None of this is any more fun as it sounds -- the cancer ward scenes are truly disturbing -- but to be fair, writer/director Lone Scherfeg (the first woman to make a Dogme 95 film) manages some black-humored laughs.

An enormous number of symbols--sexual, religious, and political--collide randomly in this pretentious, incoherent horror story.

A series of heavily telegraphed, desperately played and incredibly unfunny sight gags, Silent Movie is truly a maddeningly insulting salute to the golden age of film comedy.

This stage-bound farce could easily be an American sitcom: It's all slamming doors, eavesdropping and stupid miscommunications, garnished with a heavy-handed helping of comedy of humiliation.

The relentlessly self-congratulatory tone is oppressive.

If it's all supposed to be in fun, why does it feel so much like an insult?

Another mindless exercise in unexciting, unmotivated action sequences punctuated by moments of stupid, redneck, good-ol'-boy humor.

Dante gleefully trashes cliches and sentimental Capra-esque notions, but one should not forget this movie was given a "PG" rating and cynically aimed to draw an audience of small children who would no doubt be terrorized by this myth-shattering film.

The screenplay just isn't funny: Most jokes fall flat and just lie there in a pool of their own sick. And while Zwigoff's deadpan pacing was perfect for the wry, sophisticated humor of "Ghost World," here it's a comedy killer; that extra beat after each new outrage is just long enough for viewers to realize just how sad and disturbing it all is.

Incoherent horror film about a woman, Hill, searching for her father, a surrealist painter in a small California coastal town that has become overrun with flesh-eating zombies. Katz and Huyck, who enjoyed great success as the writers of George Lucas' AMERICAN GRAFFITI, stooped to ripping off George Romero's low-budget masterpiece NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD.

It's fun for awhile, but soon the sheer lunacy of it all wears thin as Corman keeps trying to top himself.

The films of writer/director Francis Veber are a bracing reminder that French comedies can be every bit as broad, unsophisticated and cliched as their American counterparts.

A weird picture based on a slim novel by Carson McCullers, this movie fails to engender any sympathy or interest due to several miscalculations.

A classic among lovers of truly bad movies.

Ken Russell applies his rococo outpourings to Pete Townshend's rock opera and botches not only the visuals but the fine score.

The humor here is forced, incoherent, and sophomoric, made worse by Thomas Chong's amateurish direction.

Meredith's narrative helped to keep the proceedings together but could not circumvent Rydell's ordinary direction and the silly script. McQueen could do a lot of things well, but comedy wasn't his forte.

Cassavetes' films can be annoying and enigmatic, but they are usually creative and interesting. Not so with this one.

Insipid, formulaic and suitable for the dumbed-down sensibilities of lowest-common-denominator couch potatoes.

It's difficult to figure just what is going on here, and most certainly not worth the effort.

Stereotypes abound in this foolish, witless western--a production misusing the fine talent in its cast.

We never get a real sense of what made these recordings so different or revolutionary. Part of the problem is that re-recorded versions of songs by the actors were used in the film, with vastly mixed results that never match the ferocity and excitement of the original tracks.

Directed by Charles Band, the son of Italian trash-master Albert Band and the head of Empire Pictures, Trancers is on the same subgutter, grade-school-mentality level as the rest of Empire's output.

Toback quickly reveals himself as an insufferable, opinionated blowhard who pontificates shamelessly about the art of the cinema while indulging his own obsessions on film.

Played for Maverick-like comedy, the film might have coasted on Harris and Mortensen's dialogue. But played straight it's both dull and preposterous.

This attempt to combine elements of vampire lore with the limited format of the teen sex comedy is a monstrous movie all right, a frighteningly awful horror comedy.

Not everyone's cup of tea, but definitely a must-see for fans of the band.

The Big Picture is a failed attempt to spoof the wheelers and dealers behind the scenes in Hollywood. Christopher Guest, who directed and cowrote this diatribe against the inanities of the studio system, has created what amounts to no more than a series of sketches that would probably work better on television than in this prolonged, belabored movie. 

Figgis again aims for sensual moodiness, but so many clashing tones clamor for the viewer's attention that the result is a noisy mishmash.

The loose, rambling conversations that substitute for action might be more interesting if any of the characters were capable of real introspection. But they're so shallow and distracted they can't even manage sustained navel-gazing, which makes their so-called relationships profoundly uninteresting.

The willowy Danes' rich, melancholy characterization is sown in a barren field of snippy attitude and too-cool posturing, and the film's disingenuous air of bittersweet chic becomes deeply tiresome long before it's over.

This cliche-riddled picture was the directorial debut of veteran cinematographer Michael Chapman, who took no risks in his first time out.

