The acting is consistently good, with Liotta, in particular, creating a masterful portrait of implacable, blue-eyed terror--a man equally at ease explaining his vocation to a class of schoolkids ("I'm here to be your friend") as staging a cold-blooded murder. It's a tough job, but somebody has to do it.

Vincente Minnelli's film might have benefited from less emphasis on dialogue and more on the musical numbers ("Just in Time" and "The Party's Over" among them), but Holliday is adorable and efforlessly "real" in one of the best roles of her sadly abbreviated career.

It's Deneuve, in little more than a cameo, who commands your attention and doesn't release you until she's good and ready.

A wildly entertaining detective thriller that succeeds entirely on its own terms.

Feels hokey, generic and dated.

A cerebral thriller that dares to ask a fundamental question: What, exactly, is love?

Viewers are left to draw their own conclusions, which inevitably will be colored by individual reactions to unabashed frontal nudity.

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

Michael Tolkin's THE NEW AGE is something new, a comedy of horrors that's brittle, hypnotically hip, and so cool it almost freezes the audience out.

Lee has perfectly captured the details, textures, sights and sounds of a China caught between East and West, occupied by an ancient enemy and quaking on the eve of an earth-shaking revolution.

A riveting account of one of the most extraordinary events in U.S. immigration history.

Luckily the story behind the suds is a pretty good one.

8-year-olds of all ages, prepare to storm the multiplex!

This version is a well-handled retelling of the classic Louisa May Alcott tale.

The story wears thin long before it's over, but Machado draws strong performances from his leads and makes excellent use of its rundown locations.

A throwback to the slickly entertaining melodramas of Hollywood's golden age.

Overall, The Comfort of Strangers seems tremendously overwrought for no good reason.

While Kudlacek lets some of the elder statesmen ramble, their recollections are a vivid, firsthand window into a bygone era of American art.

It's a tongue-in-cheek movie that avoids the sappy sentiment of so many "family" films and concentrates on sheer entertainment instead.

Only the heavy stylization mitigates some highly artificial plot contrivances, and the final photo montage of America's poor, while no doubt exciting to Von Trier the provocateur, is maddeningly oblique.

Of all the feature films and documentaries to emerge since 9/11, few have been as bold, perceptive or as downright chilling as this thriller.

Sweet-natured, episodic comedy-drama.

Given a distinctly playful treatment by Russell, who crams some kind of phallic imagery into almost every frame, THE LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM is solid, campy fun--much more entertaining than any of the director's "serious" films. Russell (who also scripted) enjoys himself with all kinds of fetishistic images, from a naked Amanda Donohoe slithering around in green body paint, to a white bra- and panties-clad Catherine Oxenberg suspened over a pit as a sacrificial offering to the great white worm-snake--whose flickering tongue is, no doubt, firmly in his cheek.

The premise is ordinary, but the film is distinguished by funny gags and excellent performances by Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall.

Anderson is a master of detail, from the film's ubiquitous fish motif to the elaborate carnival set piece that unfolds inside the claustrophobic confines of a spook-house ride called "Route 666."

Biloxi Blues works better than the script alone would suggest, thanks to the skillful direction of Nichols and excellent performances from Broderick and Walken.

This second feature from director Fred Dekker is a poorly paced and haphazardly scripted horror-comedy that is neither scary nor particularly funny.

This is an offbeat gothic drama with elements of mystery, that would be nothing more than a muddle if not for the compelling presence of Tracy and Hepburn.

Lacking the thematic depth of "On The Run," this brisk, bubbly jape never really transcends the genre it's emulating, and your enjoyment of the film really depends on your tolerance for bumbling misunderstandings and improbable coincidences.

Natali's film has a fabulous look, a nerve-wracking, claustrophobic mood, a number of genuinely suspenseful set-pieces and some sublimely stomach-churning special effects.

The story is slim but the jazz is great, especially when legendary Louis Armstrong gets into the act.

As in BASKET CASE, director Henenlotter combines some disturbing gore with an offbeat sense of humor that makes the entire disgusting exercise a bit more palatable.

Full of wonderful music, grand visuals, and melodramatic plot twists, the movie is laced with very funny moments, as well as interesting insights into the world of jazz and the plight of the dedicated musician.

