Although it begins promisingly enough, with a documentary-like look at the options available to young African-American men who grow up in the "ghetto life," this visually polished film stumbles when it comes to actually telling a story.

Willard could have been a great horror film; instead, it just makes you want to lift your feet safely off the floor.

Where "Pitch Black" relied on shadowy threats and sharply drawn relationships between a small group of stranded victims-to-be, Twohy's bloated space opera is an eye-popping three-ring circus of fabulously freaky costumes, over-ripe declaiming and computer-generated spectacle.

It's all beautifully photographed and Schwartzberg tries to capture the country's diversity despite notable omissions, as there always will be in any movie that attempts to "define" America.

BITTER MOON is entertaining, but in the manner of ghastly car crashes and legendary theatrical disasters; you can't take your eyes off it, but you often want to.

Allen Daviau's photography is exceptional; Quinn, Mueller-Stahl, and Plowright give commendable performances. Ultimately, though, Levinson's very personal project never acquires a personality of its own.

History gets short shrift from screenwriters William Nicholson and Michael Hirst -- starting with the not insignificant fact that in 1585, Elizabeth was 52 years old – but Kapur is clearly more interested in spectacle and soap opera than dusty old facts.

Painfully undermined by its central characters.

DUNE is visually delightful but choppy, confusing, and overloaded with exposition. Moreover, most of the thematic material that made the novel work--subtexts involving incestuous desire, capitalism vs. environmentalism, and Middle East politics--is simply missing.

The film is basically a two-character piece featuring Woodward and Cobb and probably would have made a very good play. Cinematically, it's lacking on several levels.

While the characters are fairly offbeat and interesting, the film is weighed down by some tediously handled camp intrigue, political skullduggery, and $2 million worth of special effects.

Shot largely in Toronto and cast with the best of the B-list, this film has the low-rent gloss of a made-for-cable thriller.

Wrapped in a layer of psuedo-spookiness that leads viewers to think the story is going somewhere it isn't.

Henkel's directing debut isn't incompetent: It's just derivative, pointless and tediously repetitive.

The right combination of goofy character behavior, action set pieces, and narrative drive to keep the movie from ever being boring.

The combination of Lee's discomforting subject matter and distancing style -- calculating artlessness punctuated by occasional flights of lyrical fantasy -- makes this slow-moving drama a challenge that doesn't seem entirely worth the effort.

Hopkins possesses a Candide-like equanimity in the face of bizarre happenstance that is thoroughly charming and keeps the story's excesses from becoming exasperating.

The effect is hypnotically disorienting, but the less familiar you are with this period in 20th-century Chinese history, the easier it is to get hopelessly lost in the tangle of personal and political loyalties and betrayals.

Naim's potential is evident, but his debut is a frustrating exercise in missed opportunities.

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.

The film is at heart a look at a unique slice of Americana, particularly an opening montage in which we realize that football here is a cradle-to-the-grave proposition -- literally.

It's obvious that director Milestone could not control Brando for a moment and that the famous, sometimes brilliant actor directed himself. His is one of the most impossible performances in screen history, infecting Harris, who plays a sort of seagoing Iago and is equally hammy and unbelievable.

Director Cassavetes here applies his remarkable talent for social observation in a light-comedy context and creates one of the strangest, and in many ways most frustrating, screen comedies in recent years.

Has the distinctive Heavy Metal magazine meets "The Neverending Story" (1984) vibe of Euro-science-fiction comics, complete with ponderous philosophical noodling, weirdly whimsical aliens and seriously creepy creature sex.

Formulaic but not entirely predictable, it's like old-school Disney, but without Tim Conway.

While his film is less than satisfying, it's a refreshingly off-kilter experience.

Though beautifully photographed, acted and written (the three source stories are skillfully blended into a single narrative), this leisurely, bittersweet look at a child's loss of innocence ends rather abruptly and inconclusively.

A satisfying hatchet job on the spooky -- or as the Wayans see it, kooky -- world of supernatural pictures.

The issue is dealt with in a sensitive manner, but a much less "meaningful" approach would have made the characters much more accessible. The direction by Friedkin is not cinematic at all, looking simply like a rendering of the stage play on celluloid.

