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.

Surprisingly well-done nearly all the way around, this neither plays down to its target audience, nor fumbles the inherent childhood fantasy of the story.

It is so bad and illogical that even devoted loyalists should find their faith tested. The subtitle Dark Territory doesn't even begin to describe how inchoate and blemished this storytelling is.

Even a C-section couldn't rescue the shallow script and overplayed performances by Hugh Grant and Tom Arnold.

What else can I say about a movie in which even a brilliant artist like H.R. Giger repeats himself… except that besides a few random moments, Species just doesn't make the grade and also manages to waste a fine cast along the way.

It's not that First Knight is a terrible, embarrassing piece of junk; it's just a film of stunning averageness and not really good or bad enough to make any kind of a lasting impression which, depending on your point of view, may be even worse than a total failure.