Has a certain weird charm, but it's too seamy for children and too simplistic played for adults.

You can't beat on Dead Man's on value-for-money terms, but it's like an all-you-can-eat buffet -- everything's tasty, the surfeit is sickening.

This slight story of youthful dreams and adult compromise is bolstered by finely modulated performances from the three leads.

POINT OF NO RETURN remains entertaining, mainly thanks to Fonda. One of the sleekest and smartest of the young stars of the 90s, she makes a highly watchable action hero in a genre usually dominated by muscle-bound men.

Overboard aspires to be a wacky, heart-warming screwball comedy, but it is neither memorable nor particularly funny. Hawn and Russell have both shown themselves capable of bringing this kind of light comedy to life, but even their likable screen presences aren't enough.

A very good musical that should have been a great musical. Bob Fosse, making his film directorial debut, couldn't convey the verve he injected into the play to the movie version.

Bendinger pulls out all the stops visually, using bold set design, frantic editing, extreme angles and computer image multiplying that turns what begins as a Busby Berkeley exercise in synchronized movement into a kaleidoscopic infinity of handsprings and back flips.

Charming.

Silly, good-natured and thoroughly unpretentious, this giant-spider movie has nothing more on its mind than providing the kind of brainless thrills once delivered by movies like Tarantula (1955), Earth vs. the Spider (1958) and The Giant Spider Invasion (1975).

The film's potshots are perfectly aimed.

Their dilemmas are the stuff of dozens of Masterpiece Theater productions, but they're brought to life with a vividness that defies changing mores and cuts to the heart of the ways people justify hurting each other in the name of love.

The animation is truly breathtaking, the action sequences are spectacular (and sometimes very violent) and everything floats along on the strains of Il Won's spare, hypnotic score.

The action here is virtually nonstop and the special effects are often astounding: good and bad guys battle atop speeding trains and the lovers dangle perilously over cliffs and ride through stampeding desert tribes. But THE JEWEL OF THE NILE is missing the faux-innocent tone and consistent narrative invention that made ROMANCING THE STONE work.

As a modest little dramedy about the everyday adventures of starting a family, Marley & Me is pretty solid, but as a movie about the joy and heartbreak of owning a dog, it goes straight for the jugular.

Written and directed in a campy, tongue-in-cheek style, it's a loving homage to those wild imports from Hong Kong--kung-fu movies.

It's all cutely derivative, occasionally charming and very occasionally clever...but the movie's vague aspirations to being something more than disposable fluff never amount to anything.

Do director Bryan Singer and screenwriter Brandon Boyce really mean to suggest that the roots of genocide lie in homosexual desire?

Clearly designed to be a family entertainment, THE CUTTING EDGE has a by-the-numbers quality that's only partly concealed by smooth production values and consistent--if uninspiring--performances.

A predictable amalgam of every military-academy movie you can think of.

Beneath the plot's romantic turns lies a surprisingly complex examination of the personal and professional price of honesty; falsehoods, half-truths, little white lies and self-delusion spur most of the key plot developments, and Roos never resorts to platitudes to account for their effects.

A reasonably entertaining way to kill an hour and a half.

Resembles the giggly teen romances that saturate the Japanese market with a coolly alienated French twist.

So inconsequential that it starts evaporating from memory the minute it's over.

While the film's exploration of Irish religious intolerance takes it to many familiar areas, the specifics are unfamiliar and fine performances -- especially those of leads Cunningham and Brady.

If you know there's so such place as Avenue E in the East Village, or if you've ever taken a bath in your kitchen, this one's for you.

The film is by turns strident, obvious, righteously angry and inspired.

There is practically no plot, and even less character development, but the script is based on a novel, most likely a thin one.

A humorless Greek-tragedy western with little going for it save its inexorable momentum toward the obvious end.

Bad Taste was probably intended as camp, but its humor falls flat even as a parody of the horror genre. It is best viewed as a film strictly for movie makeup and special-effects aficionados.

Basically a formula film with all the usual car chases, knock-downs, booby traps, etc. If you like John Wayne, you'll love Brannigan. If you just think he is...well, only all right, you'll be better off reading a book. This is not one of the Duke's best.

Ultimately, though, the film is forgettable even by the standards of prefabricated pop ephemera.

Slow, solemn going, despite its best efforts at thundering soldiers and comic-relief kings.

