An unvarnished look at the emotional havoc that ensues when middle-class housewife Kira (Stine Stengade) returns home after a lengthy stay in a mental hospital, anchored by devastating performances.

This loud, overlong and thoroughly exhausting fantasy, based on Milan Trenc's slim children's book, purports to introduce youngsters to the wonders of New York City's American Museum of Natural History, but in fact aims squarely at hyperactive kids who can't sit still or stand a moment's silence.

Ritt and Field seem to have been trying to capitalize on the southern backwoods setting that served them so well in Norma Rae, but this time around they didn't have nearly as engaging a story with which to work.

Never figures out what it wants to be, and ends up a jumbled mess that nobody wants.

It hits more often than it misses, and the best parts are always the simplest, in which the stars wing it with nothing to go on but their natural chemistry.

As sequels go, Critters 2: The Main Course is particularly bereft of imagination. Save for the opening 20 or 30 minutes, the film is pretty much a clone of the original.

This formulaic comedy is a real kid-pleaser, full of spitballs and slapstick mayhem. Most adults will be squirming long before the heartwarming finale -- what a drag it is getting old.

If only Reiser or director Raymond De Felitta had been able to resist the fart jokes and the sloppy male-bonding scenes, this could have been a terrific little movie. As it is, it's shamelessly manipulative shtick brightened by sharply drawn supporting performances.

This relentlessly depressing film biography boasts a moving performance by Jessica Lange as Frances Farmer, one of the most beautiful movie actresses of the late 1930s and early 1940s, shown here as the victim of a forceful mother (Kim Stanley) and a tyrannical studio system.

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.

Bullock playing against type is the only original thing going on in the whole film.

It shares all the original's shortcomings —--it’s too long and too loud and filled with historical disinformation -- but none of the snap that made "National Treasure" fun for kids and a guilty pleasure for some adults.

The irony is that for all its "not your father's spy movie" posing, it's exactly like the later James Bond pictures: predictable, lightweight and 100 percent disposable

It works its gilded butt off to give you your money's worth.

Along the way, director Brian Robbins indulges Reeves in too many laughable inspirational speeches. He also wastes the terrific Diane Lane in the thankless role of the kids' dedicated teacher.

Clumsy and amateurish. But it's also occasionally quite charming, and ultimately more commendable for what it ISN'T than worthy of censure for being nothing more than an inconsequential comedy.

One soggy, charmless heap of chum.

This smooth concoction goes down with a pleasant tingle and leaves behind a warm glow.

Fans will clap along with the many songs, but the tunes aren't interesting enough to win over the unconverted -- a fact made clear when genuine teen star Taylor Swift shows up to perform -- she demonstrates all the spontaneity and authenticity that Miley Cyrus lacks.

There's nothing more to it than meets the eye, but Bertino understands the mechanics of suspense and knows how to use them.

Every aspect of WILLOW seems as if it were written in stone before a shot was filmed. The plot grinds on inescapably to its predictable climax, with the viewer fully aware of what awaits long before the events unfold.

Holland fills this film with so many throwaway gags that it is impossible to communicate the outright zaniness. Every scene contains dozens of jokes, some that work and some that don't, but they keep coming so fast and furious that the duds are easily forgotten. Strung together on the flimsiest of plots, Holland's film works as well as it does because he stocks it with several likably eccentric characters. While certainly not for all tastes, it's refreshing teenage fare, and underlying its cartoony insouciance is a welcome touch of innocence.

The improbable star of this ultra-low budget cinematic gross-out is 300-pound transvestite Divine, whose willingness to do virtually anything in front of the camera, along with an undeniable screen presence, made Pink Flamingos a favorite on the campus and midnight-movie circuits.

It's not earthshaking or life-changing, but it's cute, occasionally predictable and only requires ACTUAL idiots, like Barry, to act like idiots. As formula entertainment goes, that's a pretty sweet deal.

Although it lacks the intensity and sophistication that could have made it a classic, the film still has a definite charm and appeal.

Unfortunately, the remake is as toothless as the original and gets bogged down in the humiliations of the Harpers' down-slipping life.

Well-acted first-feature.

Martin's Bilko is a career grifter who comes out on top every time. He's a Bilko for the nasty '90s, oily and smug.

In Ducastel's and Martineau's hands all the unpleasantness blows away like a kiss on a soft summer breeze, a light wind that nevertheless leaves a vaguely unpleasant scent in its wake.

If all this were anarchically funny, its shambling idiocy could be forgiven.

A wildly overblown, unpleasantly smirky mess of a film.

