A tense geopolitical thriller that leaves a curiously bad aftertaste.

Although superficially an odd couple, the outspoken Barr and the restrained Dench work together surprisingly well and a steady stream of jokes aimed at both adults and kids keeps this genial entertainment galloping along at a brisk pace.

Melodramatic.

Overall it's slick, brainless entertainment.

Rosie O'Donnell's bracing freshness and genuine likability cut through the cloying stuff every time, but there's nowhere near enough of her to balance things out.

Although it aspires to subversive social satire, FUNNY FARM seems little more than a dumb comedy more determined to make people guffaw than to think.

This film, with a whole new cast of miscasts, is even more mindless than its predecessor.

In its small way, however, it succeeds, thanks to director Hugh Wilson's light touch and the chemistry between leads Shirley MacLaine and Nicolas Cage.

It's a terrific showcase for battling Boleyn babes Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman.

While it does take place over a weekend spent touring Northern California's wine country, writer-director Russell Brown's feature debut isn't exactly a bicurious "Sideways." The characters are less interesting and even less likable, and the only pleasure we can take is in their emotional pain.

Though the film certainly isn't awful, the filmmakers couldn't decide on their focus. Did they want the picture to be be a fun little piece full of black humor, or did they want to go the usual blood-and-gore route?

This humorous, lively, and entertaining picture could be described as a caper film set against a WW II backdrop.

The film is rather haphazard in its visual style and plotting, tallying up to a confused condemnation of our lack of morality.

A must-see for Beatles buffs and anyone interested in how the '60s looked as they were happening (rather than in slick, retrospective recreations); others might want to take a pass.

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.

Waters fans and those with a taste for '60s indulgence will want to have a look, but keep that fast-forward button handy!

Since FANDANGO never has anything to say about its well-worn themes, the film quickly becomes boring and predictable.

Intended as more than a simple genre flick, SUGAR HILL aspires to something like classical tragedy, but it's weighed down by its sense of self-importance.

Overall the film is a stylish lark with no resonance, a mean-spirited one-night stand of a movie.

The film's flashy visuals (apparently geared to engaging video game-impaired attention spans) are entertaining, but its cynicism is distasteful.

This underrrated shocker has developed a cult following since its scattershot 1973 release, but deserves a wider one.

For most of its running time, this lunatic euro-thriller is creepy, stylish and occasionally suspenseful.

The film's center will not hold. Either crucial scenes were cut (perhaps for length) or Kapur has a problematic sense of narrative structure; sometimes it's unclear who's doing what to whom.

What begins as an entertainingly contrived lark soon feels like a poorly plotted muddle.

Though filmmaker Nina Gilden Seavy followed Bering Strait for the better part of two years, their story is in no way over at the film's conclusion.

Can't match the original's shock factor --abortion isn't the taboo subject it once was and the women of Sex and the City have helped make playing the field good, dirty fun.

There's a caper and there are some laughs, but this isn't a larky caper flick; it's a pulpy little story that could at any minute go straight to hell.

Director Wolfgang Petersen combines the elements into a charming film that is excellent for children and won't put any adults to sleep, either.

Aside from the obligatory shots of the dummy looking sinister, director Attenborough fails to evoke an effectively eerie mood, concentrating instead on the "drama" between Hopkins and Ann-Margaret.

Hemorrhaging enthusiasm, ruthlessly violent, and light-headed with its own hard-core grunge worldview, LOVE AND A .45 unmistakably positions director Carty Talkington among the many pretenders to Tarantino's throne.

As played by the classically trained Robert Englund, Freddy is a vital killer who brings a sense of creepy fun to his demented work — moviegoers actually like the guy. The nightmares themselves are another reason for the series' success. Seldom have films explored the nightmare world with such effect, style, and panache.

The thrills are few and the expository dialogue tediously overwhelming in this preachy cautionary tale about getting too big for one's britches.

The "cute" kids are insufferable, but leads Ali Khan and Mukerji radiate the unabashed star quality that's all but gone from American movies -- poverty and desperation haven't looked so glamorous since the glory days of Joan Crawford.

It's a "Taxi Driver"-inspired odyssey into violence and insanity that runs close to two hours -- a long time to be riding shotgun with a madman.

Obviously relishing the chance to show everything they couldn't back in the early days of exploitation horror, the New World gang breaks all the monster-movie taboos while injecting heavy doses of black humor.

The dullest movie ever made about child abuse, conspiracy and murder.

Beautifully shot and lushly scored, this may be one of the least P.C. love stories ever filmed. But it's one of the most deeply felt.

The set design, by future director Derek Jarman, is probably the most successful element of the film.

Despite the sluggish opening, Kutcher and Bernie Mac ensure that this predictably plotted comedy of preposterous misunderstandings is occasionally quite funny.

All that matters is if it's funny -- and it is.

There are fewer laughs and more lectures -- but there's plenty of sass and soul in between.

The result is gorgeous, if ultimately shallow -- much like Simone herself.

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

Packed with more information than can possibly be digested in a single viewing, the film will be a bracing eye-opener to anyone who hasn't considered the full implications of recent Congressional debates advocating further media deregulation.

An entertaining and well-crafted political satire that is definitely worth a look.

A real bore, with the director seemingly incapable of creating suspense.

Given the controversy, which strongly suggested that the filmmakers had it in for President Bush, the film's biggest shocker may be how kind Range and coscreenwriter Simon Finch are to him.

A well-acted character piece.

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

Sturges's direction, given the confining nature of the settings, is masterful, and the cinematography headed by Howe and pieced together by many others is sometimes stunning.

Like its star, Howard's movie is affable, but has limited range.

The kind of movie for which the term "video baby-sitter" was coined.

