No aliens. No firefights in space. No robots. Just an eerily attractive, sleekly costumed cast in a stylish, cooly intelligent throwback to the Twilight Zone era of deeply serious science fiction.

It's seldom boring and always beautifully photographed, but it's also considerably less than satisfying, perhaps because its internal logic never comes into focus.

The youngsters all turn in game performances, but the standout is Anne Heche, whose weird Missy Egan is pure Mimsy Farmer at maximum twitch.

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

Visually inventive, The Maker is a superficially compelling film that adds nothing new to the environment-vs.-heredity debate.

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

He (Anderson) manages to guide his cast of characters through an epic story of self-delusion with a skill and grace that many more experienced filmmakers would be hard put to match.

For all its talk about sex, incest, insanity and the gory details of the Kennedy assassination, Mark Waters' adaptation of Wendy MacLeod's play doesn't really amount to much more than a lurid, thoroughly enjoyable little pot-boiler.

Unfortunately, this visually sumptuous epic is the very definition of a "prestige production," swaddled in good taste and better intentions.

In his last role, the late Tupac Shakur shows once again that he had considerable natural talent as an actor, and while Jim Belushi is always in danger of sliding from sleaze into shtick, he always pulls back.

Fleder delivers the requisite shocks, and his direction is brisk, efficient and occasionally stylish; Judd and Freeman both give more than the material demands.

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.

An honorable film, beautifully acted, refreshingly un-camp in its take on wide lapels and progressive rock and occasionally coolly moving. It's just that ultimately, there's less here than meets the eye.

Ruthlessly efficient and utterly predictable.

But it's also old-fashioned family drama that invites audience participation ("Don't you go making eyes at your cousin's husband, you little slut!"), and is surprisingly satisfying, in a gooey kind of way -- like macaroni and cheese or peach cobbler, perhaps.

A taut, literate tale of civilized men pitted against implacable nature, encumbered by a meaningless and not especially enticing title.

Director Curtis Hanson keeps the hugely complicated story zooming along the boulevard of broken dreams without losing sight of the details that make the trip worthwhile.

It's not about sex -- it's about Barbra and Bette and the Village People: That's the lesson of this cheerful, mainstream comedy about tabloid TV, Hollywood sophistry and family values that finally gets discussion about gay people out of the bedroom and into the record store, where it belongs.

It's probably not the last word in WASP angst, but it's eloquent, witty, graceful and as sharp as can be.

It's a cut above the throng of mindless, purported thrillers in which explosions and gun battles replace even rudimentary story telling.

Audriad's film articulates an uncomfortably familiar vision of a nation desperate enough to believe its own lies, where the copy is inevitably much better than the real thing and heroes are only as genuine as one needs them to be.

The supporting cast is stocked with far better actors than Seagal -- Kristofferson, Harry Dean Stanton and Stephen Lang among them -- and country music personalities ranging from Mark Collie, Levon Helm, Randy Travis and Travis Tritt to Loretta Lynn's twin daughters Patsy and Peggy, to whom Seagal's character makes some vaguely suggestive remarks.

The first fruit of wunderkinder Alicia Silverstone's First Kiss Productions, this muddled thriller-cum-romantic comedy of errors suggests that she might want to lay off the producing for a few years.

if son Nick's adaptation isn't in the same league with Faces or A Woman Under the Influence, he also can't be accused of dropping the ball: He's just not experienced enough to overcome the structural weaknesses of a sporadically brilliant piece of writing.

Uneven and inaccurate as it may be, it's hard to wash out entirely with a movie that explores as neglected an aspect of classic gangster mythology as this one; at the same time, you can't help but wish it did so more successfully.

Bancroft and Mortensen take home the acting awards -- the pleasure they take in what they're doing really makes the film come alive.

Creepy, beautifully designed horror yarn about mutant roaches that delivers both artfully eerie atmosphere and some boffo shocks.

All but the most easily pleased kids will be bored as can be, and anyone who has fond memories of TV's Leave It to Beaver would probably rather not besmirch them.

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 film is content to relentlessly scream "Boo!" behind the audience's back rather than provide any real thrills.

An enjoyable, ultimately inconsequential crowd-pleaser.

Not a terrible movie exactly, just a dark, edgy idea relentlessly worn down into mildly diverting blandness by the mega-wattage presence of stars Mel Gibson and Julia Roberts.

This is a film worth seeing, and LaBute is a filmmaker well worth watching.

An amiable romantic comedy.

Todd McFarlane's Spawn plays better on the page, but the adolescents of all ages who buy Spawn comics will probably enjoy the movie. Others should consider themselves forewarned.