The second attempt to bring a dark corner of the Marvel comic-book universe to the screen, this comic-book-based revenge story is undermined by its inconsistent tone.

Todd McFarlane's Spawn plays better on the page, but the adolescents of all ages who buy Spawn comics will probably enjoy the movie. Others should consider themselves forewarned.

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.

While far from a bad film, The Human Factor fails to convey the desperation and stagnation felt by the Williamson character.

Ambles to a surprisingly affecting conclusion, almost despite itself.

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.

That it feels so predictable is, ironically, a tribute to the universality of the experience it explores.

Much ado about nothing much at all.

If the movie is remembered for anything, it will be for the feature-film debut of fiercely talented Jonathan Jackson: His performance truly transcends its dour setting.

Though carefully cast and set in the most exotic of locales, the drama lacks any real excitement, the director's glacial style aligning itself all too patly with Hwang's arid rhetoric.

Although not as powerful, impressive, or exciting as Suspiria, Inferno is still intriguing, effective, and stylish enough to make the narrative unimportant.

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.

This breezy romantic trifle isn't nearly as clever as it imagines itself to be, but it's smart enough not to take itself too seriously.

Despite its preachiness, we all know New Jack City is making the right statement on drugs, racism, the system, etc. But the fact is it's not very good.

The widescreen photography is, however, quite beautiful, and the scenes of aerial combat thrillingly staged.

This remake of the 1951 family fantasy is strictly minor league, struggling mightily to balance heartwarming sentiment with sporty sight gags, yet never getting beyond second base.

The movie suffers from a serious case of unoriginality.

By all accounts, the events depicted are historically accurate, but historical accuracy does not always guarantee a well-paced, interesting film.

The performances are passable: Tandy and Cronyn are talented enough to avoid looking foolish. The special effects team has created some truly convincing sequences that give the saucers more personality than the human characters.

Much of the dialog seems improvised, with erratic results. Director Hal Ashby's cut of the film was chopped by Paramount and by producer Schaffel and writers Voight and Schwartz, and it came up weaker for it. In spite of having problems, however, the film is not a complete turkey.

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

Director Attenborough's film version has a couple of pleasant numbers which serve as oases amidst the dullness.

Like Larry, Cadillac Man doesn't know quite what it wants to do. At first the film seems to be a low-key comedy about a small-time hustler, then it becomes a kind of Dog Day Afternoon-style melodrama. Ultimately it is an uneasy mix of the two.

This southern-fried mess of poetic crime-movie cliches is redeemed by standout performances.

MacDowell, Staunton and Chancellor are terrific, tearing into their juicy roles and reveling in first-time feature writer-director Jim McKay's sharp-tongued dialogue.

Little more than a lengthy Twilight Zone episode.

Frankenheimer pulls out all the stops to lend excitement to the racing footage--splitting the screen into ever smaller increments, mounting cameras to the cars to get shots taken inches above the track, and using slow motion--but ultimately his obsession with technique becomes wearying, and the plot is simply not interesting enough to stand on its own.

All in all, Fritz is best observed as a cultural artifact, with its success allowing Bakshi to follow it up with more heartfelt projects such as Heavy Traffic (1973) and Coonskin (1975).

Benson is as annoyingly untalented as ever, and the film is definitely overlong, bordering on the dull.

De la Iglesia's years of filmmaking experience are obvious in the film's formal touches -- his transitions between scenes and time frames are smooth and very stylish.

It's so perfectly contrived and mechanical and fresh as a daisy, it's infuriating.

The film is merciless in its depiction of death and suffering, Pitt and Corbet are perfectly cast, and Watts, who also served as executive producer, gives a disturbingly raw performance.

A wacky, occasionally inventive road movie that fails to display the vision or the dark intensity of director Lynch's earlier work.

In all, it's a peculiar mishmash, simultaneously bland and suggestive.

This film doesn't know who its target audience is. Adults will find it plodding and predictable. Parents of small children should think twice about letting them see this film: the violence is cartoonish, but still brutal, and much of the dialog will be over their heads. Perhaps teenagers will enjoy it (perhaps they'll get some really neat ideas from it, too). John Hughes' vision of Dennis is much more menacing than Ketcham's fans and parents of small children might reasonably expect.

The direction is routine action filmmaking with no originality. The film, therefore, is both exciting and flat all at once.

