Although the stellar contributions to this supremely intelligent film are many, there's no mistake that the presence of director Redford dominates the film.

There's really nothing new here (as if anyone expected there would be), but it's a decent enough entry into the Karate Kid series, if you don't mind having seen it all done before, and better.

All of it plays a bit phony. Perhaps something was lost in the transition from book to film. The movie was adapted by novelist William Boyd himself, but it feels like it's missing something, maybe a narrative voice that gave all the coincidence and silliness some sense.

What Happened Was … dissects the interminable hopefulness of dating. Noonan, who also wrote the script, has an ear for believable dialogue, and Sillas (Simple Men, Risk) allows every conceivable emotion to ripple across her face, which is a landscape unto itself.

It takes a bit to get going, but once it does, Fresh never lets up.

At times poignant, joyful, and terrifying, Shawshank Redemption is an altogether brilliant movie and the debut of an equally brilliant director.

Quentin Tarantino sans the witty dialogue.

Berserk from the outset, Natural Born Killers lunges for our collective viscera in its opening sequence (surely one of the most brilliant establishing sequences of all time) and never lets go for the next two hours.

Color of Night is yet another in a string of vapid, low-tension headaches passing for suspense thrillers (Fatal Attraction, Jennifer 8, Single White Female) that tries to go everywhere and, instead, goes nowhere. At all.

Where drag is concerned, though, the film does anything but drag; Elliott has no compunction about restraint, and Priscilla gushes with bitchy repartee, campy comedy, sappy Seventies pop (Abba! “Billy, Don't Be a Hero”! “Take a Letter, Maria”!), and production numbers so outrageous, they make the Divine Miss M's excess look like the efforts of a Baptist boys' camp.

Lehmann has dropped the ball -- or the pick, whichever the case may be -- again. Instead of playing up the inherently silly, goofy nature of heavy metal, he sinks to its level, offering nothing more than the occasional chuckle and some ratty old combat boots.

Adults can enjoy the way these youngsters spout grown-up chatter and all ages can delight in the old-fashioned slapstick. I won't claim this film's great, but it is fun, and remarkably innocent and playful.

There is enough intrigue to keep it interesting, and if it ever feels too slow, try counting the number of people who get betrayed.

With great subtlety and knowing humor, Eat Drink Man Woman emerges as one of those unforeseen treats.

Carrey has yet to find the perfect vehicle for himself, but The Mask, while hardly as fantastic as it should have been, is a step in the right direction.

Barcelona does have brief flashes of brilliance.... For the most part, however, Barcelona offers nothing much interesting beyond some beautiful scenery and generally annoying characters.

Sure, Rosie Perez's greedy Muriel is a cartoon and her voice, always at full drill-bit whine, is wearing, but the warmth and graciousness apparent in every frame keep this movie touching and sweet. Give yourself over to this giving film and see what happens.

Young kids will likely enjoy watching all the hubbub the gutsy protagonist stirs up and identify with his plight, but most anyone over the age of 14 will find the film alternately too cute for its own good and too blind to quit while it's ahead.

This movie is much like its brethren: pretty, with strong leads -- the most fun is watching Sarandon match her heavy-lidded orbs against Jones' demon stare -- great supporting work (especially from the sorrowful Parker and the regal Davis), and a tense chase or two from director Schumacher.

The catch is, once you get past the stunning special effects and the mind-numbing stuntwork, there's not all that much there.

The movie's tone concurrently embraces melodramatics and wry humor, a twisted suburban Oedipal knot seen through a sardonic, yet deeply involved, eye.

So syrupy-sweet in its depictions of the game, angels, orphans, children's wishes, and estranged parents, that it may be all you can do to keep from taking a Louisville Slugger to the projectionist.

A remarkable balance of sentimentality and harshness, darkness and light.

The film still looks great, as does Baldwin, but the tense tale of the fight against Shiwan Khan -- a cooly evil John Lone -- becomes a silly, sloppily developed world takeover story pulled from the Batman TV show, characters stall, and the humor goes broad.

Perhaps sensing that audiences will believe they have already savored the finest MGM musical moments in That's Entertainment! and That's Entertainment! II, the studio has sweetened the pot by including outtakes from its features, songs and scenes deleted prior to the films' original runs.

