Steve Davis

Assure Patient, who has paranoid delusions about Jennifer Lopez being molded into the new M______ C_____, to rest easy because Lopez has never made a film as bad as Glitter.

Even the usually unbearable Rourke, who plays yet another psychopath here, is surprisingly subdued and effective -- his performance gives the film its menacing undercurrent. Although Daniel Pyne's otherwise sharp screenplay falls short in explaining why who's doing what to whom, perhaps a little ambiguity is necessary in a movie in which appearances are deceiving. After all, sometimes, you've just got to take these things on faith.

A valentine to the happenstance miracle of lovers and other strangers, a movie that regards modern romance as something that is, ultimately, old-fashioned to its core.

A movie designed without a proper foundation -- it feels as though it might crumble at any minute.

Frankenheimer resorts to gunfire and explosions to bring the film to its predictable end. It's when things get mundane that you find yourself wishing that Brando would reappear on the screen to make things interesting again.

A welcome antidote to most of the crap that for passes today for horror and other supernaturally themed movies.

The metaphoric title about the danger in beautiful things sounds like something from Byron or Keats, but this compressed film adaptation of an Oprah-endorsed bestseller plays like the Dickens.

What is not debatable, however, is that Cruise is an actor of limited emotional resources, one who lacks the presence required for the film’s protagonist, a character intended to inhabit more than one dimension.

A satisfying Cinderella story in which its outcast crew finally get their glass slippers, if not handsome princes. In the greatest of storytelling traditions, it is a true fairy tale with a happy ending.

There’s something earnest and forthright about the movie, despite its misguided execution.

Emotionally urgent, The Living End excites you about the state of independent filmmaking; it's a road movie that leaves a skid mark on the psyche.

Cape of Good Hope is a hopeful piece of humanism that is difficult to begrudge too much.

Franco Zeffirelli's contrived autobiographical film about his youth in fascist Italy has little social grace -- it's embarrassingly awkward, like a dilettante playing the doyenne.

Ultimately, one has to chalk up The Pink Panther to the good old traditions of Hollywood greed and chutzpah. Nothing this slapdash and badly executed is done for the love of movies.

The lengths to which a parent will go to save a child can be gut-wrenching stuff, but Waist Deep rarely hits you in the pit of your stomach. Blame it on the lame screenplay, which unwisely (and badly) gravitates more toward the crime-spree elements of "Bonnie and Clyde" than the fierce parental instincts of, say, "Kramer vs. Kramer" or "Lorenzo's Oil."

The film's biggest shortcoming is that its caricatured strokes aren't broad enough; it lacks the slam-bang energy of the comically grotesque.

When it works, Shall We Dance? has a way of sweeping you off your feet.

Iris is difficult to watch, given that it requires you to witness the transformation of the title character from a literate, vibrant woman to the ghost of her former self.

A laugh-aloud film that exemplifies the snap-crackle-pop of exquisite comic timing.

I give this the BOMB!

Borrows from other movies almost shamelessly.

It's the most compelling American movie to come around in a long, long time.

Predicated as it is on Huppert's pensive, provocative blankness, the action moves a bit slowly, although, as is often the case with Jacquot, events make more sense after the movie is over. Dares to provoke rather than titillate in its delineation of love's strange ways. As the French might say, “L'amour, l'amour, toujours l'amour.”

A delight when its comic elements are in high gear.

A reprehensible movie from just about every perspective, Ransom tries to justify the behavior of its lead character as something grounded in principle, but make no mistake about it: This is the act of a man who can't bear the thought of losing, a man who will turn the tables on his enemy at the risk of a beloved's death.

In short, there's nothing remotely real or appealing about it.

There’s enough intelligence and wit here to sustain your interest, especially when Curtis and Lohan are in peak form. They put the freak in this Freaky Friday.

Bigelow stages the film's action sequences with a brutal efficiency (they almost redeem the movie), but she can't keep the increasingly silly script in check.