Martin Sheen makes his directing debut with this military drama mixed with laughs. It isn’t awful — just bland, which is worse.

The superbly crafted suspense thriller…slams you like a sudden blast of bone-chilling, pulse-pounding terror.

This big-screen Hamlet, pumped up to operatic scale by overkill director Franco Zeffirelli, exposes Gibson's shortcomings.

Don't look for the originality and grit that distinguished Weir's Australian films Picnic at Hanging Rock and Gallipoli, Green Card has all the heft of a potato chip. But Depardieu's charm recognizes no language barriers, and MacDowell, the revelation of sex, lies, and videotape, proves a fine, sexy foil.

Alice may be a minor work in the Allen canon, but when its grace notes manage to be heard above the whimsy, they ring true.

Director Brian De Palma’s $45 million film version of the book is superficial, shopworn and cartoonish. On film, Bonfire achieves a consistency of ineptitude rare even in this era of over-inflated cinematic air bags.

At its best, The Russia House offers a rare and enthralling spectacle: the resurrection of buried hopes.

Edward Scissorhands isn't perfect. It's something better: pure magic.

The antique charms of the story can still seduce us when done well, and director Jean-Paul Rappeneau, who freely adapted the play with Jean-Claude Carrière, knows how to fashion a sumptuously beautiful, hugely entertaining spectacle that also stays alert to the cadences of the heart.

The film is dawdling, sometimes maddeningly so, but Newman and Woodward deliver lovingly detailed and bruisingly true performances that not only command attention but richly reward it.

Levinson wants nothing less than to capture the hope and despair of the American dream through the saga of one family — his family. It’s a grand ambition. But the film, though exquisitely crafted, lacks the political, spiritual and sociological depth to realize it. What Avalon does offer are rich period details, abundant scenes of humor and heartbreak and outstanding performances.

What makes it such a mesmerizing, wickedly witty entertainment is the revealing portrait it paints of an era in which everyone is presumed guilty where greed is concerned... It's an often chilly movie, but the chill cuts to the bone.

The vigorous young cast enhances the excitement of the flight sequences, which are spectacular. Movie rah-rah has rarely been this entertaining.

Ferrara’s blend of toughness and lyricism turns this visionary crime film into something stylish, seductive and haunting.

[Keaton] delivers a chilling performance, imbuing what could have been a one-note nut case with unexpected reserves of feeling. The acting and direction don’t fill in all the credibility gaps, but they do make for classy, crackling suspense.

The real burned-out case is director-writer Peter Bogdanovich. The Last Picture Show made his reputation, and these aging Texans trying to rediscover their innocence obviously touch him deeply. But Bogdanovich’s style has turned heavy, crude and incoherent.

This is vintage B-movie material, and if you really want to catch a vintage B movie that uses the material effectively, try the original 1952 version of the same name.

The movie is marred by overkill, especially in the brutal and bloated allegorical ending, which feels lifted, clumsily, from The Godfather. State of Grace is most powerful and gripping when it stays true to the emotions of its characters.

The film is talky and often stilted. But Eastwood’s compassion for the character, warts and all, feels genuine. His performance, like the movie, is a high-wire act that remains fascinating even when it falters.

Martin Scorsese scores again with his gritty, kinetic adaptation of Nicolas Pileggi's best-selling "Wiseguy."

A hot-wired crime thriller that captures Thompson's flair for hard action, malicious wit and fevered eroticism.

Roaring into the microphone with all the passion he can't put into his life, Slater gives this movie what it otherwise so desperately lacks: a reason for being.

Starting with the outrageous and building from there, he ignites a slight love-on-the-run novel, creating a bonfire of a movie that confirms his reputation as the most exciting and innovative filmmaker of his generation.

The movie that might have been goes down in flames.

Towne doesn't weave all the elements as deftly as before, and his political observations seem secondhand.

A film that could have been the first cleareyed view of the jazz world from a black perspective ends as a romanticized fable. For the only time in his remarkable career, Spike Lee has failed to tell it like it is.

The first Young Guns, in 1988, was an endurance test for all but those who think ogling young actors in tight britches is a fascinating way to spend two hours. Though it seems impossible, the sequel is even more excruciating.

Even readers with reservations about the ways the film fails to measure up to the book should appreciate a smart, passionate, steadily engrossing thriller in a summer of mindless zap.