A likable but forgettable bit of fluff about mistaken identity.

It's an uncommonly mature and intelligent chiller, particularly in a period when the genre has devolved into wisecracking fiends and empty special effects showcases.

A gentle comedy about two misfits--a schizophrenic girl and a boy whom earlier generations would have called an odd duck--who find love, Benny & Joon means well but overdoses on whimsy.

Throughout, Binder doesn't seem wholly committed either to character exploration or broad comedy; the film veers back and forth between the two. Despite its weaknesses, however, SUMMER is another promising film for Binder, who manages a fair enough share of privileged moments to make it worthwhile, if not outstanding. He's put together a terrific cast and has directed them well, down to Raimi, who puts his longtime devotion to The Three Stooges to good work by stealing some of the film's best laughs.

Ambitious thriller, which never quite lives up to its aspirations or its cast.

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.

Indecent Proposal is as relentlessly entertaining as it is silly--so shamelessly over the top that you watch in a mixture of horror and delight as the drama unfolds toward a climax that is truly mind-boggling.

The comedy is broad, cartoonish, and quite funny in a faux "Little Rascals" manner. The movie is almost completely derivative, but that's part of the fun.

Yet another variation on the woman-from-hell subgenre, THE CRUSH fails to come up with many new twists beyond casting a teenager as its villain. Dancing around its own salacious possibilities, the movie is only briefly offensive and rarely surprising.

This third--and, at $30 million, most expensive--go-around gamely attempts to jump-start the viewer's interest with the canny switch of locations (and centuries), but the new recipe can't change the fact that this Turtle soup has grown cold.

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.

Despite Chantel's promise that she's letting us in on the "real deal," JUST ANOTHER GIRL ON THE I.R.T. is just another teenage pregnancy melodrama: remove the swearing and the hip-hop soundtrack and it would make a fine after-school special, complete with a smart yet sexually irresponsible teenager, a remarkably successful premature birth, and an uplifting ending in which the young mother goes to night school to finish her high school diploma.

The title CB4 stands for Cell Block 4, but it may as well mean crash and burn, because that's what happens to this sputtering satire of modern rap music and Black hip-hop culture.

Believe it or not, this fantastic story (of a close encounter of the worst kind) ultimately proves to be pretty uninvolving, relying on the quality of the performances to maintain interest.

Mad Dog and Glory is an edgy romantic drama that never quite jells, but has enough moments of humor and/or charm to make it worth seeing.

Despite energetic dance sequences and appealing leads, the film falls prey to pat psychologizing and some stunningly puerile notions of history.

The film sags under the crushing weight of its own inadequacy, lacking not only subtlety, intelligence, and insight, but also dramatic tension, character development, and a satisfying resolution.

The unrelenting tempo is bolstered by Rodriguez's camera work and editing: nearly every frame seems to have been shot with a careening, handheld camera, and they're cut together in a skillful, fluid fashion that enhances the tension and pace of the 80-minute chase.

These adventures would be offensive if you could take them seriously, so it's probably good that you can't. Despite a nicely understated performance from Robert Duvall as a cop on Douglas's trail, Falling Down fails to convince on any level.

Raimi is a master at pacing this kind of material, however, and never allows it to become redundant.

An almost unrelenting barrage of gore, Dead Alive is also a constant assault on the funnybone, a film in which the graphic blood-spilling is taken so far over the top that it becomes hilarious instead of disgusting.

Seeing it once is fine, but seeing it every day for the rest of your life is not recommended.

One would have to be heartless not to be engaged by Strictly Ballroom's romantic, dewy sentiment, but the predictable plot is difficult to bear, as are the broad characterizations.

The film benefits from an appealing cast, though neither Slater, Tomei, nor Perez is called on to stretch very far. Though actor-turned-director Tony Bill has proved himself adept at character-driven dramas like MY BODYGUARD, the material he's working with here is simply not up to scratch.

While the original was a rather cerebral exercise in suspense, the American version has predictably been given a more visceral dimension. The new version is more simplistic, but still works on its own level.

Obviously, gags rather than plot are central to a movie like LOADED WEAPON, but even so, neither the writing nor the acting is strong enough here. Estevez and Jackson are adequate as deadpan actors who remain oblivious to the chaos around them, but they lack the super-straight persona that makes Leslie Nielsen so effective as a dimwitted cop in the NAKED GUN movies. Often the jokes seem to barely squeak over their heads when they should fly.

Calling CHILDREN OF THE CORN II a better film than its predecessor is something like damning with faint praise, but this sequel manages to be somewhat less ludicrous and occasionally a little more chilling than the first film.

The film continually leans towards intelligence and even poignancy but then gives way to pretty pictures and nonsensical fluff.

Body of Evidence is at its most hilarious in the deadly earnestness with which it unfolds its ludicrous plot, populated by paper-thin characters who range from the underdeveloped to the simply inane. BODY is oddly conflicted by the sheer unpleasantness of its depiction of sex.

