Lawrence Van Gelder

For horror film devotees eager to know how this unseasonable visit from the darker spirits of autumn rates, frankly, it's more marketing trick than moviegoer treat.

Though it flies in the face of credibility and becomes downright silly by its end, I Know What You Did Last Summer knows its way around the rules of the popular horror-film genre.

Poverty, capable of stunting lives, can also blight films. A case in point is the earnest and heartfelt but undernourished and plodding Off the Hook.

In the end, The Baxter is a Baxter of a movie: well meaning and mildly likable, but unlikely to sweep you off your feet.

Establishes its ominous mood and tension swiftly, and if the suspense never rises to a higher level, it is nevertheless maintained throughout.

A sadistic, bloody, foul-mouthed action movie.

The director's attention to details of character and locale makes for a precise evocation of a New York seldom seen in feature films.

Not a subtle film; and, most curiously -- to put it mildly -- for a sermon on tolerance, it resorts to history's eternal scapegoat.

Gang Related is a preposterously overplotted tale of two police detectives with moral compasses so defective that they have buried their brains and consciences along with 10 of their murder victims long before the film even begins.

Leelee Sobieski and Albert Brooks, especially Mr. Brooks, deliver outstanding performances in the first feature film to be directed by Ms. Lahti.

The novelty of a bloody horror film built around a malevolent doll carrying the soul of a serial killer has worn thin.

An offbeat little charmer of a mystery.

Director Curtis times his audience immersions into the ice bath of terror with such skill that moviegoers will scarcely have the leisure to ask why some of the renters aren't a bit more observant and curious about their dwelling.

To make a film in 2005 that asks audiences to sympathize with the plight of a band of terrorists is an intellectually audacious gesture.

The movie only really comes alive when the music plays and people sing and dance.

Torturously boring.

This well-cast film does with a lighter hand for art what "The Producers" does for show business.

The law of averages demands that every once in a while a movie must come along starring young nonprofessional actors who aren't very good. That's unfortunately the case in 15.

Begins to seem not so much an examination but an exploitation.

Acted by an appealing cast, enlivened with well-chosen and varied music and filmed with bleak beauty by the cinematographer Eduardo Serra.

Mr. Morel's predilection for murky, nearly pitch-black cinematography and spare, elliptical dialogue indicates his debt to filmmakers like François Ozon and Claire Denis, but Three Dancing Slaves lacks the psychological precision of Mr. Ozon's or Ms. Denis's work.

The card announcing the film's G rating was roundly booed by the youngsters though at almost every sight of the dog they screamed with mouth-filled delight.

Though it generates its share of unintentional giggles, Desert Wind does manage to take us to a seldom-visited place: the hidden corners of the straight male mind.

Lovingly shot on location in the Italian neighborhoods of Providence, this comfortably predictable film has its pleasures, most notably a dryly funny Adrienne Barbeau as the brothers' hip, hard-drinking Aunt Lidia.

This sweet-natured but plodding adaptation of a young-adult novel by Carl Hiaasen could have used a little less broad satire of corporate greed and a few more, well, owls.

American Chai may not tell a new story, but in its understanding, often funny way, it tells a story whose restatement is validated by the changing composition of the nation.

The buoyancy is only intermittent.

Too much soap opera colors its love story, and the industrial- strength dancing by booted men that is its centerpiece falls short of exhilaration.

The offending videotape is never seen, but the entire film is built around its absence. Periodically, the film returns to a written police account of the video, which scrolls up the screen, documenting the animal's suffering blow by blow to the sound of ominous music.

Slight but bright and charming.

It is the absence of genuine comedy that exposes glaringly the film's fundamental attitude of condescension and scorn toward blacks and women, and a tendency toward stereotyping that clashes violently with its superficial message of tolerance, compassion and fair play.

A mere slip of a movie, a wan character study of people who add up to little more than a series of studied quirks.

Turns out to be a pretentiously righteous drama that drowns any claim to serious attention in a sea of superficial characters.

The team that gave the world "Dumb and Dumber" returns with something feeble and feebler.

For juvenile filmgoers and families in search of a more-than-twice-told tale with uplifting messages about the rewards of perseverance, the virtues of animals and acceptance of the handicapped, MVP will do.

Sometimes even a talented lineup produces unexceptional results.

