More of the same, but it's now so far removed from any sense of reality, and done with such ham-fisted insistence, it's become a clumsy parody of itself.

Poison Ivy doesn't exactly keep one at the edge of one's seat throughout, but it certainly holds the interest.

Very fast-paced, SPLIT SECOND is an example of the men-versus-monster genre, with a British setting providing a fresh twist.

Instead of leading to a crafty, emotionally cathartic payoff, WHITE SANDS gets more tiresome and banal as it goes along and all its threads are tied up with neat, if outlandish, explanations. WHITE SANDS would have been a better film if it had remained more dreamlike and less tied to plot mechanics.

Made in 1988 but unreleased for several years, BORIS AND NATASHA isn't truly wretched, just undernourished. It tries hard to revive the anarchic spirit of Jay Ward's cartoons, but Boris and Natasha were only supporting characters there and nothing is done to make them interesting over the course of a feature film.

DEEP COVER has a shaky beginning and a hokey ending but, somewhere in between, it becomes a movie of considerable power--largely thanks to the contrasting styles of its two stars.

Sumptuous production values and fitfully impressive choreography notwithstanding, Newsies was a major misfire for Disney Studios.

STEPHEN KING'S SLEEPWALKERS is an unusually stupid and tedious film that seems aimed at viewers who have never seen a horror movie and will therefore be shocked and surprised by the idea that such apparently nice people as Mary and Charles Brady could be murderous, shape-shifting energy vampires.

Widely noted as a politically correct animated feature, FernGully is entertaining enough to make its occasionally overstated message palatable.

A hilarious and deftly convincing satire.

Delicatessen is an ingeniously funny film with a surprisingly sweet romance at its center.

A thoughtful, atmospheric thriller.

Ron Shelton's second outing since his breakout success with Bull Durham aims to be a high-energy remake of The Hustler in a street-basketball setting, but succeeds only intermittently.

Rodney Dangerfield has always had the potential to be one of the funniest men in American movies, and when filmmakers have taken advantage of that potential, the results have often been hilarious. Unfortunately, LADYBUGS squanders his talents in a cheap and crude comedy.

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.

The worst things about Basic Instinct, though, are the explicit "love" scenes. They're supposed to contribute to a heady equation in which sex, violence and psychology are fused; instead, they're gratuitous, exploitative, and entirely unerotic.

The filmmakers have allowed themselves an overlong 140 minutes in order to preserve as much of the plot as possible, but they have bypassed many of the novel's key ideas and ironies.

An ambitious drama about gang warfare and the culture of violence, American Me is nothing if not earnest. Unfortunately, this doesn't mean it's a particularly successful film; for every bluntly powerful moment, there's another that's crude and obvious, sometimes excruciatingly so.

Clocking in at just under two hours, MY COUSIN VINNY moves at an extremely leisurely pace for a Hollywood farce. But that's just one indication of what makes this appealingly quirky comedy stand apart from more run-of-the-mill fare.

Virtual reality aside, THE LAWNMOWER MAN suffers all the usual problems: the cliched story is further undermined by wooden performances (Fahey, his naturally dark hair stripped to the consistency of a Harpo Marx fright wig, is particularly excruciating) and the inevitable [spoiler omitted] ending.

Levy can't seem to tell if something is funny or not and keeps up the sledgehammer intensity throughout every scene, comic subtlety and timing abandoned in a desperate attempt for laughs--even pained ones.

GLADIATOR breaks no new ground, but it pays off scrupulously, fulfilling--in fact, catering to--audience expectations at every turn. This may not sound like much of an achievement, but when theaters are full of movies that don't deliver on their implicit promises, it's nice to see a movie that gives audiences exactly what they've paid for.

Unfortunately, it is the spirit of adventure that is distinctly lacking in MEMOIRS OF AN INVISIBLE MAN, a dismayingly flat and predictable, special-effects-laden action thriller.

WAYNE: "No way, Professor; we just needed a story so we could string a lot of gags together without it getting too boring."

Medicine Man tries hard to be a film for all tastes, but it ends up appealing to none.

