Barnes, now in his seventies and relocated by the Witness Protection Program, is shot only in silhouette, but there's plenty of footage of him in his heyday, dressed to the pimpalicious nines and playing to the cameras like a movie star.

Probably the most lighthearted and enjoyable of Meyer's films, Faster, Pussycat was embraced by a new generation during its art-house re-release in 1994; many viewers detected a feminist subtext beneath its extravagantly campy surface.

It's a shimmering, thorny, and consummately self-aware valentine to a paradise, however illusory, lost.

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

It's all passably entertaining, but there's precious little that will stay with you; like so many contemporary movies, this one self-destructs five seconds after you leave the theater.

All behave in ways that may at first seem incomprehensible, but through Moncrieff's expert storytelling, each woman is finally rendered merely human.

Sexy and soulful like the smoothest slow jam, writer-director Theodore Witcher's debut feature is a classy, surprisingly accomplished romantic comedy focusing on life and love among of a group of young African-American Chicagoans.

A slickly crafted fable, however dark, but it's shot with haunting poetry.

Its subject -- ethnic profiling during a time of international crisis -- could hardly be more contemporary.

cinematographer Mo-gai Li's keen sense of color balance and composition make this freaky fairy tale the most beautiful - if not the scariest - horror movie in ages.

Not quite as fresh as the first NAKED GUN, but what can you expect from a film subtitled "The Smell of Fear"?

Much of the film's appeal rests with Thai soap-opera actress Panyopas, whose bittersweet charm smoothes over the uglier aspects of Tum's spiral into crime.

A successful thriller makes you forget such impossibilities, but here they poison every scene.

Director Weir and cinematographer Russell Boyd's re-creation of the invasion and battle action is stunning, but what makes Gallipoli such an affecting film is its intimate presentation of the friendship between Archy and Frank (wonderfully essayed by Lee and Gibson).

Director Kershner demonstrates fine visual talents in his use of New York locations.

Director Robert Mulligan does an excellent job of evoking both the historical period and the terror, aided greatly by Robert Surtees' fine photography. The performances from the Udvarnoky twins are nuanced and memorable. Well worth seeing.

British documentarian Peter Bate frames a mix of archival materials and re-creations with a "trial" at which Leopold listens to testimony against him from within a wood-and-glass booth, like Nazi Adolf Eichmann at Nuremberg.

There are only short bursts of action in between nearly endless talk in the Clements script. Despite a huge cast of very competent actors the film misses the mark.

The overall effect is either exhilarating or exhausting, depending on your emotional investment in the franchise, but credit where credit is due: Steven Spielberg and George Lucas set out to make one for the fans and delivered.

Broomfield's film is didactic, awkwardly acted by the cast of former Marines who are meant to lend the film credibility, and clumsily inflammatory.

We've come a long way from the filthiest people in the world: Who knew Waters could be so bland?

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

The film is rich with period flavor, and Phillips is superb as Valens, but the rags-to-riches story (even if true) is maudlin and overfamiliar.

The freedom to answer Hamlet's nagging question over whether to be or not for oneself is explored in this thoughtful and thought provoking documentary about the Swiss organization EXIT AMD.

A workmanlike piece of storytelling elevated by fine performances.

A kitchen-sink realist coming-of-age story in the venerable British tradition, with all the good and bad that entails.

Even the film's ironic ending is deftly handled, its cynicism is tempered by a certain rueful wisdom.

Despite strong acting (the slapstick energy between Ford and Connery is wasted), obligatory chases and stunts and splendid art direction, the virtuoso technique evident in every frame remains formulaic--unaccompanied by revelation, epiphany or surprise.

There are poignant moments in this apocalyptic "what if" exercise.

One problem with the film is that it does nothing to endear the Catskill social setting to an audience; the inhabitants seem to be competing for awards in obnoxiousness.

The Warriors is a visual feast. Director Hill fills the frame with vibrant colors, bright lights, and nonstop motion. The uniforms of the various gangs are unique, funny, fearsome, and more than a bit theatrical. The exciting fight scenes are brilliantly choreographed, and instead of focusing on the violence, Hill concentrates on pure movement (most of the cast were actually dancers).

Between Magruder's oily schmoozing and the camera-ready combo of Spanish moss and constant rain, he and cinematographer Changwei Gu whip up some amazing atmosphere.

Mesmerizing.

Wavers between being condescending and downright preposterous, but there are redeeming moments.

As star, director and co-producer, Streisand shifts the book's focus from the Wingo past to the Tom-Susan love affair. This could have worked had Streisand directed herself better--if, indeed, she had directed herself at all. Instead of a performance, we get smirks, poses, campy shots that linger on her outrageously long manicured fingernails, and radiant, cloying smiles. Streisand's inadequacies, though, are more than compensated for by Nolte's compelling Tom. He brings conviction and depth to the role, treading a fine line between self-pity and self-respect and exposing his frailties with a rare sensitivity.