In addition to its views on the glamorization of serial murder, MAN BITES DOG offers a wicked send up of notoriously talky French filmmaking--the most unbelievable thing about the movie's narrative conceit isn't that the crew is calmly shooting a vicious serial murderer as he goes about his business, but that they've chosen to follow the unbearable Ben. His loathsome, self-absorbed monologues are torment worthy of the ninth circle of Hell, but with a cup of black coffee and a supply of smelly cigarettes he could pass at any cafe for a run-of-the-mill French intellectual.

Director Frank Marshall mounts the story as tastefully as possible, given the subject matter, but it never seems to have much point and is sometimes unintentionally silly.

The action scenes are poorly staged, the frights predictable, and the generally competent cast appears at a loss to make anything of the substandard material. Gabe Bartalos' makeup for the leprechaun is actually quite good, but his efforts go for naught.

An unusual piece of work that combines almost thriller-style suspense with an intelligent, neo-documentary approach to its harrowing subject.

Despite Jack Nicholson's galvanizing portrayal, Hoffa is a cold, remote, neo-religious pageant.

Here, some striking ideas, themes, and symbols never quite gel; the main problem is the plot, which never overcomes the implausibility of its premise. Yet the performances are solidly above average for the genre and, while TRESPASS might have been more compelling, it still displays far more style and intelligence than the average contemporary action thriller.

Thanks to a landmark performance by Al Pacino, SCENT OF A WOMAN is an agreeably watchable film. If they'd made it half an hour shorter and re-written the ending, it could have been a great one.

A schmaltzy variety-show routine inflated into a rudderless mess of a fantasy.

The final scene, when Kaffee locks horns with Jessep, more than makes up for the predictability of what's come before.

A mixed bag of mixed moods. The somberness of Dickens's oft-filmed seasonal cautionary fable works at cross purposes with the Muppets, keeping their usual gentle anarchy at bay.

There's just not enough good material, however, to sustain the comic pace.

Thematic issues aside, The Crying Game pulls off a tremendously difficult technical feat; its screenplay contains not one, but two, wrenching twists, each of which could easily derail the narrative in the hands of a lesser storyteller.

A dreary, turgid melodrama.

Aladdin is a fairy tale with an edge--a popular children's story that will have even the most media-savvy parents straining to keep up with Williams's machine-gun delivery of quips, allusions and imitations.

Harvey Keitel gives an astonishing performance here... Though hardly a film for all sensibilities, Bad Lieutenant has the courage of its own convictions, and follows them to the bitter end.

Home Alone 2 pales next to its predecessor.

Lee's biography of the slain civil rights leader treats Malcolm, not as a political rallying point, but as a fully rounded individual whose life defies reduction to symbolic status.

Francis Ford Coppola's lavish version of Bram Stoker's classic novel is a visual cornucopia, overstuffed with images of both beauty and grotesque horror.

Writer-producer-director Dale Launer's breezy comedy LOVE POTION NO. 9 is the perfect date movie. It's light and fast-paced, with several funny moments and a predictably happy ending. Don't look for anything beyond that.

An action thriller from the Joel Silver school of Big Bang filmmaking, Passenger 57 smashes on the runway, an inflated cartoon of excess without a modicum of charm, wit or sense.

Despite a gimmicky, underdeveloped plot, JENNIFER EIGHT is a moody, atmospheric thriller, featuring several fine performances and marking a promising major studio debut by writer-director Bruce Robinson.

INTERVISTA play as an enjoyable, lightweight entertainment, filled with the usual Felliniesque characters, faces, and situations.

March has the requisite child-woman quality and evinces some sly humor but she, too, is stymied by the schematic screenplay. She is far more convincing as an emblem of nostalgic, adolescent eroticism than as one of France's most distinguished future writers. Small wonder, then, that Duras herself has publicly disowned this adaptation.

A cliched throwback to the early 1980s slasher genre, DR. GIGGLES transplants the heart of a NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET sequel--wisecracking killer--into the body of HALLOWEEN--psycho killer returns to his hometown to slash anew--but lacks the wit of the former or the tension of the latter.

The acting here is first-rate, with Madsen turning in a forceful performance as the confused but resilient heroine. And special mention must be made of Philip Glass's superlative score, which combines synthesizers, piano, and chorus to haunting effect.

CONSENTING ADULTS shows that the urban thriller genre spawned by FATAL ATTRACTION has run out of gas. Viewers who have seen such films as THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE, SINGLE WHITE FEMALE and UNLAWFUL ENTRY are unlikely to enjoy this derivative effort; it's the same paranoid mayhem--and not as much fun.

Even the Critters seem to be going through the motions, which hopefully marks the end of this clearly exhausted series.

Even set against the Sierra Club beauty of Redford's Montana, it's hard to get excited by fisherman casting their lines into the water.

During its opening scenes, Under Siege threatens to achieve something like Die Hard's blend of wit, ingenuity and action, with Jones and Busey making highly entertaining, creepy-funny villains. Once the stolid Seagal takes over, however, we settle into a predictable high-tech groove of explosions, gunplay and gore.

A lumbering journey that conveys none of the joy or mystery of exploration. Star Gerard Depardieu's unintelligible line readings and director Ridley Scott's murky mise-en-scene make it a hard film to hear and see, let alone like.