"Masala" refers to a mix of varied spices, and one of the strengths of MISSISSIPPI MASALA is its own collection of colorful characters.

Fried Green Tomatoes is an engaging if sentimental tale, charmingly handled by producer-turned-director Jon Avnet (Risky Business) and flawlessly acted by its four female stars. Plaudits must also go to Geoffrey Simpson, for his splendid cinematography, and to Thomas Newman for his drama-enhancing musical score.

Zanuck and Dexter employ an elliptical narrative style, stringing together vaguely connected scenes that nervously cut away before their full, depressing implications can sink in. The result is a lack of any meaningful character development or narrative drive.

Alas, even the lowest expectations go unmet by FREEJACK, which turns out to be an inexplicably lame, penny-pinched futuristic actioner.

This jovially sinister, middle-class morality tale-cum-horror show is predictable, implausible and fiendishly entertaining.

Marketing-minded folks may be quick to position Guncrazy as a 90s take on Bonnie and Clyde (1967), and its title is certainly meant to evoke Joseph H. Lewis's 1949 classic Gun Crazy. But this film is by no means as brash, startling, or iconoclastic as either. Its quieter character-study nature has more in common with They Live by Night (1949), its remake Thieves Like us (1974), and Badlands (1973). Compared to these three landmarks, Guncrazy comes up lacking in lyricism and resonance, but it does give ample pleasures thanks to a subtly self-aware sense of humor and fine performances by itstwo leads.

Paul Schrader's study of a middle-aged drug dealer, is a return to the director's thematic roots, an exploration of the dark side of the American psyche.

Animator/fabulist Hayao Miyazaki pays homage to Hollywood’s wartime adventure films in this masterwork built around the adventures of a high-flying pig.

A treat for Cronenberg fans, though this could hardly be called a gripping, or emotionally involving, story; you're more likely to need a can of bug spray than a hanky.

Releasing one's self to the new rhythm of this film can be difficult; the story is allusive, the Island history sketchy, and the precise relationships of the family members undefined. Yet, if her suggestive presentation escapes straightforward analysis, one cannot help but be mesmerized by Dash's unique vision.

Grand Canyon successfully recreates the random, haphazard ways in which individual lives intersect, and captures the sense of menace and disintegration that permeate contemporary urban life.

As star, director and co-producer, Streisand shifts the book's focus from the Wingo past to the Tom-Susan love affair. This could have worked had Streisand directed herself better--if, indeed, she had directed herself at all. Instead of a performance, we get smirks, poses, campy shots that linger on her outrageously long manicured fingernails, and radiant, cloying smiles. Streisand's inadequacies, though, are more than compensated for by Nolte's compelling Tom. He brings conviction and depth to the role, treading a fine line between self-pity and self-respect and exposing his frailties with a rare sensitivity.

Once the film gets bogged down in the outback, however, it comes to a virtual stop. Wenders seems to be saying something pretty banal about the emotional emptiness of the recorded image as opposed to the "real thing." If that's the point, why make a film at all?

A stylish but disappointing spoof which lacks the satiric gusto of director Pedro Almodovar's earlier works.

The film belongs to Steve Martin, whose crisp, almost bitter delivery, although frequently off-putting, manages to put an edge to a film that, without him, would be mush.

Director and co-screenwriter Oliver Stone pulls off an amazing filmmaking feat with JFK, transforming the dry minutiae of every John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory of the past three decades into riveting screen material.

Bugsy is an elegant, knowing, but ultimately heartless homage to the bygone glamour of Hollywood and Vegas.

The story is beholden to the trendy steroid-and-TV world view: pump it up and cut it fast. Still, the dialogue, while fitfully glib, is wry and engaging, like a profane Raymond Chandler on speed. No one acts (in the Stanislavsky sense, anyway) but all perform well.

This is really just by-the-numbers moviemaking, the kind of project that would have been made with more zip back in the Corman glory days--if, in that pre-sequel crazy climate, it would have been made at all.

