The young people in Nowhere spend a lot of time worrying about the world coming to an end. Watching these sour characters abuse themselves and one another, the more immediate concern becomes: When is this movie going to end?

Austin Powers sounded like a silly idea, but it turns out to be one of the best comedies of the year.

Bucking the lava tide of computer special effects gushing out of Hollywood this season, the makers of Breakdown use old-fashioned ingenuity -- plus a compelling star, a fast- paced mystery and a deadpan villain -- to come up with a sizzler.

That Duncan can't come up with a satisfying ending and lets the story drift into a confusing polemic is hardly surprising. He's guilty of overreaching -- interrupting his very sly satire with quasi-serious thoughts on the end of Soviet communism.

Irma Vep blurs the line between reality and fantasy, toys with notions of identity and offers a playfully jaundiced look at the petty jealousies and acts of sabotage that infect film crews in the heat of production.

A frothy comedy with the most adorable buddies since "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid."

With its fake-looking technology and empty characters, Volcano eventually becomes as obvious as its what-if premise.

Exactly what the title implies: mindless.

Murder at 1600 has velocity and excitement, and that takes it a long way. It stars Wesley Snipes, which takes it a bit farther. And it's also lightweight, cliched and borderline ridiculous, which takes it back a few pegs.

Traveller is entertaining in a mild, relaxing way.

It's even less funny than it sounds. By the end, this soporific comedy makes 105 minutes feel more like a two-year hitch.

The picture is a soggy, all-over-the- place mess.

So desperate and silly that here and there, it's a lot of fun.

Good in their individual scenes, Yakusho and Kusakari are magical together. They convey so much yearning -- not so much for each other as for that extra something to give real meaning to their lives.

A big problem in the beautifully shot movie, with top-billed Glenn Close heading a fine ensemble cast, is that there are too many characters.

It's fresh, unexpected and goofy. It's not a smart career move, just a film that its director wanted to make for some crazy reason, and he made it.

An awkward script, a mannered style and the selection of hill-and-dale Petaluma as a stand-in for an Illinois small town all undermine the film.

Lacks insight and finesse, and feels like a boldfaced Rorschach for Smith's own hang-ups.

Kilmer dons 12 disguises in all, polishes them with impeccable accents and pliable postures and gives a performance that's far and away the best aspect of the diverting The Saint.

Rodman can't act, but his outsized personality fits right in. Van Damme, as always, does his job and looks good doing it. As for Rourke, he's taken the first step. Now he just needs to rinse and repeat.

It looks like a low-budget film, but in this case that just adds to the charm. Croghan's only false move was to divide her film into segments, each one introduced by a quote from a famous writer.

Every instance when Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie feels like the worst movie ever made, some goofy little screechy moment involving the villainess, Divatox, saves it. So it winds up being nearly the worst movie ever made.

That the would-be buddies are played by Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt ensures enough star power to keep things moving even during the sluggish early scenes that set up their relationship.

Adults may have more fun watching this engaging film, which cleverly paints Hollywood as a treacherously duplicitous place even though it turns out some of the most joyous entertainments on earth.

The movie, directed and written by Gregory Nava ("My Family/Mi Familia"), is only so-so but Lopez, who appeared recently in "Jack'' and "Blood and Wine," is so vibrant that you almost forgive the movie's paint-by-numbers script and moldy formula.

Carrey goes boldly where no funnyman has ventured before, and it's simply amazing to watch him do it.

I'm not quite sure what David Cronenberg is trying to say in Crash, but whatever it is, he deserves a lot of credit for having the nerve to put it on screen and face the consequences.

Kore-eda weaves these images and others, building a multilayered fugue that contemplates death, asks if mourning ever truly ends and addresses the ephemeral nature of love, family and home. Everything we value and use to define and frame our lives, he suggests, is always at risk.

There's only so much Soderbergh can do. Gray's Anatomy is made up mainly of Gray, and there's a whole lot of Gray going on. The story is unremarkable. Gray's observations, pedestrian.

First-time film director Sullivan draws good performances from Goldwyn, Hutton and Parker, as well as Debra Monk, Elizabeth Franz and Eric Bogosian in minor roles.

What this film desperately needed was another element in the script, something besides love and sex. Maybe something about art, something that put the lovers on the same team and back into those appealing bohemian clubs. As it stands, love jones is a smart setting in search of a story.

Private Parts is witty and fast-paced and makes Stern's raunchy, breast-obsessed, lesbian-fetishizing, big-penis-envying, arrested-adolescent outlook seem like harmless fun.

