Executive producer and screenwriter Audrey Wells' script portrays most of the men as repulsively one-dimensional; the women fare only slightly better as two-dimensional beings: smart and plain, or dumb and drop-dead gorgeous.

For the first time in her film career, Plummer really owns the movie. Plummer's habitation of the character of Eunice in Butterfly Kiss is a creation that sears itself permanently into the viewer's consciousness, though it's possible that, ultimately, you may wish the memory to be quite otherwise.

A classic sophomore slump, all bark and very little bite.

The improbabilities pile up on top of each other in Mrs. Winterbourne, an anxious-to-please romantic comedy about mistaken identity that sounds vaguely familiar.

Cobbling together so many different characters (nearly all of them familiar to regular viewers) has left the Kids' feature debut as something of a letdown. We've seen it all before, and better, on HBO and Comedy Central.

As Tears Go By has some interesting ideas and is an adequate first film, but, ultimately, is only slightly more interesting than any number of similar pictures made in the wake of John Woo's seminal 1986 trendsetter A Better Tomorrow.

Scenes rarely exploit their full potential and, frequently, it's clear that the slightest bit of effort might have made the shots work more smoothly. Movies like this could start giving sports a bad name.

Exploitation fans will be disappointed to see that Roy Frumkes, who wrote the incredible cult favorite Street Trash and directed the excellent documentary Document of the Dead, and Alan Ormsby, who collaborated with Bob Clark on his forgotten classics Deathdream, Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, and Deranged, were partly responsible for The Substitute's abysmal screenplay.

It's full of special effects that are big on smoke and noise, but short on logic and payoff.

While the account of Walden's heroics doesn't necessarily move from legend to fact, it does push the bounds of truth and raise interesting questions about the function of truth for the survivors of war.

Despite a few scattered moments of visceral excitement, the only thing truly frightening about the oh-so-ominously titled Fear is how so many talented people came to be involved in so inane a project.

I hope we don't have to wait another quarter-century for the next great Dahl adaptation, but for a film as good as this one, I'll wait.

Norton's performance and the well-paced tension preceding the movie's climactic sequence provide an entertaining if slightly predictable thriller.

With acting legends Duvall and Jones in the lead roles, the story stays afloat, but occasionally these actors seem to be lurching around in a script that's too "small" for them.

Ghost in the Shell is a slick but plodding recycling of tired cyberpunk clichés that adds nothing new to the genre.

All things considered, Sgt. Bilko is little more than a lengthy episode of the original show. Only less creepy.

Taking the concept of the dysfunctional family to a degree that might even boggle Leo Tolstoy's mind, Flirting With Disaster is every son or daughter's nightmare… multiplied.

As Dawn, Matarazzo isn't afraid to evoke the horrors of puberty with a straightforward charmlessness: She's gawky, unhappy, and confused, while her tingling of sexual desire downright gives you the shivers.

It's a mess alright, but it's easy on the eyes. Like phone sex is for the ears. Only not as much fun.

Just when you're about to give up on this seemingly sorry excuse for an action movie, the picture does an about-face in a matter of minutes, and pushes the tension level way into overdrive and transforms suddenly into a solidly entertaining thriller.

An immersion into the characters' world in toto, from the "Oh geezes" and the "Oh, yaahs" to the dark and flinty core beneath.

A bit of a letdown in some ways, The Birdcage nonetheless features some scene-stealing performances.

Though The Flower of My Secret is not as crazed as "Women on the Verge," the movie marks the return of Almodóvar's delicious humor and a departure from the nastier streak that this Spanish director has been on recently.

The performances here are irresistible, thrilling in their invention and spontaneity, as is the mind-blowing, urgent cinematography of frequent Wong collaborator Christopher Doyle, which makes the most of Hong Kong's neon-drenched streets and cramped interior spaces.

This fourth and, presumably, final entry into the ever-deteriorating Hellraiser series is by far the worst of the lot: a jumbled, unsatisfying, and ultimately boring glimpse into the past, present, and future of the notorious cenobite affectionately known as “Pinhead”.

Comedic touches aside (nearly all of which belong to Ben Stiller who's off on another, far more interesting, planet as the genuinely goofy Bwick), If Lucy Fell strives hard to be a serious romantic comedy for the Nineties. It almost succeeds. Schaeffer trips up, though, when he lets his philosophies get the better of him. Nothing stops If Lucy Fell faster than its mordant underpinnings, cute though they may be. It's “The Best Date Movie of the Nineties,” number 224 in a series. Collect 'em all.

Davies tells David's story in a striking series of tableaux and dioramas, all impeccably executed to the last detail. As in Martin Scorsese's work, there's a great deal of control in Davies' directorial style, to the point that it seems totally lacking in spontaneity. But unlike a Scorsese movie, The Neon Bible implodes rather than explodes.

There's barely a belly laugh here, and judging from the deafening silence in the theatre where I saw the film, it's not just me.