But for all the profane language and sexual frankness, Soderbergh's film is no more cynical or world-weary than its inspirations, and in the end, it feels like a clever trick wrapped around a hollow center.

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.

Most of the cast of accomplished actors are wasted in these roles, although two do manage to stand out: Ryder as the innocent-savvy Myra and John Doe, in an underplayed performance, as her father. The musical sequences are entertaining and energetic.

Violent update of The Blackboard Jungle.

There are people who eat this kind of thing right up -- if you're one of them, dig in.

This dogged journey of self-delusion is interrupted periodically by snippets of footage...that promise a dark revelation that would give an edge to the otherwise tedious goings-on but, sadly, never materializes.

A vivid telling of a familiar story -- the rise and fall of a street criminal -- bolstered by exceptional performances and a clear-eyed take on the economics of dealing and the pathology of ghetto fabulousness.

An intriguing mix of the familiar and the alien. DaFoe's distinctly American speech patterns are a little jarring amid a tangle of British inflections (French actor Cassel's accent is justified within the story), but it doesn't spoil the film's overall effect.

Chinese director Ann Hu follows-up her tepid 2000 debut "Shadow Magic" with another luscious historical drama that, thankfully, is a lot more interesting. The plot is no less melodramatic, but here melodramatics work along with the film's theme, not against it.

The film ends before Franken can actually take the step from commentator to participant, which adds to its overall unfinished and unfocused air.

Pure trash, based on a trashy book, filled to the brim with trashy performances, now becoming a trashy cult film.

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.

For all its contrivances, the film is cheerfully rude and surprisingly generous to the mothers, most of whom find sizzling new romances at an age when their American counterparts are reduced to sexless dithering or played as humiliating punch lines to jokes about horny old hags.

Screenwriter Matthew Tabak's directing debut is carefully plotted, well acted and surprisingly free of cheap thrills.

Charming, low-key ensemble comedy that recalls the films of both John Cassavetes and Woody Allen, which is to say it's a loosely structured, quasi-improvisational saga about a bunch of New Yorkers obsessing about relationships.

The movie isn't "Blade Runner," but it's got some provocative ideas about the implications of cloning in a market-driven, capitalist society.

The movie exists only as a showcase for the animation technology known as hyperReal, a photo-realistic simulation of space, figure and movement that hopes to one day erase the line between animation and live action once and for all.

The flashback structure drains the story of momentum, but Mashkov and Uchaineshvili portray the reptilian glamour of cultured thugs with frightening intensity.

Though "Pulp Fiction" is the obvious point of reference, but this hugely entertaining Mexican crime comedy is actually closer in spirit to "Go," Doug Lyman's underrated 1998 lark.

Yes, it's a deeply formulaic buddy movie predicated on geezer charm. But the surprise of this comedy about two former Chief Executives forced to get along and get in touch with the real America is how sharply written it is -- almost sharply enough to overcome the crude direction that grotesquely overemphasizes the picture's inevitable sentimental interludes.

CONEHEADS represents a prime example of opportunistic commercial filmmaking, with plot and character sacrificed to an endless series of comic ideas that are never developed.

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.

Edward Asner is good as the tough cop who takes over the besieged precinct, Aiello is appropriately sleazy, but Newman is still left to carry this rather predictable film wholly on his shoulders. The script is sharp and witty, but there's no central theme to hold it all together.

Clever enough; but, as is the case with all stalk-and-slash films, it becomes repetitive and boring very quickly.

Competently made but highly contrived so as to evoke as many "aw's" as possible in an hour and a half, this movie is only for the extremely naive.

Possibly Minnelli's worst screen musical.

Douglas and Sutherland do crackling hostility with devilish glee, and the fireworks are nothing if not entertaining.

While there is some imagination behind the destruction of the title abode, the film quickly grows into a tired repetition of one long joke.

It's funny without being toothless, adrenaline turbocharged without being mean and utterly deranged in the best sense of the word.

Those bothered by crunching violence and plot lapses won't find much here to enjoy, but action fans will find it delivers just about all they want from a film.

The film's few saving graces include Dickinson's sardonic southern belle; Winger's welcome return to the screen after a five-year absence; and Howard's voice-over readings of Brown's powerful prose, which ultimately saves the film from itself.

In the end the film has absolutely nothing to say.

All too often, dramatic confrontations feel like barely dramatized debates.

While Aiken couldn't be cuter or more-well suited for his earnest role, the script is utterly predictable and often falls into the saccharine trap. The pooches add a little life to this otherwise lackluster effort.

It's sweet-natured, soothing and there's a behind-the-scenes/blooper reel at the end that will reassure anyone worried about the animals' treatment during filming.

One of the flat-out creepiest films ever released by a major American studio.

With the exception of one breathtaking sequence in a helicopter, the action in Terminator Salvation is astonishingly dull.

Noisy, spectacular and disposable.

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.

The result is an inconsistent, incoherent anti-superhero action-adventure comedy.

An ambitious and sometimes-incisive look at the inner workings of an Italian-American family.

A pleasant comedy, but any film starring Matthau and Jackson--and written by such funny men as Shulman and Epstein (among others)--should have been much funnier.

Its excellent cast, including Walter Pidgeon, Joan Fontaine, and Peter Lorre, play rather predictable characters, but the film boasts some captivating special effects and sets.

Poky, oddly uninvolving.

Parts of the film are nasty enough to grip the audience, but a large portion is muddled and sometimes laughably pretentious.

Wahlberg, whose Bobby is the kind of guy who enters a room gun first, swinging a can of a gasoline, is the glue that holds everything together; he's perfectly cast and has never given a more persuasive performance.