Sheer eccentricity and ambitiousness place Inside Moves above the Kramer class, but ultimately the film only reconfirms that good liberal intentions rarely produce good Hollywood movies.

Disgracing itself only with McConaughey's over-extended bit as a psychotic trucker, the film delivers more or less comfortably on what you'd expect, then sits down for a rest.

It's an interesting example of how a stock Western plot can assume some fairly explicit political ramifications once it is transposed to a modern setting (not that that is any recommendation).

A maestro of the action movie, McTiernan effectively captures the horrors of a climactic jungle fire, but at other times, the setting merely provides an exotic backdrop to bolshie posturing and feats of derring-do.

It's the kind of silliness that's too strained and self-indulgent to be enjoyable.

Writer/director Dearden's version of Ira Levin's novel is routine stuff, neither thrilling nor revealing as a portrait of a psychopath.

The trouble is that all of these characters are more interesting when things are going badly for them than when the tide has turned, and Carroll's determination to make the final reel an extended bout of audience tummy tickling is disappointingly conventional.

Griffith's directorial debut - after 20 years of scripting for Corman - does deliver the expected race/chase/demolition derby mayhem, but every time the focus switches to Ron Howard's adolescent romantic worries, it stalls.

Things plod to their inevitable conclusion, helped along by the script's assortment of stereotypical underdogs and manipulators, and with Candy hamming up the oppourtunity to get into lots of tight spots while wearing funny disguises. At their silliest, such moments actually provide light relief from an otherwise unremarkable comedy caper.

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.

Though, like many of Edwards' films, it lurches uncertainly from slapstick farce to mordant humour in an extremely hit-or-miss fashion, this surprisingly bitter satire on Tinseltown - in which a producer (Mulligan) beefs up his latest turkey of a movie by introducing some pornographic sex scenes and having his wife/star (Andrews) bare her breasts on screen - does hit the mark once or twice.

The narrative, from a story by Peter Straub, juggles ambiguously - if not carelessly - with themes thrown up and better developed in The Turn of the Screw, Don't Look Now and Rosemary's Baby... But there is much to commend in Farrow's performance, complemented by Colin Towns' softly chilling score, which is more than can be said for Conti and Dullea.

If it weren't for the gimmicks (and the sadism is so gratuitous it could be nothing else), then the film could easily pass for a minor caper thriller of the '60s, all convoluted plot and calculated kookiness. But cyphers (both female leads) and question-marks (who'll get the money, who'll survive - who cares?) dominate the script as every labyrinthine twist becomes more plodding.

Predicting that we might soon weary of downhill action, this virtually plotless ski picture is decorated with hot tub frolics and a wet T-shirt contest.

It's all a brave try, though Gibson is perhaps not up to the demands of a Christian's progress from naive rating to self-loathing exile, and Donaldson's direction often verges on the stolid.

Schrader and De Palma's tribute to Hitchcock's Vertigo may lack the misogyny and bloodbath sensationalism of De Palma's later work, but it's still dressed up in a mortifyingly vacuous imitation of the Master's stylistic touches.

There's almost enough in-joke ingenuity to justify the total absence of plot.

Despite sturdy acting from a starry cast, actor Barry Primus' directorial debut is a lacklustre affair.

A bizarre mix of actors goes some way towards bolstering this flyweight caper; but the last third degenerates into farce, with nuns and thugs playing cat-and-mouse in a Reno casino. A one-note movie.

More confusing than illuminating, it's a film which will rely more on its reputation than its achievement.

Hutton succumbs firstly to a thin role, and secondly to the film's lack of any strong viewpoint about its leading men. As usual Schlesinger is more than half in love with what he might be satirising.

This spin-off from the TV series featuring the large purple felt dinosaur of awesome good nature is emetically wholesome. The screenplay doesn't stray much from the series' 'listen, sing, and rush off to the next thing' formula.

Based on a true case history of a schizophrenic - here a woman with three personalities: a slatternly housewife, a seductive flirt, and a smart, articulate woman - this is worthy but somewhat turgid and facile, a typically Hollywoodian account of mental illness.

There are striking images here (especially in the scenes outside Salt Lake City), Martin gives a very likeable performance, and individual scenes display intelligence and wit. But it doesn't hang together very well, jump-cutting between slightly portentous artiness and light comedy, and never really adding up to very much at all.

William Goldman's leisurely script and Forbes' dull direction never quite capture the subtleties of Ira Levin's novel about an idyllic Connecticut commuter village where the housewives are a bunch of domesticated dummies.

This stab at the soft underbelly of American middle class paranoia looks increasingly contrived once the film loses direction in the daylight outside, and a realism intrudes that the film-makers just don't know how to handle.

Grier is an actress able to convey an amazing and unflinching strength, and she reveals the film for the dross it is.

Adamantly sincere but utterly redundant populism from Bob "Porky's" Clark, a boy scout's stab at Bonfire of the Vanities starring Timothy Hutton's noble adam's apple (gulp!), which he thrusts this way and that for all the world like an ostrich with a social conscience.