Benigni wants to tell a poignant fable rooted in the love between a father and son, but everything hinges on whether one finds his gags inspired or tasteless. Humor can only save some of us.

Buoyed by a good cast, strong direction, and excellent effects, Child's Play almost works. Unfortunately, the screenplay is full of plot holes, lapses of logic, and missed opportunities.

This is a professional machine of a movie that compresses huge amounts of information into its two and a half hours of screen time. But it's so weighed down by detail, it fails to generate any real suspense.

Were there more meat on the bones of this fable about hypocrisy and spiritual hollowness, Marsh's pacing might seem deliberate rather then merely slow.

Inspired by accounts of underage vigilante girls in Japan turning the tables on Internet predators, playwright Brian Nelson's schematic tale of the hunter captured by the game, a queasy blend of exploitation-movie nastiness and blunt moral lesson.

Watching this thinly written, intellectualized caper film, one realizes how far downhill we've come since Ernst Lubitsch's Trouble in Paradise or even Jules Dassin's Topkapi. If Object of Beauty were to have worked as a comedy of manners, it would have needed a director with some champagne in his bloodstream and a cast with some insouciance in their bones.

A Holocaust film that's light on sentimentality but high on human drama, Defiance tells one of those remarkable survival stories that's so incredible it must be true.

During its opening scenes, Under Siege threatens to achieve something like Die Hard's blend of wit, ingenuity and action, with Jones and Busey making highly entertaining, creepy-funny villains. Once the stolid Seagal takes over, however, we settle into a predictable high-tech groove of explosions, gunplay and gore.

Given the film's focus on the importance of hip-hop, its soundtrack -- crammed with current artists though it is -- doesn't make the impression it should.

The film avoids theorizing about why the bridge should exert such a hold over the imaginations of suicides all over the world, but Steel's dramatic cinematography, particularly the distorted telephoto shots that make the bridge loom even larger than it already does in life, provide one answer.

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

A dismal affair that reeks of pretentious self-importance.

It's intelligently conceived (on a visual level, at any rate) and largely good fun. Steven Lisberger, an East Coast animator, directed the visuals, combining the actors and computer graphics with satisfying results.

They've taken material with the power to insinuate itself directly into the realm of the imagination, and made it strangely inert and lifeless.

Adding to the excitement of Psycho III is Perkins' willingness to take chances with his style and material.

The film's bizarreness pales next to that of little-known exploitation film "Sonny Boy" (1990), which weaves similar material into something authentically nightmarish.

This rare direct follow-up hopefully will put to rest the leftover emotional baggage of the character and leave Bond open to a bit more familiar interpretation in the future.

While the subject is potentially fascinating, Gosling's unfocused, sluggish film is a case study in missed opportunities.

Attal's characters are one-note position statements, which forces the unsubtle soundtrack - mostly American pop songs that range from the Velvet Underground's "Sunday Morning" to Radiohead's "Creep" - to bear the brunt of clarifying their thoughts and feelings. Without it, you'd be entirely in the dark.

As subversively clever as it is unsubtle.

The whole enterprise has the sweaty sheen that comes from trying too hard to be cool.

Luis Orjuela's sweet, slight comedy is about a middle-class Colombian family and the huge, cherry-red Chevrolet Bel-Air convertible that conveys them through several years worth of life's little dramas.

The first part of this film is an exceedingly taut little chiller that stands on its own, and in fact was once a short film entitled The Sitter. Director Fred Walton decided to expand the clever premise into a feature and, unfortunately, that is where the film begins to fall apart.

LEAN ON ME's manipulations justify Clark's drastic methods only superficially, by trivializing legitimate questions regarding Clark's actions.

Jack H. Harris, the cheapie producer who went on to make the forgettable Mother Goose A Go-Go, struck it rich with this silly picture that gave McQueen his first starring role after a few supporting jobs in Somebody Up There Likes Me and Never Love A Stranger.

Virgil's naïveté isn't entirely believable, but his essential goodness is, thanks to a solid performance by Jordan, and that's really what makes this modern urban tragedy unusually affecting.

The performances are uniformly excellent.

Extremely difficult but worthy film.