Nicole Kidman does the best work of her career in a character that seems to fit her tighter than pantyhose. Swathed in camera-friendly pastels, she's dead from the neck up (a scene with uncredited George Segal confirms that) but she's got legs like scissors, ambition like a knife, and a will of pure steel.

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

After an onslaught of prerelease hype promising the erotic experience of a lifetime, Showgirls reveals itself as a 131-minute dose of cinematic saltpeter.

Insubstantial, predictable and often dull, it's a dismaying move from director Allen Moyle, who displayed a real grasp of pulp energy in 1990's "Pump Up the Volume".

Still odder is the movie's sexual worldview, which is simultaneously infantile and fetishistic. Boys wear rubber, lipstick, and spandex, but don't seem to have a sexual bone in their unmuscled bodies.

The result is an imperfect but genuinely moving film.

Spike Lee's adaptation of a solid, if overpraised, crime novel by Richard Price is slickly made and well acted. But with most of the novel's subplots stripped away, it emerges as just another polemic about the scourge of drugs in the African-American community.

Against the odds, this horror series (initially based on a Stephen King short story) has actually improved over time to the point where this third installment is a creditable if far-fetched chiller.

It's hard to dislike so genial a picture about guys in gowns (although only Leguizamo would pass muster at a drag ball: Swayze seems to be doing a third-rate impression of Joan Crawford, while Snipes just comes off as a man in a dress); still, it's basically an elaborate denial of homophobia -- which is no help to anybody in a country where people get killed for cross-dressing.

Filmed in glamourous black and white (with vampire POV sequences shot in arty Pixelvision), it's one of the most mannered horror flicks ever made.

Potentially the most controversial movie of 1995 and arguably a masterpiece, this edgy, downbeat film falls somewhere between social document and peep-show.

Unquestionably formulaic but mercifully free of the flat dialogue and arch one-liners that undermine so many action films. And while it lacks "El Mariachi's" naive charm, it's far funnier.

Solid, old-fashioned narrative moviemaking with just enough no-budget cachet to disguise its essential blandness.

Expect lots of earsplitting music, garish visuals and badly staged martial arts action.

Surprisingly, it's not bad on the whole (in an Afterschool Special kind of way), and the young stars are uniformly appealing, especially Schuyler Fisk (Sissy Spacek's daughter) and CROOKLYN's Zelda Harris.

Screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie's tough-guy dialogue and Bryan Singer's crisp direction give the ensemble cast every opportunity to shine, and they do.

Director John N. Smith, who helmed last year's masterly "The Boys of St. Vincent", is reduced to carrying Michelle Pfeiffer's baggage in this assembly-line star vehicle.

Half as interesting as a rerun of Falcon Crest and twice as long.

Lame and surprisingly awkward from start to finish.

Babe could charm the pants off the most unregenerate cynic.

Unfortunately, Virtuosity ignores character development in favor of slick set design and mindless action sequences. Consequently, it plays like an outdated video game.

Something to forget about. In this painfully contrived comedy of Southern manners, Julia Roberts's waning star power finally winks out.

Its mediocrity guarantees this lavish, soggy retread of futuristic Australian action classic "The Road Warrior" a place in the ranks of forgotten extravaganzas.

A thoroughly conventional exercise in pop paranoia with trendy appurtenances, The Net has little to offer outside of Bullock's moderately appealing presence.

An exceptionally sturdy cast -- especially Danny Glover as a stern but sensitive captain and Denis Leary as a wisecracking supply sergeant -- manages to keep the one-joke scenario airborne most of the time.

It's a one-note satirical piece, but the pitfalls of indie filmmaking are lovingly portrayed, and DiCillo proves that he can take it as well as dish it out.

Impossible to dislike: It's as good-hearted as its bubbly protagonist.

Genuinely charming, this children's fantasy is the perfect antidote to Pokemon mania: Younger kids should be entranced, while their older brothers and sisters may just pick up on its gentle critique of a movie culture in which action figures and tie-in toys are all-important.

We'll bet you our measly paycheck that UNDER SIEGE 3 is set on an airplane -- although, given the precipitous downward trajectory of Seagal's career, a moped or a pair of in-line skates isn't out of the question.

Frantically busy, largely laugh-free.

Alien meets Basic Instinct in this textbook illustration of what happens when millions of dollars' worth of technical expertise is brought to bear on a cheap, exploitative script.

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.

Curiously empty and instantly forgettable.

This big-screen incarnation of the TV kids' adventure show that spawned a marketing empire is no better than it should be, but it's lively enough to fulfill its primary mission -- which is, of course, to sell more toys.

Overall, Pocahontas is a triumph as a visual experience (though the music is unusually bland), but a disappointment as a film.

At best, Batman Forever is mildly diverting, brainless fun that feels like a long trailer for a better film.

The film has a gentle political edge, knocking Marxists and Christian Democrats with equal cheerfulness, and Troisi's self-deprecating humor, sly delivery, and melancholic charm are inimitable.

Pretty to look at but contrived and somewhat stagy.