It's not the greatest movie about baseball ever made (and I'll keep my mouth shut on that one if I know what's good for me), but it's not the worst, either. Like the game itself, it's pretty darn fun.

It all comes off as too sketchy and too obvious, and after 90 minutes, we're bloated with incidents but still hungry for satisfying drama.

Ridiculous plot, dumb characters, foolish dilemmas. The only point to this movie is to make Macaulay a millionaire.

It's a thumping good adventure.

In a film like this, timing is everything, and everyone from the stunt coordinators to the crew-at-large seems to have gotten it right the first time.

At heart, White is a black comedy with intriguing characters and a plot that plays its cards close to the deck.

Only Palance is worthwhile, as Curly's long-lost brother Duke (there's an inspired cowboy name for ya), and even that role seems dazed and clichéd. Tack on an absolutely deranged, hackneyed final reel, and you've got a movie that'll fade from your memory so quick it'll make your eyes water and your teeth hurt.

From the ad campaign, we pretty much know how things are going to turn out, and her pedestrian attempts at subplots are even more transparent than those in "Awakenings."

They're admirable attempts to update the old cartoon's broad social satire and add some depth to these characters, but they're played too gravely (gravelly?) to work in this wild world, and they don't prompt the same silly satisfaction that the show did.

Beverly Hills Cop III is made with so little spark, humor, and internal logic that it makes me better appreciate these other recent Murphy movies where the actor/comedian at least stretched his persona and attempted something apart from the action comedy mold.

Some of the movie's mysteries are more unsuccessfully secular than rapturously eternal, but the doorway opens far enough to offer a few glimpses of nirvana.

Unfortunately, for a number of reasons, the movie does not work, though it's difficult to sort out the “what is” from the “what was” and “what might have been.”

As an updated version of the old western TV show, it does a pleasant enough job.

Crooklyn is a winning work whose charms far outweigh any pitfalls.

Brandon Lee's swan song is a kinetic, pounding, adrenalized feast for the senses, if not the psyche. Bursting with startling images, eclectic staging, and gorgeous neo-gothic set design.

A nifty idea that goes everywhere (and nowhere).

A riot of colors, Kika is sometimes sick, sometimes playful, but consistently hilarious and entertaining in ways that few films have been lately.

The movie brings no new material to the screen and banks on the fact that its underage audience has an unschooled memory. Don't insult your kids with this choppy, unimaginative film product.

Writers Sara Pariott & Josann McGibbon and director Donald Petrie know how life is lived - tending to details - and have packed the film with them, such that it almost works as a slice of suburban life.

It's just a good ol' bad ol' low-road road movie, a throwback to thirty years ago, a picture with hairy arms and a brew in one fist. Maybe that's why, as it ended, I could swear I heard Sam Peckinpah's ghost chuckling away.

As out-of-whack and sophomoric as all this is, the movie sustains a rudimentary action interest.

The gags are quick and barbed, but the wire seems blunted by the essentially one-note gag storyline.

The real star of Red Rock West is the convoluted plot, as twisty as any backroad out south of Bakersfield and with a hell of a lot fewer p(l)otholes.

Cronos is a thoughtful, intelligent film, and as a horror movie (which is, I think, its main mission in life) it's genuinely disquieting.

Let's just say if you liked the last one, you'll like this one, too. Otherwise, you'll discover that it's time for Drebin, Nordberg, Capt. Hocken, and the rest to finally retire their badges.

The chaos, the confusion, the ongoing struggle between personality and purpose, The Paper really gets the beat, gets how a paper comes together and the beat at which that happens.

A disturbing, spare story and a return to Polanski's earlier thematic grounds; it's not Knife in the Water, but it does feature fragmenting marriages and a big boat.

There are lots of laughs in this picture, and though at one point he teeters perilously on the brink of mush and gush, Wilson manages to regain his gently caustic comic footing.

Hudsucker Proxy works more like a fairy tale in which all implausibilities are acceptable and none of it has to play by real-world rules. But it's a fairy tale without any lessons, a satire without any targets.

Sirens, is unable to rise above its intrinsic prurience.

Leary rehashes his Bill Hicks persona for the umpteenth time, but if you can get past the blatant rip-off of his shtick, you'll find an inspired, virulent, often hilarious film that apparently was just too much for old Saint Nick.

