Although the search for enlightenment may not have much in the way of high-concept appeal, the film should satisfy adventurous moviegoers as well as the large number of adults already intrigued by eastern religions. Children with open minds will also find much pleasure in the characters of the children and the kindly old monk.

Roos' sly, throwaway insights into the ways people deceive and undermine themselves are both ruefully funny and painfully on the mark.

The funniest of all the Cheech and Chong movies, UP IN SMOKE provides a feast of gags for the sympathetically minded.

This beautiful but notoriously disappointing film is one of the most overblown epic Westerns of any decade.

The city looks breathtakingly lovely, the movie's Brazilian characters are charming and filled with joie de vivre, and using excerpts would take care of the fact that the pacing's a bit sluggish for such fluffy material.

Girard and his collaborators are so focused on the stunning tableaux that all other considerations fall by the wayside, leaving their visual achievements -- miraculous on such a small budget -- mired in the elaborate but maladroit storytelling.

Spare, rough around the edges and unsentimentally melancholy.

Director Gary Winick serves up enough giddy fun that it's easy to turn a blind eye to the film's skewed sense of time and minor anachronisms.

The charismatic Mac has stepped into leading man roles with surprising ease, but Bassett -- a fine actress in all respects -- is clearly struggling with the film's broad comedy.

Ejiofor's polished, energetic performance -- including several song-and-dance numbers -- enlivens what's basically comfort food in movie form, but sometimes comfort food is exactly what the doctor ordered.

Of course, most of the male-female situations Terry finds herself in are played for laughs, and the film eventually sinks into an all too typical conclusion, but the observations regarding the nature of sexuality are interesting and well handled.

This could have been a wonderful film, but the makers fell in love with the hardware and forgot the humanity. BRAINSTORM is chockablock with special effects that sometimes obstruct rather than enhance the story.

A sharp, superbly acted character-driven comedic drama.

Neil Armfield's film hits hard because it sensitively shows how life on drugs can never be about anything else, and how the real horror of addiction is not what users do to themselves, but what they do to each other out of loneliness and despair.

An effective, tightly constructed thriller that packs an emotional punch in the end, when even its politics are compelling.

Part The Great Escape, part standard sports movie, Huston's Victory limps along until hitting full stride with a brilliantly staged soccer sequence that provides the film's climax.

Inoffensive and designed to cater to some sort of middle-of-the-road constituency (it's not entirely clear who wants period gangster Westerns to be jolly instead of dark), this film is a huge leap forward for director and cowriter Richard Linklater, and he tackles the genre conventions and period set pieces with eminent grace.

A winding story with no real direction.

Delivers plenty of sharply funny moments.

To see the two of them on screen together, even past their primes, is a delight.

That director and co-writer Gurinder Chadha transforms this sitcom material into a lively and charming film about the melting pot at full boil probably owes something to the fact that her own multicultural bona fides are firmly in order.

There's so much less to the film than the novel: Nicholas Meyer's screenplay fails to capture the intricate subtleties of its subject and replaces Roth's moral scope with a moralizing tone.

Rocky III crawls along without dramatic impetus, failing to convey the big emotions and missing the humor of the first two films.

It's a handsome production, and a pleasure to watch. With a shadowy palette and a set design reminiscent of Edward Hopper's nocturnes, a soundtrack hearkening back to the sounds of vintage rock 'n' roll, and a cast of characters straight out of a James M. Cain novel.

Rios is the glue that holds Johannesson's neither-fish-nor-fowl film together.

The final result is a bittersweet product closer to honey than treacle.

Endearing without being especially engaging.

Christine just boils down to another average adaptation of one of the increasingly weak Stephen King novels that hit Hollywood like a bad rash in 1983.

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.

It's genuinely funny, oddly romantic and surprisingly engaging for what could easily have been an obnoxious vanity project.

Run Ronnie Run! is an unfortunate mistake, but it's still better than actual reality programming.

Slickly animated and cleverly written.

Veers inconsistently between sit-com jokeiness and nostril-flaring melodrama.

Perhaps the only person more enthralled by the romance of train hopping than the latter-day hobos profiled in this great looking documentary from first-time director Sarah George is George herself.

Much of it is inspired, some of it is downright awful, but it does entertain, even as it threatens to drown its generally fine cast in a flood of blood and sundry body parts.

