Kilmer makes a surprisingly effective and effete Holliday, but Russell lacks the stature for Earp - Sam Elliott as his older brother Virgil suggests a better movie. There's a misguided romantic subplot and the ending rather sprawls, but mostly this is rootin', tootin' entertainment with lots of authentic facial hair.

The movie meanders for two and a half hours, has glaring continuity gaps, and repeatedly confuses self-consciousness with irony, sincerity with significance. There are grace notes here, but Wenders' ambitions seem far, far away.

Despite typically hip disclaimers, WW2 is in many respects a standard sequel, careful to rerun not only the (very sketchy) form of the original, but often the content as well. Odd, then, that this should be much funnier than the first film.

Bouncy musical numbers and plenty of social concern, but the star, regrettably, is on autopilot.

Walter Hill proves unexpectedly reluctant to force the story, but he makes the red earth of the Moab desert burn with blood and shame.

In the end only Channing, reprising her award-winning stage role, manages to inject some authentic feeling into this somewhat mechanical enterprise.

This adaptation of Roddy Doyle's novel may not display the glitz and relentless energy of The Commitments, but it has wit, feeling and authenticity.

What's most impressive is the simplicity and clarity of the enterprise - and, of course, the music.

The director manages mostly to avoid the enormous maudlin pitfalls of his material, at least until the over-extended final scene. As usual with Eastwood, little is overstated - and the accent is on humour.

It runs long and is ultimately not much more than a showpiece, but Pacino looks every inch a movie star, and De Palma provides a timely reminder of just how impoverished the Hollywood lexicon has become since the glory days of the '70s.

Satisfying, old-fashioned family romp, but hardly a modern classic.

The familiarity of the high-armour shoot-outs and sfx-assisted set-pieces make most of this sequel feel surprisingly low-tech. Not bad entertainment, though.

Comic interest is sustained by the entrance of prissy poodle Daphne (voice-over: Diane Keaton), but the preponderance of nudging innuendo was enough to earn the film a '12' certificate, thus excluding the audience of younger children who might otherwise have enjoyed the movie.

You know there's truth in these drab small-town lives, but, regrettably, there's little drama or humour to sustain interest in Ruby's vague musings on her bleak search for paradise.

The performances are sound, but for much of the time the film seems undecided whether it's a mystery, a romance, a social document or an art movie. And that indecision is fatal, stifling the life out of what might have been an effective little thriller.

Yuzna and fx maestro Steve Johnson put human flesh on the plot's bare bones, without ever losing sight of the central offbeat romance.

There isn't a half decent performance to be found here, and his own daughter in the female lead is particularly awful. Also, a barely credible plot and uneven pacing don't help. Yet Argento's occasionally brilliant camerawork and the evident glee with which he sets about the decapitation scenes make this just about worthwhile.

This beautifully realised confection will delight grown-ups of all ages.

Underdogs are the grist of sports movies; even so, it's unusual to find a hero so ill-equipped for the task at hand. Directed with composure, but no great fervour, the film's conspicuously uninterested in American football, and much concerned with testing the limits and the resilience of the American dream.

[A] lamentable half-hour sit-com masquerading as a movie...No unexpected twists; very few jokes; not much talent. After the glory that was "Wayne's World", director Spheeris should be ashamed of herself.

Appropriately operatic, Chen's visually spectacular epic is sumptuous in every respect. Intelligent, enthralling, rhapsodic.

A soap for the slack generation, that'll strike a chord way outside the confines of the New Queer Cinema.

An American wrestling champ with two or three films under his belt, Hogan has an unusual combination of assets: brawn and an authentic American accent. He doesn't take himself too seriously either, which could prove his downfall - that and excruciating movies like this.

In its present state, the film veers unsteadily between overblown romance and a portrait of a disturbed and pained man as a wacky guy who's fun to be with. Small wonder that the director has disowned the release version.

An ecologically sound update of the classic '50s bug movie, efficiently directed by Tony (Hell-bound) Randel and featuring 'the vampires of the insect world'.

