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

This coming-of-age drama scores big points for trying to honestly tell a story rather than just pass the time.

Shot in gloomy shades of gray, this earnest but banal story about the legacy of bad parenting strands fine actors in a contrived situation and lets them squirm.

The slim story gets swamped by the stunning visuals.

Uneven and inaccurate as it may be, it's hard to wash out entirely with a movie that explores as neglected an aspect of classic gangster mythology as this one; at the same time, you can't help but wish it did so more successfully.

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.

THE SHADOW is the worst kind of homage, recreating childhood enthusiasms in a manner so clunky and unsophisticated that it's actively off-putting, while entirely missing their essence.

The all-too-vivid simulation of terrorist attacks, including a prolonged scene of a building collapse in which people are seen plummeting to their deaths and crushed under falling concrete, may strike a very different chord with post-9/11 American audiences.

The bad news is that Seitz's protagonists are almost all insufferable: Smug, self-important, opinionated and relentlessly convinced that they're far more sensitive, intelligent and interesting than they are.

YOUNG GUNS is simply not a very good movie--western or otherwise. Fusco's script provides little character development and muddies the narrative with some unlikely supporting characters. Still, it proved to be popular enough to lead to a television spinoff and a sequel in 1990.

Although director Rosman spices up the predictable murders with some stabs at surrealism, a slasher movie is a slasher movie is a slasher movie, and this one soon wears out its welcome.

Slightly better than average Presley fare, Roustabout boasts a better cast than most of the King's films--with Stanwyck's presence lending the production status.

The special effects are unrealistic, as are the dialog and performances. However, despite everything, the picture still makes for great fun.

The diverse elements of the plot are fairly complicated, but Lumet is a strong director who knows how to effectively weave these components together. Gere, in one of his better performances, is the all-important connecting factor. The secondary roles are well cast, with Washington and Learned giving the most assured characterizations.

Disappointing effort from Siegel, although not without some interesting philosophical "hero-antihero" questions.

Since each is more adorable than the one before - and together they're an irresistible mass of squirming speckles - the whole elaborate edifice holds up pretty well.

Unfortunately, the film suffers from the weak script's predictable situations and underdeveloped characters, and the pathos and cliches become hard to take, making Honkytonk Man more of a curiosity piece for followers of Eastwood than a truly compelling story.

This film is pure, empty (if gorgeous) spectacle, and the decision to loose the tongues of the ape planet's humans (they were mute in the original) undermines the contrast that lies at the heart of the story's power.

It's a bad sign when audience enthusiasm peaks during the credits sequence.

Further proof that so-so books often make better movies than good ones.

Though the film's fanciful premise seems more naturally suited to comedy, Bose exploits its more sinister implications surprisingly skillfully until the combined weight of narrative threads involving incest, suicide and murder eventually bog the story down.

The script is often obvious and much of the acting is amateurish (Rakesh's comic sidekicks are just dismal), though Purva Bedi is a shining exception — she's got star quality to burn.

The stunts in Smokey are excellent but the comedy is numbing, and the acting is on a par with a junior high school production of Our Town. Even Gleason comes across badly, and that's a major feat. Adolph Coors and Sons must have been very happy to have a 97-minute commercial for their brew.

Has an intangibly charming goofiness about it that is somehow endearing: here is a movie about teenagers that contains no excessive profanity, no drug references, and no explicit sexual activity.

Music video-trained director Francis Lawrence whips up a witch's brew of gray-on-gray atmosphere, but for all the end-of-the-world mumbo jumbo, nothing much ever seems to be at stake.

Despite Jack Nicholson's galvanizing portrayal, Hoffa is a cold, remote, neo-religious pageant.

There are a few inspired set-pieces -- Ruber's creation of a mechanical army is really quite something -- and the score by David Foster and Carol Bayer Sager is generally fine. But overall, this is a bloodless entry into an already highly formulaic genre.

It's handsomely shot by Stuart Dryburgh and nicely acted, and if it tastes a bit bland, you'll soon forget that, along with just about everything else about it.