Though positioned as a glum expose of America's violent schools (a cause for hand-wringing at least as far back as 1955's The Blackboard Jungle), the story is overwhelmed by the throbbing score, music-video aesthetic (New York scenes are shot in cold blues and grays, while the L.A. sequences are a hazy, burnt-out yellow) and the exotic, colorful psychos who rule Garfield's classroom: It's a New York Times editorial by way of CLASS OF 1984.

Trapped uncomfortably between its higher aspirations and the demands of genre, this picture never quite gets its bearings, but it's still a solid ride.

Kenan and Kel share a wonderful comic chemistry that has a lot in common with the anarchic goofiness of Abbott and Costello or Martin and Lewis, leavened with a good deal more mutual affection.

The filmmaker's command of storytelling is less than assured, and with the exception of Figueroa and Annette Murphy (who plays Pepe's mistress Letti), the film's performances range from awkwardly wooden to amateurishly awful. While Arteta is definitely a filmmaker to watch, this particular movie is a testament to aspirations that considerably exceed his present abilities.

An intelligent story for the kilts-and-corsets crowd.

Clumsy and amateurish. But it's also occasionally quite charming, and ultimately more commendable for what it ISN'T than worthy of censure for being nothing more than an inconsequential comedy.

John Cleese supplies the voice of George's brainy and terrifically tolerant sidekick, a very unconvincing animatronic gorilla named Ape, but even he can't raise the level of humor above the harmlessly goofy.

This film is no exception to the rule that philosophical debate seldom spawns compelling cinema.

Lee occasionally stumbles as a documentarian... But the material is so profoundly moving that it hardly matters.

Extravagant special effects notwithstanding, this is really a triumph of casting: The aplomb with which Jones plays wry straight man to Smith's street-smart wiseacre is terrifically enjoyable.

Unlike Woo's successful but rather disappointing "Broken Arrow", this brutal, stunningly choreographed spectacle weaves together lyrical beauty, blasphemy, sadistic cruelty and grotesque sentimentality with breathtakingly smooth assurance.

Fun for the kids, but no Beauty and the Beast or Lion King. This child-friendly retelling of Hercules' story takes the predictable liberties with a story originally chockablock with sex, violence and generally sordid behavior. After several passes through the Disney wringer, a sanitized, blandly blond Hercules (voice of Tate Donovan) emerges, ready to enter no pantheon other than that of muscle-beach pinup boys.

It's a gee-whiz kiddie movie imagined by pervy grown-ups who get a giggle out of mixing bloodless fight scenes with close-ups of rubber-wrapped butts and baskets.

This amiable comedy may not be hugely sophisticated, but Hogan does manage to make his attractive leads look like complete idiots, no mean achievement in image-obsessed Hollywood.

Emir Kusturica's magnificent fresco rips through half a century of the tragic history of his homeland -- the former Yugoslavia -- with all the solemnity of an amusement park ride.

Nathanson's script has a disheartening let's get on with it air, and the film feels like marathon training...

The power of an otherwise carefully crafted film is undone by risky and not altogether successful casting.

Mega-budget action extravaganzas don't get much sillier than this.

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.

Just a little shy of twisting the knife that extra twist.

If you're in a triumph of the human spirit frame of mind, this is your cup of dark, sweet tea.

It's all about as white and bourgeois as you can get, but the film does take a few risks, and some actually pay off.

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

It's all densely imagined and more than a little goofy -- perhaps too goofy for the average American viewer.

How much you enjoy the film will depend entirely on how much you enjoy the spectacle of Williams spewing forth streams of nonsensical gibberish in an attempt to impersonate a German record producer, and Crystal pitching snit fits.

Director and enfant terrible-wannabe Gregg Araki winds up his Teen Apocalypse trilogy with this loud, ridiculous mess, and not a moment too soon.

Amiable, brightly colored spoof of '60s pop culture.

There are echoes of Stephen Spielberg's "Duel," as well as "Roadgames," "The Hitcher" and "The Hills Have Eyes," but director/cowriter Mostow isn't interested in hommages: He's just looking to crank up the suspense (not the in your face action, thank heavens), bit by miserable bit, and does a very nice job of it.

Though writer-director Peter Duncan can hardly help but touch on volatile political issues, he seems oddly without a political point of view.

Cheung, slinking around the corridors of her hotel in her sheath of shiny black latex to the dissonant chords of Sonic Youth, is an instant icon of everything.

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

The fun is in the mayhem, and there's plenty of it.

An excruciatingly unfunny comedy.