Though director Guy Hamilton has tried to make the Christie formula more cinematic by trimming the number of characters and streamlining the plot, the picture is still rather uninteresting. Only the performances, the lovely location, and some Cole Porter tunes make it worth watching.

The moral message gets a bit too preachy at times, and the performances are somewhat wooden.

The story is told with uncharacteristic restraint and benefits from fine performances by Nelligan and Hirsch.

Jonathan Demme's characteristic generosity toward his characters and refusal to make absolute moral judgments are strong points, while the feminist subtext adds freshness to the story.

This often-funny film fails to sustain its premise through its entire length. Cambridge is hilarious in his role, but many of the gags are cliched, uninspired, and just what one might have expected from the situation. In order to work, comedy must offer surprises.

In capturing the compelling battle between a boy and his abusive stepfather, director Michael Caton-Jones cannily avoids obvious sentimentality, opting to let a rather brutal story tell itself.

The result is a raucously funny and poignant love letter to standup comics.

A visually inventive and energetic pop musical.

While nothing to rival Hitchcock, the film's look and direction make it a worthwhile effort. Doris Day makes the switch from light comedy to suspense fairly well, creating a believable victim, while Harrison, his usual debonair self, adopts a sinister air.

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

Although Benny used this film as a running gag on his radio show for years (claiming it had ruined his movie career), there are some comic gems here, especially in the smash finale.

[A] bold and brilliant rendering of Henry James' masterpiece.

Russ Meyer's Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is an outrageously entertaining cult classic, and probably one of the most bizarre movies ever produced by a major Hollywood studio.

As a visual counterpart to some of the most sublime verse ever written, it's often thrilling.

Happily, a feeling of genuine comradeship among these athletes shines through, and their irreverent, go-for-broke comments are a jolt of fun compared to the usual canned epigrams from pampered sports multimillionaires.

Grisly, yes, but it's all done in fun; having tried his hardest to shock audiences with his previous films, it now appears Miike simply wants to entertain, and he pulls out all the stops.

A fun and fanciful comic adventure, based on the novel "The Death of Napoleon" by Simon Leys, that takes a great premise and runs with it.

Baker stars as real-life Tennessee sheriff Buford Pusser, whose one-man battle against gambling, moonshine whiskey, and prostitution in his county elevated him to folk-hero stature in three movies.

Filled with interesting characters and strong performances, Stay Hungry not only makes its point about class prejudice, but presents a detailed portrait of southern country club culture and the bodybuilding milieu that would be so deftly captured in Schwarzenegger's next film, the fine documentary Pumping Iron.

A pleasant, mindless diversion.

Essentially a supersize episode that ignores a slew of fifth-season developments and adds yet another monster to the mix, one that owes a striking debt to "Alien."

The film's occasional jarring shifts in tone are a liability, but not a fatal one: It's a character-driven piece and the beautifully-crafted characters mask the narrative flaws.

Yuen would have been better off exposing more of that reality and celebrating less of the joyful silliness of the model works, let alone staging pointless hip-hop-inflected dance numbers set to Yang Ban Xi musical themes.

This is not a film---it's a deal, decorated with extensive publicity, but weighed down by listless direction and lots of nasal talk, talk, talk.

None of it really adds up to much but it's smart, low-key fun -- terrible title and dangling preposition notwithstanding.

This supremely silly supernatural potboiler is slickly entertaining for just under two hours and absolutely hilarious for 10 minutes near the end.

"Double Indemnity's" darkly poetic carnality is timeless. Trashy, throwaway fluff like De Palma's film can only look bad by comparison.

These three films form a remarkably cohesive whole, both visually and thematically, through their consistently sensitive and often exciting treatment of an ignored people.

Gordon makes the mistake of preserving Bradfield's highly idiosyncratic dialogue -- dazzling on the page, deadly in any actor's mouths -- and the otherwise talented Lloyd is miscast.

This DIY oddity is both quirkily funny and strangely poignant, and does justice to the same themes that underlie the far more lavishly produced "A.I.: Artificial Intelligence."

Ironically, as the former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia Chas Freeman, puts it, Iraq has become what the Bush White House insisted it was at the very beginning, albeit for altogether different reasons: a battlefield in the war against terrorism.

