Don Roos's script for Single White Female, from the 1990 potboiler SWF Seeks Same, by John Lutz, is as empty as a hack's head. Schroeder goes through the motions — the movie is elegantly made — but this synthetic Hollywood package panders shamelessly to the baser instincts.

Unforgiven is the most provocative western of Eastwood's career, and with Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman and Richard Harris along for the ride, it's also the most potently acted.

Buffy isn't heinous, just disposable. As a friend tells Buffy while she eyes a fashion purchase, "It's so five minutes ago."

The exquisitely wrought tale of four British women of different backgrounds who rent a villa in Portofino, Italy, is delivered with a witty feminist twist by director Mike Newell (Dance With a Stranger) and an outstanding cast.

August keeps a discreet distance from the harsher realities, making The Best Intentions must viewing only if you find diluted Bergman better than no Bergman at all.

Craig Lucas’s prince of a play has been turned into a toad of a movie.

What Murphy's doing isn't acting; it's masturbation.

Burton uses the summer's most explosively entertaining movie to lead us back into the liberating darkness of dreams.

Kid'n Play have charm, but it's disturbing to see them settle for the slick. Their rap used to stand for something; now it's just easy listening.

For stranding these talents in a one-gag movie that wears thin somewhere between the first choir practice and the second chase, the filmmakers should say a sincere Act of Contrition.

Even at its hokiest, Far and Away is never less than heartfelt.

If Ridley Scott's Alien (1979) had more surprises and James Cameron's Aliens (1986) more thrills, David Fincher's austere, low-tech, darkly funny Alien 3 has more sharply observed characters.

Plot analysis is useless, since the film's fate rests with MTV comic Shore in his feature debut.

Lethal Weapon 3 offers mediocrity wielded by experts. It's not a movie, it's a machine.

Though Poison Ivy is more than whoopee, audiences may find the movie easier to get off on than to get into. But why settle for the usual walk around the exploitation block when Shea offers a wild ride with the top down into uncharted territory?

What makes The Player the best and boldest American comedy in years is Altman's wizardry at leavening anger with cathartic wit. He sticks it to every target, himself and us included, with a wicked zest that hurts only when you laugh -- and The Player keeps you laughing constantly.

What Shelton fails to provide is a coherent structure; the film is wearyingly repetitive. The boys do the same hustle and hurl the same racial epithets as our goodwill dribbles away.

A violent cartoon that trivializes apartheid. If there's any justice, the birds of loneliness will be circling the box office.

The film is for horny pups of all ages who relish the memory of reading stroke books under the covers with a flashlight. Verhoeven has spent $49 million to reproduce that dirty little thrill on the big screen.

Incisively witty, provocative and acted to perfection, this sublime entertainment is a career peak for producer Ismail Merchant, director James Ivory and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala.

Olmos is unsparing in depicting the dark side of human behavior. His in-your-face style stresses the urgency of a situation most of us choose to ignore. Though powerful, the film is sometimes preachy; there's a sense that information is being disseminated instead of dramatized. But it's hard to believe anyone will remain unmoved by American Me or its final shattering image of human desolation.

Here's the movie of the month for those who like their escapism big, brutal and brainless. Two fine young actors – James Marshall (Twin Peaks) and Cuba Gooding Jr. (Boyz n the Hood) – have inexplicably agreed to strike suitable-for-leering poses in their underwear while director Rowdy Herrington (Road House) devises other distractions from the idiotic plot.

Mellencamp has made an admirably unfussy movie that sneaks into your heart with the hypnotic power of a song.

Final Analysis suffers from something much worse: terminal shallowness.

Mira Nair’s lush, heartfelt romance glows with humanity and desire; it puts the “passion” back in “compassion.”

In Guncrazy, Davis delivers pow entertainment with a twist: It matters.

Schrader is out there again, testing the limits of audience tolerance. Good for him. Buoyed by his questing spirit and Dafoe's mesmerizing performance, Light Sleeper might just keep you up nights.

Grand Canyon is most gripping when Kasdan shows people waking up to the world and finding that they need more than bromides.