Everyone does his or her own singing--a mistake, except in the case of Presnell. Eastwood talk-sings effectively, a la Rex Harrison, but Marvin sings so badly that his numbers are camp classics.

Alien meets Basic Instinct in this textbook illustration of what happens when millions of dollars' worth of technical expertise is brought to bear on a cheap, exploitative script.

Though positioned as a glum expose of America's violent schools (a cause for hand-wringing at least as far back as 1955's The Blackboard Jungle), the story is overwhelmed by the throbbing score, music-video aesthetic (New York scenes are shot in cold blues and grays, while the L.A. sequences are a hazy, burnt-out yellow) and the exotic, colorful psychos who rule Garfield's classroom: It's a New York Times editorial by way of CLASS OF 1984.

A fairly interesting, but somewhat muddled, road movie starring Newman as an ex-cop who now drives cars from Denver to San Francisco for a living.

The second leads are far more interesting: Belushi brings a brash, hearty presence to the film, while Perkins is wonderfully acerbic. Their scenes together are the movie's best.

The devout will no doubt enjoy this picturesque dramatization of an inspirational story many have known since childhood; others may understandably expect something more.

The manipulative climax works, even as you feel like the jerk in tear-jerking.

Bright, bubbly and thoroughly inconsequential.

Grownups who grew up on The Jetsons and children who, like the movie's heroes, aren't yet nine years old, should enjoy this film.

If you like Prince's music, you'll love this movie. If not, stay away.

Whether the source material or Hare's tinkering is to blame for the fact that the story keeps the viewer at arm's length, the end result is still the same: A film that's technically superb, yet still falls short of true greatness.

Fox's performance is surprisingly assured; Sutherland is also convincing as his self-centered, dissipated, and snobbish best friend.

Climaxes in an ending of such sleazy preposterousness that it's almost worth the price of admission alone.

Handsomely photographed and acted...defiantly old-fashioned testament to the power of love.

It's enjoyable and profoundly unlikely to make a lasting impression on anyone.

Often confusing, especially during the first half, but Gabin and Ventura are well cast as hoods.

At first glance, FOR LOVE OR MONEY looks like a holdover from the greed-filled 1980s, a last gasp glorification of Reagan/Bush era yuppiedom. The surprise is that it's actually an amusing, if occasionally formulaic, comedy.

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.

Boyle's movie jettisons much of the telling detail; it has the shambling rhythm of a shaggy dog story and so simplifies the characters' ethical dilemmas that it's hard to care what they do.

Classic Italian splatter directed by Lucio Fulci, reviled and adored in equal proportions by Euro-horror fans.

Bodrov's staging and cutting does a perfectly good job conveying their anthropomorphized feelings and motives; the spoken drivel is just a distraction. The film's human characters are largely inconsequential.

A bizarre hybrid between Euro erotic thriller and a parable of Jewish awakening.

Fart, feces and gonad gags notwithstanding, this knockabout comedy is no more vulgar than most contemporary children's films, and more good-natured than many.

The film's nervous, gritty style is woefully out of sync with its broadly whimsical tone. Woody Allen is an acquired taste, and MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY is a movie for his steadfast fans only.

Air America comes on like a noisy, overproduced sitcom pilot.

Though stylishly produced, this clumsy parable will probably engender more boredom than sequels.

This multiple-twist thriller gets off to a fine, creepy start but eventually becomes too preposterous for its own good.

A benign, mushy gruel that tries desperately to maintain the sticky sweet consistency of "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" but ultimately ends up coasting on the "kefi" of that previous success.

The lives of three deeply unhappy New Yorkers crisscross in unexpected ways in writer-director Joe Maggio's uneven but strangely affecting film.

The talents of the wonderful Jonathan Pryce are wasted in this poor adaptation of Ray Bradbury's tale of fantasy and the supernatural.

Unfortunately, this flawed but interesting film will be Wassel's only legacy; the director was murdered in 2001 by Nathan C. Powell, who helped finance this film.

What TOP GUN contributes to the genre is an increased emphasis on military hardware and an almost homoerotic attraction for male bodies, mostly sweaty ones.

For all its cute contrivances, Six Pack isn't a bad film and is guaranteed to warm the hearts of Rogers' fans.