A romantic screwball comedy, one is as intoxicated by words, dialogue and characters as by love.

Depp is perfectly cast as Gilbert, by turns sullen, quiet, and caring. Depp's expressive face has long been the focal point of his talent, and he uses it to excellent effect here. It's DiCaprio as Gilbert's retarded brother Arnie who may well get the Oscar statuette. He's utterly, tragically convincing as the boy who wasn't expected to make it to ten, much less eighteen years old.

Sugar Hill is arguably the most beautiful-looking crime drama since Coppola's Godfather, Part II. Forsaking the glitz and over-the-top grittiness of New Jack City and other recent NYC gangster films, director Ichaso instead opts for the lush, burnished earth-tones of the Corleone clan. It's a dark, rich film, and its lengthy running time of over two hours glides by with only a few annoying snags.

The performances of Mary McDonnell as the coach's ex-wife and Alfre Woodard as a ballplayer's ambitious mom raise the dramatic levels to such a degree that you might want to see the movie for their performances alone.

It's Stiller's knowledgeable use of these smaller touches that (along with the excellent cast -- it's great to see Winona relinquishing period gowns and back where she can do some real damage) pushes the film along a solid, fresh line and toward its admittedly Hollywood conclusion. Stiller and company imbue their film with an honest, sarcastic wit that's all too familiar: apparently, somebody's been filming our lives. Does this mean we'll all be getting royalties?

Certain things must be answered, like Seagal's environmental lip service that is utterly mocked by the movie's need to blow things up and destroy property.

This remake of the 1972 Peckinpah gem lacks the Ali McGraw/Steve McQueen heart and soul of the original, opting instead for the vacuous and thoroughly forgettable anti-chemistry of Baldwin and Basinger.

This movie simply reeks.

Manic energy is the term that comes most readily to mind when describing Ace Ventura.

The reality of this film is that it is pretty innocent fare, for the most part, and Depardieu does prove his versatility by possessing a natural comic flair that eases him into the paunchy papa bear role.

Henkin's vision of Mona Demarkov (Olin) as a remorseless, amoral, lethal, and sexually devastating (you should see what she can do with a prosthetic limb) arch-criminal is a nightmare come to life. But perhaps like dreams, the story works best when played out in the furtive dark spaces of the mind's eye.

Lush, succulent, verdant, aromatic. These are the kind of words that come to mind when describing this new Vietnamese film, a film dominated by textures rather than plot.

Gone is the working-class charm and truly clever, humorous situations evocative of the early 1960s and in their place, all the sophomoric, redundant jokes reminiscent of the Police Academy films. Even stars from the original show -- Nipsey Russell and Al Lewis -- can't save it.

Although Ferrara's Body Snatchers might not be the preferred among the three versions, it is nevertheless a clever reading of the story. The decision to start the pod plot within the military is a great one, and there's a disconcerting lack of privacy for the Anwar character.

Driving home with all the windows down, I, for once, relished the bumps on South Lamar and leaned into the curves along Pease Park and, home at last, gave my trusty, tired old Honda a grateful, affectionate pat on its overheated hood.

Part drama, part civics lesson, part entertainment, it sustains our deep curiosity despite the forgone knowledge of how things turn out.

For in relating the true story of Conlon's wrongful conviction and 15-year imprisonment, Sheridan has used the tools of the filmmaker to evoke a visceral echo of Conlon's waking nightmare.

With token computer graphics thrown in to pad an already overlong script, Ghost In the Machine gamely tries to hop aboard the Virtual Reality bandwagon and only succeeds in crashing the Net.

Grumpy Old Men is supposed to be about how love reinvents life and I'm not even really sure where it gets lost, but it ends up going nowhere.

As much as these actors heroically struggle to focus the film, the director more successfully hacks it apart. But if you really love Westerns, despite its faults, it's got to be recommended for Kilmer's performance alone.

While it's sad the filmmakers didn't lavish more detail on the characters' faces and fluidity of their movement, the picture is still dynamic looking: moody, haunting, full of bold shapes and action, striking compositions, and clever quotes from the encyclopedia of noir. It has style to spare. And for any kid at heart whose breath catches at the sight of a caped figure swooping across the sky, it has moments when your lungs will be stopped by a Dark Knight to dream on.

