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

With an often very funny story line that eventually touches on parental disappointment and suicide, it's clear that, his debt to Hess and Wes Anderson notwithstanding, Waititi has learned a thing or two from fellow antipodean Jane Campion as well.

While director Tony Scott's brash and boisterous take on the material may lack that certain '70s quirkiness, it gets just about everything else exactly right.

(A) languorous, mud-spattered psychological tale.

Situations don't come much more claustrophobic, and if the payoff doesn't quite live up to the build-up, the film is still an enjoyable exercise in claustrophobic suspense.

With a little more plot, this could have been a killer.

The pressure often shows: For all its charm, the dramatic moments are awkward and the final act feels rushed and under rehearsed.

The detatched, fly-on-the-wall perspective, however, offers little insight into the strange gender game that's played out in the dark safety of the porn theater.

There are two kinds of police officers in David Ayers and James Ellroy's convoluted, ultraviolent tale of corruption within the LAPD: dirty cops and dirtier ones.

While Rick Baker's special effects work is remarkable (and won the first competitive Oscar for makeup), Landis seems content to simply showcase it, shooting it in close-ups and bright lighting without any attempt to build any emotion into the sequence.

Unfortunately, this visually sumptuous epic is the very definition of a "prestige production," swaddled in good taste and better intentions.

Despite a few good moments here and there and a stunning performance by Gena Rowlands, Light of Day is an anemic drama with little to say.

Milo Forman's Valmont is the weakest version so far, suffering from willfully wrongheaded casting, a comic-strip "free" adaptation by former Luis Bunuel collaborator Jean-Claude Carriere, and Forman's heavy-handed direction of material that requires the most sophisticated glancing touch.

The verdict: More thoughtful than Harlin's version, but hardly the invigorating mix of shocks and metaphysical horror needed to revitalize the Exorcist franchise.

To help break the monotony, Frost relies on relentless digital effects; there are so many shots of giant golf balls whizzing toward the screen it looks like the film was meant to be projected in 3-D.

Linear storytelling was never Herzog's strong suit even under the best of conditions. His strength lies in capturing lucid lunacy on film, and Manoel da Silva's descent into the jaws of madness is a straight shot into the heart of darkness, a place familiar to both Herzog and Kinski.

Strictly for the young ones.

The Comancheros is not a terrible film; in fact much of it is entertaining. But it is obviously the effort of two talented men far from their peak powers.

This is a very funny satire of television.

The feminist subtext here is intentional -- the credits list a Wiccan priestess as witchcraft consultant! -- but any subtlety soon gets lost in the thud and blunder of special effects, trendy music and a predictable Hollywood-style climax.

A little too much talk and not enough action, but it's still fun.

Like Night and Day and Words and Music--film biographies about Cole Porter and Rogers and Hart, respectively--Rhapsody In Blue has little to do with the real life of its subject, but, as is the case with those films, its subject's wonderful songs are the main attraction.

The plot is a bit busy but the performances are solid, even though Douglas seems to be doing a reprise of his role in OUT OF THE PAST (1947) as a cruel, unfeeling villain.

The last of seven "Road to" pictures and an awkward attempt at re-creating the fun of the previous films, this one has a few funny moments, but it's so filled with inside jokes that a lot of it will be lost on anyone who hasn't seen the other six movies in the series.

Director Arthur Penn uses every trick in the horror book to pull this one off, but nothing really works, including his accent on scary noises. Everything is forced, contrived, and not too neatly lifted from other classic doppelganger films.

Herman fails to journey beyond the surface-level realities of his central perspective, which makes his film feel half-developed and poorly conceived, and drives it into sensationalism.

Hawn has the right screen persona to carry it off, but her character is lost in a barrage of weak comic moments and absurd action.

Where "Charade" unfolds in a fantasy Paris full of glamorous white people, Demme's film takes place in a gray tangle of streets teeming with multi-ethnic Parisians. Newton and Robbins mimic Hepburn and Matthau, while Wahlberg is the anti-Grant, lumpen and thuggish rather than beguilingly debonair.