Vanessa Redgrave bails out this mushy Italian-postcard romance.

Ernest Schoedsack's sequel to his monster hit of 1933, rushed out the same year. The slapdash production shows in a wavering tone and a paucity of special effects. With Robert Armstrong and Helen Mack; the animation, what there is of it, is by the legendary Willis O'Brien.

Steve Buscemi supplies the only spark of intelligent life in this numbingly flat universe, despite the fancy gadgets, the high-speed chases, and a skyscraper collision reminiscent of the World Trade Center attacks.

No doubt the characters are stereotypes, but the performances are handled with a knowing wink and a great deal of fun-particularly Mike Epps, who shines as a hammy Little Richard-style preacher.

Wain and Marino try to tie all this together with a framing narrative about an unfaithful husband (Paul Rudd), which turns into a clever parody of Woody Allen movies.

Demands that we see as coincidental if not ironic the ease with which Fraser cuts a rug at a swing club when he's hopelessly naive about everything else that's being revived in the 90s when he emerges.

A lot of superwimp gags executed by Luke Wilson grow out of this premise, as do some tacky 50s-style special effects. The movie's too slapdash to keep its characters consistent, but this has its moments.

The hero's psychological transference is so blatant that even the characters begin commenting on it after a while, yet this modest three-hander is capably acted and genuinely touching.

Jeff Lipsky invests this indie drama with admirable intelligence and insight, though these fine qualities are undermined by a sense of writerly artifice.

Foreigners who argue that Americans are Neanderthal savages can point to this movie as persuasive evidence.

Assorted movie in-jokes should keep parents tolerably entertained, and Alan Menken's songs mercifully favor western swing over the expected twang pop.

The players deftly balance flip caricature with a surprisingly moving depiction of those trapped in the celluloid closet.

After 9/11 and Katrina, this megabudget remake by Wolfgang Petersen benefits from a similar cultural oomph, though it's just as enjoyably silly as the original.

All this is supposed to be as cute as bugs and chock-full of worldly wisdom, but even with lead actors as likable and as resourceful as these, the material made me alternately want to gag and nod off.

It's neither sexy enough to qualify as good trash nor serious enough to pass for history.

Another disposable family entertainment.

An attempt to blend the war epic and the caper film that doesn't quite come off.

Almost an hour of self-indulgent psychedelics, it's nearly impossible to watch.

The late 300-pound transvestite Divine, John Waters’s most enduring muse, makes his/her first star entrance in this 1969 feature—the first Waters movie to play outside Baltimore—driving a 1959 Eldorado to the strains of “The Girl Can’t Help It.”

Playing a variation on John Wayne's character from "Red River," Harrison Ford gives an understandably bewildered performance, often appearing uncertain if he should take his lines seriously.

The end justifies the means as long as everything turns out OK for the not-too-obedient American soldier and everyone else who enjoys Coca-Cola.

The film's opening and closing moments are weirdly reminiscent of "Black Hawk Down," another tale of Western soldiers in over their heads on the dark continent -- clearly no one these days understands manifest destiny.

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.

More concerned with attitude than character and too moralistic to be much fun.

This caper movie starts off as enjoyable guff before turning strictly formulaic and winding up as unenjoyable guff.

Despite the sophistication of the source material, this 1984 film isn't particularly successful: Petersen insists on forcing the superficial moral lessons, and the half hour removed from the film by its American distributors leaves it with a harsh, choppy rhythm.

After making his best and smoothest drama (Match Point) in England, Woody Allen returns there for one of his most clueless and awkward, outfitted with a standard-issue Philip Glass score.

As the aching spouse, Moore delivers what is for her an unusually sympathetic performance.