Dillon makes an assured directing debut, neither indulging in unnecessary stylistic flourishes nor allowing scenes to run too long, a tendency in actors-turned-director.

About as subtle as a hammer blow to the skull and marred by a heedless mixture of fact and fiction.

Though the movie is clearly meant to work on its own, the relationship between Starling and Lecter plays best if you're familiar with "Lambs."

Excellent performances from Sarah Polley and Deborah Harry, and a sensitive script from writer-director Isabel Coixet transform what might otherwise have been little more than a disease-of-the-week cable melodrama.

Would be as tedious as a home movie if the couple, Edward DeBonis and Vincent Maniscalco, weren't gay men and their nuptials not colored by the clash between their personal faith and their rejection by the mainstream church.

Ultimately the sci-fi fillips — human cloning, memory wipes, empathy viruses — are subordinate to screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce's doomed romance.

A delicate watercolor dream of a ghost story, as insubstantial and tremulously haunting as an unquiet spirit.

The subject can sharply divide even the most liberal-minded critics, but it's no secret on which side of the debate filmmakers Bathsheba Ratzkoff and Sut Jhally find themselves.

Clever though the premise is, the film's real strength is the smooth banter between Sam and Devon; it's never less than smart, often startlingly perceptive and always thoroughly convincing.

It's hard to say which sight is more depressing: That of Chinese girls mortgaging their futures in the hopes of helping their families, or drunken American girls, surrounded by privilege and opportunity most of the world can barely imagine, arguing that it's fun to degrade themselves for cheap baubles.

Wright's haunting performance is the anchor that keeps Ruscio's film from vanishing down a rabbit hole.

Based on the book by syndicated columnist and savvy media watchdog Norman Solomon, who appears throughout as the main talking head, Earp and Alper's documentary shows just how the U.S. government coerces a nation into accepting the very idea of war, and it's a job it couldn't do without the full cooperation of the media.

If only the wit weren't overwhelmed by lame jokes about body parts, functions and fluids.

Though inspired by Weiland's own childhood, the film's plot sticks close to the underdog's coming-of-age formula and is marred by young Bernie's gratingly self-pitying voice-over.

The direction is routine action filmmaking with no originality. The film, therefore, is both exciting and flat all at once.

Though Argento's plot is often confused and grotesque, he has a remarkably energetic visual style (mobile camera, slow-motion, careful lighting, creative editing) that is never boring.

Woods is particularly good as the deprogrammer, conveying an air of moral tackiness that suggests the "cure" may be worse than the perceived disorder.

Directed by the prolific but uneven African-American filmmaker Michael Schultz, this well-intentioned biography of the first black auto racing champion, Wendell Scott, features Richard Pryor in an early dramatic role.

O'Hara looks like she's just doing Wayne a favor, and Pat Wayne and singer Vinton just don't have much screen presence. These weaknesses plus a mediocre script add up to a very weak Wayne outing.

Good acting and careful direction by Becker make it worth seeing, but the violence and the language may be too graphic for some tastes.

Filmed and released in England in 1976 as FULL CIRCLE, this movie flopped badly and went unreleased Stateside until 1981, when it was unveiled under a new title and still failed to find its audience.

The film uses the locations well and Gazzara's performance is an actor's dream. But SAINT JACK never quite becomes the "important" film it seems to aspire to be. The story is told in too meandering a style and the many well-acted characterizations never mesh together.

The thin story line of NEPTUNE'S DAUGHTER revolves around swimming star Esther Williams as Eve Barrett, a partner in a bathing suit company (with Keenan Wynn), who must continually fight off the advances of millionaire playboy Jose O'Rourke (Ricardo Montalban).

Some good lines notwithstanding, this is a real disappointment.

This dumbed-down spin on Jules Verne's classic adventure tale was devised as a kid-friendly roller-coaster ride, and it delivers the goods. Whether anyone over the age of eight wants the goods is another matter altogether.

McCormack and Cochrane can't transcend the clichéd, meandering dialogue, so Brad and Lexi's dilemma never feels like anything but a didactic contrivance.

For once in a kids' sports picture, the child actors don't grate or get sticky, and the adults aren't crotch-grabbing, swaggering, overgrown delinquents. More important, Little Big League makes some very nice emotional points along the way to a satisfying end, suggesting that America's rocky romance with baseball is alive and well.

