Mississippi Burning is visually splendid. Director Parker and his crew have created a film that is unquestionably watchable. As a history lesson, however, it's laughable.

Mike Nichols, in his first venture into movies since "The Fortune," elicited superlative performances from the actors, particularly Streep and stage veteran Sudi Bond.

Its brightly colored surfaces and chirpy, picaresque tone notwithstanding, filmmaker Ra'anan Alexandrowciz's first feature is a scathing condemnation of the rampant venality he perceives as having gripped his country.

It presents an image of today's Israeli army, composed of teenagers who are by now several generations removed from the founders' original vision and have begun to question whether tactics designed to keep the country safe will only lead to increased levels of fear, humiliation and deadly violence.

With its attractive cast, beguiling score and relatively straightforward narrative, this dark fable of letters and lust is one of Greenaway's most accessible works.

Sydney Pollack's film is a solid, absorbing drama that, in profiling the damage that can result from investigative reporting, presents a counterpoint to All The President's Men.

Rapp's snappy, loquacious and catty script gives the predominantly female ensemble plenty to chew on.

Sweet, likable and consistently engaging, if so insubstantial that it's always on the verge of blowing away.

Both Hesses and a surprisingly large number of their very talented cast and crew are graduates of Brigham Young University's film program: Could BYU one day join the esteemed ranks of USC and NYU?

An extraordinary technical achievement.

Though it clearly explicates the problem, the film is by no means a straightforward documentary.

Ultimately, Coppola's pastel-colored take on Marie's life is beguiling and annoying in equal measure.

Producer Irwin Winkler's directorial debut is a well-intentioned history lesson that may play like a clear-eyed relevation for the last person in the world not yet aware of the period of the Hollywood blacklist. For everyone else, Guilty By Suspicion is a mediocre, pointless non-examination of a paranoid, hysterical historical tragedy.

In the end, sharp writing and terrific performances can't compensate for the fact that the back-and-forth between a sour scribe and a manipulative celebrity doesn't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.

It's easy to envision the big-budget remake, but hard to imagine a mainstream American production capturing the original's sour, sweaty immediacy.

The mockumentary conceit gives a vivid immediacy to the material, and the PAL digital video cinematography is often surprisingly lyrical -- certain shots of empty, fog-shrouded San Francisco sites more than make up in eeriness what they lack in special-effects decrepitude.

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.

WHERE THE DAY TAKES YOU has a consistently engaging narrative that resonates with accuracy and honesty.

Chilling special effects highlight a rather gory production.

What this spectacular-looking sci-fi thriller lacks in originality it makes up for in pure beauty: It just might be the most visually audacious and startlingly beautiful space opera since the original "Solaris."

Although inconsistent in tone, it is an emotionally wrenching account of life on the mean streets of Los Angeles.

Features a first-rate voice cast and state-of-the-art animation that's nothing short of miraculous.

Though too long by a good half hour, Lee's latest film packs a genuine emotional punch, largely because its polemical agenda doesn't entirely eclipse the drama.

This follow-up to THE MUPPET MOVIE and THE GREAT MUPPET CAPER is not as good or as hip as its predecessors, but the Muppet gang remains fairly charming.

This wonderfully touching and funny reminiscence of life in a Catholic boys high school in Brooklyn circa 1965 went mostly unnoticed by critics and moviegoers alike. HEAVEN HELP US is a refreshingly honest portrayal of teenagers. No character is stereotyped, and events turn out differently than expected.

Versatile, highly skilled Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland's poignant drama examines the lingering effects of U.S. intervention in Southeast Asia.

Real Life delivers a pointed critique of the influence of media on our lives; it is also one of the funniest looks at filmmaking ever put on screen.

Preachy and predictable, an afterschool special in all but name.

In the end, the film feels a little futile; its relentless, one-miserable-note tone is numbing.

Paxton is impressively subtle and elicits remarkable performances from O'Leary and Sumpter.

Imagine the John Waters remake of an Agatha Christie mystery directed by Douglas Sirk, and you'll get some idea of the tone of this retro musical melodrama, which features a cast whose combined wattage could eclipse a small solar system.

Yes, the story is pure formula, though given less twinkle and lip gloss than Hollywood would have brought to bear on it; the film is so remake-friendly you can cast it in your head.

It's easy to view the story of these brothers as a larger metaphor for the relationship between the two Koreas, which gives the film an added resonance that your typical Hollywood war movie wouldn't possess.