A melodramatic thriller which did surprisingly well in the US given its implausible straight-to-video scenario. Undistinguished.

Clearly a labour of love for co-writer, co-director and star Alex Winter (the other one in the Bill and Ted movies), this freewheeling, anarchic, gross-out comedy should satisfy the six-pack post-pub crowd, but it can't really stand up to sober viewing.

Young Mac is decisively upstaged by Wood, but the film's strongest selling point has to be a cliff-top finale in which the tyke's own mother has to choose whether he'll live or die. A summer camp classic.

Magnificent...Scorsese's most poignantly moving film.

His unauthorised investigation, with partner Jo Christman (Parker), is a routine affair, the film's familial and professional tensions sunk by a script that's all development and no pay-off.

Disappointingly infantile.

While confined to the futuristic prison interiors, the film works reasonably well; but once Lambert springs his wife from the women's section and escapes, the limitations of budget and narrative imagination start to show. As it moves away from the ensemble feel of the early scenes, this quickly degenerates into a part explosive, part sentimental star vehicle.

Uniquely weird, subtly macabre, and utterly compelling.

Phoenix is fine in an odd, transitional role, but Mathis (who looks more like his sister than his girlfriend) really steals the show with a bright, sassy performance.

The movie's firepower would shame the devil. It's what Hollywood wanted Woo for: bigger, brighter explosions.

As light and brazenly generic as Allen's early work. As a result, it is both unusually insubstantial, and, at least in the second half, extremely funny.

Frances Hodgson Burnett's much-loved children's novel could all too easily come across on screen as the last word in period fustian, but the unforced approach of Holland and scriptwriter Caroline Thompson pierces to the emotional core of a still potent tale.

Made for cable with many has-beens from hell.

Ford is up to par for the strenuous stuff, but falls short on the grief, anxiety and compassion, allowing Tommy Lee Jones to walk away with the show as the wisecracking marshal on Kimble's trail.

Never patronising his characters, Ang Lee combines comedy, both subtle and raucous, with acute social asides.

The crass Scots jokes are irresistible; Alan Arkin's cameo as a mild-mannered police chief is sheer perfection; and the cultish references to Beat poetry should please slumming hipsters. Like an exploding haggis, funny but extremely messy.

There are explosions, car chases, a climactic shoot-out, and a comic dog. Comedy and suspense sensibly packaged; but very old hat.

The ugly trio - Midler, Najimy and Parker - perform a show-stopping version of 'I Put a Spell on You' at a Halloween party, but otherwise it's slim pickings.

First-time director Stern - Macaulay Culkin's punching bag in the Home Alone films - gives a broad performance as the pitching coach who knows nothing about baseball. Approach with aspirin.

Branagh and Thompson, as Beatrice and Benedick, seem on the whole happier with the romance than the comedy - but do a fair job with some of the best verbal jousting in the language.

Along with the usual streamlining of history, we get a good deal of first-hand emotion and little critical perspective.

A smooth blend of sentiment and slapstick.

Anyone who saw The Killer will have a fair idea what to expect, from the intense male bonding to the hyper-kinetic editing style. What's new here is a rich vein of anarchic humour (will they evacuate the maternity ward before the hospital blows up?) and a bluesy back-beat of philosophical musings on a cop's sad lot.

It's overlong, but that reflects the nature of Mexican cooking: like water for chocolate, which must be brought to the boil three times, the characters continually bubble and boil over.

Yes, designer David L Snyder has done wonders with the set; yes, there's decent photography and effects; yes, the giant Goombas are splendid. But the whole is not a dinosaur, it's a dog. It will baffle kids, bore adolescents, and depress adults.

While there's no doubting the sincerity of writer/director Gerima's film, one can't help sensing more than a little déjà vu in his account of the manifest evils of slavery.

After the first half sets up intriguing racial/political/biological conundrums, the second simply lets them go hang. Energetically directed with a fair smattering of funny lines.

Stone looks distinctly ordinary in this glossy, glassy sex-thriller.

