Shelley Winters won an Oscar for being her own unbearable self (as Hartman's nagging mother) and Guy Green (The Magus) directed with eyes on the noble Kleenex box and visions of Stanley Kramer running through his noggin.

Cheerful mess of a pulp-fiction parody.

Amiable comedy western, with James Garner expanding on his Maverick image as a boom-town sheriff who’d rather use his cunning than his guns.

There are no big surprises, but Mac and director Charles Stone III (Drumline) hit all the right dramatic notes.

Edwards directs this farcical material in an unexpectedly intimate, naturalistic style, giving the characters a conviction that makes the slapstick sequences much funnier and more suspenseful than they might have been. But the film still has a rushed, slapdash feel to it.

Less about the characters than about the first two movies, whose best scenes it congeals into ritual or parody.

Debutant director Richard Day, a seasoned TV producer, delivers a steady stream of cheerful vulgarity and a few clever gags.

Fans of Coppola's movies (and/or perfume ads) will find this free of the absurd pop-rock flourishes in "Antoinette" and more consistent with the skilled tonality and narrative ambiguity of "Translation."

Not to raise anyone’s hopes too high, but Gene Wilder has finally made a film you can watch without wanting to exit before it’s over.

With its diabolical ending, this is the movie equivalent of a crossword puzzle: fun, clever, and disposable.

Despite its nasty facade, this comedy is surprisingly good-natured.

Doesn't add up to much more than a series of pretty pictures, and Goldsworthy's gnomic statements about the "energy" he perceives in "the plants and the land" are never fully explored.

A horror comedy with one shocking scene and one very funny one.

The tag here is more silly than haunting, but this is still a pretty wild ride, with a fine, knife-wielding score by Bennett Salvay.

Falk throws himself into the part and almost single-handedly enables this comedy drama to transcend some of its sitcom limitations.

This British drama is so overplotted it smothers the two main characters as much as they do each other.

This doesn't lack for crazy charm, particularly when Nicolas Cage (in his go-for-broke Bad Lieutenant mode) and Ciaran Hinds (playing the devil) try to out-weird each other with broad, even cartoonish performances.

Director Gary Ross (Pleasantville) generally avoids the elaborate exterior shots and special effects that dominate high-concept blockbusters.

This buddy movie grows on you.

No real film lover could help but muster some affection for this bedraggled action movie, shot in an extremely unpicturesque Yugoslavia on a budget that must number in the hundreds of dollars. The lead, Olympic gymnast Kurt Thomas, is clearly a stranger to the thespian arts, but it's pointless to single him out in a cast that seems to have been assembled from all the expatriate American used-car salesmen living on the Adriatic coast.

A seemingly mad dog periodically turns into a well-trained pet.

If you like Ryan and Robbins as much as I do, you'll probably feel indulgent and even charmed in spots; if you don't, you'll probably run screaming out of the theater.

The mad campy moments—which chiefly involve snake woman Amanda Donohoe slinking around in various stages of undress or in dominatrix outfits—are worth waiting for.

This 1985 western does a decent job of developing some dry 80s humor without completely undermining the genre, yet Kasdan's considerable skills as a plot carpenter seem to desert him as soon as the story moves to the town of the title--the action turns choppy, confused, and arbitrary.

Like "The Hustler," this absorbing Las Vegas story about a professional poker player (Eric Bana) uses gambling to tell a tale of moral regeneration. But Bana can't carry a picture like Paul Newman, and poker proves less photogenic than pool.

Cox's style is a step beyond camp into a comedy of pure disgust; much of the film is churlishly unpleasant, but there's a core of genuine anger that gives the project an emotional validation lacking in the flabby American comedies of the early 80s.

The film may never fully attain the emotional resonance it seems to be striving for, but it's still an accomplished and interesting piece of work.

By accident or design, the resolution here is morally ambiguous and vaguely distasteful, which may be the reason I liked it.

The dual point of view is used effectively, though it's less valid as social criticism (where Penn's observations tend toward facile revisionism) than as an index of the uncertainty that characterizes most of Penn's heroes.

In trying to cover so many bets, Petersen has created a film without an identifiable style or subject of its own.

Director Ron Howard brings a quality of gentleness and whimsy to the performances, but basically this is a highly calculated project brought in by those two old pros, producers Richard Zanuck and David Brown (Jaws, The Verdict).

Capable, if slightly show-offy, performances by McTeer and Brown give this Sundance favorite a little sparkle.

