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.