What jump-starts the film is the casting of Johnny Depp as Don Juan and Marlon Brando as his shrink. They bring a playfully romantic touch to a drama that could have been dead weight in clumsier hands.

You always know where it's going even as it meanders for two and a half hours getting there.

The team of producer Ismail Merchant, director James Ivory and writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala drops the ball with this droopy, snail-paced prigs-in-wigs movie.

Despite Bates' mastery at bringing unexpected depth to unhinged characters, Dolores is a few pints low on chills and challenge.

Egoyan is an acquired taste, but once in, you’re hooked. Exotica is Egoyan’s most accomplished and seductive film to date — even tackling acute psychic distress, Egoyan’s deadpan comic eye never flinches.

Driver's tough core of honesty and wit is bewitching. So's the movie.

A crowd pleaser that spices a tired formula with genuine feeling.

Quick and the Dead plays like a crazed compilation of highlights from famous westerns. Raimi finds the right look but misses the heartbeat. You leave the film dazed instead of dazzled, as if an expert marksman had drawn his gun only to shoot himself in the foot.

Alive with beauty, spirit and wit, Roan Inish is pure magic.

What makes Legends such an entertaining male weepie is the star shine. Though the admirable Quinn has the toughest role, Pitt carries the picture.

Higher Learning is seriously intended and seriously flawed. Singleton tends to shout his objectives. But in an era of cop-out escapism, it is gratifying to find a filmmaker who is spoiling to be heard.

Comedy and tragedy cohere in this extraordinary film of Alan Bennett's play.

Polanski, working from a fluid script by Dorfman and Rafael Yglesias ("Fearless"), gives the story its due. He creates an atmosphere of claustrophobic tension to rival his "Knife in the Water" and "Repulsion".

Shelton's strong, stinging film — one of the year's best — wants to get at something ingrained in the American character: the irrational desire to make saints of sports heroes.

The film wants to make a case for Parker as the first modern woman. It gets the look and the attitude right, but it can't find her heart.

Ah-nuld’s swollen belly is the joke — the only one — but director Ivan Reitman (Dave) takes it for a few deft spins.

Jackson’s visionary triumph, heightened by the blazing performances of Lynskey and Winslet and by Alun Bollinger’s whirling camera, is in capturing the delirium as the girls whip themselves into an erotic frenzy with Mario Lanza records, semi-naked dances in the woods and revenge fantasies.

But for all its visionary brilliance, the movie version of Interview never lets us close enough to see ourselves in Louis. We're dazzled but unmoved.

Mamet's incendiary writing and the potent performances are teasingly ambiguous. Though he exposes the widening gulf between the sexes, Mamet leaves the audience to find ways to explain it. That's what makes Oleanna such a powerhouse; it's a brilliant dare.

In the end, Shelley and the audience are cheated of a tale truly told. De Niro, on the brink of giving a landmark performance, settles for being a gross special effect. And the promise Branagh once showed as a filmmaker, like the hope of revitalizing Frankenstein, is dead again.

The new King Kong of crime movies...Ferocious fun without a trace of caution, complacency or political correctness to inhibit its 154 deliciously lurid minutes.

River may not be high art, but it is the perfect high old time for audiences in the mood to be tossed into the spin cycle for a pulse-pounding thrill ride.

Redford blows the dust off a 35-year-old scandal about rigged TV quiz shows and makes it snap with up-to-the-minute relevance.

Based on William Boyd's 1981 novel, the film has a touch of Evelyn Waugh — though the satire is served dry, it has still got a kick.

The acting by Esposito and Jackson is exceptional, but it is on the remarkable face of Nelson that Yakin shows what gets lost when a child beats criminals at their own game.

It's the no-bull performances that hold back the flood of banalities. Robbins and Freeman connect with the bruised souls of Andy and Red to create something undeniably powerful and moving.

Stone calls this bile satire. But satire takes careful aim; Killers is crushingly scattershot. By putting virtuoso technique at the service of lazy thinking, Stone turns his film into the demon he wants to mock: cruelty as entertainment.