Still, Philadelphia is comprised of enough “little moments” that provide all the richness and grace we need to get us past the film's more inelegant moments. Primary here are the transcendent lead performances by Hanks and Washington, both of whom are, at all times, exciting to watch.

It's a mess, but it's Wenders' mess, and that means that there are any number of salvageable parts to the whole.

Unfortunately, The Pelican Brief comes across as a prolonged bout with deja vu: you know you've seen this before, and more than once at that.

The movie's ending at the train station and the modern-day epilogue feel protracted and indulgent...Apart from the ending though, this is Spielberg's most articulate movie ever.

The astounding performance of David Thewlis as Johnny is in no small measure responsible for the success of Naked. Talking his way through every scene, his portrait of this drifter is mesmerizingly appealing, hateful, humorous, self-destructive, honest and compelling. Still, I am unable to separate my loathing for this character from my feelings about the formal achievements of this movie. The effect may be one of naked observation but the view is ugly and corrosive.

Surjik's skewed Canadian vision keeps WW2 from descending to the level of Thanksgiving leftovers, with frequent touches of out-and-out weirdness and the sure-footed knowledge that this is a comedy, period. It doesn't have to try to be anything more, and that, I think, is why it works so very well.

Certainly movies are a business, but it's only good form for them to at least pretend that they have some reasons for existence other than the purely mercenary. The goal of entertainment has been forgotten here in the mad dash for formulaic guarantees. These comedy nun pushers have forgotten that there's no bottom line at heaven's gate.

A film about Geronimo and about the great feared Chiricahua Apaches would offend, should offend our sensibilities. We should be forced to confront and understand a different way of thinking. This is a more civilized movie, a more noble movie, a remarkably and consistently boring movie.

I'm not sure if this is a failing of the play, the actor, the director, or whatever, but it's a nagging perplexity at the center of this story. Yet there's so much else going on here, ideas and lines of thought that it engenders, that it's difficult not to enjoy the experiences. It's also bitingly funny.

There's not as much bombast here as there was in Parker's Commitments, but then Frears is an entirely different kind of director. He prefers the ensemble to the character study, and here he does a wonderful job of it.

At its best, 32 Short Films manages to convey something of Gould’s state of mind, often using the musician’s own words.

It's just raw, uncoated stupidity that sticks in your throat.

A Perfect World is a gorgeous, sprawling road movie, full of unique characters (more or less -- Laura Dern's criminologist seems like some sort of PC afterthought, and Eastwood's grizzled Ranger borders on cliché) and arresting cinematography that reminds us why we live here in the first place.

Julia, Huston, Ricci, and Workman are all excellent in their roles (Carol Kane as Granny Addams seems little more than an afterthought), but they're unfortunately not enough to save this elongated mess. If you haven't yet seen the first film, rent that instead, or, better yet, go pick up a volume of the original Addams cartoons.

With a concluding chase/shoot-out episode that might even make Hitchcock jealous, Carlito's Way is a dandy piece of entertainment. If the story needs a bit more depth and reason, who really cares? There's hardly time to notice.

Unfortunately, this kind of sledgehammer comedy has worn thin over the many years since Mack Sennett first hit on it.

This is for kids, mind you, it never transcends into farce and even the sheer joy of watching the three of them is overwhelmed by the mundanity of the story and the stereotyping of the fall-in-love-at-first-sight women characters.

Gorgeously lensed and delightfully structured, however, this is, in a word, wonderful.

About as two-dimensional as a comic book, RoboCop 3 should be regarded as the last strike-out.

The amazing thing in Ropelewski's film is just how much of this lowest-common-denominator pabulum has been recycled from the foul spillage of the previous two films. Once again, needlessly, we're treated to lengthy scenes of the family singing and clowning about with treacly plasticity, fantasizing, dreaming, whining, mewling... it's all too much, grating on your nerves and leaving you desperately in need of a healthy dose of cinematic sanity. Or, at the very least, genuine humor.

Director Nunez, whose previous films (Gal Young 'Un, A Flash of Green) are also set in Florida, has an ability to translate states of mind into their native environments and vice versa. In this instance, his regional realism combines with Judd's transfixing performance to create a movie that sticks to your ribs.