Not for everyone, but those who respond to it will find it unforgettable.

Dreams With Sharp Teeth Or, Why is Harlan Ellison so gosh darned angry?

Slick, stylish and super-violent, but also oddly dull.

It should come as no surprise that Wes Craven's return to the horror series he created is the strongest of the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET sequels, but even his fans might not have expected the ironic depth and self-reflexivity he brings to this chapter.

A rarity for Neil Simon's screen efforts, The Goodbye Girl perfectly blends humor, sentiment, and romance on a level so pleasant it's almost suspicious.

The action is reasonably well-staged, but the film is overlong and occasionally draggy.

Brooks, hardly a great director, doesn't quite pull off this adaptation of the Rossner novel.

Hope and Crosby had been making "Road" films for 12 years when they did this, their sixth installment in the series, the only one in color. It was getting tiresome by that time, although they managed some fun out of the slim plot.

Writer-director James Mangold has surrounded Stallone with an exceptional ensemble cast, and Sly is smart enough to let the actors do the acting.

The underlying political motivation may be unclear, but the violence and desperation of lives lived in something close to hell on earth is terrifyingly clear.

Yeah, but at the end, he gets into hand-to-hand combat with Saddam, and he kicks the guy's butt! I love that part.

An oddly lifeless affair, though Gretchen Mol's sunny performance almost hauls it out of its doldrums.

The ensemble performances are perfectly meshed, and the Sprechers deserves special credit for bringing the desperate underside of Posey's brittle self-assurance to the surface.

It's the perfect "smackeral" of adventure for youngsters craving Pooh Bear and his pals.

Too bad that Romanek feels compelled to tie it all up with a banal pop psych explanation that offers an all-too simplistic solution to an otherwise uncommonly complex thriller.

The film is meticulously crafted but frustratingly meaningless.

The unspoken question that underlies their struggles is whether a facility run by sheer force of personality can survive when that personality is gone; the film ends on a cautiously hopeful note.

Hypnotic film.

It's just as juvenile as you'd expect, and even funnier.

Among those who are on hand to offer their own feelings about the man known as Peter Berlin and his art are fellow porn legend Jack Wrangler, groundbreaking gay writer Armistead Maupin, pornographer Wakefield Poole and director John Waters, who remembers Peter from his days in San Francisco, and still doesn't quite get what he's all about.

Ramshackle as comedy and mundane as drama, this noisily energetic and splashily - literally - photographed hang-ten flick doesn't wipe out due to spectacular surfing stunts and the fun of seeing McGregor and Zeta-Jones in pre-stardom mode.

A visually fascinating rumination on the genre.

Rough around the edges but rock-solid in its sense of place and its depiction of real people overreaching their apparent limitations.

Offers substantial food for thought on the subject of prison reform, and Ariel and Menahami close by noting that Bedi's example has been followed in Thai and -- surprisingly -- U.S. prisons with encouraging results.

Film works best as a soberly witty commentary on the workplace and makes an interesting companion piece to "Mondays in the Sun."

Though occasionally jarring, the intercutting between the parallel stories, aided immeasurably by Streep's disparate characterizations, succeeds in conveying the complexity of Fowles' novel.

The script quickly runs out of gas thanks to the one-joke story line and Blake's uninspired direction.

Garofalo and Thurman breathe some eccentric life into the cliches, and charming Chaplin is a walking warning to Hugh Grant, almost adorable enough to warrant all the trouble.

Straight Time is a powerful film that shows a criminal as he is. The film has no tired explanations for Hoffman's behavior, no fingers are pointed, no apologies or excuses are offered.

It's especially nice that all the songs on the soundtrack are heard in their entirety, even if the accompanying video footage is sometimes drawn from performances of different vintage.

Gripping adventure tale.

Far from proving the reality of the Horatio Alger myth it peddles, Chris Gardner's story is worth celebrating precisely because he managed to beat the odds stacked so high against him. Steve Conrad's screenplay is also curiously but insistently silent on the subject of race.

Brimming with ideas, aphorisms, diatribes, film clips and even bits of a story, the film's a gorgeous muddle that somehow manages to leave one both baffled and deeply satisfied.

Eight magnificent sled dogs must fend for themselves amid Antarctica's frozen wastes in this top-notch survival adventure that will reduce the coldest heart to a puddle of warm slush.

