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.