Delivers some powerful emotional wallops alongside the chopsticks-up-the-nose violence, and manages the remarkable feat of making venerable American genre conventions seem eerily alien.

The jabs at the expense of self-centered New Yorkers with more money than sense are so mild they're pointless -- if satire doesn't hurt, what's the point?

The film is filled with Miike's brand of imaginatively staged violence and hints of fetish sexuality, but his sadism, which reaches its apotheosis in 2001's sickening "Ichii The Killer", is tempered by a sincere romanticism and a number of lovely touches.

That rare film aimed at teenage girls that's still enjoyable for grownup viewers.

Given the serious subject matter, this adaptation of Irish writer Brendan Behan's autobiographical novel is surprisingly light and exceedingly good-natured.

The film's greatest assets are leads Susie Porter and David Wenham, whose considerable personal appeal make its trite observations about the war of the sexes seem charming, at least for a while.

Tries to leave the impression of Escobar as a positive force whose dirty money actually saved Colombia's economy while those of neighboring Latin American countries collapsed.

This simplistic animated feature falls firmly within the long tradition of bland, upbeat and earnest religious instructional films.

Weinstock's trump is Moreau, a natural-born charmer.

Sivan's film is well acted, beautifully photographed and oddly reassuring. It comes perilously close to suggesting that the injustices of colonial rule were the product of morally weak and misguided individuals rather than a system that empowered and enriched foreign interests at the expense of locals.

If the naive dramatic situations and trite idealism can be ignored, the viewer is in for an amazing spectacle of special effects in WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE.

CHAPLIN is the cinematic equivalent of a whistle-stop tour of Europe--the kind that takes you to ten cities in five days at such speed that everything melts into a vaguely entertaining blur.

Ryan is raw and remarkably good, but the film's real star is New York. Draped in post-9/11 anxiety and brimming with a free-floating fear, the city hasn't appeared this threatening since the '70s.

Writer/director Craig Rosenberg is no master of subtlety -- in fact, he seems to have only two settings, whacking excess and treacly pathos -- and the film is awash in ponderous whimsy.

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

Broad, hackneyed and stultifyingly predictable.

Goofy and surprisingly slow-moving.

Seriously flawed and not for every taste, the film was shot quickly and on the cheap, and is driven by Argento's slurred, scratchy voice and Bette Davis eyes.

That there's precious little chemistry between buffed-and-tanned stars Parker and McConaughey is only the first of this slight, overly busy film's problems.

Inspired lunacy, Pee-wee's big adventure is one of the most inventive films in recent memory. This clever and wholly original work incorporates a wide variety of cinematic tools with a fresh and unique sense of style.

The group's credo, "Live free, stay high," only confirms your worst suspicions about their real motives. And that makes it hard to feel any nostalgia for the good old days or condemn the members who came to their senses and moved on.

Though the film ends on a surprising and genuinely magical note, it takes its own sweet time getting there; some viewers will have lost patience before the denouement arrives.

The backgrounds are handsome and moody, and the character animation is less distractingly cartoonish than that of films like the otherwise breathtaking Metropolis (2001).

A train wreck of a film whose chaotic, partly improvised story and too-tricky mix of film stocks, image sizes, split-screen effects and color/B&W footage overwhelm some phenomenally beautiful sequences and a memorable performance by Saffron Burroughs.

The film has a certain easygoing charm, choppiness notwithstanding, and delivers several big laughs; if leads Cuthbert and Hirsch were as charismatic as scene-stealing supporting players Olyphant and Marquette, it might have joined the ranks of memorable teen comedies.

Cloying, immature and relentlessly cute, this grating British comedy about two London con men is every bit as shameless as its heroes.

This unusually rich film tackles not only the social structuring of criminality and sexuality but race as well, and explores the ways science has been used to justify the ruthless pursuit of market interests and, eventually, apartheid itself.

There's tons of professionalism in He's Just Not That Into You, but it lacks passion -- they should have called it "Like, Actually."

It neither works as a stand-alone film nor captures the thrilling sense of somber, pulpy mystery that made "The Matrix" so compelling. Nevertheless, It brings the saga to a satisfying close, and relies less on the clumps of pop-mystical cyber gobbledy-gook that gummed up the gears of "Reloaded" and more on the powerful emotional bonds that bind Neo, Trinity, Morpheus, Niobe, Link and Zee.

Steiger and Ireland manage to give believable performances, but Bronson is unable to evoke a sense of hardness. The direction suffers from too little effective pacing and too much concentration on the pretty scenery.