That "The Keeper" was made by a novice is evident in the visible seams between the present-day narrative and the flashbacks; the whole thing plays like a loopy amalgam of stilted costume picture and after-school special.

The medium is more palatable than the saccharine message because Hopkins and Gooding know how to put on a show.

When it comes to an ending, Drive Me Crazy offers no surprises, but it arrives there in amiable, sensible style.

J.D.'s Revenge crosses the line from a stupid movie to a potentially harmful one.

Ridiculous without being awful enough to be hilarious.

Leave It to Beaver is the sort of movie that could be described as good clean fun if it happened to be good or fun.

Easy to like and difficult to admire.

Most of the principal female characters are either sexually voracious, sexually promiscuous, pregnant out of wedlock or angrily bent on revenge.

Serious, competent and unsurprising debut film.

This clunky juvenile comedy lurches among multiple story lines without fully realizing the comic potential of any.

Warm of heart, modest in polish, Amy provides satisfactions that must be balanced against its flaws.

A superior Seagal film, a smooth blend of action, character and noble environmental message. Credit is owed to the screenplay by Jeb Stuart and Philip Morton, which provides strong supporting roles; the photography, directed by Tom Houghton, which brings out the beauty of the landscape violated by the villains, and the lively country music, which is attributed to Nick Glennie-Smith. [6 Sept 1997, p.18]

What Yellowbeard establishes is that for even the funniest of performers, a good script may be as essential as pitching is to baseball.

Special effects in which the actors appear repeatedly in black outline and occasionally distorted perspective; and an assortment of tricks (rearing up on hind wheels, blushing and blinking his lights) that possesses a somewhat limited power to captivate...Reluctant adults marched off to "Herbie" by tiny press gangs may take what consolation they can from the scenery, featuring France and Monaco.

Eventually becomes preaching that is likely to tax the credibility of the unconverted.

A modest but engaging mixture of comedy and drama that derives most of its energy from the performance of Callie Thorne.

Once again, the proceedings have been directed with high energy and rapid pace by Bob Clark, and the results are slicker and more sophisticated than before. Refined sensibilities may understandably recoil from all this: high art is not among the aspirations of Porky's II. But lots of lowdown fun? Well, that's another matter.

Mr. Rodriguez seems unsure what his film is really about, making the moral of the story -- "dream an unselfish dream" -- feel more like a vaguely judgmental homily than a satisfying conclusion.

Despite the presence of such performers as E. G. Marshall and Sean McClory and the comedy team of Penn (the hustler) and Teller (the Arab), My Chauffeur remains a victim of low literacy, muddled characterizations, frequently rudimentary acting and unrealized yearnings toward humor.

With its heavy symbolism and awkward, lurching pace, A Hole in One leaves viewers with little more than the vague conviction - which I think I already had going in - that falling in love is better than an ice pick to the brain.

Knock Off runs breathlessly over land and water in familiar comic book fashion, offering more action than sense and next to nothing in the way of suspense, humor or romance.

Sheds heat but insufficient light.

In the end the elaborate gimmickry of Inspector Gadget cannot conceal its very ordinary storytelling.

A well-cast disaster movie more notable for special effects and stunts than for credible drama.

More focused on surface than true revelation.

Belly is a film that begs for a pat on the head for its virtue while catering to cinematic tastes more interested in crotch shots, topless dancers, wall-sized television screens, ganja galore and, wherever possible, crime without punishment, all to the accompaniment of a high-octane soundtrack.

People who are immune to atrocious acting in minor roles; to occasionally poor dubbing; to a totally unoriginal story; to the sort of sloppiness that allows at least one reference to the octopus as a squid; and to a climactic sequence that looks like feeding time at the aquarium when it is at all intelligible, will cull the exceedingly minor rewards of "Tentacles" from some realistic underwater photography, a nicely manipulative opening sequence in which the baby vanishes; and the bobbing corpse gimmick that was more shocking than anything else in "Jaws."

Repackaged as cyberthriller, the old time-travel adventure returns in this stylish but overplotted and ultimately illogical combination of science fiction, mystery and romance.

Film Geek has a likable premise, an unusual setting in downtown Portland, Ore., and a pleasantly homemade indie feel. Unfortunately, Scotty Pelk, as written by James Westby and played by Mr. Malkasian, is actually so irritating, so genuinely hard to take, that like the rest of the characters in this semiautobiographical movie, we soon find ourselves itching to get away from him.