While not quite up to the standard of Chan's finest movies, Rumble in the Bronx is fast-paced, funny, and exciting, and should serve as a nice introduction for the uninitiated to the hyperactive world of Hong Kong action filmmaking.

A gothic little slip of a film, beautiful to behold but with less substance than the shadowy tendrils of fog that blanket nearly every scene.

Bottle Rocket's minimalist pop has a refreshing flavor but insufficient bubbles for a long, cool drink. Maybe someone ought to think about culling this thing down into a sustainable short film.

A lame, unoriginal comedy.

Becker's tight, streamlined direction, along with Nicholas Pileggi's (GoodFellas) excellent script and Cusack's wonderful turn as Calhoun take City Hall far above the standard genre fare. Like real mayoral politics, it's a descent into a snakepit, with no easy answers in sight.

With beauty and talent to spare, Portman is something to behold: It's as if Elizabeth Taylor and Jodie Foster were somehow genetically melded at an early age. She's definitely a beautiful girl to watch for.

A lively action picture with a spirited sense of humor, Broken Arrow is a great deal of fun, even if it isn't exactly a return to form for its celebrated director, former Hong Kong action auteur John Woo.

The only thing that surprises me here is that Roger Clinton isn't signed up for a cameo.

This is horror with a wink and a nod to drive-in theatres and sweaty back seats. This is how it's done.

Mr. Holland's Opus is the kind of movie that only a person who really doesn't like movies could love. It's a movie whose grandiose swagger is meant as compensation for its message about the resignation of the human spirit to smaller gratifications and vistas.

A crowd-pleaser for the under-10 set judging from the preview audience’s reaction, Dunston Checks In offers a few funny scenes, one-liners, and characters, but not enough to inspire the entire film.

Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace is a bad movie, wrongheaded in its concept and empty in its execution.

Unlike great spoofs like Airplane or I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, this gagfest lacks both structure and momentum, and, also unlike those aforementioned classics, the folks behind Don't Be a Menace don't simply seem to be taking good-natured jabs at a genre they truly love.

Gilliam keeps the audience guessing, and in doing so creates a startlingly effective rumination on the nature of sanity and madness cloaked in the shroud of a sci-fi thriller.

Robbins' direction and script are nearly flawlessly rich. There are no easy answers on death row, and Dead Man Walking makes this painfully, powerfully clear.

The cast, a who's who of British stars, is terrific, filling the drama with urgency. But driving it is Richard, is McKellen's towering performance, which seems embodied in his face, the left half sloping down, like a cliff sliding into the sea or like it's being pulled slowly -- fatefully -- to hell.

At its best, there's an undoubted thrill and wonder to Pom Poko, like the massive parade of phantoms the tanuki conjure up as one of their harebrained schemes. Takahata's misfire at least provides some wonderful sparkles.

Shanghai Triad doesn't feel up to Zhang's usual standards.

For all its unwieldy temporal scope and narrowness of perspective, Nixon is an amazingly graceful beast, flawed yet invigorating, packed with enough material that will fascinate and irk moviegoers of all stripes for quite a time to come.

One of the most intelligent crime-thrillers to come along in years.

With its fine performances, gorgeous sets, incredible special effects, imaginative story line, beautiful score (by frequent David Lynch collaborator Angelo Badalamenti), and knockout cinematography, The City of Lost Children is very much worth seeing.

While it can’t hold a candle to Wilder’s film, the updated Sabrina has its moments.

An absorbing, delightful, and nuanced movie with laugh-out-loud humor, and though it often plays events broadly where you might have preferred subtlety, it's not a movie that could have settled for muffled silence.

The movie features a very cool soundtrack and more hip lingo than two ears can absorb. But, like the air in Denver, this movie is spread awfully thin.

Despite its authentic feel for things Western, Wild Bill misses the big picture.

Audacious, thrilling, erotic (and in three languages, no less), I Am Cuba is a lost masterpiece of filmmaking finally seeing the light of day 30 years after its production.

Carrey is in top form here, giving a wildly confident, physically draining performance with all the stops pulled out.

Mighty Aphrodite may take its thematic and structural cues from Greek tragedy, but it's second-rate Borscht Belt all the way.

Overall, the movie stresses the more painful and awkward moments; moments that might be classified as "heartwarming" are rare. This results in a very cynical tone and I suspect that was not the desired effect.

Very slick and extremely silly, not to mention aptly titled, Fair Game is just that - a noisy actioner so inanely scripted, acted, and directed that it practically begs you to make fun of it.

The story excels in its portrait of obsessive love and desire. Where the tale falls down is in its portrait of two comrades in poetry, the writers who inspired each other to new levels of artistry and dwelled with the muses wherever they cohabited.

An amazing, bracing, funny, audacious, tender, and sobering piece of filmmaking. Few movies have ever dared to be this remorseless in their portraits of addiction.

It's an occasionally entertaining ride, although one fraught with numerous logical holes.

Neither all that scary nor all that hilarious, Vampire in Brooklyn falls directly between the two, into the valley of mediocrity.