Congo, adapted by John Patrick Shanley and directed by Stephen Spielberg protege Frank Marshall, is not one of the better silly action pictures set in gratuitously fake jungles and featuring nefarious foreigners, threatening natives, and talking gorillas.

The cast is uniformly excellent - particularly the relentlessly effervescent Posey and the imperious Sasha von Scherler, the director's mother - and the modern take on old-fashioned romantic comedy is surprisingly effective.

Robert Waller's inexplicably colossal bestseller is transferred to the screen with more art than it deserves, but neither old-fashioned Hollywood craftsmanship nor the massive star power of Eastwood and Streep can compensate for the story's intellectual slightness and emotional implausibility.

Too disturbing for most children, too suggestive of cornball kiddie fare for most adults, this oddly affecting film is unlikely to capture the audience it deserves.

Let's face it, it's about a dead boy who falls in love with a real live girl. The high-tech animation is completely persuasive; nothing else is.

Keanu Reeves plays a "courier" with a lot of top-secret data stashed in his brain; it's clearly interfering with his minimal acting capabilities, causing several moments of unintentional (but welcome) humor.

A massive, sweaty, frequently silly epic that nevertheless delivers enough brute pleasure to pass a rainy afternoon.

And though the new Little Princess is a far darker affair than the 1939 version, Mexican-born director Alfonso Cuaron doesn't make it anywhere near as drab and moody as Agnieszka Holland's more artistically and commercially successful The Secret Garden.

The third Die Hard film is easily the most spectacular, featuring an exploding subway train and a manic car chase through the congested streets of New York that rivals "The French Connection."

Directed by Hollywood's slickest hack, Tony Scott ("Top Gun"), with a script doctored by Quentin Tarantino--you won't need sonar to spot his contributions.

Moving and sensitively written, it's a needed reminder that what's personal is always political -- and vice-versa.

A remarkably revealing documentary.

VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED projects the most basic of human terrors: the fear of group power overtaking individual will is expressed in the children as well as in the government and medical establishment which intervene in the realm of the body by manipulating reproductive decisions.

A star vehicle for rapper Ice Cube (who also cowrote and coproduced), Friday is a lighthearted, comedic presentation of the realities chronicled in dramas like "Boyz N the Hood."

While You Were Sleeping is a mild romantic comedy rooted in class anxiety, but it's nice to see perennial loser-in-love Pullman ("Sleepless in Seattle", "The Last Seduction") get some. Respect, that is.

Jim Carroll's dreamy, pseudo-poetic memoir of a misspent New York boyhood - standard equipment for alienated adolescents of the 90s - is predictably re-tooled as an anti-drug message vehicle.

For everyone who's just dying to know (and can't guess) what it's like to work for Joel Silver, Hollywood mega-producer and notorious egomaniac, Silver's former assistant George Huang has fashioned this mean-spirited revenge comedy. Kevin Spacey is awe-inspiring as the Silver-esque Buddy Ackerman; Frank Whaley is his wimpy whipping boy.

Classy film noir, as you would expect from a team including director Barbet Schroeder (Reversal of Fortune); writer Richard Price (Clockers); and Nicolas Cage, as a loopy, iron-pumping mobster.

Often funny, darker than you'd expect, and firmly grounded in Franken's extensive experience of the 12-Step worldview.

Aside from the racial twist, this is pretty conventional fare, but it's consistently diverting.

Depp's considerable personal charm is the movie's greatest asset. The story is painfully insubstantial, and Dunaway is sadly wasted in the shallow, predictable role of a woman whose barren life blossoms under her husband's renewed attention.

Rob Roy succeeds more as an old-fashioned romance (nice to see Jessica Lange, instead of some babe du jour, as Rob's fiercely proud wife), than as an action epic.

Grown-ups will come away feeling violated by the film's clumsy comedy, ancient plot, and unimaginative action sequences.

Jefferson in Paris is a rich confection indeed, filled with tidbits about fashion, customs, art, and commerce in 18th-century France and America. But like a meal consisting of nothing but petits-fours, this lavish biopic is too much dessert and not enough main course.

If this pairing sounds like movie magic to you, we're sure you'll love the picture.

How well you'll tolerate this utterly unhinged quasi-feminist comic book fantasy depends on your Lori Petty threshold. As the title character--a smartass riot grrrl who rolls through a fanciful postapocalyptic landscape in a tank, occasionally pausing to snuggle and bicker with her mutant kangaroo boyfriend (Ice-T) -- Petty's onscreen virtually nonstop, and her hyperkinetic mugging, jerking, whining, and sassing wears thin after a while.

Kathy Bates, so memorably creepy in "Misery", delivers what may be 1995's most underrated performance in this implicitly feminist melodrama.

Predictable and ultimately saccharine, but occasionally enlivened by Wayans's rather vicious comic sensibility.

Exotica sounds terrifically lurid and interesting, but like most Egoyan films, it's far more interesting in the telling than in the watching.

This lackluster sequel forgoes everything that made the original a superior horror film in favor of simplistic genre cliches.