Mildly caustic, sentimental and slow.

Dunye's engaging personality quickly wins you over. She deserves to be a character in a movie; she's more interesting than most.

The Daytrippers is low-budget perfection, a comedy without a false note and without a flat joke.

The true soul of the New York mob is portrayed in Donnie Brasco, a first-class Mafia thriller that is also in its way a love story -- perhaps director Mike Newell's best.

Noirish thrillers live or die by their plot twists and dialogue -- talk literally being cheap compared to action shots. Unfortunately, the script by first-time filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson fails on both counts.

Vanessa Redgrave makes a regal if too-brief appearance.

Booty Call never quite gets tiresome, thanks to the appealing cast and its sexy-goofy spirit. The picture succeeds in finding jokes within jokes.

It's a weird movie, in that spooky/sicko, deadpan way that Lynch's movies always are, and it's guaranteed to repel anyone who likes entertainment wrapped in tidy resolutions and optimistic fade- outs.

Rosewood is startling, infuriating, painful history played out as a not-very-satisfying, overly ambitious and overlong movie.

A sour romantic comedy that arrives in theaters just in time to spoil Valentine's Day. Its plot is a catalog of unpleasantness. Its characters are repellent.

Why, if Chase is such a funny guy, does he make such unfunny movies?

A first-rate thriller about arrogance at the top.

It's a light-hearted comedy about faith, transcendence and American-brand exploitation, and addresses those issues in such goofy, indirect, unhurried fashion that you could easily miss what Schrader has to say.

The new comedy is screechingly inane and skitters in nine directions at once.

Approximately the last hour of Dante's Peak is made up of action scenes, and how well one likes computer-generated destruction will determine how well one likes the movie.

SubUrbia is depressing comedy -- the more so because director Richard Linklater's satirical picture of youthful alienation rings painfully true.

Unfortunately, Hotel de Love also has all the originality of an all-purpose valentine. First- time filmmaker Craig Rosenberg appears to have seen every relationship movie ever made. To his credit, he borrowed only from the best.

Guest's boldest move is to present the revue in its entirety. It's as if Mel Brooks had shown the complete "Springtime for Hitler,'' the play within his 1968 movie, "The Producers.''

A wildly funny sex farce that smartly combines big-time silliness with sophisticated wit.

Using documentary-style Super 16 film and staged cutaway interviews with friends and family, James and his photographer and co-producer, Peter Gilbert, fashioned a movie with an affecting, candid look.

Mother is a relationship comedy, like Woody Allen's films, and it screams for the smart, elastic pacing that Allen creates. The situations are funny -- 40- year-old John moves into his old bedroom, goes shopping with Mother, is shocked that she has a boyfriend and occasionally curses and smokes -- but his poor timing flattens most of those scenes.

A glob of comedy, drama, action and suspense.

This is a movie in which the audience knows half the gags in advance, but thanks to director Dennis Dugan's timing and Farley's execution, the audience doesn't just laugh anyway, but laughs harder. Knowing in advance is part of the fun.

Metro, the new Eddie Murphy cop picture made in San Francisco that opens today, goes beyond cliched: It's shameless. The relationships, plot turns -- even the action sequences -- are trite and uninspired. Murphy is fresh, as usual, but "Metro" is not.

Sizemore ("Heat") and Miller, though saddled with a lot of scientific DNA jargon, are really the only lively people in this dense, gruesome film that stubbornly refuses to break out of its contrived atmosphere.

Ghosts of the Mississippi doesn't glorify in happy endings. That's because it haunts with the reminder that racism remains an unhealed wound.

With "Flynt," Love does what Madonna has been trying to do for 12 years -- create a performance filled with humor, intelligence and soul.

Alan Parker's picture is epic, lavish and fascinating. It is not a perfect screen musical, but it is spectacular and it works.

Nora Ephron directed it and had a hand in the screenplay, but without Travolta this film would have no reason for being.

Coming on the heels of Ma Saison Preferee, Thieves suggests that Techine is filling the void left by the deaths of Truffaut and Louis Malle, and ought to be considered his country's finest humanist filmmaker.

The Portrait of a Lady is a huge disappointment. It's a deliberately arty, overly formal exercise in emotional terrorism.

Wicked fun with flickers of intelligence.

Has some funny moments, and if you're a Beavis and Butt-head fan, you'll enjoy the movie.

My Fellow Americans is one adjustment away from being a great movie. As it stands it's a pleasing but mediocre film, with a great cast, a great story and a misguided script.