Nearly every one of the film's emotional scenes is too predictable to hit its mark, but Mr. Jones's dry delivery has its moments.

Screwballs establishes that - in the absence of talent - teen-age prurience, old Thunderbirds, rock music and hula hoops do not add up to entertainment.

For all its experimental intentions, Loudmouth Soup feels familiar: a claustrophobic Hollywood satire that's short on kinesis and long on conversation.

Combines old-fashioned boys' adventure with a heavy-handed modern lecture on parenthood. The film possesses a decent heart but suffers from a simple mind.

All its 89 minutes of fast cuts, swooping overhead shots, sun, surf, song, sunburn and sex cannot obscure the extent of its shallowness.

Ordinary lives have become an ordinary film.

Travel from Mars to Earth is an amazing feat, but not much more remarkable than reviving a sitcom that had been dead for a third of a century.

A quintessential Renny Harlin film: a big, dumb, loud action movie.

A tale of negligent homicide, class warfare, vengeance, jealousy and murder, Stephen King's Thinner has the outlines of Shakespearean tragedy and the intellectual content of a jack o'lantern. But as such ventures go, this Halloween handout is more treat than trick, if your tastes run to dripping blood and repellent skin ailments. The production is slick, the Maine scenery is bracing, the characters are well-acted, and in a mumbo-jumbo movie with a few loose ends, the makeup central to the plot and applied by Greg Cannom and Bob Laden to Robert John Burke in the leading role is most admirable.

There's not much sense to the plot. But the film makers' blunderbuss approach to humor, with visual and verbal jokes coming in profusion and scattering high and low, guarantees that just about every funnybone is bound to be hit, some more than once.

In films, as in the ring, heart and will without exceptional talent don't produce winners.

A high-concept, low-reward hodgepodge that mingles elaborate stunts and shootouts with stereotypical ethnic humor.

Given genuine life by the dimpled enchantress Nancy St. Alban, Nora makes palpable the bittersweet love at the honest heart of Some Fish Can Fly.

Even pretensions toward the humorous and hip cannot save this blood-drenched film from its innate tastelessness.

When it comes to father, sons and mob life, stick to "The Godfather."

Brilliant film of nature has been warped into something jarringly unnatural.

In retelling this timeworn story of conflict between young men in the New World and their stubborn Old World fathers, Mr. Efteriades may not have generated many sparks, but with his affection for Astoria and its people he has given his tale a warm glow.

Think of it as a modern-day variant on a Shakespearean comedy, only without the verbal felicity or dramatic structure.

A tepid vat of cinematic sludge...O'Neal will doubtless survive this latest misadventure, as he did last year's outing as a genie in "Kazaam," but only the most devoted of his admirers will want to watch him lumber through "Steel."

All the special effects in the world cannot compensate for an inability to generate tension, establish and sustain pace or create any character whose survival is worth rooting for.

What results is a candy-colored broad comedy with noteworthy performances.

Theresa Russell is terrific as Angela's slatternly but loving mother, but her character disappears abruptly midway through the movie.

It is a measure of the shortcomings of this genial, well-meaning but ultimately unenchanting film that scene after scene is stolen by the second bananas.

A smoother, funnier, more suspenseful and more endearing version of the 1980 John Cassavetes film of the same title.

Tedious descent into cinema hell.

When it comes to entertainment, children deserve better than Pokémon 4Ever.

Structurally, Sex, Politics and Cocktails is wildly, almost frantically inventive, with techniques ranging from stop-motion to split-screen to silent film-style intertitles. But no amount of directorial trickery can mask the essential vacuousness of the story and its characters.

Memo to Shaquille O'Neal: Don't give up your night job.

Cause for fright in only one respect: the possibility that it could spawn sequels.

Pallid writing, awkward acting, familiar situations and tired jokes make the morons, wimps and losers of Meatballs Part II easy to pass up.

A mound of standard-issue parent-child conflicts and enough self-help cliches to drive Polonius to the aquavit barrel at Elsinore.

Comes off as noisy and ill conceived, long on morphing monsters, short on storytelling talent and uneven in its efforts at animation.

Throughout this lame film, directed by Stephen Kessler and written by Elisa Bell, situations are developed -- complicated directions to a hotel room, Clark clinging to the face of Hoover Dam, Ellen the object of Mr. Newton's seductive charm -- and left to wither without a payoff.