More than any other filmmaker making movies about the new “kids” generation, it seems to me that Araki -- with both Doom and Totally F***ked Up -- has his finger tuned most acutely to the human pulse and not just the lens shutter.

The film is wickedly hilarious but more in a droll and knowing kind of sense than a har-de-har-har manner.

While Smith's testosterone-loaded humor is a taste I have yet to acquire, his choices of a comic book-inspired credit sequence, the guest appearance of Marvel Comics genius Stan Lee, and the film's overall superhero aesthetic perfectly capture the mall mise-en-scene.

Now and Then somewhat successfully pushes all the right emotional buttons by depicting themes common to most young girls, but I expected more, not less, from the now in Now and Then.

Jim Jarmusch's elegiac, hilarious performance as a man about to smoke his final cigarette is brilliant.

Although there are some exhilarating moments here, they're offset by frequent distractions: Lewis' standard (and now boring) weird performance, an occasional lack of logic in the story line, a tendency to go operatic, and the overall feeling that the movie is unsure of where it is going.

Friedkin, to his credit, gives us a nicely compelling car chase through the near-vertical hills of San Francisco, but it's only five minutes long, and this is a 105-minute film. What to do with the other 100 minutes? No one seems to know.

It’s a nice debut piece for director Baumbach, despite the film’s reliance on the twentysomething blues formula.

On the mean streets, Devil is okay; but it's something special when it gets to Easy's street.

Far and away, one of the most tedious, uninspired offerings thus far (and, worst of all, the door is left open for yet another pointless sequel).

Kidman inhabits the lead character of Suzanne Stone (yes, Suzanne Stone) with such sly and delicious zest that we can only wonder why this aspect of her acting has been buried under blonde dramatic ambitions.

The story is so shabbily built that it can make no valid claim to motives other than the filmmakers' mercenary desires to cash in on the public's prurient interests. And even on this bottom-feeder level, Showgirls fails to deliver the goods.

A very nasty piece of work, indeed.

Silly, predictable, and, dare I say it, oddly endearing, Hackers is the first film I've seen in a long while that annoyed me so much I actually enjoyed it.

Eccentricities, though they are essential to the story, nevertheless come across as too pat and planned in Unstrung Heroes. Despite my inability to dismiss the film's uncomfortable flaws, these were not so distracting that I had anything other than an enjoyable experience while watching the movie and was awash in a small puddle of tears at the end.

This is the first Spike Lee Joint that feels more like a mainstream Hollywood cops-in-the-'hood picture and less like one of Lee's recurrent soapboxes.

Calling To Wong Foo campy doesn't do the film justice: The film camps it up but still allows us to believe in the characters. Snipes and Swayze are so successful in exploring their feminine sides that all of their future roles should be played in drag.

Infinitely subdued, sexy, and melancholy, Nadja is one of the most stylish and quietly exhilarating genre movies to arrive in a long time. Recommended, and not just if you wear black all the time.

Disturbing, harrowing, visceral, and even sporadically humorous, Kids is one of those rare films that begs the description “a must-see.” For once, it's the truth.

Widen gets an “A” for ambition here, but by the end of the whole shebang, you really couldn't care less.

A bust-a-gut film experience that reveals Rodriguez as both a stylist versed in the mechanics of popular storytelling and a maverick whose ingenuity guides him along a singular path.

It is a rare treat of a film.

It is, in essence, the video game transferred part and parcel to the screen, and very well at that.

Bright and cluttered and engaging, The Baby-Sitters Club has a youthful buoyancy and whimsical rhythm that catches even the most jaundiced (i.e., 16-year-old) viewers up in its play of light and energy.

A movie with style to burn, and, initially, that is this crime drama's most mesmerizing aspect.

As far as Pfeiffer's performance goes, she's got charm and pep to spare, but next to zero substance when it comes to exploring her character's particular hypocrisies and pretensions.

Reeves sticks out like a bad grape in an otherwise acceptable harvest. Having taken this role to broaden his acting horizons, his gain is the film's loss.

There are simply not enough sparks here to fire the imagination.

Perhaps one of the cutest children's films ever made.

Despite some briefly breathtaking, computer-generated special effects, Virtuosity is 95 minutes of unsubstantial firefights and meandering plot twists.

Perhaps the most satisfying aspect of this film is its lack of tidy closure. As in life, compromises are reached and battles continue.

Nowhere near the Hollywood disaster that was foretold, Waterworld is a near-model summer fantasy: two hours and 21 minutes of loud, expansive fun.

The movie's suspense derives from figuring out how wide the evil net has been cast. But in terms of suspense, this Net is full of holes.

Operation Dumbo Drop is a disastrous miscalculation that leaves the viewer with only one burning thought: “What the hell were they thinking?”

It's a hilarious, scathing look at one man's attempt to get a film made, whatever it takes, and it may be the most realistic depiction of that struggle so far.

Michael Lehmann's "Heathers" followed the same sort of story line to much better effect in 1989, and Clueless leaves you itching to race over to the video store in search of just that.