To be able to give this kind of stuff new and sympathetic twists is a tribute to Hughes' skill with narrative, and to Ringwald's magnetism as a performer.

Its plot is riddled with holes and its ending is overcooked, but it’s packed with terrific actors – Toby Jones, Gillian Anderson, Charlotte Gainsbourg, even Robert Duvall – and achieves the light chill of a Christmas ghost story. Not one Poe would have been proud to write, but perhaps the sort of thing he’d read on holiday.

This Age-of-Aquarius relic's dedication to utopian ideals is great; this superficial portrait, however, is merely grating.

Polite, earnest stuff, but it never quite adds up to much.

It’s a movie that got up on the wrong side of the bed and compensated with four quadruple espressos.

The Americanized version reconfigures the plot as both a hazing ritual for corporate-ladder-climbers and a lazy hook to hang cheap jokes on.

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

Beck’s widow, his ex-wife and three daughters paint the man as someone whose success only complicated his life, estranging him from his family and eventually saddling him with crippling inertia. Pimping ain’t easy, but going straight is no picnic, either.

The result is not so much complexity as a mildly entertaining collection of rather superficial short stories; or perhaps it's best described as an elementary elaboration of a greater number of subsidiary characters than usual, inside a piece of pulp fiction. Smoothly constructed, for such a busy piece of work, and Hatcher's ascent to stardom continues.

The sense of old-school piety as lust under inhuman pressure is juicy and polished, if a little earnest about spiritual conflict and too entranced with its LOTR-ish medieval trappings. In fact, as monksploitation goes, Dominik Moll’s film is sober and straight when it should be crazy and hot-blooded.

The metafriction between these classic dupes and today's idiots chafes uneasily.

Beineix's determination to tell the full story results in a bum-numbing and often downright dull three hours.

Thanks to Field's no-nonsense performance, this potentially maudlin scenario is briskly handled...With all the male characters kept strictly functional, it makes a shameless bid for your heart, aiming to have you smiling one moment, sniffling the next.

The movie you were hoping to avoid.

Director Samantha Grant scores an interview with Blair himself, whose too-little-too-late admissions (along with his reemergence as a postguilt life coach) might drive your crowd to hisses.

Deadly Blessing isn't a very good movie, but it holds out distinct promise that Craven will soon be in the front rank of horror film-makers.

Kastner’s history is simplistic, his pacing is glacial and his film is laboriously constructed around a campy fictional trio of caricatured gay-black-girl “masterminds” planning the “revolution,” thumbing through a “manifesto” and sprinkling glitter ritualistically on a mirror ball.

Concussion could have used the political backbone of Smith’s Ali director Michael Mann; instead, it has Peter Landesman, who steers both lead actor and screenplay away from the sharper edges.

There’s no room for such soul-searching uncertainty with Gibson. After a few rapidly ticked-off minutes of gloom, the mission is clear: Get the sons of bitches, and make ’em pay.

wWen the filmmaker lines up her characters to confront their respective fears of intimacy, the loosey-goosey vibe clashes with the script’s clunky machinations; like her characters, Shelton doesn’t know what to do when things actually happen.

Impossibly exotic and glossy, its emotional dynamics make no sense today, so that all we're left with is a trite celebration of Warren and Annette as lovers made for each other.

Peckinpah's own control of the escalating frenzy is masterly; this is one of his coldest films, but a great thriller.

Schlesinger stages the action with smooth assurance, gradually building tension until Hayes goes completely round the bend. The problem lies in Daniel Pyne's script: the relationship between Drake and Patty is half-realised, while Hayes' motivations remain strangely muddled. That said, Keaton is chillingly convincing.

It’s high time Pedro had a lark. The buoyant and bawdy I’m So Excited plays like a to-hell-with-it-all riff from this seminal Spanish auteur, an excuse to gather his stock company for a breezy 90-minute party.

There’s a marked sense of retreat in this tale that’s never explored--everyone goes out of the way to remember the past through rose-colored specs.

The whole movie feels like a case of the sweats, putting you in desperate need of the chicken soup of recognizable human behavior.

The imposing Fiorentino helps adjust the gender balance, Modine gives his customary un-showy performance and Ponicsan tries to find a few fresh-seeming angles in his coming-of-age scenario. Still, it does cover awfully familiar ground.

The movie's multitasking creator seems to have bitten off more then she can chew. Her friends should have advised "baby steps."