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

Richly imagined and resolutely unpredictable, this dark and profoundly optimistic paean to passion -- for glass, for horses, for the thrill of the moment after a coin is flipped but before it falls -- is held together by Gillian Armstrong's solid direction and by strong, if occasionally strident, performances from Fiennes and newcomer Blanchett.

Anime enthusiasts will want to take a look, but the film is too uneven to serve as a good introduction to the form.

As these films go, School Ties is more simplistic and has its dice more loaded than usual.

Full of mysterious twists and turns, this expertly crafted thriller casts Strasberg as the wheelchair-bound step-daughter of Todd.

At times funny, but mostly tragic, Scurlock's film is important viewing for any who owns a credit card without realizing that it's a wallet time bomb.

Curl your cynical lip if you want, but there's a place for heartwarming, life-affirming, even weepy dramas, and Robert Redford brings the best-selling novel about a traumatized teen and her wounded horse to the screen with dignity and restraint.

Clad in dull khakis and a polo shirt, the always reliable Kinnear is his (Brosnon's) perfect foil, while Davis' neat turn as a suburban wife with a penchant for guns and the men who use them turns what might have been a cliched supporting role into something worth watching.

Through Carax's eyes, even squalor looks fabulous.

Multi-character drama that reveals a vivid cross-section of the city's inhabitants but fails to live up to the director's high ambitions.

A topical comedy that's about 25 years too late.

A well-crafted exercise in urban paranoia that's so controlled it never achieves the reckless, visceral immediacy its subject matter demands.

The film is beautifully told and superbly acted. More importantly, Paul Laverty's screenplay goes along way toward showing how the traditionalism that can turn a community inward on itself is often a response to racism, and in that sense the film's timing couldn't have been any better.

Meyrou follows the family through the three day trial, the verdict and its aftermath, but the perpetrators remain a mystery.

Adapted from the play by Noel Coward, this dissection of the prejudices of English country artistocrats shows Alfred Hitchcock in fine early form.

For all the updated riffs and personal noodling, it's best when it doesn't stray too far from the original material.

Whereas the first half of the movie concentrates nicely on the developing friendship between the young Holmes and Watson, the storm of roller-coaster thrills and Industrial Light and Magic special effects soon takes over, blowing the nicely drawn characters away.

Bottoms is a Minnesota-bred law student who comes to Harvard and the lecture hall of Houseman, an instructor who seemingly takes great pleasure in puncturing his students' egos. Bottoms falls in love with Wagner. Essentially, this is a military school plot with a change of venue.

More admirable as a sheer technical feat of filmmaking than as a sustained dramatic narrative. It still makes worthwhile viewing.

Figgis's bold narrative strategy turns what could have been a standard-issue chronicle of shallow Hollywood lives into a fluid and enthralling experience.

The issue is dealt with in a sensitive manner, but a much less "meaningful" approach would have made the characters much more accessible. The direction by Friedkin is not cinematic at all, looking simply like a rendering of the stage play on celluloid.

Pryor's direction is better than the script, and singers Eckstine and McRae make nice dramatic debuts under his firm hand.

It's a pleasure to see the articulate, disciplined Telfair succeed where so many other young men have failed, but ultimately his path to success is so smoothly upbeat that there isn't much urgency to it.

While not entirely successful, Mortal Thoughts is surprisingly compelling. Headly and Moore go all-out with their working-girl mannerisms, but their friendship rings true and their ill-considered decisions are made strangely believable by their desperation.

Watching Binoche dithering about an American comedy takes some getting used to, but she's a believable soul mate for the hangdog Carell. The rest of the family, however, has got to go.

The action sequences are so franticly dizzying that they make "Run Lola Run" look as though it unfolds in slow motion.

The film is simultaneously sweet natured and sharply observed, and if love eventually conquers all, it takes its own sweet time doing it.

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.

It's a brilliant impersonation; Smith gets Ali's speech patterns and Louisville accent exactly right, and astonishingly convincing facial prosthetics complete the transformation. But he never quite finds the man under the enormous image; those quintessential Mann moments, during which Ali is left alone to brood, feel surprisingly blank.

Aside from its frank consideration of preteen sexuality, the most daring thing about Cuesta's extraordinary film is its willingness to put honest, intelligent dialogue in the mouths of kids.

While Lee fails to impose sufficient structure on his material, expertly drawn performances help vividly to evoke the family and street life of an era untroubled by crack or drive-by shootings.

The film moves well and never loses its gripping tension, but the lighthearted tone of the beginning takes a dive into an abyss that shocks many viewers.

The plot is simple and the Italian performances verge on the operatic, but Leone revitalizes the Western through a unique and complex visual style. The film is full of brilliant spatial relationships (extreme close-ups in the foreground, with detailed compositions visible in the background) combined with Ennio Morricone's vastly creative musical score full of grunts, wails, groans, and bizarre-sounding instruments. Aural and visual elements together give a wholly original perspective on the West and its myths.