This arty and moody account of her formation as an artist, as its subtitle declares, is basically invented. Its nerviness only pays off in a few details and in Nicole Kidman's resourcefulness.

The film's relaxed pace, unassuming tone, and respect for its characters all recall the films of Abbas Kiarostami, who provided the story idea, but director Ali Reza Raisian adds a slightly more dramatic and emotional edge.

The film's elliptical structure seems little more than a device to compensate for the thin dramatic material, but it's saved by a fine ensemble cast and Akhavan's convincing transformation from a naive romantic to a disturbing reactionary.

The cultural cock-strutting gets to be a bit much, but Neville handily captures the excitement of an art scene percolating, breaking wide open, and finally burning itself out.

Making Shakur the narrator works pretty well at first...But once he becomes an overnight star at age 20, his relentless self-articulation to Tabitha Soren begins to sound like the usual white noise of celebrity, his ideas about race and power in America potent but undeveloped.

This isn't quite up to the original, but it has its moments, as Inspector Clouseau (Peter Sellers) sets out to solve a murder in an English country house.

Engaging entertainment, but far from Minnelli’s peak.

Like most of Perry's movies, this one oscillates wildly and shamelessly between raunch and pathos, leaving plenty of room for the performers to work. The lively ensemble includes a scene-stealing Cassi Davis as pothead Aunt Bam.

The results are easy to watch, though awfully familiar and simpleminded.

I can't say I warmed to the results, but I was solidly held for the film's two hours.

Singer draws heavily on the 1978 hit that launched the Warner Brothers franchise, with Brandon Routh dully impersonating Christopher Reeve as the Man of Steel, Kevin Spacey getting all the good lines as the villainous Lex Luthor, and stock footage of Marlon Brando proving that death isn't always a good career move.

Ken Hanes's witty script shows its origins in his stage play, with the repartee often a bit too thick and fast for the screen.

Against the lush backdrop of the Andes, Crowe and Caruso define on-screen cool: good guys in a match of wits and firepower who even talk about their emotions.

Ultimately, this is the kind of film that gets more points for what it isn't—i.e., a typical teen comedy loaded with boob and fart jokes—than for what it is.

The fun hardens into Fun after he's (Mr. Incredible) lured out of retirement and imprisoned in a remote island compound, though the sleek computer animation is spellbinding as usual.

A mildly psychological suspense thriller with military trappings.

If, like the filmmakers, you're willing to settle for a myth that flatters your sensibilities and shortchanges the past, you're likely to find some agreeable kicks here.

The Disney version (1951) lightens and sweetens Lewis Carroll's tale, but what's really disappointing is the undistinguished animation: the film looks and plays more like the Disney shorts than the Disney features, though the Cheshire Cat (voiced by Sterling Holloway) is a small masterpiece of elusive menace.

The contrast between Tucker's motormouth and Chan's man of few words should be funnier, but the plot -- which is cliched without quite becoming self-reflexive -- and the uneven pace dampen most of their moments.

An ambitious but pretentious adaptation of Edward Lewis Wallant's novel by David Friedkin and Morton Fine, directed by Sidney Lumet.

A trio of stridently weird performances--from Nicolas Cage, William Fichtner, and David Morse--brighten this otherwise rote actioner.

The performances are strong, but the spectator often feels adrift in an overly busy intrigue.

If you like being shaken up and don't care too much why or how, this is probably for you; Huppert gives her all to the part, and you won't be bored.

I guessed the big plot twist as soon as Franklin began setting it up, which gave me a good 40 minutes to appreciate the fine supporting cast and weathered coastal Florida locations while waiting for Washington's character to catch up with me.

Passably creepy chiller.

Hovers just this side of "Ghost Whisperer" kitsch but remains compulsively watchable thanks to its smart ensemble cast

This has its sappy moments, but both women give wonderfully detailed performances, aided by Michael Learned as Hunt's mother and Chris Sarandon as the calm, cold minister.

Many of the gags rely on the incongruity of Grant's nervous, cultured character posing as an Italian-American stereotype, but they're subverted by his earnest relationship with his fiancee, whose affection hardly seems worth the trouble.

Patrick Dempsey and Michelle Monaghan make an agreeable pair in this above-average comedy.

Alas, most of the surprise and the wit to be found here ends with the title.

If you're fond of Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn's physical talents for comedy even when they have slender material to work with, this occasionally amusing fluff can pass the time.

A significant influence on Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, this grueling pile driver of a movie will keep you on the edge of your seat, though it reeks of French 50s attitude, which includes misogyny, snobbishness, and borderline racism.