In this roaringly comic and powerfully affecting road movie, Terence Stamp gives one of the year's best performances.

You won't feel too much like a jerk watching this rock & roll hostage comedy. There are laugh licks and spirited performances. It's fluff done with flair

This gifted clown has found the right vehicle for his souped-up silliness. Carrey is the ultimate party dude, and like the masked man says, this party is smokin'.

Regrettably, Bergman can't do much with a one-note script by Jane Anderson that reduces Perez to a grating cliché, Cage and Fonda to a parody of Ken and Barbie and our interest in what could happen to them to dry ash.

A movie heart-breaker of oddball wit and startling grace.

The list goes on with moments historic and hilarious from the likes of Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Cyd Charisse, Arlene Dahl, Ann Miller, Jimmy Durante and even Elvis. That’s more than entertainment, that’s pure gold.

A hugely entertaining blend of music, fun and eye-popping thrills, though it doesn't lack for heart.

If you're looking for action movie heaven, try Speed, a crackling blend of suspense and fun that gives you the rush of a runaway roller coaster.

This lumbering retread, subtitled The Legend of Curly's Gold, is mostly old ground slavishly covered. There are wider gaps between the jokes this time, and the slick style of British director Paul Weiland, best known for commercials (Schweppes, Heineken), can't disguise the fact that he's selling stale goods.

The best hip-hop film of all, taking on obvious targets (misogynist lyrics) and sacred cows (political rap) alike.

Whatever juice is left in the "Cop" franchise or in the once unstoppable career of Eddie Murphy peters out ignominiously in this poor excuse for a sequel.

This remarkable movie will haunt you for a good long time.

Kazan’s technique drafts seductive promises that the empty-headed Dream Lover can’t keep.

Backbeat catches the Beatles in the act of discovering themselves. It’s a thrilling spectacle that rocks the house and a lot of lazy misconceptions about how legends are made.

John waters and Kathleen Turner bring out the sicko best in each other in Serial Mom. It’s a killingly funny spoof of crime and nonpunishment that couldn’t have come at a better time for us or them.

You don’t expect director Ron Howard and producer Brian Grazer — partners on such benign jokefests as Splash! and Parenthood — to catch the mad-dog anarchy of the newsroom. But they nail it...What’s missing is the bite.

Polanski has great wicked fun with sex, love, cruelty, books, movies and, of course, himself. If you don’t go along with the joke, you’re in for rough sailing.

An offbeat mix of typically quirky elements, and it could have easily been hard to stomach. But the author and director Lasse Hallstrom's affection for these characters shines through. Their greatest asset is the young Leo himself, in his first Oscar-nominated role, bringing great sensitivity and complexity to a part that might have come off as cloying or cynical.

By spinning something fresh out of something familiar, Reality Bites scores the first comedy knockout of the new year. It also brings out the vibrant best in Winona Ryder and Ethan Hawke as friends who resist being lovers, makes a star of Janeane Garofalo as their tart-tongued buddy and puts Ben Stiller on the map as a director.

Wait till you get a load of this babe from hell in scenes that are sure to put the gorgeously lurid Romeo Is Bleeding on the Moral Majority’s shit list. The rest of us – those who believe it’s children and not adults who need protection from movie mayhem – will be too busy relishing the riveting fireworks display from Olin and Oldman in this scorcher of a thriller. Director Peter Medak (The Krays, The Ruling Class) keeps the action stylish, sexy and fiendishly funny. The film rarely makes a lick of sense, but it’s compulsively watchable.

The new Body Snatchers is the most graphic of all, featuring more overt violence and decomposing flesh than the other two films combined. But it sorely lacks the focus and resonance of its predecessors.

Watching Carville and Stephanopoulos manipulate the media by playing both footsie and hardball makes for a wickedly funny and irreverent lesson in ’90s power politics.