A flawed though compelling eye-opener.

THE MIGHTY DUCKS is harmless enough, but its schematic retread of a screenplay and its lethargic acting detracts from the unassuming, passable entertainment it might have been.

Aside from a few moments of comedy between Davis and Chase (in a relationship lifted almost unaltered from THE FRONT PAGE), HERO is an embarrassment best forgotten by everyone involved.

The film's look and themes also recall those of Howard Hawks. Avoiding artful, fussy compositions, Tarantino constructs much of Reservoir Dogs from simple medium-shot long takes.

A searing showcase for a remarkable ensemble cast.

Parillaud makes for a sympathetic and convincing vampire protagonist, with her appealing accent lending Marie an exoticism she might have lacked with an American actress. Given the apparent intention to make this a strong woman's role, though, it's a shame that she becomes a sex object in a few key moments.

As these films go, School Ties is more simplistic and has its dice more loaded than usual.

Like virtually every Disney comedy released for the last several years, Captain Ron starts well but gets soggier as it goes along.

Although inconsistent in tone, it is an emotionally wrenching account of life on the mean streets of Los Angeles.

SINGLES is funny and well-observed and, most notably, plays to its audience's intelligence rather than its libido.

The acting is flawless throughout, with top honors going to Davis, who blazes through the picture with devastating intensity and honesty. It's an urgent, unsettling performance, perfectly complemented by Pollack, who projects quiet ease and authenticity in this, his first major role.

It's all passably entertaining, but there's precious little that will stay with you; like so many contemporary movies, this one self-destructs five seconds after you leave the theater.

WHERE THE DAY TAKES YOU has a consistently engaging narrative that resonates with accuracy and honesty.

Brother's Keeper offers a rich tapestry of rural American life in both light and dark shades.

A smart, funny pseudo-documentary.

While Lynch ladles on the random weirdness around the edges, it is Lee who keeps the film centered, with a harrowing but poignantly sympathetic portrait of a woman's descent into horror and madness.

For all its many flaws, the original PET SEMATARY at least maintained a fidelity to its source novel; this one not only ignores the rules set up by the first movie but manages to contradict its own internal and dramatic logic as well.

More admirable as a sheer technical feat of filmmaking than as a sustained dramatic narrative. It still makes worthwhile viewing.

Johnny Suede's stylish, dreamlike mood and abstract dialogue cannot compensate for its unsatisfying storyline and characters.

A stylishly shot thriller with several hair-raising moments.

The cast is universally strong. Hackman, Freeman and Harris don't do anything they haven't done before, but the roles suit their personae to a degree where they approach archetypal status.

While one could wish the film offered something more original than its strictly formula heroics, it benefits from a generous portion of charm. And most kids attending 3 Ninjas are likely to stand up and cheer the rousing, action-packed finale.

Every so often, a neat little moment will appear and RAISING CAIN will appear to be getting back on track, but like his schizophrenic villain, De Palma always winds up letting his worst instincts get the better of him.

If you've seen Buffy the Vampire Slayer's poster, you've seen the movie. Otherwise, this pallid crossbreeding of vampire horror with Valley Girl vamping has no surprises.

The end result is a film that tries to do too many things at once and does none of them quite right.

Paper-thin.

Given a better structured screenplay, Mistress might have given The Player a run for its money. Instead, it merely offers glimmers of what might have been, and settles for being a cinematic footnote.

Despite the impressive special effects, Honey, I Blew Up The Kid offers few surprises. The visual gag of a giant-sized infant is the only real joke the film has and it wears thin in a hurry. The plot is perfunctory and simple, presumably to cater to the attention span of a pint-sized audience.

Cool World's numerous plot holes and illogicalities might be forgiven if it had interesting characters or impressive visual effects.

Bleak and beautiful, GAS FOOD LODGING is a richly evocative look at lives in waiting.

A deeply satisfying film, THE BEST INTENTIONS, honored with the prestigious Palm d'Or at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival, uses its considerable length to examine the early relationship of Bergman's parents with uncompromising thoroughness.

More interesting than entertaining and too long by far.

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.

Director Tim Burton and his screenwriters bring a heavy-handed, plodding realism to bear on what should be pop-mythic material.

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.

More ambitious than the usual low-budget horror item, SOCIETY doesn't develop its provocative idea--when the rich feed off the lower classes, they do so literally--to the fullest, but has its share of intriguing and chilly moments along the way.

As the Fat Boys demonstrated in DISORDERLIES, the social stridency of rap music does not mix well with crude, antediluvian slapstick. And now Kid 'N' Play, the popular rap duo that scored high-energy hilarity in HOUSE PARTY, offer further proof with the intensely juvenile CLASS ACT.

Director Emile Ardolino largely saves the day by coaxing winning performances from an excellent cast. Goldberg's work here never loses its edge or originality, allowing her to shine opposite Smith, who is so good that she barely seems to be acting.

Far and Away plays like a theme park attraction: viscerally exciting but detached, impersonal and dull.