One Fine Day is no great shakes, but it avoids being tiresome thanks to the attractiveness of the stars and to a few twists that screenwriters Terrell Seltzer and Ellen Simon offer to differentiate this from other bickering-adversaries-fall-in-love comedies. Both stars also have adorable kids who figure prominently in the plot.

Any movie with Meryl Streep is an occasion, but when you add Diane Keaton, Robert De Niro, Leonardo DiCaprio, Hume Cronyn and Gwen Verdon, you've got an embarrassment of riches.

The movie is directed by Anjelica Huston, and like a lot of actors who direct, Huston shows an ability to elicit strong emotions from her actors. But Huston also demonstrates a sense of where to place the camera. [13 Dec 1996, p.C1]

Zellweger has the most interesting new face in film, and she knows how to use silences to say what the heart wants to get across.

This messy science fiction comedy blows most of its inspired moments because of its mean-spirited, deafening siege mentality, which turns rich promise into a tiresome parade of half-baked skits. Hilarity never seemed so tedious.

Along the way, this funny picture does exactly what a satire should: It irritates everybody. At least it runs that risk.

What Daylight lacks is the knowledge of its own limitations. The only really hysterical line is delivered by Sly's son, Sage Stallone, who plays one of three young prisoners also stuck in the tunnel...Surrounded by rubble and rising water, he gazes longingly at the 14-year-old Harris and says, "If we don't die in here, I was wondering if I could give you a call. . . ."

A story that's startling, soulful and absolutely unforgettable.

Though this film's considerable warmth derives from dalmatian puppies and other animals who take charge of their fates, Close steals the show.

Director Nicholas Hytner doesn't soften or cosmeticize Miller's tale -- it's often uncomfortable to watch -- and he draws an emotional pitch from his actors that helps us understand the mob fury and irrational fear that make a situation like the one in Salem possible.

The fine quality of the new film is good news for anyone disappointed by "Star Trek Generations," which got the new "Star Trek" feature film series off to a shaky start two years ago.

Jingle wants to warm our hearts and establish Schwarzenegger as a family man -- but devotes so much time to goony violence and broad physical comedy that the last-reel schmaltz feels hollow and tacked-on.

With a surgeon's precision and trenchant wit, director Patrice Leconte slices open the French upper classes of the late 18th century and reveals the black, wilting heart beneath the pomp and pretense.

Delivers a full emotional palette without undue sentimentalizing.

A mesmerizing film that is the most stunning, tempestuous love story in a decade or two of movie making.

It's gimmicky Saturday-morning cartoon wackiness in your face -- funny, but brain-deadening.

One of the most haunting and vital movies of the year.

Beneath the handsome production values, the steady motor of Ron Howard's direction and the solid acting of Mel Gibson as a flashy airline tycoon whose son is abducted in Central Park, Ransom is pure poison: the kind of hang-'em-high rouser that feeds off our basest impulses and prods us into cheering the hero on as he commits grisly, retributive acts of violence.

This thick, leaden production starring Bob Hoskins and Patricia Arquette - and an uncredited Robin Williams - has a sophomoric air, even though it faithfully follows the book.

Set It Off blends action and urban drama effectively, but at times isn't sure which foot to lead with.

The result is embarrassing: quick cuts and shaky, hand- held camera work, bad acting and lots of attitude.

Larger Than Life isn't as bad as it sounds, mostly because Murray is so likable and fundamentally incapable of not being funny.

Stupid yet cogent, High School High is a rapid-fire gag machine that's dopey enough to get belly laughs and smart enough to earn a C-plus as engaging entertainment.

On a deeper level -- and this is where When We Were Kings exceeds its expectations and becomes a great film -- Gast examines African American pride.

Particularly impressive is the film's success at making an actor of average weight look emaciated. His cheekbones are built up so his cheeks appear to sink.

It's no masterpiece, but it's real.

A visual masterpiece that powerfully explores male cruelty, too.

Jude is knockout Hardy, filled with stormy visual poetry and accompanied by a gorgeous yet simple score.

By tossing out all these voices and opinions, Lee and screenwriter Reggie Rock Blythewood have created both a time capsule and a movie audiences will talk about.

The Chamber has nowhere to go and it goes there slowly, flirting in all directions.

Viewers may feel let down because the depth promised by the movie's visual artistry is never quite delivered.

A "nonstop thriller" that is also a nonstop dud. Underline the word "long" in the title.