Bugsy is less an indictment of the dark side than a black-comic look at our continuing fascination with it. Even when this powerhouse entertainment trips on its ambitions, you can't shake it off.

Jarmusch is a true visionary; he knows his films can't bring order to the ravishing chaos around him, but he can't resist the fun of trying. In this compassionate comedy of missed connections, he makes us see the ordinary in fresh and pertinent ways. But the flickers of humanity in those taxis are soon dulled by barriers of time, sex, race, language and money. They are flickers in a vast emotional void.

Sure, it has a low-rent, get-high-and-watch-it-at-3-AM vibe to it, but the film's mind-numbing longueurs and its dialogue do away with any Z-movie verve one might be expecting. DiCaprio isn't too bad as a pissy kid; indeed, he seems to be the only cast member who can actually act.

Since this is a movie about deranged racists driven by a virulent strain of midcentury Christian moralism to keep children in cages while conspiring to disenfranchise the poor, that’s not going to work. Everything that happens in this movie could happen next month and it would be a one-day cable-news story that Fox would probably not cover.

Before this trippy, mesmerizing movie swerves out of control, it delivers an exhilarating and challenging ride.

Purposely out of step with the feel-good-movie era, he offers caustic wit instead of gags, blunt questions instead of glib answers and challenges instead of reassurances. Bless him.

Washington strikes the right tone of cocksure bravery as it turns into bewilderment, psychosis, and rage as the movie goes through its many wild twists and turns.

Dogfight doesn’t sum up an era; it merely romanticizes it. What could have been an incisive movie about alienation deteriorates into a conventional romance.

Restores our belief in the power of movies to transform reality, even temporarily. So what if it's not perfect? It's magic.

In his debut as a writer-director, Sean Penn shows a sure hand with actors and a knack for setting up a scene visually and dramatically. But he’s a bust at following through.

It’s the old Monkees trick: If you can’t find a band, manufacture one. British director Alan Parker (Fame, Mississippi Burning) lucks out. The dozen unknowns he’s chosen — ten with no previous acting credits — make a joyful noise and rousing company. Parker, however, hasn’t made much of a movie.

A two-hour search for a pulse... A miscalculation from a prodigious talent who has forgotten that you squeeze the life out of romance when you don't give it space to breathe.

Stimulating entertainment, as rigorously challenging and painfully funny as anything the Coens have done. But it's necessary to meet the Coens halfway. If you don't, Barton Fink is an empty exercise that will bore you breathless. If you do, it's a comic nightmare that will stir your imagination like no film in years.

Paris Is Burning catches the sadly hollow spectacle with acuity, wit and intelligence.

Within its small, darkly funny range, Trust is an exceptional film that stays alert to the mysteries of love.

Life Stinks isn't nearly as bad as legend suggests, and its even won a tiny cult following.

What saves Point Break from wipeout is Kathryn Bigelow's direction. Though the film lacks the formal beauty and allure of her Near Dark and Blue Steel, Bigelow keeps the action percolating in high style.

What's lacking is emotional weight. It's sad to watch a talented cast, including Bill Nunn as Henry's physical therapist and Donald Moffat, Rebecca Miller and Kirby Mitchell as co-workers, selling bromides.

The film's relentless pummeling grows wearying at 135 minutes. The first Terminator, a half-hour shorter, was leaner and meaner.

There's no telling how the unflatteringly photographed Applegate delivers a comic line on the big screen, because Tara Ison and Neil Landau haven't written her any. And it's painful to see pros like Joanna Cassidy and John Getz stuck in this sewage. Director Stephen Herek does what you'd expect from the man who gave us Critters and Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, i.e., grinds out the film equivalent of processed cheese.

The satire loses its edge as the filmmakers wrongheadedly try to humanize this nest of vipers. Soapdish is more fun when it's spitting venom than when it's licking wounds.

A movie this unspeakably awful can make an audience a little crazy. You want to throw things, yell at the actors, beg them to stop. But the film drags on, digging horrible memories into the brain -- like Bruce Willis and Danny Aiello's singing.

Begins like an episode of "I Love Lucy" and ends with the impact of "Easy Rider."

Writer and first-time director Anthony Minghella lays on the whimsy a bit thick at times, but his wryly funny and heartfelt observations on sorrow go down much easier than the Hollywood brand of lump-in-the-throat histrionics.

Is this vulnerable Madonna the real thing or a ploy to ingratiate herself with film audiences who’ve found her chilly and strident? You be the judge. But there’s no denying that Truth or Dare is at its raunchy best when Madonna is kicking ass instead of kissing it.

Dillon is a potent combination of looks, charm and menace, as he proved in Drugstore Cowboy, but Dearden’s script fails to provide the raw material that would let him go beyond the stereotype.

Director Paul Schrader has fashioned a film of surpassing creepiness. It's pretentious, too, and sometimes maddeningly dull. But the erotically unsettling atmosphere – exquisitely rendered by cinematographer Dante Spinotti – soon seeps in.

Winkler's script creaks with melodrama, especially in the scenes with Merrill and his ex-wife, Ruth (Annette Bening), though Bening gives the role spine. Director Winkler fails to modulate the performances.