Thompson's stories are familiar, but she weaves them together with such assurance and good humor that they're equally soothing and thoroughly enjoyable.

It's an overblown campfire tale that doesn't know when to stop.

Given his way with witty banter, Stoppard's obvious, even leaden, dialogue is especially disappointing; director Michael Apted's handling of the story's frequent flashbacks is equally infelicitous.

With its artfully artless hand-held cinematography, haphazard focus, non-diegetic dialogue and what sounds like a largely improvised script, Thraves's film is all about style, but contains a surprising amount of substance.

A fascinating allegory of life in Iranian Kurdistan, a remote borderland still deeply scarred by years of war with Iraq.

Imagine "The Full Monty" without any of the feel-good uplift, and you'd be pretty close to capturing what this bitter -- and often bitterly funny -- film from Spain is all about.

Buried deep inside this ponderous, repetitive psychological thriller is a fantastic half-hour "Twilight Zone" episode.

Despite Schnack's half-hearted attempt to divide the film into chapters, his film is too unstructured to hold the interest of non-fans who might have appreciated a somewhat less hagiographic approach.

The outlandish premise and greasy title may be a little hard to swallow, but Danny Leiner's proudly moronic film embraces its boneheadedness so cheerfully that its lowbrow charms are nearly irresistible.

The melancholy joke - if you can call it that - is that the pall of global mediocrity has erased national differences and turned women like Tamiko and Amanda into ghosts drifting through their own lives.

The morbid theme notwithstanding, this is by no means a downbeat film, and it ends with the rather hopeful thought that for every disaster there's also a chance for survival.

Though not particularly bloody, The Hills Have Eyes is an extremely intense and disturbing film. As is the case with Sam Peckinpah's classic, Straw Dogs, it becomes oddly and distressingly exhilarating to watch the nice family become increasingly savage in their efforts to survive.

This film, Hitchcock's first contribution to wartime American propaganda, is as polished and suspenseful as any the great director would make.

This unlikely love story never really pays off, largely due to Lawrence Kasdan's contrived script. To their credit, a very subdued Belushi and an appealing Brown do their best to add a patina of light charm to this minor effort, and largely they succeed.

Although occasionally preachy, it is a fascinating horror tale that is as engrossing as it is horrifying.

Nothing much happens on the surface, but worlds of hope, hurt and determination lie right behind the characters' eyes, waiting to be discovered.

This adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic adventure novel features plenty of not-too-menacing pirates, and exactly the sort of schtick one expects from the Muppets. It will provide an entertaining diversion for children and adults.

The film bogs down, however, because of De Palma's penchant for technically slick but overblown action scenes that call attention to themselves as virtuoso set pieces instead of advancing the narrative.

All in all a fascinating film with an outstanding musical score consisting of jukebox hits from the period.

The third teaming of Redford and Fonda (after "The Chase" and "Barefoot in the Park"), HORSEMAN falls far short of what it might have been, starting out smart but getting sloppier and more sentimental as it goes along.

French director Helene Angel's dark but deftly handled fable about familial violence has a terrifying, fairy-tale atmosphere that's in perfect keeping with its unique point of view.

A beautifully acted slice of intersecting lives defined and driven by the business of beauty.

The puzzle pieces are all there. But when you put them all together, the result is a bit of a gyp — neat but utterly forgettable.

It's not a great film, but let's face it: Considering the source, this is as good as it was ever going to get.

For anyone unfamiliar with pentacostal practices in general and theatrical phenomenon of Hell Houses in particular, it's an eye-opener.

The film's uniformly excellent performances are a delight, and fans of Irish actor Farrell (whose pitch-perfect American accent has served him well in Hollywood) can hear both his natural inflections and his singing voice.

The result is undeniably offensive and occasionally very funny, but the gags fall flat as often as they hit their mark.

Grand Canyon successfully recreates the random, haphazard ways in which individual lives intersect, and captures the sense of menace and disintegration that permeate contemporary urban life.

A sometimes hilarious farce and a holiday favorite.

Director John Dahl keeps a firm hand on Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely's razor-sharp hit-man-in-rehab comedy, which mines the same dark vein as "Gross Pointe Blank"(1997) and "Matador"(2005), and the payoff is both slily funny and startlingly fresh.

Ostensibly an "adult comedy" about serious things, screenwriter Richard LaGravenese's disjointed directing debut rings profoundly false, a story about class distinctions and suffering conceived and executed in privilege.