Lawrence Van Gelder

Mr. Gast skillfully blends photographs, celebrity interviews with Norman Mailer and others, and colorful forays into the Zairian countryside, where Ali fostered black brotherhood and became a huge favorite, in a film that ''gazes well beyond the ring and seeks engagement with history''.

The kind of silly summer fun that gives family entertainment a good name.

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

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.

In the failure of Electric Dreams to blend and balance its ingredients properly, plot elements are lost (the brick), credibility is overtaxed (the lovelorn computer), and what remains is high tech without being high art.

Though it is marred by an implausible climax and a cloying conclusion, this movie's quiet intelligence sneaks up on you, marking the director as a talent to watch.

Mr. Jewison, filming mainly at Fort Chaffee, Ark., has opened up the play by using such interiors as the bar where the troops hang out and exteriors on and around the base. But perhaps most commendably, he has let Mr. Fuller's drama speak for itself, applying the skills of a film maker to polish the facets that lent such substance to the drama.

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.

Propelled by a captivating, wrenching performance by Karine Vanasse as Hanna, a 13-year-old girl adrift in a sea of powerful emotions in Montreal in 1963.

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."

Harrowing yet hopeful film.

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

Simultaneously fascinating and vexing in ways that might tax informed devotees of both baseball and film.

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.

Slight but bright and charming.

Goldie Hawn and Steve Martin are appealing performers, but none of the energy, professionalism and gameness they display -- can surmount the mess that surrounds them in this misguided comedy.

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

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

As long on adrenaline and special effects as it is short on genuine novelty and intellectual content.

Yakusho and Ms. Shimizu deliver unerring performances in a splendid film that harvests hope from a bleak landscape.

Astringent and unsentimental, it is a case study of losing, its clear eye focused unwaveringly on the realities of commerce and kinship.

An unusually cerebral filmed essay that demands focus and patience from its audience as it sets about the task of unearthing a secret history of the 20th century. Adam Curtis, the film's director and writer, saves the proceedings from being overly dry with his visual wit and deft touch with archival materials.

Experience filmgoing joy.

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.

Plods along, never catching dramatic fire, sometimes suffering from amateurish acting and often relying on its intrusive and treacly music to impart mood and rhythm.

Tedious descent into cinema hell.

But while rooted in British sensibilities, Bean is not to be confused with a Noel Coward comedy. Not every gag in Bean succeeds, but compared with most comedies, this one is a keeper.

C.H.U.D. makes no pretension toward serious theses about government or the environment. It is meant to be light commercial entertainment, and in the category of horror films it stands as a praiseworthy effort.