Janet Maslin

In the Mouth of Madness has enough menace and novelty to please fans of Mr. Carpenter's horror films (among them The Fog, Christine and Halloween) without the wider interest of an enchanting parable like Starman, which he also directed. Still, this is a film with the temerity to think big, if only for the magnitude of the wickedness it invokes.

Even if you haven't spent as much obsessive time at the video store as these guys have, you might enjoy helping 'Scream 2' laugh all the way to the bank.

To its credit, the film doesn't sugarcoat its women too monstrously, and it lets real conflicts and opinions occasionally creep in.

Among the things that deserve mention in this lightweight but sometimes subversively stylish farce are its ingenious credit sequence, its lively editing by Herve Schneid, its use of code names like Artichoke Heart and Cordon Bleu in the guerrilla war that rages underground and its reference to a couple of odd inventions.

It becomes less crisp on screen than it was on the page, with much of the enjoyable jargon either mumbled confusingly or otherwise thrown away.

Like "Agatha" and the rock drama "Stardust," other movies of Mr. Apted's, Coal Miner's Daughter does a better job of setting its scenes than of telling a story. Its characterizations and its atmosphere work better than the action, which becomes shapeless and, in the manner of biographies of living subjects, slightly cramped by its good intentions.

Because Johnny Handsome is a film by Walter Hill (The Warriors, Streets of Fire), it crams the following things into its first five minutes: gunfire, screeching brakes, a drug-popping hoodlum, a moll in black leather, a violent robbery, one murder, sinister masks, shattering glass. But because this is Mr. Hill's work, these ingredients are slapped together with high style.

Mr. Schrader doesn't match the Leonard habit of ending each scene with a lively little jolt. But he succeeds admirably in extracting the novel's best lines and in casting his film with mischievous verve.

Mr. Argento's methods make potentially stomach-turning material more interesting than it ought to be. Shooting on bold, very fake-looking sets, he uses bright primary colors and stark lines to create a campy, surreal atmosphere, and his distorted camera angles and crazy lighting turn out to be much more memorable than the carnage.

It's a big, lavishly staged farce that aims to please even those who favor sophisticated screwball comedy, a genre to which it is greatly indebted.

Of all the bravura visual effects in Martin Scorsese's dazzingly stylish Casino, it's a glimpse of ordinary people that delivers the greatest jolt.

Brooks brings vast reserves of quarrelsome, hairsplitting hilarity to the story of a man going mano a mano with his sweet little mom.

The screenplay, by Jeffrey Price, Peter S. Seaman and Daniel Pyne, is occasionally sharp-tongued but more often pleasantly knee-deep in rustic corn. Mr. Fox also seems a shade more substantial this time, possibly because he is seen making life-or-death decisions when not fielding comic lines.

Deliciously silly.

Ms. Stone's presence nicely underscores the genre-bending tactics of Sam Raimi, the cult director now doing his best to reinvent the B-movie in a spirit of self-referential glee. Mr. Raimi is limited by a sketch mentality, which means his jokes tend to be over long before his films end. But his tastes for visual mischief and crazy, ill-advised homage can still make for sly, sporadic fun.

It works because Miss Midler and Miss Long are hilarious, both separately and together. Another thing that works is Leslie Dixon's screenplay, which has energy, wit and a supreme confidence that's just this side of bluster.

Both Paul and the film would seem maddening if they weren't so passionately sincere, and if Paul did not gaze at the film's many beautiful young actresses with such an amazed, seductive gleam in his eye.

The fundamentals here go beyond first-rate: animation both gorgeous and thoughtful, several wonderful songs and a wealth of funny minor figures on the sidelines, practicing foolproof Disney tricks. Only when it comes to the basics of the story line does Aladdin encounter any difficulties.

Robert Downey Jr.'s Blake Allen is enough of a raging dynamo to find the dark humor and desperate romanticism at the heart of Mr. Toback's ego trip of a premise, and to make Blake sympathetic too.

This is essentially a formula film, and as such it's nothing fancy. But it has crisp, spare direction, enormous momentum and a story full of twists and turns. For anyone who thinks they don't make spine-tingling detective films the way they used to, good news: they've just made another.

Mr. Douglas, who delivers a new shade of cruel elegance each time he plays another urbane monster, is the ideal star for this vigorously contrived thriller.

Mr. Burton's new Batman Returns is as sprightly as its predecessor was sluggish, and it succeeds in banishing much of the dourness and tedium that made the first film such an ordeal.

A well-made work with much to recommend it, even if its worthiness is not the brightest flare on the movie horizon this season.

Drawing upon the novel with merciful selectivity, and adding such a contemporary flavor that the film's woodsmen often have a laid-back air, Michael Mann has directed a sultrier and more pointedly responsible version of this story.

Fortunately, the actors are mostly likable, and the story is told gently enough to downplay both its trendiness and its conventionality.

For a time, The Best Intentions captures the elements of a profoundly difficult and credible love story, one plagued by essential differences that cannot be resolved.

The screenplay for Copycat, by Ann Biderman and Jay Presson Allen from a story by David Madsen, is otherwise so crackling good that character development threatens to eclipse the actual crimes.

It has a style that is unexpectedly snappy. Scares are not its strong suit, but it has a trim, bright look and better performances than might be expected. William Katt, looking weathered and sounding very Robert Redfordlike as Roger Cobb, brings some conviction to his role, and George Wendt is funny as a nosy next-door neighbor named Harold.