Schindler's List, despite blatant compromises, is a rending historical document. But the film's near-certain victory is based less on merit than on the marketing of its ambitious intentions. The academy doesn't judge movies, it weighs them by subject matter. On that basis, Spielberg's epic tips the scales.

What felt appropriately metaphorical and ruminative on stage becomes somewhat muddled and inane onscreen. The real attraction here is the controlled, charismatic performance by the man formerly known as the Fresh Prince.

This rip-roaring Irish comedy is the freshest surprise of the season.

Eastwood grabs the reins and draws Costner's scrappiest performance since Bull Durham. In going beyond chase-yarn duty, Eastwood and Costner do themselves proud.

There’s a secondhand feel to the way this gangster movie delivers the goods. Carlito’s Way is haunted by a ghost from De Palma and Pacino’s past — Scarface.

This is the safe and sorry Disney version, suitable for anyone under 10 or gullible to the point of idiocy.

Detractors will see the usual parade of repressed feelings in a Masterpiece Theatre setting. Those who look closer will find one of the best films of the year.

Nunez is a major filmmaker who thrives working in a minor key. He makes Ruby a romantic fable with a tough core of intelligence and wit. It’s a real beauty.

This kinky game of murder and eroticism is preposterous but never boring.

Small jokes are buried under elaborate setups. Sight gags are repeated to the point of exhaustion — a woman’s shoe steps in gum, then toilet paper, then . . . you get the point. Most painful of all, serious actors strain to be funny.

Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas restores originality and daring to the Halloween genre. This dazzling mix of fun and fright also explodes the notion that animation is kid stuff. The history-making stop-motion animation in this $20 million charmer transcends age. It's 74 minutes of timeless movie magic.

Sean Astin is a winner as Rudy Ruettiger, who earns the grades, a place on the scout team and, in 1975, a chance to play... There’s little Rocky-like rah-rah. It’s Ruettiger’s persistence that his teammates and the film celebrate. For that, Rudy earns a rousing cheer.

The Beverly Hillbillies is not, as the saying goes, a critic’s picture. Still, you want to root for a movie that wallows without shame in leering, fatuous humor. I did — for about 15 minutes — then the sameness set in like an overdose of Beavis and Butt-Head.

Demolition Man is sleek and empty as well as brutal and pointless.

Part of the miracle of Robert Altman's triumphantly fierce, funny, moving and innovative Short Cuts is that you can't get this movie out of your head. You keep playing it back to savor its formula-smashing audacity, its peerless performances and its cleareyed view of blasted lives.

Perhaps director Harold Becker thought flashy acting could distract us from the gaping plot holes. Becker gets so intent on confusing us, he forgets to give us characters to care about, the way he did in Sea of Love with Al Pacino. Malice is way out of that classy league. It’s got suspense but no staying power.

It took four screenwriters to turn a potent premise into mush. There’s some compensation in a solid supporting cast, especially Fyvush Finkel of TV’s Picket Fences as the world’s oldest bellboy. But director Barry Sonnenfeld shows little of the wicked spirit he brought to The Addams Family.

Linklater is a sly and formidable talent, bringing an anthropologist's eye to this spectacularly funny celebration of the rites of stupidity. His shitfaced "American Graffiti" is the ultimate party movie -- loud, crude, socially irresponsible and totally irresistible.

He lacks Scorsese's raw inventiveness, but there's no denying De Niro's skill in keeping this pungent street epic brimming over with action and laughs without sacrificing intimacy. He is a supreme director of actors.

Day-Lewis is smashing as the man caught between his emotions and the social ethic. Not since Olivier in "Wuthering Heights" has an actor matched piercing intelligence with such imposing good looks and physical grace.

It's the scenes of the boys on horseback, riding this moonbeam of a movie to a fairy-tale ending, that provide the essential ingredient: a sense of wonder.

The blistering confrontation scene between Hopper and Walken -- both in peak form -- will be talked about for years. It's pure Tarantino: a full-throttle blast of bloody action and verbal fireworks.

Hits hardest when it bypasses sentiment to ponder the inextricable mix of love and pain that comes with the ties that bind.

