This terminally sappy romance delivers heartache, sacrifice, a make-out scene in the pouring rain, and not one but two autistic characters.

Well-meaning but thick with cliches.

While billed as a romance and a thriller, the film strictly qualifies as neither, appealing to our prurience, guilt, hatred, and dread.

Not even the soundtrack can save Under the Cherry Moon .

Nobody ever shuts up in this schmaltzy, mannered drama.

Two obnoxious, swaggering brothers -- whose sexual naivete is supposed to make them endearing as well as pathetic -- find happiness in this more schmaltzy than funny Saturday Night Live spin-off.

Tim Burton's new movie is gorgeous -- shot by shot it may be the most impressive thing he's done.

Once again, violence (more than 30 on-screen deaths) makes a poor substitute for suspense, while sloppy, rear projection work drains most of the excitement from the climax.

Camara and Peña are perfectly cast as the bewildered couple, and early on Berger gets some laughs from the one-note premise. But the material grows increasingly stale as the film drags on to its unintentionally creepy finale.

Director Kenneth Branagh has mercifully pared the action down to 88 minutes (the first movie dragged on for 138), but the final act, with its obscure homosexual flirtation, still seems to go on forever.

Stanley Kramer issues the final warning to Mankind, in a tiresome, talky 1959 film set in the shrunken aftermath of World War III.

Director Ron Howard makes too much of camera and editing tricks, as if momentarily confusing us about where a character is or which character's point of view the movie is taking will somehow deepen the narrative.

Seems perfectly timed to coincide with the ascension to office of George W. Bush. It's a clunky effort Bush could have written and directed.

Moderately watchable but awfully predictable.

Writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz (All About Eve) was brought in to salvage the runaway production (with the cost adjusted for inflation, it may still qualify for the title of Most Expensive Movie Ever Made); though his name stands alone on the credits, a lot of other hands contributed to the general muddle.

The perfectly acceptable shtick executed by Williams--whose I-know-you-better-than-you-know-yourself seduction techniques ought to make him a hotter leading man--occasionally justifies the relentlessly light tone of this preachy 1998 comedy-drama.

Failing to provide any insight into his plight as a rich African-American celebrity, he moves on to the hard stuff.

There's a mechanical desire to work in as many outlandish twists as possible, and shallow grotesquerie quickly takes over.

The main problem here is the gross inferiority of the new version to the old: compare Tracy's handling of the opening monologue with Martin's and you'll get a fair indication of what's become of commercial filmmaking over the past four decades.

Marek Kanievska (Another Country) directs with relentlessly fancy visuals in a series of opulent southern California settings; Ed Lachman's cinematography is letter perfect as always in its handling of light and color (assisted here by Barbara Ling's flashy production design), but it's a pity to see it wasted on such claptrap.

Teen romance and operetta-style singing replace the horror elements familiar to moviegoers, and director Joel Schumacher obscures any remnants of classy stage spectacle with the same disco overkill he brought to "Batman Forever."

The sensibility is Southern California Witless, and the jokey intertitles that periodically take up half the 'Scope frames ("This is a comedy. Sort of.") are even more smarmy than the characters.

This has its moments, but most of these are engulfed by the overall murk.

All the male pulchritude can't make up for a muddled script.

Routine crime thriller.

With its sappy musical vignettes and encounter-session dialogue, the movie consistently overplays its insights, though all three leads contribute thoughtful and genuine performances.

Falls flat.

Indifferently scripted and shoddily animated feature.