A chancy work of self-promotion. Of course, Madonna is a master of image manipulation, forever reinventing herself, so it's difficult to assess exactly what was up her sleeve when she commissioned this movie. Whatever her purpose, Truth or Dare succeeds in somewhat demystifying the icon she's become, giving her a human dimension that has eluded exposure since her rise to superstardom.

What About Bob? is a one-joke movie, but what a funny joke!

But let's face it. This whole movie is based on stereotypes.

Valiantly tries to recapture the spit and polish indie feel of the original, and comes up looking more like something Franklin might have directed on a Bad Day.

The only redeeming thing in Switch is Barkin's vulgar and adept physical performance of a man literally trapped in a woman's body. She's in a constant state of discomfort, whether it's trying to walk in high heels (a sight gag that quickly gets old), scratching her breasts, or sitting with her legs apart in a tight miniskirt. Her presence, however, is a small consolation in a movie that takes the battle of the sexes and turns it into a pointless skirmish.

As a personal, autobiographical tale, Europa Europa is a fascinating narrative. As a historical memoir, its details are compelling.

Toy Soldiers is little more than macho posturing for young men searching for their identities. As such the image of a beefy Astin sporting a machine gun is not especially healthy nor is it especially imaginative. There is an attempt at balance with the younger, nerdier intelligent kids having a role in their own salvation and a representative cast including kids of all colors. For those concessions and for directorial competence, I am grateful.

Director-screenwriter Dearden, who wrote the script for Fatal Attraction, does a terrible job of making the pieces of the who's-he-going-to-kill-next narrative stick; jumping around with an unnerving frequency, this film self-destructs before your very eyes.

Stallone makes good-hearted fun of his street-wise Italian-American persona and also of himself as big shot. I'm not used to having much good to say about the guy, but Stallone has evidenced a nascient sense of humor before, and here he allows it to blossom.

The script is awash with uncertainties -- some intriguing, some frustrating. The wildly uneven director Rudolph also must shoulder some of the blame. What cannot be underestimated in Mortal Thoughts are the performances. Absolutely extraordinary all the way around. Disappointments don't come more intriguingly packaged than in Mortal Thoughts.

The yuppie dream of an unencumbered life where style always exceeds substance is at the crux of The Object of Beauty. Partly likable and partly odious, your reaction may depend on whether, like the proverbial glass of water, you see their lives as half empty or half full.

I didn't care much for this movie. It's brutal and it's brutalizing. It seeks to make the audience an accomplice rather than a rational observer.

The way the individual stories are intercut builds connections between the seemingly discrete tales such that they begin to converge in ways that were not readily apparent. Repeated viewings, I'm sure, would enhance the connections, so smartly are they conceived.

The movie's light, easily forgotten and very good for a few laughs. I sure hope that eating thing comes true.

Something about The Comfort of Strangers remains aloof, creating a physical and emotional distance between its characters and its audience. Some of that is, no doubt, Pinter's script. But Schrader pinpoints a nucleus of moral decay and then observes it with a detached clinician's eye rather than the eye if a rapt storyteller.

Ju Dou is a juicy and stylish potboiler that keeps the pilots turned on full blast.

Director Apted has somehow managed to take one of the most contrived plots I've ever seen and make it seem, if not original, then at least way above average.

The don't-get-caught '80s and holier-than-thou '90s do battle in True Colors, a political drama of all-too familiar dimensions. The painstakingly obvious screenplay by Kevin Wade (Working Girl) plays like an eighth-grade civics primer: ethics and morality are good, greed and corruption are bad.

Rifkin has fashioned a crawly little movie that underscores the Faustian price of fame in a way that few recent films have managed.

Obviously, there's something going on here but I'm not convinced Besson knows what it is.

At long, long last: the real thing.

Director Miner (Friday the 13th, House) executes some of the scary scenes competently (one in which Sands gives his male host the ultimate French kiss is grossly memorable), but he never takes the material beyond its rather limited parameters.

Depp, as the the fragile but irresistibily fabulous title character, is a delight.

It's shoot-em-up action from start to finish, beginning at such a peak that there's hardly any room for the action to build or climax.

Home Alone is the apex, the pinnacle, the culmination of every bad bit Hughes has ever written or directed. It overflows with primitive, disastrously unfunny sight gags and neo-hateful familial humor.

The film's politically correct repudiation of the familiar black-and-white characterizations of the white and red man is ultimately undermined, however, when the pendulum swings too far in the other direction.

Barry Sonnenfeld's stunning cinematography and the sharply etched characterizations make this film one for the ages.

Frame's story is told with an intriguingly naked honesty but one that never drags the viewer into emotional prurience. It creates a fascinating portrait.