It desperately wants to be a paranoid political thriller, but this cobbled-together collection of corruption-on-Capitol Hill and cop movie cliches is so implausible that it's hard to care about any of the conspiratorial cover-ups and counter cover-ups.

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.

This shotgun marriage of coarse laughs and low-rent action cliches is, of course, utterly predictable: Cutting-edge comedy isn't lurking under the corpses of old TV shows.

A slick, mannered and frequently clever comedy.

Voight's performance -- one of the film's pure, trashy delights -- is all leer, sneer and macho swagger, while the rest of the actors feel like the disposable snake-fodder they are.

It addresses issues of stultifying routine and the small crises of middle-aged life, and deserves credit for not obscuring the simple story with a flurry of smoke and mirrors.

It's strange to imagine the subject of World War II a now no-brainer in the same league as sequels and old TV show-spinoffs, something safe and familiar in light of its new, "inspiring" spin. But that's the only way to explain the existence of this otherwise pointless picture.

A painfully self-conscious comedy that mistakes relentless self-referentiality for cleverness, this half-witted misfire is filled with accelerated motion, repeated and overlapping scenes, direct address to the camera and other cliches of defamiliarization.

A romantic comedy distinguished by the particular roadblocks writer/director Kevin Smith throws up in front of his characters.

A pastel-pretty and oh-so-dull coming of age tale.

Kilmer slips in and out of a series of ludicrously elaborate disguises, some more convincing than others, while poor Shue shuffles through the role of a sexy, book-reading babe pretending to be a dowdy lady scientist in kneesocks.

Neophytes may be baffled by the film's weirdly sentimental streak -- the vendetta that drives antiterrorist Van Damme and his nemesis (Rourke) is all about babies -- but by the time Rourke has mined the Colosseum (yes, the Colosseum) and sicced a Bengal tiger on Van Damme, the wise viewer is just sitting back and enjoying the show.

An exuberant and supremely unselfconscious first film about five Melbourne college students and the various crises that befall them during one momentous day. The movie is in the best sense of the word artless (there's not an hommage insight), and its occasional missteps -- like a ham-fisted parody of partisan film students -- do little to undermine its charms.

Infantile, pointless tedium aimed at kids, to whom the fact that it features the entire cast of TV's Power Rangers ZEO will presumably mean something.

An earnest, thoughtful, surprisingly well-written (given the number of writers who worked on it) drama about guilt and betrayal that features excellent performances by Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt and dares to defy the juvenile wham bam thank you ma'am aesthetics that have turned mainstream action pictures into feature-length video games.

An animated parody of the disparity between Hollywood image and reality, this occasionally clever kiddie feature often rises above its straightforward plot.

But the film soars when the stunning Jennifer Lopez beams and struts her stuff in a series of exhilarating performance sequences; she's a glitzy, thrilling icon a la the made-over Olivia Newton-John of Grease.

A sickly soft-swirl confection of low laughs and smarmy sentiment.

Adapted from J.G. Ballard's cult novel, a dispassionate exegesis of warped desire, Cronenberg's movie is suitably cold, cold, cold: proof positive that movies about sex aren't always sexy movies, at least by conventional standards.

Daniel Sullivan's earnest adaptation of Jon Robin Baitz's play is worth seeing for Ron Rifkin's performance alone.

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.

Capably directed by Betty Thomas, this freewheeling pseudodocumentary tribute to Stern's juvenile antics paints the anarchic radio idol as Everyschmo made good.

This very Disney treatment of the classic fish out of water story ought to satisfy its intended audiences: kids and the parents who must accompany them.

Although it contains funny moments, the deliberately disjointed whole is too cute for its own good.

First-time writer-director Greg Mottola has a real feel for characters, a quality that's in disturbingly short supply among young filmmakers. The Malone family could easily be a one-dimensional collection of sitcom caricatures, but by the movie's end they feel like real people. He also pulls off a tricky shift of tone, from pleasant, mild comedy to something far more bitter and haunting.

Depp's tight, guarded performance is almost painful to watch, and Newell seems to have reined in the flamboyant Pacino, whose portrait of the mobster as a grumpy old woman may be his best work in years.

Ultimately, the material is so familiar that it's hard to work up any enthusiasm for another trip though the seamy underside of glittering gaming life.

This lame bid at a thriller is hobbled by a plodding pace and a slipshod script.

It's basically a one-joke comedy that spins out of control once the joke's over, but the cast is likable, the women smart, and one can't argue with the important safe-sex message.

A feature-length Twilight Zone episode, filtered -- not entirely successfully -- though the sensibilities of David Lynch and his Wild at Heart collaborator, Barry Gifford.