Highlights how far we've fallen.

The film's woozy, digital-video gorgeousness is undeniable, and the glittering shots from atop the Brooklyn Bridge could make a tough guy weep.

While Burnam and Garrison imbue their characters with authentic-feeling frustration and anger, they never succeed in making them especially interesting; it's hard to care in any serious way what becomes of either.

Andrew Neel's fascinating but troubling documentary about his famous grandmother is more than a mere biography of an important 20th-century artist: It's also an intimate portrait of a family member that questions whether or not "great artist" and "good parent" can ever be combined in the same person.

Jim Brown and Gary Burns hang a powerful antisuburban diatribe in the form of statistics, expert opinions and pictures worth a thousand words on the experiences of the Moss family.

There are some marvelous sight gags, but the film goes over the top into mindless farce at times, destroying much of the Chaplinesque believability that Sellers had earlier engendered.

Generally regarded as the best of Reynolds good ol' boy films, with fine, sensitive performances by the leads and a wonderful supporting cast.

Though at times the film relies a bit too much on slapstick humor, skilled director Robert Stevenson (working on his 19th Disney film) keeps the action from getting too out of hand

You can almost feel writer-director Ron Shelton praying for lightning to strike twice, but to no avail.

There's no time wasted and no showy effects to detract from the situation -- just sheer tension.

Although perhaps not as mind-blowing in its uniqueness as RE-ANIMATOR, this is definitely one of the best horror films of the 1980s.

There's no downside to a reminder that not every beefy, God-talking sheriff is a bigoted cracker, and Kraus' short, no-frills documentary is a model of fly-on-the-wall filmmaking.

A handsomely mounted aviation adventure from the director, screenwriter and one of the stars of the hugely successful BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID, this film deals with that colorful era of the early 1920s when barnstorming--performing aerial feats before rural crowds--was so popular.

All technical credits are first rate, but Friedkin doesn't draw enough on his substantial cinematic talent.

You can't help but wish the set up were shorter and the dilemma longer.

Simply and eloquently articulates the tangled feelings of particular New Yorkers deeply touched by an unprecedented tragedy.

Roundly condemned (though not banned) by Church officials in Mexico, the film became a smash hit -- probably in part because the public wrangling gave it an enormous publicity boost.

Entertaining documentary.

The thin line between self-esteem and hubris is explored in this cautionary tale.

It's slick, romantic, funny (Close has a great rapport with her beer-guzzling, foul-mouthed mentor, Robert Loggia), intriguing, and filled with excellent performances.

Hill's action scenes here are surprisingly perfunctory, but his narrative exposition is superb--a model of minimalist restraint in lurid circumstances. Hill also maintains his ability to push his actors in interesting directions here, though Rourke's laconic performance fails to pay off.

A candy-colored, superficially fizzy revenge fantasy with a startlingly corrosive undercurrent of bitterness and frustration.

Odd but never dull.

Gleefully trashy BONNIE AND CLYDE ripoff, served up the Corman way.

A rare misfire from the normally reliable team of Powell and Pressburger (THE RED SHOES), this 1890s British-based film was taken from a fair novel and only barely came up to the novel's standards, despite an excellent and lively turn by Jones in the lead.

Runge's coolly photographed, intricately plotted feature is always interesting in its execution, but disappointingly pat in its resolution.

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.

History has since overtaken Ponfilly's film, which now more than ever seems like but one chapter in a much larger story -- the ongoing tragedy of Afghanistan -- and a tragic tribute to all that might have been.

Spare and coolly evocative, it's a chilling accomplishment.

Sometimes seems as noisy and unrefined as Jean himself. But it has just as much heart, and builds up to rousingly "Rocky"-like climax.

Everett remains a perfect Wildean actor, and a relaxed Firth displays impeccable comic skill.

This anti-thriller radiates dread rather than suspense; it delivers creeping apprehension rather than adrenaline-pumping kicks, and the uniformly strong and finely calibrated performances more than compensate for the absence of technical razzle-dazzle.

Though ultimately the film is all smoke and mirrors, the sensibility it reflects is rich and exciting.

Uneven but sometimes fascinating murder mystery.