Unlike its grim predecessor, there are at least two chuckles this time round, a slapstick routine at a Buddhist monastery and a witty Apocalypse Now gag.

Fate intervenes at an indecent rate, serving up plenty of misunderstandings, but the mise-en-scène is stunning. Go with the floe.

The jarring 1990s sensibility of this over-directed, under-written movie extends to style as well as content. Worst of all is the blatantly fetishistic attitude the director adopts towards his posturing macho star.

A buoyant comedy in the Capra tradition.

Unlike most film star biopics, this is especially strong on the films themselves, with skilful re-creations from Fists of Fury and Enter the Dragon. Less successful is the subplot in which Lee faces up to his inner demons, depicted as a fantastical giant samurai figure.

Clearly a labour of love for director Hackford, the film oozes integrity and is heavy with the stench of an authentic milieu; but forceful set-pieces and astute cultural observations are lost amid a sea of confusing (and eventually dull) stand-offs between warring gangs.

Lacking the intellectual, emotional and philosophical rigours of, say, a film by Oshima, this brazenly voyeuristic nonsense is finally as incoherent and unilluminating as it's hackneyed.

The film has three amiable leads and doesn't overstay its welcome.

Director Harris's strength is his ability to flesh out routine crime scenarios with credibly motivated characters, adding emotional depth and texture to familiar generic pleasures. That said, Snipes never quite finds the measure of his role; so, despite Hopper's unusually funny and warm performance, the final impression is tepid.

Chock-a-block with cute reminiscence - which is a shame, because if it weren't so knowing, this would be quite a likeable little comedy about nothing in particular.

A harmless sex-teaser, from a first-time writer/director, which develops into a confused, cynical and third-rate exploitationer.

One could dwell on Johnson's in-your-face performance, or how refreshing it is to see a black New York drama played out by homegirls. But, facing facts, the climax is unpersuasive and the happy end a cop-out.

Slater's greasy-haired 'Beast' is not for the hard-boiled, but see the film for Tomei's sensitive, doe-eyed 'Beauty', and for Bill's sure feel for an authentic downtown milieu.

Wrong, wrong and wrong again; this Loaded Weapon fires only dumb-dumb bullets.

The solid script makes the most of the dilemmas and paradoxes of the couple's predicament; Philippe Rousselot's photography manages to be lyrical without becoming too cloyingly picturesque; and surprisingly (the only surprise in this craftsmanlike but unremarkable movie), it doesn't cop out at the end.

A virtual two- hander, the narrative proceeds by contrasting Berenger's edgy pragmatism with Zane's unwilling induction to the art of murder, though the director's inventive bullets' eye-view shots still fail to dispel the suspicion that the film has little new to say.

A dull affair.

There's bondage, buggery, and a clothes-ripping chase up the stairs. Apart from that, there's a bit of verbal back-and-forth in court between the DA (Mantegna) and defence about whether she used her body as a lethal weapon to kill her millionaire lover and inherit; a brace of shifty witnesses (Archer and Prochnow); no tension; and Portland, Oregon in the rain.

This spoof fly-on-the-wall documentary is funny, scary, provocative, and profoundly disturbing...Purely on a gut level, it may offend; but as an exploration of voyeurism, it's one of the most resonant, caustic contributions to the cinema of violence since Peeping Tom.

Skilfully crafted and doggedly performed, the film pushes too hard and too far; it strives for the inspirational but falls well short of inspired.

When Van Damme is doing what he does best - narcissistically displaying his body and thumping the bad guys - the film works reasonably well. By contrast his attempts to lighten up and play quieter dramatic scenes offer an embarrassing array of boyish smiles, dumb looks and stilted dialogue.

For the undemanding, it may seem a fair stand-off; but compared to Hill's best work, it's merely a jerk-off.

Williams has been playing nauseatingly cute for ages, but achieves a new squashiness here as a chatterbox Andy Pandy. Unbelievably rotten.

