Nothing jells at all - least of all the central conceit of the hero becoming shaggy (sometimes the dog's a dog, sometimes a man with fur). It's also not much fun seeing Jones, Pleshette and Wynn getting older and older, staler and staler, playing the parts they've been stuck with for years.

This particular wet dream is wrapped in a vacuous blackmail plot (which enables the young hero to fantasise that he's f.cked Sylvia to death, and her to reveal her heart of gold) and padded with lots of horrible Adult Oriented Rock (Clapton, Rod Stewart, etc).

This pitifully unfunny comedy has only two things going for it: its theme song, Starship's Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now, is a hit single; and it is short. A film about, by and for dummies.

No Retreat, No Surrender borrows heavily from the likes of The Last Dragon, Karate Kid and even Rocky IV, but makes them look like masterpieces by comparison.

The film does assert there are some things positive thinking won't conquer, like sickness, senility and death. But it smothers any serious intent in cheap homily, modern mythology and sickly sentimentality.

Despite making use of Hackman, Christie and Marshall in supporting roles, and actual US newscasters to cover the election results, the film is still a complete mess. Barely held together by Cy Coleman's powerful score, it finally falls apart thanks to the embarrassing amateurism of the party political broadcasts the characters produce, and the Vidal Sassoon world they inhabit.

De Palma is not a director one looks to for conscience, and his track record on the issue of rape has been innocent of moral debate. It's odd to find him dealing with both, and the non-sensationalist approach seems to have taken a toll on his energies: Casualties of War is dull.

Once thought of as racy and adventurous in its treatment of sex, this turgid nonsense about a high-class whore with love in her heart has dated atrociously. Taylor hams away and Harvey in his debonair mood is distinctly unappealing, while the overall effect is too excruciating even to be unintentionally funny.

An uneven blend of crime thriller and rural romance, this aims for an adult complexity but misses the target by a mile.

A curiously indigestible phenomenon, like being forced to eat five courses of avocado by an overbearing dinner-party host.

A painfully sincere, meticulously faithful, and pitifully plodding adaptation of Hemingway's novel about the symbolic struggle between an old Mexican fisherman and a giant marlin.

This is shameless stuff: happy, barefoot peasants sing that traditional Latin cancion, 'Crush the grapes, crush the grapes,' the moonlight is so strong you could get burned, and the metaphors are writ large as tabloid headlines.

A tame, poorly plotted serving of schlock, less horrific for its ketchup-smeared murders than for the bare-faced fashion in which it tries and fails to rip off Carpenter's Halloween in matters of style and construction.

A kind of Invasion of the Body Snatchers meets Catch-22, or maybe Fuller's Shock Corridor set as an episode from The Twilight Zone. Sounds interesting enough, but isn't.

Barker calls his shambolic, uninvolving narrative 'scattershot'; put less kindly, it's as explosive and directionless as a blunderbuss.

Few people can be so big-hearted as to tolerate Ed's agonising brand of pedantic humour.

Together with Hamburger Hill, this illustrates that Irvin probably couldn't stage an action scene if you held a gun to his head. Even more turgid and unconvincing are the quieter 'dramatic' scenes, which serve only to arrest the plot's minimal momentum and prolong the agony.

Somewhere in the Hollywood hills there's a computer loaded with a software programme called BuildaStar. A hack punched in the script requirements for this intended star vehicle for Selleck: an action yarn pitting an American loner against evil Nazis, bent coppers, a sultry girl-friend; sardonic sex with a lashing of perversity and gratuitous nudity; dare-devil stunts and chases for excitement.

Three witlessly routine tales (adapted from stories by Chetwynd-Hayes), drearily executed and graced not at all by such luminaries as Pleasence, Magee and Whitman.

Jade Calegory, who plays the boy-hero in this cuddly alien yarn, was born with spina bifida, and the film is neither sentimental nor exploitative in dealing with its wheelchair-confined star. Unfortunately, there's little else to commend.

This is rubbish: an incoherent James Bond-ish yarn distinguished only by its formal decadence and the presence of basketball's Dennis Rodman.

A dismally unfunny shambles.

Third and last in the Bad News series, with Curtis as a Hollywood hustler trying to make a buck exploiting the sad sack little league baseballers, but suffering the obligatory change of heart. Dire.

It is regrettable that the highest of production values have been invested in this, the cheapest of stories.

One problem here is that the jokes aren't funny; another is that Sally Field is funny by mistake.

Endless and doggedly in earnest.

McDowell's comically histrionic performance is, in fact, the single redeeming feature in this lamentably simplistic and unpleasant piffle.

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.