As soon as it became clear that this remake has nothing to do with real Georgia moonshiners and everything to do with car chases, smashups, and explosions, I could sit back and enjoy it as good, stupid fun.

Griffith's talent, energy, and sexiness give it some drive and punch.

Lots of men cry lots of tears in this supremely self-indulgent, supremely moving documentary about making a documentary.

Like Fellini's "I vitelloni," this Spanish-French-Italian coproduction is a bittersweet epic about frustration and relative inertia, though with a somewhat older and wiser group of layabouts.

As a psychological case study this is intelligent and adept, with fine performances by both of the lead actresses, and none of the Hitchcockian implications are lost on Schroeder. But there's something dehumanizing about 90s horror thrillers that all but defeats the film's impulses toward seriousness; no matter how much the filmmakers work to make the characters real, the genre contrives to turn them into functions and props.

My only reason to recommend this movie is that there's nothing quite like it.

The performances of both Schwarzenegger and O'Brien are labored, the pacing uneven, and maybe only half the gags work, but there's a certain amount of creative energy and audacity mixed in with all the confusion.

This is fairly efficient if you can square efficiency with being twice as long as necessary and overly familiar to boot; at least Jackson and Spacey keep it afloat.

A pleasant, inoffensive, and (quite properly) mindless diversion.

Engagingly corny drama.

Pretty dispensable, though it has one of the best homosexual-panic gags I've ever seen.

Never quite settles on a tone, veering from wacky comedy to earnest sports drama to romantic farce. The results are predictably muddled, if mostly harmless.

There isn't a whole lot of Zen here, barring the opening and closing scenes with a priest, but there's plenty of lively sex, both conventional and otherwise, in this high-spirited porn romp from Hong Kong.

Though it strives for broad humor, pushing cuteness and light irony, this bland 1998 movie isn't exactly a comedy.

A businessman is visited by an otherworldly presence who has the nerve to fall in love with his daughter in this savory, extralong feature, whose obvious plotlines unfold with an almost painful slowness that somehow makes them deeper.

Some pieces of the plot feel dishonest, others contrived, but there are also moments of nicely observed detail and plenty of good messages.

George Lucas produced and Jim Henson (of Muppets fame) directed this heftily budgeted 1986 fantasy, which seems to be a conscious attempt to play on the female coming-of-age themes of classic fairy tales.

The payoff matters at least as much as the setup, and this story's secret is way too easy to guess.

Larry Doyle and John Hamburg's script is full of holes, but this is still pretty damn funny--thanks mostly to Barrymore, who seems to be retracing Lucille Ball's trajectory from sex kitten to comedienne.

This 'heartwarming' thriller refuses to distinguish realism from stylization, and much of the plot is a twisted mess of repetition and unpersuasive motivation.

Friedkin does a superb job of serving up the well-appointed script by James Webb and Stephen Gaghan.

John Boorman's 1981 retelling of the Arthurian legends is a continuation of the thematic thrust and visual plan of his Exorcist II, though the failure of that bold, hallucinatory, and flawed film seems to have put Boorman into partial retreat.

Zuniga's support is winningly low-key.

What's lacking here is a sustained thematic focus -- at least five people worked on the script, including Mann, which may account for the absence of a clear through line -- though the spectacle and characters keep one absorbed.

Where the narrative and characterization work, the visuals are lacking. Director Colin Trevorrow's digital cinematography occasionally resembles a YouTube video in mid-buffer, making the gorgeous and picturesque setting of the Pacific Northwest coastline appear bland and texture-less.

The movie is fairly entertaining, but the high production values and shticky humor invert the dynamic of the show, which was played totally straight despite the fact that the sets were always threatening to fall down.

Allen's conception of character is as banal and shallow as ever, but the lively performances of some of his actors—mainly Davis, Pollack, and Juliette Lewis (as a creative writing student of Allen's who has a brief flirtation with him)—and the novelty of the film's style make this more watchable than many of his features.

Coming-of-age drama is pretty familiar stuff.

Within the limitations of the genre, the film succeeds fairly well, with enough giddy sophomoric humor, stunning fights, titillating sex, and exotic sets and costumes to keep an audience entertained.

Though there's a crime to be solved, a romance to go awry, and lots of trooper-police politics to elaborate on, the strangely drawn out pacing somehow feels fresh rather than oppressive.

Dustin Hoffman is superb as Lenny Bruce, but he gives an actor's performance where a less declamatory, more comedic delivery would have worked better.

Inspired, self-referential animated musical.

This has its moments, but don't expect many fresh insights.