The three ghosts of Christmas are wonderful. Elsewhere, Fozzie Bear bears a resemblance to Francis L Sullivan in the David Lean Dickens adaptations, and there's a shop called Micklewhite. As an actor, Kermit can corrugate his forehead vertically. Good fun.

Visually, it's a treat, a perfect marriage of hi-tech graphics and the traditional Disney virtue of strong characterisation and colour. The script crackles with wit and life. Williams' Genie is matched by Freeman's malevolent Jafar, and by Gottfried as Jafar's wisecracking parrot Iago. The only disappointments are the wet Aladdin and his sweetheart Jasmine and five rather ordinary original songs.

This routine sequel has a trio of nice cameos, but no surprises.

While the film glides from Malcolm's early years as a hustler and petty criminal to his emergence in the Nation of Islam, it plays surprisingly safe as a solidly crafted trawl through the didactic/hagiographic conventions of the mainstream biopic.

An efficient, entertaining time-waster, but Snipes deserved better for his first solo starring role.

The opening scene on a rain-drenched rubbish tip hints at great things, but despite strong writing and an exceptional cast, the plotting is suspect and the murderer's identity is obvious from very early on.

The searching period reconstruction includes some dark notes (peasants sing Fascist anthems in the fields), but this is mostly a starry eyed celebration of the time when Movies were still Magic, complete with a bitter-sweet pastiche Nino Rota score.

For all the footage of glistening flesh - most of the film takes place in a darkened room where the two explore the realm of the senses - this is basically a melancholic piece about the remembrance of times, places and passions lost (with voice-over narration by Jeanne Moreau).

Following up on Paperhouse, Rose stages the suspense and horror with skill and panache, making this one of the best sustained horror movies for some years.

Twenty years after the taut Klute, Pakula's touch has deserted him; the glossy, literalist approach he favours here works firmly against the arrant contrivances in Matthew Chapman's screenplay, rendering already convoluted events even more ridiculous.

The cheap 'message' of the ending fails to salvage a film that at best is well-meant but misguided, at worst, flashy and garbled.

Seems doomed to remain a period piece.

Besides a smattering of good gags, David Webb Peoples' script touches on numerous intriguing questions (notably, what constitutes heroism?) while piling irony upon irony. But while Garcia waxes credibly sincere, Hoffman hams, and Davis simply looks lost: small wonder, given Frears' leaden direction, which contrives to scupper suspense and comedy through sluggish pacing and misguided camera placement.

David Mamet's play about the wheelings and dealings of real-estate salesmen gets dedicated playing from a splendid cast, but gains nothing by the transfer from stage to screen..

Drawing a parallel with Gennaro's undercover isolation and hinting at a cautious affinity in a bravura sex scene, Landis brilliantly captures a carnal craving laced with blood lust and dangerous eroticism; but, regrettably, all too often the tone lurches from stylish suspense to smart-ass in-jokiness and silly slapstick.

Low on directorial inspiration, but more relevant and resonant than much of the big-budget white trash churned out by Hollywood.

Writer-director Crowe suffuses the film with tender humour and affection as the characters, most of them living in the same apartment block, swap stories, ponder sexual come-ons where none exist, and remain resolute in the face of emotional horrors. Pearl Jam, Mudhoney and Soundgarden contribute to the soundtrack, and the film's tone couldn't be sweeter.

With excellent performances (Davis and Pollack in particular), it's his finest film since "Hannah and Her Sisters."

With its bravura camerawork, fetishistic Cenobite designs, nerve-jangling soundtrack, and literate Peter Atkins script, Anthony Hickox's film is a worthy successor to Clive Barker's flesh-ripping original. Forget the disastrous Hellbound: Hellraiser II; this is adult horror to die for.

A '60s-radical alternative to the 'flying glass' action pic prevalent in Hollywood, the film is sustained by a personable ensemble who generously trade off each other rather than grandstand.

It does have flaws, but its confidence and courage in going against the grain of an increasingly conservative America are impressive.

This was a beautiful new kind of madness, terrifying, exhausting and exhilarating in equal measure.