But by the time the big not-so-surprise ending rolls around -- no, nothing that happened was exactly as it seemed -- most viewers will have long since stopped caring.

An old man's movie, filled with regret over things lost, corrupted and spoiled.

It's little more than a disjointed succession of kick-ass action scenes.

This one-joke film beats its punch line to death, playing its gay character for big laughs with generally predictable and boring results. Hamilton (who coproduced) chews up the scenery with relish, and the bland supporting performances yield to his campy caricature, But the subtle element of self-parody that distinguished the best of the Zorro films is absent, and the gay stereotype is more offensive than comical.

An odd blend of recycled American exploitation movie tropes and snarky Euro-art film attitude.

Stony and statuesque, Michelini is an excellent casting choice: Her impassive face and dispassionate voice serve as a carefully constructed protective mask that hides her pain, and which she rarely lets slip.

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.

Boring, cliche-ridden teen drama looks nice and features Quinn, who is fairly impressive in his debut. Hannah looks good but seems completely without depth, as do all the other characters in this routine bad-boy-loves-good-girl drama.

A tricky thriller, Malice begins well but betrays its coolly calculating premise and degenerates into a silly horror story.

It's an amiable, middle-class coming of age story, soft and sweet and ultimately a bit inconsequential.

Dazzlingly colorful.

The film is juvenile when it should be adult, coarse when it ought to be bubbly, and upfront when witty circumspection is indicated. The result feels a bit like a drag show, a camp blend of pitch-perfect mimicry and anachronistic raunch.

Writer/director Austin Chick falls into the timeworn trap of making an immature, irritating film about immature, irritating characters.

This charming and funny film may be one of the last of a rare genre deservedly named after a person -- the Woody Allen movie.

It's swiftly paced and never dull, but the heavy-handed symbolism comes fast and thick.

Once again brushing aside critical drubbings and public indifference, determined independent auteur Henry Jaglom follows up the abysmal "Let's Go Shopping" with something far better: an old-school Hollywood cautionary tale about -- what else? -- Hollywood.

Intermittently amusing, forgettable action spoof showcasing Whoopi Goldberg and helmed by Penny Marshall.

Admitting that it's formulaic doesn't make it any less so, but it's enjoyable in a mushy, easily digested sort of way.

Though the plot has some annoying holes, the dialogue and the performances are excellent.

It's beautifully shot -- the sweat-drenched jukejoint scenes are particularly evocative -- and features a terrific performance by Ricci, one that deserves to be seen by a wider audience than the one certain to be reeled in by those torrid ads.

Only Rejtman's sharp eye for absurd detail and the bleakly subtle joke separates comedy from tragedy in this story of listless Bonaerenses chasing their own tails through successive drab rings of urban hell.

Sentimental, formulaic, predictable and shamelessly manipulative, Marcos Carnevale’s tale of late-life love is also genuinely heartbreaking and heartening.

Racing fans should love Le Mans' dazzling documentary-like photography, including actual footage from the 1969 and 1970 races, but those who are more interested in an involving story may be disappointed.

Bad editing, uninspired direction, and a script that teetered precariously on the verge of parodying a John Wayne movie combined to make Joe Kidd nothing more than a plodding shoot-em-up.

Clever, fast-paced and surprisingly moving.

The sequences are handsomely designed, but frankly, you might as well be watching someone play a video game.

Everyone involved obviously had a blast, but in the end this is a one-joke movie, and the joke is stretched too thin.

Anonymously titled and packaged like a vulgar teen sex comedy, this candy-colored trifle is so precious it nearly floats away on a cloud of fairy dust.

The creepy set pieces are repetitive and the payoff is rather unsatisfying, even though the prophecies do eventually pan out.

It's never dull: Shalhoub's direction is smart, the dialogue is tart and the Adams' family shares a palpable intimacy that translates directly onto the screen.

Characters lip-synch their dialogue -- badly.

This sweet and innocent movie about teen romance won't fail to bring a tear and a smile in its heart-tugging finale.

Sweetly sentimental story of young love.

fFrst-time feature filmmaker Cam Archer turns what might have been an exercise in salaciousness into a stylish visual poem about desire and adolescent alienation.

Taking its title from a key track by the NYC noise band Sonic Youth, S.A. Crary's documentary about No Wave music and its paradoxical influence is both a history of music that sought to defy history and a sharp look at the crisis of innovation in an age of commodified nostalgia.