While no masterpiece, My Girl is a fine example of compassionate and tasteful filmmaking which features a number of charming moments, most of which are provided by Anna Chlumsky and Macaulay Culkin, while Dan Aykroyd (in a mildly eccentric but subdued role reminiscent of his recent turn in Driving Miss Daisy) and Jamie Lee Curtis lend able support.

Beauty And The Beast is a nostalgic feast, drawing shamelessly on the best traditions of screen animation and American musical theater and film. Thoroughly derivative but thoroughly charming.

An exercise in audience manipulation, with every frame designed to stagger the senses.

Highlander 2 is beautiful. But it's largely incoherent. The film is desperately overplotted; events and years rush by and pile up like cars in an interstate wreck. It's also terribly overexplained.

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.

While far from the worst adaptation of Poe's work (there are so many candidates for that dubious honor it's hard to know where to start), Two Evil Eyes breaks no new ground.

Van Sant casts a gently hypnotic spell that is not easily forgotten.

The performances, surprisingly, are not bad at all. Kristen Minter does well with what she has, as does Vanilla himself. However, it's impossible to take anything seriously--the film's dramatic premise is utterly insupportable and David Kellogg's direction renders the choices flat.

Though low-budget sequels are often out of steam by the third go-round, Puppet Master III is a surprisingly lively and entertaining picture.

The one highlight occurs during a couple of brief montage sequences which feature Varney mimicking a variety of cartoonish characters. These few moments are actually funny, but prove to be the only amusing moments in the film.

It's sad that HOMICIDE goes so drastically off the rails, because the first half of the film is a positive joy.

Despite a disappointingly obvious ending, Ricochet is a brutally entertaining film.

Not unlike her first film, True Love, director Nancy Savoca's big-studio follow-up is more an actor's piece than a fully formed film, its subject yet another rambling contemplation of the rocky relations between the sexes. But it's also no less enjoyable and no less deeply felt.

A superb, timeless film which can and should become part of the treasured trove of minimalist art films that live on in memory and experience.

While NECESSARY ROUGHNESS admittedly traverses highly familiar territory, with few surprises, it does deserve to be appreciated as a genuinely entertaining, albeit old-fashioned, college football yarn that's great fun to watch.

Woo's direction is clean and direct, with a clarity of purpose behind every scene that makes each wrenching development seem inevitable. It's strong stuff.

The script never resolves the different levels on which it tries to operate, and also throws in too many loose ends which never get cleared up.

Stranded somewhere between exuberantly bad and merely boring, THE INDIAN RUNNER is a bloated resume film hobbled by a script as slight as the Bruce Springsteen song upon which it's based.

FREDDY'S DEAD is one of the weaker entries, with overt violence downplayed, perhaps because Freddy has become something of an institution, star of the silver screen as well as a short-lived TV series and innumerable merchandizing ploys.

For all its emphasis on working-class integrity, The Commitments is really Fame wrapped in streetwise packaging.

Director Jack Bender films all this with enough style that Child's Play 3 never becomes overly boring or tedious, and there's some nicely timed tension and comic bits scattered throughout.

However unlikely the twists and turns in this mystery, Dead Again moves briskly forward, never weighed down by any sense of seriousness.

Don Johnson and Mickey Rourke preen and posture on motorcycles and off in Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man, a futuristic action adventure that feels desperately like a vanity project.

Ultimately, however, the look, sound and feel of this macabre comedy fail to support any coherent theme...Much is denigrated, but little affirmed.

Danny Glover is an adequate straight man, as both Lethal Weapon pictures demonstrate, and Martin Short can certainly be funny. But they don't really play as a team; you get the feeling that their sheer physical disparity--tall, dark-skinned Glover and tiny, red-haired Short--struck someone as so inherently funny that it didn't matter that the two of them don't ignite comic sparks.

if you're in the mood to watch some high-class head-kicking, Double Impact is a perfectly adequate piece of work.

A clumsy, calculated attempt at warm-hearted, populist entertainment.

A movie whose best features are its lush tropical vistas has evident limitations.

An enthralling examination of the loaded cultural issues of sex, class and race as seen through the subculture of black and hispanic transvestites.

Trust is stylishly photographed and crammed with quirky, offbeat incidents and dialogue.