This unashamedly old-fashioned coming-of-age story is nothing new, but remains highly watchable nevertheless.

Noted French filmmaker Demy's wife Agnes Varda helmed this intensely personal tribute to her late husband. It is her third such tribute and is the only one to look deeply into Demy's vision as a director and his filmmaking techniques.

Ultimately, the comedy here is grounded in self-hatred, hostility, and despair. Nearly everyone who wanders through this brash and deliberately tasteless film is stupid, ungainly, or grotesquely tragic. But this only heightens the pleasure during moments of delirious merriment.

The best part of the movie is the fetid, oppressive atmosphere Hooper works up inside the sweatshop that evocatively serves as an industrial hell. The Mangler itself is an imposing creation, and its gory activities (which are more so on an unrated video version) pack an occasional chill, but too much of the movie is devoted to slack plotting and overstated acting.

There's little new here, but uniformly powerful performances (especially Owen's) give the tale unexpected power and depth, and the exotic details--like the elaborate tribal tattoos worn by Nig's gang, or the Maori chants Boogie learns in reform school--make the Heke family's descent into misery seem fresher than it otherwise might.

A funny, savvy, camp yet family-friendly look at the Generation-X TV icons.

There seems to be a message here about being true to yourself, but it's hard to find it under the blubber jokes.

A good premise spins out of control in the hectic final hour.

The film should have featured more absurd and nonsensical elements. Certainly the plot is ridiculous, and so completely illogical that to see it fall by the wayside in favor of some inspired lunacy would not have been a loss.

Hip, jokey western from cult director Sam Raimi. Recommended as an antidote to anyone still suffering from Wyatt Earp hangover.

Danny Boyle's effective psychological thriller.

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.

Darkly lyrical and imbued with a genuine sense of magic, ROAN INISH has the haunted quality of Irish folk music. It's family entertainment in the best sense of the term.

The weight of the film rests on the shoulders of Hawke and Delpy, and they're both remarkable.

Although Christopher Lambert repeats his film role as the immortal action hero, he is less dynamic than he was in Highlander or even Highlander 2, The Quickening. He is also far less charismatic and interesting to watch than Adrian Paul of the European television serial. Moreover, in this film, Lambert inexplicably whispers his lines, while the special effects are deafening.

The golden shadows of the waning Old West are thrown across the big screen with full reverential treatment in this solid, unsurprising rendition of Jim Harrison's widely praised novella.

Nobody's Fool is to be commended just for acknowledging the existence of old age in the context of youth-obsessed pop culture; more importantly, the film is refreshingly frank about the everyday struggles of many senior citizens in an era of fractured families and a disappearing social safety net.

Good-humored gore, ably directed by Ernest Dickerson (JUICE), formerly Spike Lee's cinematographer.

Based on a harrowing true story and fueled by a blistering, full-throttle performance from newcomer Crissy Rock, Ken Loach's LADYBIRD, LADYBIRD reconfirms his status as dean and foremost exponent of the British tradition of social realism.

Singleton gets points for exposing the hypocrisy of "politically correct" institutions, but stilted dialogue and cardboard characterizations undermine the message.

Acclaimed stage director Nicholas Hytner was obviously determined to make his cinematic debut a memorable one. He doesn't just open up the play; he scatters it across sun-drenched country fields, seemingly all of London, and every nook and cranny of the royal residence. Despite the talents involved, however, the effect is surprisingly static and unexciting, probably because the source material is the kind of talky tour de force that is best carried off on the stage. Even so, Hawthorne's performance is tremendously intelligent and affecting.

Stunning production design, smart pacing, and a well-handled romantic angle make for a seamless, if undemanding, entertainment.

The material is well served by director Roman Polanski, who knows well how to instill a subtle, claustrophobic sense of dread in an audience and has put together a rather elegant potboiler.

The film is beautifully made and thought-provoking, but vacillates too much between the sentimental and the metaphysical.

In its noisy, pointless way, STREET FIGHTER does come close to the frenetic meandering of a video game scenario--which is precisely the problem. Video games are always more fun for the players involved than onlookers; consequently, this whole subgenre seems inherently self-defeating.

There are moments of genuine humor in the film, but Finney virtually sucks the oxygen out of the story, and even tempered pros like Gambon and Fricke can do little to save it.

Mixed Nuts is a relentlessly hectic, poorly structured farce that falls embarrassingly flat. All the comedy here comes at the expense of the characters, reflecting a pronounced cruel streak in Ephron's work for the screen.

Director Gillian Armstrong's feminist spin on classic material retains the moving humanity of Louisa May Alcott's novel while reworking it with welcome freshness.

While the filmmakers haven't bothered to come up with a novel approach to very familiar material, the final product is a reasonably entertaining film that will interest children without putting their parents to sleep.

Underlying the slapstick, however, is an extravagant parody of American culture--bad taste, bad manners, the gushing sentimentality of Lloyd's daydreams, or the classic westward road trip, complete with diner scenes and archetypal rednecks.