The film is relentlessly formulaic -- it's like a super-sized Afterschool Special with PG-13-rated bad language -- and is weighed down by Trevor Rabin's bombastic score, which telegraphs the appropriate emotional response to every feel-good moment.

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

Screenwriter David Auburn's awkward dialogue spells out the film's themes with painful literal-mindedness.

Despite its failings, Wind Chill represents a road rarely taken by 21st-century American horror films: Original (in the non-remake sense of the term), subtle and restrained.

Whoopi Goldberg here made her first stab at drama since her film debut in The Color Purple, and it's simply appalling. She's mawkishly maternal, and her patois is about as convincing as Lionel Richie's.

Depending on your taste, either much hilarity or a tedious barrage of tasteless, juvenile pranking ensues. Trust your instincts.

Fanciful and highly entertaining docudrama.

A creepily unpleasant study of race and class.

There's something inherently funny and surreal about Chinese kids speaking Singlish while trying to be goombahs from Brooklyn.

Think "The Lion King" redone for horses, with fewer deliberate laughs, more inadvertent ones and stunningly trite songs by Bryan Adams.

This entertaining and erotic picture, while perhaps not the most challenging film to come out of Brazil in the 1970s, is nevertheless enjoyable. (Review of original release)

HOUSESITTER starts out slowly and never stops being implausible or predictable. Neither Steve Martin nor Goldie Hawn do anything we haven't seen them do before, and neither of them play especially likeable characters. The strange thing is that, despite these failings, the movie is obstinately, sometimes painfully funny.

Hurt's performance is remarkably assured, and Davis beautifully captures her character's insouciance. Less than perfect is Turner, whose capable performance presents a figure somewhat hollow at the center.

In the end it's all seductive surface and no substance, but Lough has a bold eye and a vivid sense of uniquely urban beauty.

Nick Nolte gives one of his finest performances in this somewhat mannered but absorbing adaptation of John Steinbeck's novels Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday.

French up-and-comer Alexandre Aja's full-bore do-over is a shockingly successful update of a seminal 1970s shocker.

A big sweet hit, tingly and glycerined in a phony way, but diverting.

The story gets silly from time to time, stretching credibility to the breaking point, but the final result is an old-fashioned love triangle made new by the third party's being electronic.

Prodded by Landis' slam-bang direction, the effect isn't so much a comedy as it is an exercise in excess. Somewhere in the planning stage one all-important factor was left out: humor. The concept is a funny one, yet no one seems to have the faintest idea of what to do with it. Between Landis' direction and the initially lame screenplay, Three Amigos never really stands a chance.

Engaging, high-spirited tale.

A fascinating, often tragic history of a program the Soviet Union held up to the rest of the world as communism's ultimate technological achievement.

The story is shallow stuff, but pretty entertaining until it becomes utterly preposterous.

Purely literary stuff that's always the first to go whenever a book is adapted for the screen. Unfortunately, as this thin and entirely ill-conceived adaptation from director Neil LaBute demonstrates, that stuff happens to be the lifeblood of Byatt's wonderful book.

The pace is brisk and the details are carefully arranged, but there's no sparkle -- and what's a romance without that?

This efficient fright machine features a knowing cameo by Curtis's mom -- "Psycho's" Janet Leigh -- a couple of bloody good scares and a genuinely affecting performance from Curtis.

This is a rare road picture that leaves us knowing less about our traveling companions than we did when the journey started; Dahan and screenwriter Agnes Fustier-Dahan reduce their characters to pasteboard symbols, colored by unexplained quirks.

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

Based on the story of Milarepa (1043 - 1123), who renounced the violence and vengeance of his early life to become a revered Tibetan Buddhist saint, lama Neten Chokling's directing debut ends on a frustrating spiritual cliffhanger.

Although the premise of Goin' South is clever, the story is unbelievable and, under Nicholson's first grip as a director, is unwieldy and directionless. The tale is presented in disjointed, confusing, poorly set sequences. Nicholson the actor is mildly amusing, as are some of his riotous gang members, DeVito and Belushi (the latter appearing only briefly, irrespective of his high billing). But the whole film deteriorates midway into amateurish mugging and slapstick.

The New Jersey locations and soundtrack help ground the story in a particular time and place, and Schroeder delivers a terrific performance.

True to form, Salles' version is an intelligent, brooding ghost story brimming with atmosphere, emotions and, above all else, water, but it's disappointingly short on scares.