The last animated film to be directly overseen by Walt Disney himself, Jungle Book contains some great visual laughs and is low on sticky sentiment, but the sketchy animation style strains to be modern and looks careless instead.

The pacing and action sequences are staged in a manner reminiscent of a spaghetti western and are quite good, but the allegories are too much and too many.

If not precisely poetic in its elaborate offensiveness, it's certainly imaginative. Unfortunately, that's not the same as interesting or engaging, unless you're a dyed-in-the-wool fan.

Cushioned by money - which frees him from needing to work and allows him to fly around the world looking for his past - Bruce is attractive and well-spoken but not especially interesting, which leaves a yawning void at the story's center.

Not surprisingly, the film is strongest when its characters are simply hanging out, shooting the breeze and venting their feelings, while moments of high drama occasionally fall flat.

The film is dreary and attenuated, the tedium broken only by the occasional golden moment when one of the stellar supporting players - Ron Silver as the principled presiding judge who alternately tolerates and quashes Jackie's antics, Peter Dinklage as the lead defense attorney or Annabella Sciorra as Jackie's ex - manages to cut through the clutter.

A heartfelt sleeper from screenwriter Joe Eszterhas and director Guy Ferland.

This is one of the best political thrillers of the 1970s.

An accomplished thriller that's nasty, brutish and relatively short.

Fox falters a bit with the narrative, but offers a fascinating treatment of the issues facing the descendents of Jewish victims and their German persecutors, as well as one of the most chilling birthday parties ever filmed.

Medem's stupendously gorgeous puzzle movie features strong performances from its four leads.

A triumph of genre filmmaking.

While Grazia's story is too reminiscent of such films as "Blue Sky" (1994), which also draws an all too easy connection between mental illness and the oppression of high-spirited housewives, the evocation of provincial life in a tiny village that's wholly dependent on the sea is splendid, and recalls a number of classic Italian films.

Though compelling, well crafted, and well acted, SWEET DREAMS will probably be a disappointment for Patsy Cline fans.

Written with all the bite of a distinctly middle-class church social, this musical re-working of The Philadelphia Story feels distant.

Dark, dank and violent, filled with terrifying scenes in which exploited children are beaten, shot or starving to death. In other words, it's just as Dickens wrote.

The actors look like they're having a great time, playing exaggerated versions of their stereotyped neuroses, and the complex plot's fast movement keeps the audience's attention well. But with all this, something is very wrong with SOAPDISH: It isn't all that funny.

Adapted from Booth Tarkington's Penrod stories and his Alice Adams, the Warner Bros. production suffuses its folksy story in nostalgia but never completely warms the hearts it aims for.

Despite Chantel's promise that she's letting us in on the "real deal," JUST ANOTHER GIRL ON THE I.R.T. is just another teenage pregnancy melodrama: remove the swearing and the hip-hop soundtrack and it would make a fine after-school special, complete with a smart yet sexually irresponsible teenager, a remarkably successful premature birth, and an uplifting ending in which the young mother goes to night school to finish her high school diploma.

This is one of the better Norris action films, showcasing his astounding martial-arts skills. But the film loses power toward the end when the action bends reality a little too much.

Who these brave men were and why they fought disappears under the usual clichés, while the astounding acts of courage that occurred at Ia Drang are lost to the dust and din.

The real stars of the film are Francois Emmanuelli's vibrant production design, Klapisch's flair with inventive optical effects and above all Barcelona itself, captured here in all its baroque brilliance.

The film's epic look is undermined by his narrow focus; in the end it feels rather thin and less than the sum of its handsome parts.

A gentle and effective heart-tugger, Cocoon tries to make its audience feel good, but you can't help but feel uneasy about the vision of old age that director Ron Howard depicts--one in which the young cannot accept the notion of getting old. The derivative special effects feel like leftovers from the infinitely superior Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

The writers get the mix just about right, and first-time Bond director Martin Campbell moves things along fairly briskly.

Christopher Lee is excellent as the mute monster, but this is Cushing's film all the way.

Buoyed by a distinguished cast of horror veterans, Bloch's well-written script, and Baker's deft direction, Asylum is the most satisfying of the horror anthologies of the 1970s.

Peddle captures a vital and increasingly visible community that's easily misunderstood, and his film will undoubtedly help novices further understand the complex differences separating gays, transsexuals and the transgendered.

Rossier's film leaves the dispiriting impression that democracy simply will not be tolerated in the Southern Hemisphere.

Driven by Edward Norton's and Evan Rachel Wood's riveting performances, writer-director David Jacobson's tense drama samples bits of cinematic Americana from sources as diverse as "Shane," "Badlands" and "Taxi Driver."