss Dunaway's work here amounts to a small miracle, as one movie queen transforms herself passionately and wholeheartedly into another.

Mr. Eggleston proves the polished granddaddy who, early on, recognized beauty in a garish wasteland. In this accomplished look at a storied career, he instructs - without words - how to see all that is hauntingly familiar.

Tony Scottmdoes his utmost to pump up the audience's adrenaline at all times, which means that the film's big moments - the races, the crashes, the news that someone needs brain surgery - don't seem that different from the small ones.

For all its pretty glimpses of the desert island, the film never offers a clear, overall sense of what the place looks like; neither the camera nor the boy really goes exploring.

The principal thing that keeps "The Seduction of Joe Tynan" engrossing is the level of acting it sustains throughout.

No one who sees Full Metal Jacket will easily put the film's last glimpse of D'Onofrio, or a great many other things about Kubrick's latest and most sobering vision, out of mind.

Manages to have playful comic ingenuity of its own.

More often, the film is like a ride through a car wash: forward motion, familiar phases in the same old order and a sense of being carried along steadily on a well-used track. It works without exactly showing signs of life.

The film's mix of romance and reading matter is seductive in its own right, providing comfy book-lined settings and people who are what they read and write.

Carl Reiner's hit-or-miss film noir parody, a collection of gags that vary much too wildly in terms of timing and wit. All that hold this comedy together are a playful outlook and a conviction that detective stories are intrinsically funny, especially if the detective is as much of a blockhead as Ned Ravine.

Barcelona, like "Metropolitan," indulges in long, hair-splitting discussions without resorting to broad gags or worrying about wearing out its welcome.

Multiplicity weaves such an uninteresting plot around its bland, generic principals that it rarely reaches the absurdist heights its premise demands.

Eastwood directs a sensible-looking genre film with smooth expertise, but its plot is quietly berserk.

An interminable car chase punctuated by dumb stunts and even dumber dialogue, plus the well-worth-missing sight of Paul Williams in a dress.

A cute, buoyant sports fantasy, jolted along by a reggae soundtrack and playfully acted by an appealing cast. This new Disney comedy is slick, funny and warmhearted, very much in the old-fashioned Disney mode.

Mr. Spielberg's 1971 television film Duel took advantage of the very narrowness of its premise, building excitement from the most minimal ingredients and the simplest of situations.

The film is in fine shape as long as it revels in its own craziness, making no claims on the viewer's reason. But when it asks you to believe that what you're watching may really be happening, and to wonder what it means, it is asking far too much.

Mr. Hamilton's knack for comedy has been a well-kept secret until now, but he's certainly funny in Love at First Bite, a coarse, delightful little movie with a bang-up cast and no pretensions at all.

Mr. Bogosian's venomously funny play, which he adapted himself for the screen, is given warmth and generosity by Mr. Linklater, whose elegantly fluid direction and great skill with actors are accentuated by the play's spareness.

Mr. Marshall does a much better job with the feistier early scenes than with this subsequent mush, so the film does have a good first hour. But by the end, the film goes on much longer than it should. The physical look of Overboard is also surprisingly dreary. Though the yacht scenes have some visual wit, particularly where Miss Hawn's outrageous costumes are concerned, John A. Alonzo's cinematography is conspicuously poor.

Smoothly directed and acted with glee... showing quick-witted comic spirit.

A technological marvel, arch and innovative with a daringly offbeat visual conception. But it's also a strenuously artful film with a macabre edge that may scare small children. And beyond that, it lacks a clear idea of who its audience might be.