What Lynch, who wrote the script at 19, sees as high drama is really high camp. And Fenn seems clueless on how to play her limbless character.

For all the humor, passion and decency Gibson invests in the film, The Man Without a Face doesn't add up to much more than a pretty reminder not to judge a book by its cover.

Even when the acting is hammy, notably Wilford Brimley’s turn as Chance’s Cajun uncle, Woo stages every fight with hypnotic grace.

Allenphiles will have a field day mining the film for inside dope. Are the clips from Shanghai and Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity — movies in which men are set up for a fall by dangerous women — a sly dig at Farrow? Better to see Manhattan Murder Mystery for what it is: Annie Hall replayed in a minor key by a filmmaker who sees the comedy, tragedy and transience of love and can’t stop playing the game. Allen’s readiness to step on a laugh in favor of feeling may cost him at the box office. But in this time of private hell and public scorn, it will help him endure.

A potently acted, buoyantly funny film that trades on emotion without making you gag on it.

A riveting screen adventure.

For dynamite suspense loaded with thrills and wicked fun, you can’t beat The Fugitive — the summer’s best action blaster.

The flaws don't cripple what is a fiercely funny, exciting and provocative detective story about the crimes of corporate culture — crimes that transcend race and geography.

Credit writer Robbie Fox for the fertile comic premise of equating marriage and death in the male mind. But the story, involving Charlie’s cop buddy (Anthony LaPaglia) and Harriet’s artist sister (Amanda Plummer), is too convoluted. Juggling mirth, romance and murder requires a deft touch — think of Hitchcock’s Trouble With Harry. Axe is a blunt instrument.

If Singleton, 25, stumbles, it is over ambition and not the complacency of a new Hollywood hotshot riding a trend.

Eastwood hasn't had this much fun with a role in years, and his joy is contagious.

The climax, in which all the characters link arms in a dance and sing, could serve as a textbook illustration of forced gaiety. Much Ado is much askew.

Director Sydney Pollack zapped out a taut thriller in "Three Days of the Condor". But The Firm is mostly flab, in the manner of Pollack's elephantine Havana.

Ephron homes in on what's been missing in movies and in life: ardor, longing and smart talk about the screwed-up notions that pass for love.

Colossal entertainment -- the eye-popping, mind-bending, kick-out-the-jams thrill ride of summer and probably the year.

Nothing the Hughes brothers have done in their videos for Tone Loc, Tupac Shakur and others prepares you for the controlled intensity and maturity they bring to their stunning feature debut.

As Van Peebles turns the western into an equal-opportunity genre, his voice occasionally fades in the din. But be assured: It’s a voice spoiling to be heard.

Mixing comedy and corn with surprising savvy, Dave is the first political fable of the Clinton era. It’s a winner.

Dragon errs by trafficking too much in what made Bruce Lee sell instead of what made him tick.

For a while, The Dark Half is a compelling study, in chiller guise, of an artist wrestling with his creative demons. But Stark is a real terror only in the shadows. When he emerges, all we see is Hutton — in a showy makeup job — struggling to change his wimp image.

Whatever qualms you might have about romanticizing mental illness, the misguided Benny and Joon thinks it's just darling.

De Niro's decision to make Dwight a loony from the get-go throws the delicate symmetry of the story out of whack.

As sexist propaganda, the film is shameless.

It’s not that Robert Getchell’s script is any less crackbrained than Besson’s. This kind of kink just works better with a French accent.

Harris offers an adrenalin rush of energy and talent. Her artfully stylized, explosively funny film also manages to be deeply moving without jerking easy tears.

More clever in idea than execution, this mockumentary about a trio of middle-class poseurs masquerading as the World's Most Dangerous Group Not Named N.W.A (Rock even sports Eazy-E's trademark jheri curl) is at its best when it's spoofing the songs of the time — Sweat of My Balls, a hilarious reworking of Kool G. Rap & DJ Polo's Talk Like Sex is Weird Al–level genius.