An inventive, well-animated, appropriately cast film.

When it comes right down to it, there are two kinds of people in this world: Those who despised Comedy Central's notorious series Strangers with Candy as the rudest, crudest and most offensive show ever to appear on television, and those who loved it for those very reasons.

The film doesn't provide any narration or go out of its way to identify the participants, so it's left to the viewer to make connections and draw their own conclusions.

Despite desperate efforts to sell this umpteenth recycling of the Camelot legend as a Sean Connery vehicle, it's Richard Gere's film and he's not much of a Lancelot.

Nevertheless, The Santa Clause is a charming, if mild, fantasy, distinguished by a gentle directorial touch that strikes a deft balance between dramatic and fantastic elements.

Based on a short story by Joe R. Lansdale, this low-key oddity stresses character over broad laughs and shock effects, allowing Campbell and Davis to develop a quirky rapport that's a real pleasure to watch.

Lesser Peckinpah, but fascinating nonetheless.

Black Sunday benefits from its technical skill, drawn-out suspense and developed characterizations, though the film could have been even more effectively tight with a shorter running time.

Delivers its commendable message with affecting eloquence.

Greenebaum manages to portray old-age as a condition with its own peculiar beauty and considerable grace.

It's a well-produced yearbook that will one day bring back sweet memories for the cast and fans, but probably won't be of interest to anyone who wasn't part of the scene.

The result is a mixed bag of lozenges, some sweet, some tart and others that just melt away into nothing.

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.

From a sharp, jaundiced script by W.D. Richter ("Buckaroo Banzai"), Jodie Foster has directed a poisoned paean to the great American tradition of torturous family gatherings.

It's ripe for an American remake, given the popularity of reality TV shows like "My Super Sweet 16" and "Bridezillas," but it's hard to imagine a better cast than this ensemble.

The line separating "fan" from "fanatic" has never seemed as thin or as permeable as it does in this harrowing, and at times surprisingly humorous, case study from actress-turned-director Emmanuelle Bercot.

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

Paxton (who also produced) and Marguiles turn in fine, affecting performances, Wahlberg is better than you might expect, and the story is powered by a knock-out soundtrack.

Veterans Danner and Wilkinson effortlessly make Anna and Stephen more interesting than all the youngsters combined.

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

Best of all is Tsugumi's wild performance.

The surprise is how tame and passionless it all seems, particularly after director Philip Haas's fevered "Angels and Insects."

It's Jagger's bone-dry, mournfully brittle delivery that gives the film its bittersweet bite. Michael Des Barres and Anjelica Huston make the most of their supporting roles.

Gitai's film is an interesting, if not entirely successful, adaptation of an excellent book.

The atmosphere is once again black, creepy and unsettlingly elegant, lending this twisted tale of psychological dominance and submission a patina of anxiety and dread.

By enlisting jingoism and reducing an entire culture to caricature, Not Without My Daughter defeats any progressive point it may have intended to make.

CUJO suffers from universally unsympathetic characters, and the dog is just not scary enough to maintain any interest. Significantly, the picture also lacks the sly humor that made ALLIGATOR so appealing.

Although the on-screen rapport between Redford and Winger is a delight, the film itself is less than that. The script by TOP GUN writers Cash and Epps is muddled and unconvincing.

There's not much substantive food for thought.

Pretentious but gorgeously photographed.

If this brutal tale of crime and corruption within the upper ranks of the Los Angeles Police Department feels like an updated retelling of "L.A. Confidential," there's good reason. Both stories spring from the dark mind of American crime writer James Ellroy.

The actors do their best with their one-dimensional roles, and the film is worth seeing, if only to watch Garr, Harry Dean Stanton, and Allan Goorwitz. Tom Waits provided the Oscar-nominated score. (review of original release)

Shot in the warm sepia tones of bittersweet memories, this whimsical, unpretentious shaggy war story is the sort of film that looks like a small gem when you accidentally stumble across it on TV or at the video store. But it feels a little unsatisfying when its small virtues are stretched to cover a big screen.

The mix of rollicking, family-friendly action and backwoods mysticism is odd, as is the story's progress from larky escapades to increasingly grim consequences, and Craven never quite manages to make it all seem a smoothly integrated piece.

Funny, sexy and very cleverly done.

Deeply personal film that often feels more like an artfully produced home video than a documentary.