Wild Orchid is an erotic film, plain and simple. It cannot be read any other way. There is no other purpose for its existence. Its story is absurd, and even its locale was chosen primarily for its travelogue value...What is relevant is that I did not find the movie erotic.

Maybe after years of banging his head against the system Friedkin decided with The Guardian to make a frankly commercial exploitation film. On the level of special effects and photography, The Guardian is indeed well made. But give us a break.

Maybe I've lost touch with silly, brainless entertainments like this. Let's hope so: One of the purposes of growing up and getting an education is to learn why movies like Spaced Invaders are a waste of time. And yet, a small, far-away voice inside of me says there once was a time when I would have liked this movie, when I was young and open to wonderments.

So much love is devoted to creating the wacko loonies in the cast that we're left with a set of personality profiles, not characters.

It's a bludgeon movie with little respect for the audience's intelligence, and simply pounds us over the head with violence whenever there threatens to be a lull. Anyone can make a movie like this.

There is nothing really wrong with the scenes in the institution, except that they're in the wrong movie.

Uys's style sheds a sweet and gentle light on this new comedy, which is a sequel to the surprising international success - and, I think, a better film.

The result is an actor's dream, a film in which the truth of almost every scene has to be excavated out of the debris of social inhibition.

The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover is not an easy film to sit through. It doesn't simply make a show of being uncompromising -- it is uncompromised in every single shot from beginning to end. Why is it so extreme? Because it is a film made in rage, and rage cannot be modulated.

It is only now that I am in a condition to appreciate the 1950s.

The most interesting part of the film for a non-Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle fan is the production design - the sewers and the city streets above them. Roy Forge Smith is the designer, and seems inspired by a low-rent vision of Batman or maybe Metropolis.

The sweetest and most openhearted love fable since "The Princess Bride."

Although the movie centers on well-made action scenes and contains a couple of tidy surprises, its strength comes from the portrait of this soldier on the edge.

A Shock to the System confounds our expectations and keeps us intrigued, because there's no way to know, not even in the very last moments, exactly which way the plot is going to fall.

The plot is a little of Fatal Attraction, a little of Jagged Edge and a little of Wall Street. It works because it's so audacious in combining elements that don't seem to belong together.

Hook's visual sense is not acute here; he doesn't show the spontaneous sense of time and place that made his first film, The Kitchen Toto (1988), so convincing. He seems more concerned with telling the story than showing it, and there are too many passages in which the boys are simply trading dialogue.

House Party is silly and high-spirited and not particularly significant, and that is just as it should be.

It is not an entirely successful movie, but it is new and fresh and not shy of taking chances. And the dialogue in it is actually worth listening to, because it is written with wit and romance.

Like many thrillers that begin with an intriguing premise, Bad Influence is more fun in the setup than in the payoff. For at least the first hour, we are not quite sure what game Lowe is playing, and the full horror of his plan is only gradually revealed.

At the end of the movie we are conscious of large themes and deep thoughts, and of good intentions drifting out of focus.

A skillful, efficient film that involves us in the clever and deceptive game being played by Ramius and in the best efforts of those on both sides to figure out what he plans to do with his submarine - and how he plans to do it.

Anyone who loves movies is likely to love Cinema Paradiso.

Glory is a strong and valuable film no matter whose eyes it is seen through.

Revenge plays like a showdown between its style and its story. It combines the slick, high-tension filmmaking fashion of today with the values and sexual stereotyping of yesterday. It's such a good job of salesmanship that you have to stop and remind yourself you don't want any.

On a few occasions it's very funny, but it never quite goes over the top and gets the big laughs it is obviously aiming for.

Stella is the kind of movie they used to call a tearjerker, and we might as well go ahead and still call it that, because all around me at the sneak preview people were blowing noses and sort of softly catching their breath - you know, the way you do when you're having a great time.

This time capsule from 1970 feels, in 1990, like a jolt of fresh air.