This is a Seagal movie without Seagal and a Jack Ryan movie without Jack Ryan.

The Coens haven't been this sharp, focused and fluid since their first film. This is "Blood Simple's" promise fulfilled.

While Birdcage has many isolated funny moments, long bits of slowness interrupt the energy.

The Spanish filmmaker goes back to what he does better than any other living director - post-modernizing the melodrama.

This is filmmaking of high energy and wit. What it adds up to is debatable. You can view it as a bright twist on the being-a-cop-is-lonely sort of police picture, or as a mini-anthology of quirky not-quite-love stories. If it's hard to say where Chungking Express arrives, the trip is still exhilarating.

While the picture periodically skids into sentimentality and characters lapse into schtick, its good-natured quality and winning cast sustain our sympathy.

The Neon Bible is one of those movies that isn't devoid of art or redeeming features, but nevertheless deserves some kind of warning label: Those suffering from depression or a short attention span should proceed with extreme caution.

The closest this movie comes to delivering any titillation are a few open-shirted shots of Grammer that display major chest fur. You know you're bored when you have to devise a comparative body hair study to amuse yourself.

Rumble in the Bronx has the explosive escapades that Stallone/Schwarzenegger followers crave - hair-raising free falls, hovercrafts out of control, crazed turf wars, collapsing buildings, gun-happy gangsters and other boy-film staples - plus the kind of oddball comedy and independent spirit usually found only outside the current Hollywood empire. Chan is a true artist of a genre that ordinarily does all it can to avoid art.

With the exception of a couple of inspired moments, Mary Reilly is merely a curious variation of an often-told story.

Several times during this film, you wish you were a bottle rocket so you could explode out of your seat and leave this tedious mess behind.

A way-below-par golfing comedy.

The movie is a big fumble.

Something in Hutton's wounded puppy look always communicates an untapped intelligence or wasted potential, both of which are perfect for this role.

Broken Arrow isn't the ultimate fusion of Hong Kong surrealism and Hollywood realism, but it points the way to nerve-shattering possibilities.

It just doesn't work.

Hoffman proves himself a master of complex scenery, crowd control and graceful direction. He succeeds in making a conspicuously lush and rich movie out of what was reportedly a less than kingly budget.

There are some semi-funny bits, but few are worth repeating and none will make much sense on paper. The only time when the film truly clicks is during a staged concert featuring the veteran Seattle grunge band Mudhoney. Suddenly there are wacky camera angles, wild editing, actual ideas. Despite her low-brow comedy rep, Spheeris still excels at capturing the intensity and drama of live rock music, which she did so well in both editions of "The Decline of Western Civilization."

Spiritually it's a John Woo-George Romero-Jim Thompson picture, outrageously bloody and weird.

This film may set an all-time record for shortest time between the big screen and your local video store.

Two points save "Lousy 2" from the absolute abyss. One is a couple of imaginative touches in the art design: Cori drives an old Citroen, and a couple of Vespa-like motor scooters are briefly glanced. The other is the performance of Frewer, who played the lead in TV's "Max Headroom." He endows the character with more sardonic humor than we have a right to expect from the junky script by TV-oriented director Farhad Mann.

Poking fun at such hit films as Boyz N the Hood, Menace II Society and Poetic Justice, the Wayanses parody the neo-blaxploitation craze so savagely that no filmmaker will ever be able to make another film about the drugs, guns and ho's of South Central L.A. without figuring out how to work around the genre's well-worn conventions.

Schlesinger, working from a script by Amanda Silver ( "The Hand that Rocks the Cradle" ) and Rick Jaffa (he produced that film), gives the film a zippy pace and a natural momentum as direct as a hot knife negotiating a butter stick. Schlesinger is also still canny at casting.

DENIS LEARY may be a funny guy when he's standing on stage spraying invective at a live audience, but as a movie star he has a lot to learn.

One of the qualities that makes "12 Monkeys" so good is the fact that it is almost too complicated to explain.

Troubling and troubled.

The light and heavy flow with equal ease and expertise from McKellen's enchanted kitchen.

Grumpier Old Men certainly isn't relying on its mawkish and hokey story to put warm bodies in the seats. There's no reason to see the picture - a sequel to their 1993 hit, “Grumpy Old Men" - other than to relish the talents of these two veterans, plus Sophia Loren, a newcomer to the series.