This limp, forgettable fluff is as preachy and heavy-handed as the "Goofus and Gallant" cartoons that a generation of children far less media-savvy than today's recognized as ham-fisted lessons in good behavior masquerading as funny strips.

A stale rehash of Woody Allen-style "he's a neurotic Jew, she's a flaky shiksa" gags.

Plummer's fearlessness is awesome -- just try to imagine another actress willing to bare so much bony flesh wrapped in clanking chains -- but her character is nevertheless a ranting bore.

Numbingly predictable.

Without a doubt, De Laurentiis' remake of Cooper and Schoedsack's classic is the biggest con job ever pulled on the unsuspecting American public.

A rather sorry excuse for a horror film--even Peter Cushing's distinguished presence doesn't help.

If you liked camp, you may like this film. If you hated camp, you may also like this film. If you like good comedies, you probably won't like this film.

One of many musical stinkers made during a decade infamous for them, FINIAN'S RAINBOW is sadly notable as the last screen musical of the genre's greatest star.

Vile exploitation picture shot cheaply in the Philippines.

One of the largest wastes of money ever. More than $33 million was spent on this futuristic version of THE DEFIANT ONES or HELL IN THE PACIFIC, both infinitely superior films. The basic flaw is that its premise is older than your great-grandfather's hat.

A little stingy in the action and thrills department, but Moore, in his limited way, seems to be having a good time.

Director Milius is wholly unconcerned with portraying the criminals of the 1930s as they really were, mixing up facts and fiction in a tasteless stew of violence, blood, and human gore.

Director Michael Cimino turned YEAR OF THE DRAGON, an engrossing novel by Robert Daley, into a confused, overlong, preachy, and at times downright annoying crime epic with a wholly unsympathetic main character played by the totally miscast Mickey Rourke.

A fairly tame, fairly lame blaxploitation footnote, starring drop-dead gorgeous Tamara Dobson and her improbable wardrobe.

A dismal affair that reeks of pretentious self-importance.

Jack H. Harris, the cheapie producer who went on to make the forgettable Mother Goose A Go-Go, struck it rich with this silly picture that gave McQueen his first starring role after a few supporting jobs in Somebody Up There Likes Me and Never Love A Stranger.

Writer-director Robert Hiltzik tries to mask the poorly staged murder scenes and lousy effects with a perverse sense of humor, but it doesn't work. Some scenes, especially one involving a girl and a curling iron, are simply irredeemable.

Even generally sympathetic adults may eventually find their minds wandering, if only because of the characters' continual, annoying hopping; being vegetables, they have no legs, you see.

This is one of Lewis' lesser efforts, with his appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show drawing the only real laughs.

Although Russell and Williams have good rapport, Williams' unique improvisational talents are restricted by the script (save for the hilarious training sequence), and the film suffers for it.

The People Under The Stairs doesn't play like a fairy tale; there's nothing fantastic about it, and the happy ending, in which money seems to equal happiness, rings terribly false.

Low production values, an artless script, and an unconvincing view of history don't add up to much in the way of entertainment.

A lovely soundtrack by Irish balladeers the Saw Doctors can't make up for the rest of this belabored labor of love.

Despite the success of the movie, we turn thumbs way down on this melange of cheap thrills and flat jokes, saved only by the performance of Hanks and some good work by pal Zmed. Hanks is the only oasis in this Sahara of smut.

Derivative and utterly implausible, ERASER is big-budget action filmmaking at its dullest.

Though Keaton is convincing as a smarmy narcissist who secretly thinks he deserves to fail because writing plays isn't REAL work, he's also thoroughly unlikable -- a problematic trait in a protagonist.

Awful disaster movie that combined the worst elements of soap opera with special effects (bad matte paintings and the ridiculous Sensurround)--featuring an all-star cast that should have stayed home and waited for a real earthquake.

If not precisely charismatic, Statham brings authentic athleticism and a certain cheeky presence to his lightly written role.

For a few flickering moments, we care a bit about the people, but then it's gone. There's little plot, and the picture is far too long and fraught with allegory. Director Hector Babenco's sense of style is evident, but a sharper editing eye would have helped.

All the tongue-in-cheek humor, film-buff jokes, and special effects in the world can't save this mess.

A self-consciously arty ensemble piece that's alternately exploitative, implausible and cliche ridden.

A leaden, tone-deaf remake of the 1955 Ealing comedy starring Alec Guinness, the Coen brothers' painfully unfunny rehash hinges on the duel of wits between five larcenous oddballs and one sweet but strong-willed old lady.

A film that takes such sadistic delight in the thorough humiliation of its heroine.