If you can get past the lips, Ryan gives a touching performance as a woman determined to battle her cancer while knowing life offers no guarantees except death -- an understanding no doubt sharpened by Kasdan's own experience battling Hodgkin's disease as a teenager.

Kristofferson's performance is as monotone as his singing, showing few changes in dramatic emphasis. Unmotivated story riddled with confusion and disarray.

Wearing its patent ridiculousness on its sleeve, this slight but generally agreeable comedy integrates the Airplane/Top Secret school of non-sequitur comedy into a less explicitly parodic buddy flick.

Fawcett is given little to do other than get a suntan and try to look captivating, leaving the comic chores up to seasoned professionals Grodin and Carney, who are just great.

Thinly conceived and thoroughly shallow.

To call Christian's film unpolished is an understatement.

In the end, it all remains a dramatically inert set of talking points, and not even the high-caliber cast can make much more out of it.

Surprisingly intimate, full of sly humor and, believe it or not, an odd sort of tenderness.

Clearly Phish's appeal is fundamentally experiential, and the experience doesn't lend itself to being captured on film.

An appealing, if decidedly unconventional, buddy picture that seems to channel "Midnight Cowboy" while going its own quirky way.

While in her earlier movies Jennifer Love Hewitt made an impression by spilling out of her tops, in this one she spills out of her clothes at both ends. This could, if one were feeling charitable, be construed as a broadening of her range.

An even sweeter and lighter whipped confection than "Legally Blonde," this hugely enjoyable sequel serves up a generous second helping of the ingredient that made the original such an irresistible hit.

Swings wildly between heartstring-tugging melodrama, testosterone-fueled action and buddy comedy.

The first-act crash is admittedly spectacular and the ending adequately suspenseful, but what comes between is disappointingly routine and completely lacks the kind character complexity that made the original a thrill every step of the way.

LaPaglia and Davis deliver top-notch performances that go a long way toward offsetting the material's didacticism.

Not as good as other Christie adaptations such as MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS or DEATH ON THE NILE, but still fun.

While the aerial dogfights are handsome and apparently historically accurate, right down to the tracer bullets that leave graceful, crisscrossing trails in the clouds, they have a video-game feel.

Contrived, meandering, clichéd and just plain preposterous.

Hopelessly muddled film cries out for the firm hand of a dyed-in-the-wool cynic like Billy Wilder, who would have put some teeth in its jabs at amoral politicians and blindly ambitious journalists.

Fine performances from Sam Rockwell and Brad William Henke deserve some passing attention.

Despite its philosophical pretensions, the film is fairly lightweight, and its good-looking cast and sleek production values are more memorable than any of its heady themes.

Although the fairy-tale script is as old as the motion picture industry itself, the resourceful cast of Coming to America brings freshness to the annoyingly cliched material. Unfortunately, Landis' inelegant direction nearly derails the film.

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.

An intriguing genre hybrid boasting a stronger than usual cast and excellent, atmospheric direction from Finnish newcomer Renny Harlin, Prison is an impressive piece of low-budget genre work.

The third entry in this uneven franchise is a straightforward, gruesome, and relatively successful exercise in disturbing frights.

Egoyan drains the life right out of the material, and the result is a chilly, complicated thriller that's neither thrilling nor a "Through the Looking Glass" head spinner.

Though smartly written and handsomely produced (the film's visual polish is remarkable, given its modest budget and the swanky settings the story dictates), this film would benefit greatly from more bite.

Some brilliant human moments do emerge, and there's nothing wrong with a reminder to live life in harmony, and not to beat yourself up.

This smart spoof of film noir and filmmaking is very clever and riotously funny.

It's a conspiracy theory worthy of "The X-Files."

Everything has a fusty, embalmed quality: Whatever gave the novel its vitality has been smothered.

Corny and irritatingly simplistic though this fast-paced biography of 16th-century German religious reformer Martin Luther may be, it's undeniably entertaining.

Nathanson processes this pungent stew of greed, ambition and self-delusion into pablum so sweet and bland it wouldn't shock a convent-raised idealist.

Only Lopez, the film's ostensible star, seems to be struggling; she's a lovely dancer, but the only reason Lopez's expressionless performance isn't this sweet picture's downfall is that the script makes so few demands on her.

The truly creepy thing is that there's no bizarre, COMA-like conspiracy behind the malfeasance, just an awful betrayal of trust -- the kind of thing that sends an icy, paranoid chill through the blood just as the anesthetic takes hold.

While probably not suitable for the wee ones, older kids and most adults will love this exciting and heartfelt adventure of one boy's survival during the darkest days of post-war Europe.

Charming, if slight, Venus-and-Mars romantic comedy.