Needless to say, the plot goes nowhere, but under the pornographic circumstances Figgis, Cage, and Shue all do fine jobs.

Holly Hunter and Sigourney Weaver, a cop and a shrink, are the main trackers, but so little is done in Ann Biderman and David Madsen's script to give them or their colleagues or even their prey interesting human dimensions that the overall ambience is chiefly pornographic.

Striking to look at, though often offensively opportunistic, this mainly comes across as a throwaway shocker with energy to spare. There's not much thought in evidence though.

An entertaining comedy-thriller directed with bounce (if not much nuance) by Barry Sonnenfeld.

As an "Animal House" romp about consumer slackers in a New Jersey mall, it's harmless enough--just don't expect any sort of edge. Smith has left the working class to become just as boring as everybody else.

Easy to take but even easier to leave alone.

I wasn't bored at all by this, and Angela Bassett's action-hero charisma often blew me away, but fans of Bigelow at her best (e.g., Near Dark) may be put off by the movie's calculation, which doesn't always fit with its intellectual pretensions.

Pretentious, boring, and consistently uninvolving, this effort by producer Robert Evans and director William Friedkin to make comebacks with an incoherent Joe Eszterhas script simply won't wash.

There's plenty of wit on the surface, but the pain of paralysis comes through loud and clear.

What's most memorable about it is the period flavor, including a detailed and precise account of the jim crow complications blacks had to contend with.

Charting the ruthlessness of an ambitious bimbo telecaster in Little Hope, New Hampshire, this staccato black comedy sustains its brilliant exposition and narration until the plot turns to premeditated murder, complete with hapless and semicoherent teenage accomplices.

One can already tell that this film is on to something special during the opening credits.

The cynicism of the writer and director smacks of such self-hatred (fully acknowledged in the film's closing shot) that their disgust spills over onto all their characters (and their audience too), and inasmuch as everybody here is one kind of whore or another at virtually every moment, the fine moral distinctions this movie insists on making sometimes seem about as arcane and as loony as medieval theology about angels dancing on the heads of pins.

Without being any sort of miracle, this is an engaging and lively exploitation fantasy-thriller about computer hackers, anarchistic in spirit, that succeeds at just about everything "The Net" failed to--especially in representing computer operations with some visual flair.

Thanks to the performers (including Andie MacDowell and John Turturro), this has a certain amount of charm and warmth, but the period ambience feels both remote and uncertain.

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

A quirky, lyrical independent feature by writer-director Michael Almereyda. It's shot in luscious, shimmering black and white.

It's not your usual story line, but Widen makes it sufficiently plausible; unfortunately, the film's fireworks ending isn't as subtle or spooky as the rest of the movie.

What's mainly missing is the sort of conviction and passion that gave El mariachi its charge; one feels at almost every moment that Rodriguez is fulfilling a contract rather than saying something he has to say. There's a lot of panache here, but not much inspiration.

If you want to waste a couple of hours, you can surely do much better looking elsewhere.

Though it lacks the sensational pizzazz of "Blackboard Jungle", the politics here are arguably somewhat better, and the supporting cast -- George Dzundza, Courtney P. Vance, Robin Bartlett, Beatrice Winde -- isn't bad either.

The characters (both animal and human) are solidly conceived, and the storytelling and visuals are expertly fashioned.

This movie feels like it was made by a bank rather than a person.

Though this drifts at times as storytelling, it's mainly lightweight but personable fun.

This meticulous but ultimately rather pedestrian drama gradually won me over as a minor if watchable example of the "victory through defeat" brand of military heroism that John Ford specialized in.

Contradictions confound certain aspects of this project--such as the language spoken by Pocahontas (which, in the Hollywood tradition, oscillates between tribal talk and the unaccented chatter of a contemporary Valley girl)--but overall this seems like a reasonable stab at an impossible agenda.

Director Joel Schumacher submits to the Wagnerian bombast with an overly busy surface, and the script by Lee and Janet Scott Batchler and Akiva Goldsman basically runs through the formula as if it's a checklist.

The film's warmth and sympathy are underlined by some intelligence.