Cool Runnings has a great premise: a movie based on the true story of the Jamaican bobsledders who amused the world at the 1988 Olympics. But this Disney film, a stale and out-of-date offering, is far less interesting than seeing the real athletes during the Olympic telecasts.

Visually, State of Grace joins Miller's Crossing as one of the best-looking movies in ages. But, as it nears its bloody ending, the film just gets dumber and dumber.

If there's a gay cliche who doesn't flounce through this feel-good German comedy, he must have been out of town when the casting call went out, but its fundamental good nature is tough to resist.

This is a film for hardcore film fans and Francophiles. Everyone else may find little to sustain them beyond the pastiche and shots of Paris.

Director/cowriter Adrian Garcia Bogliano's self-conscious throwback to the kind of gritty black-and-white gore films that used to play drive-in theaters and urban grind houses is a short, sharp shocker that gets surprising mileage out of the oldest formula in the book of the dead.

Fans of the first two films in the series may be a bit dismayed by Day of the Dead's deemphasis of gory action in favor of characterization, but the need to exploit the horror of the situation has passed and the film works by concentrating instead on its implications and possible solution. The standard 1950s sci-fi/horror film conflict between science and the military is also resurrected here, with distinct political overtones.

Ugly, stupid, loud, offensive, and pointlessly violent--let's not mince words--this film should be called "Total Reject."

Simultaneously shocking and deeply religious, Carlos Reygadas' follow-up to his acclaimed 2002 debut, "Japon," tells the story of one man's battle for spiritual redemption through a series of explicit images rarely seen by even the most jaded art-house audiences.

Phil Donahue and Ellen Spiro's powerful documentary takes a microcosmic look at the war and its devastation by focusing on a single casualty.

It's hard to dislike so genial a picture about guys in gowns (although only Leguizamo would pass muster at a drag ball: Swayze seems to be doing a third-rate impression of Joan Crawford, while Snipes just comes off as a man in a dress); still, it's basically an elaborate denial of homophobia -- which is no help to anybody in a country where people get killed for cross-dressing.

Packs five films' worth of drama, crises and revelations into one, and often lapses into sitcom triteness.

The result is so overloaded with extra characters, tangled story lines, dance numbers, fantasies and flashbacks that the once-simple plot feels puffed-up and irritatingly self-important.

A sloppy, self-indulgent valentine to the theater, delivered with all the grace of a letter-bomb.

Under the candy coating and girl group soundtrack, the film acknowledges some hard truths about women and education that haven't changed much since the '60s. But it never loses sight of having a good time, and the girls are great.

A touching coming-of-age story from Sweden, made interesting by the fact that the protagonist is a lonely, middle-aged farmer rather than an adolescent.

It's wonderfully satisfying: Collette, MacLaine and Diaz are exceptional, and the mix of humor and heartbreak is perfectly calibrated.

Goldbacher's film is lovely to look at, but the blurry heart of the film only suffers by the comparison.

Days of Thunder delivers only the bare essentials. Boys, the reasoning seems to go, will be lured into the theater by the siren call of gasoline and super-charged engines, while their girl friends will tag along to get a look at Cruise in tight jeans.

Steeped in what may be the ultimate postmodern irony: Talen's impromptu, defiant piece of performance art with political undertones has actually taken on a spiritual dimension.

Three Belgian clowns wrote and directed this sly, winsome tale of one woman's quest for her destiny in the polar seas after an absurd but life-altering accident reveals the emptiness of her mundane, middle-class life.

Scanners is a memorable and absorbing genre entertainment.

The result is both deeply personal and maddeningly unfocused.

Not even Drew Barrymore's million-dollar smile can save this humiliating comedy.

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

More shaggy dog story than a contribution to the ever-growing mountain of fact and fiction dealing with the Kennedy assassination, Neil Burger's feature film debut is a cleverly crafted but ultimately hollow mockumentary.

This sweet, lovingly passionate story is nonetheless a charmer. Anderson's technique -- jaggy, product-testimonial close-ups; eerie still-image insertions -- is arresting, but this is an actors' showcase.

The movie's captivating details are all in the performances, from Foreman's barking-mad Taylor to Thewlis's smoothly sinister Freddie and Bettany/McDowell's hard-eyed gangster, an amoral bottom-feeder with an expedient streak of sadism.

The film unfolds like a thriller: The plot moves so inexorably toward its tragic conclusion you can almost hear the clock ticking.