Ghostbusters II is such a lazy effort that the formula machinery is laid bare for all to see. It suffers from writing that is obvious, sloppy, and unimaginative.

It's hard to believe this shoddy, dishonest mess is Clark's sixth feature film, and not the unpromising debut of a rank amateur.

An excruciating series of gags aimed at kids old enough to think it's funny when a grown-up acts like a small child.

More cheerful misogyny from writer-director Henry Jaglom.

Women are treated with little respect by director Wilder, while men are portrayed as bad little boys who mean no harm. The so-called farce is just degrading prattle that drags on much longer than it should.

Herman fails to journey beyond the surface-level realities of his central perspective, which makes his film feel half-developed and poorly conceived, and drives it into sensationalism.

Only the performance of Elam remains lively, but it is the type of characterization he has done dozens of times. A sad finale to Hawks's magnificent career.

A dreary, downbeat "Field of Dreams."

The trouble is that Turturro's reach considerably exceeds his grasp.

Although the concept of small dolls coming to bloodthirsty life sounds scary, its fear factor decreases rapidly after the initial shock.

It takes a certain genius to make butchered corpses, sociopathic lunacy and meth-fueled debauchery nerve-scrapingly dull, and German director Marc Schoelermann and screenwriters Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor (Crank) possess it.

At a time when the images of Arab-Americans are already largely negative, do we really need more violently temperamental, bomb throwing men in turbans and beards?

Though the effects work of Giannetto De Rossi is generally excellent and certainly stomach-churning, most of Zombie is slow and unintentionally funny. Fulci's work has its champions, but his films are mostly dim-witted and hold little interest for anyone other than hard-core gore fans.

Only die-hard and undemanding Chan fans need apply.

The title duo serves up more idiocy, this time by dispensing drugs from an ice-cream truck--a concept that will appeal to few these days. The failure to come up with a strong script, character development, plot, authentic humor, or basic entertainment doesn't improve matters any.

Juvenile and pointless.

Director Jesse Peretz, onetime bassist for The Lemonheads, cut his teeth on music videos and appears to have embraced the austere aesthetics of Dogme 95 filmmakers without comprehending that an interesting story and well-developed characters are supposed to be part of the package.

Although Brown (Endless Summer) captured the beauty and fun of his favorite sport in his "surfumentaries," Milius, whose work always seems underlain with weighty symbolic intent, infuses Big Wednesday with heavy-handed philosophy and all-around stupidity.

The parade of eccentrics never ends, and Stone's near-miraculous achievement is to drain the life right out of material so sordid you'd think it couldn't help but be interesting. A must to avoid.

Crammed into 130 minutes of screen time, Le Carre's story loses much of its motivation, and although there is plenty of action and suspense, often it seems that the action is happening in the wrong places to the wrong people.

A disappointing attempt at comedy, considering the names of the creators and the adroitness of the stars.

A Time to Kill seems to argue that America's racial problems aren't so bad because, even in the heart of bigoted Mississippi, a black man can get away with murder.

Another infantile right-wing fantasy from writer-director John Milius, this cinematic embodiment of the paranoid delusions of militarists, survivalists, and television evangelists is definitely a film for the Reagan era. Red Dawn is simply too simplistic and inept to be taken seriously.

The film is really little more than an array of sometimes imaginative images.

Despite the overplotting, there's scarcely any of the characterization that might have made some of it interesting.

However deep the divide currently separating the Middle East from the West appears to be, there's at least one thing we can all agree on: Albert Brooks isn't all that funny anymore.

Sidney Lumet's overblown direction strips the story of its magic, Ross is too old for the part and never quite captures Dorothy's innocence, and Pryor is wasted in a film ill-suited to his talents.

But this $3.5-million rehash -- about the brothers Fitzpatrick and their troubles with girls -- is a real turnoff: smug, smarmy and utterly unconvincing.

This loud and thoroughly obnoxious comedy about a pair of squabbling working-class spouses is a deeply unpleasant experience.

There is practically no plot, and even less character development, but the script is based on a novel, most likely a thin one.

Bad Taste was probably intended as camp, but its humor falls flat even as a parody of the horror genre. It is best viewed as a film strictly for movie makeup and special-effects aficionados.

But by the time the big not-so-surprise ending rolls around -- no, nothing that happened was exactly as it seemed -- most viewers will have long since stopped caring.

This one-joke film beats its punch line to death, playing its gay character for big laughs with generally predictable and boring results. Hamilton (who coproduced) chews up the scenery with relish, and the bland supporting performances yield to his campy caricature, But the subtle element of self-parody that distinguished the best of the Zorro films is absent, and the gay stereotype is more offensive than comical.