Often annoyingly vulgar and crude, Life Stinks is partly redeemed by Brooks's good intentions. He and his associates have attempted, sometimes with great success, sometimes not, to illustrate the difference between decency and deceit as well as the painfully thin line that separates pleasure and happiness from degradation and despair.

Inferior retread.

Positive figures--Furious, Tre, Brandi--are rendered perhaps too virtuous, and Singleton becomes a bit preachy in the closing scenes, but an overt "message" movie may be the only appropriate response to the ongoing social crisis addressed.

There's much amiss here, with a long catalog of contrived situations that make this film a tough act to swallow.

Trend-setting visuals compensate for a plot that lacks the imagination and edge of the 1984 original.

Not quite as fresh as the first NAKED GUN, but what can you expect from a film subtitled "The Smell of Fear"?

A movie that looks nice and moves along efficiently, but offers little reason for anyone to watch.

Director Kevin Reynolds has no flair for action: the climactic battle is so ineptly shot and edited that it is difficult to tell who is smiting whom. While Costner is lifeless and speaks strangely (he was said to have attempted a British accent, then abandoned it during shooting), Mastrantonio is an acceptably vivacious Marian.

CITY SLICKERS successfully skirts the chance for a cheapshot gag comedy and becomes a friendly, heartfelt celebration of friendship and community, greatly aided by a funny and moving script by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandell (PARENTHOOD, VIBES, SPLASH). Ron Underwood's direction complements the script and, while evoking memories of old Western films and TV shows, never overshadows the acting of a uniformly capable cast.

Despite its preposterous storyline, Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dead is surprisingly entertaining and fun. While the film, directed by Stephen Herek from a screenplay by Neil Landau and Tara Ison, might have been sharper, wittier and cleverer, it nevertheless achieves on its own level by genuinely involving its young target audience.

JUNGLE FEVER offers a host of well-acted, thought-provoking dramatic situations, wrapped in one mess of a story.

The actors look like they're having a great time, playing exaggerated versions of their stereotyped neuroses, and the complex plot's fast movement keeps the audience's attention well. But with all this, something is very wrong with SOAPDISH: It isn't all that funny.

This one may be just excessive enough to develop a cult following. It also proved quite popular with German audiences, for reasons we've been unable to fathom.

A fun, breezy roadtrip across the Western landscape.

Not only do the firefighting scenes evoke a feeling of gritty authenticity, but the fire itself really does seem to be alive.

Labelled by many critics as a "thinking person's Ghost," Truly, Madly, Deeply is sensitively written and charmingly acted. Juliet Stevenson brings tremendous depth to a role that was created specifically for her, and Alan Rickman proves himself capable of something quite different from the bad-guy roles for which he's best known.

Children may delight in some of DROP DEAD FRED's fanciful effects sequences, but they're likely to be bored by Elizabeth's grown-up problems. And adults may identify with its self-help message, but the rest is squirm-inducing.

Keshishian's straightforward style allows a number of readings: he may flatter The Material Girl, but he also manages to do something much more complicated and engaging.

Actors Bill Murray and Richard Dreyfuss provide the frenzied fun that highlights What About Bob? a wacky slapstick comedy.

Stone Cold is a stupid, no-stakes movie, and no manner of high jinks can hide that fact.

MANNEQUIN TWO is breathlessly funny and blessedly unassuming comedic nonsense.

Blake Edwards's obssessive concern with cross-dressing and sexual role switching has hopefully been purged in SWITCH, an obvious, dim-witted rehash of GOODBYE CHARLIE, saved from total failure by Ellen Barkin's bright, energetic slapstick performance.

Europa Europa is a compelling story told with intelligence and wit. Holland's direction, and the acting by the ensemble cast, are superb.

Unfortunately, Petrie's idea of dramatic tension is to expose more boyish flesh as the movie progresses. And as more and more lumpy young pectorals are flashed, more and more people and objects are exploded. All this is accompanied by a persistently obnoxious soundtrack that features patriotic fanfares. And as the four different plots bump into each other like blinded laboratory animals, we begin to feel empathy if not pity for everyone involved.