While no masterpiece, My Girl is a fine example of compassionate and tasteful filmmaking which features a number of charming moments, most of which are provided by Anna Chlumsky and Macaulay Culkin, while Dan Aykroyd (in a mildly eccentric but subdued role reminiscent of his recent turn in Driving Miss Daisy) and Jamie Lee Curtis lend able support.

An old-fashioned dinosaur opera, in the worst sense of the term. An obviously formulaic effort, designed more as a cash machine than a piece of cinema.

Spare, sleek and coolly entertaining, even if there's less to this game of true lies than meets the eye.

The wholly invented character of unattainable love interest Julia Cook (the real Kelly once referred to an enigmatic "Julia" in a letter) is the film's weakest link and smacks of a desperate attempt to shoehorn a pretty woman into a story about grubby men with tangled beards.

In all, about a third of the film (most of it contained in three extended sequences) is audaciously funny and genuinely disturbing. The rest will sorely test the devotion of Carrey's fans.

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.

It's not that this is a bad, blackly comic slice-of-lowlife: It's just that you've just seen it all before.

This flawed but interesting Freudian melodrama spends about 70 minutes making points and the last 30 minutes losing them.

An inconsistent and unsatisfying tale of amour fou and literary ambition.

It's hard to believe this shoddy, dishonest mess is Clark's sixth feature film, and not the unpromising debut of a rank amateur.

Steel Magnolias is an old-fashioned "klatsch" film, a prefeminist relic in which a group of women eschew the public world of men in favor of the community of the coffee table. Their world is shown as inferior to men's in terms of power but superior to it in emotion and insight into the things that "really matter."

Director Ridley Scott's visual gifts are still evident in Black Rain. But with retread plot and characters, Scott's stylistic flourishes become irritating clutter.

This is a lean 90 minutes, packed with laughs and age-appropriate thrills -- not to mention a solid lesson for girls about self-respect.

An excruciating series of gags aimed at kids old enough to think it's funny when a grown-up acts like a small child.

More cheerful misogyny from writer-director Henry Jaglom.

Craven builds an interesting premise, but the ending is lame and unsatisfying. Outstanding cinematography and a good musical score enhance the film's mood greatly.

But it's all done with such high style and whizzes along at such an exhausting pace that you probably won't have enough time to notice how little you care.

Zack & Miri stand out as Kevin Smith's most thoroughly representative film -- both for better and for worse.

In terms of bringing the book to life, Twilight is a complete success, so much so that most of the film's flaws work within the context of the story.

This Australian tear-jerker finds more humor than you'd imagine possible in the story of a dying woman getting to know her adult children.

What does make the film disturbing is the way in which it positions Hitler as a mere mouthpiece for what was already in the air, a role he was convinced to play after suffering one disappointment too many at the hands of Jews like Rothman.

Van Bebber is out to capture the mood of a generation-long bad trip and succeeds with unnerving accuracy by telling the story within the family circle.

This eighth film in the Bond series marks the first appearance of Roger Moore as the superspy. Less macho than Sean Connery's Bond, Moore's fastidiously dressed 007 survives by his wits and injects more humor into the proceedings.

Her heavy-handed montage of war, civil rights demonstrations, revolutions and KKK gatherings, intercut with Shicoff's delivery of the opera's devastating fourth-act aria, is so amateurish it very nearly succeeds in trivializing the power of his performance.

Joan Crawford (Dunaway, in a remarkable makeup job) comes off as a cartoon monster in this over-the-top biopic, which blithely mixes fact, legend, and--especially--elements of Crawford's unique screen persona.

Beatty hired some superb talents to remake Love Affair, but many of them are dragged down by director Glenn Gordon Caron's velvety kitsch style.

This violent film, typical of Peckinpah's slam-bang action movies, relentlessly depicts ruthless robbery and murder, not to mention adultery, kidnaping, bribery, extortion, and general mayhem. The vivid direction and lightning pace, however, make the film completely fascinating.

Alternately grim, playful, and gripping, PACIFIC HEIGHTS breathes new life into what was becoming a moribund genre.