Despite a disappointingly obvious ending, Ricochet is a brutally entertaining film.

Strong performances and sharp dialogue distinguish Jeff Lipsky's melancholy second feature, which charts the two-year course of a "perfect" relationship whose flaws are evident from the outset.

Unrelenting and predictable, this pretentious collaboration between a music video director and the writer of "Revenge of the Nerds" covers all of the bases now required in a road movie thriller, to precious little dramatic effect.

It's too fundamentally light-hearted to wallow in grinding poverty and despair.

Quite enjoyable on its own terms.

The story's self-conscious seaminess cries out for the ministrations of a filmmaker like direct-to-video auteur Gregory Hippolyte.

Since her claim to fame is having brought the first living panda -- a cub named Su Lin -- out of China, Harkness's success is a given, but the footage of pandas in their natural surroundings is enchanting.

Making such a tragedy the backdrop to a love story risks trivializing it, though Chouraqui no doubt intended the film to affirm love's power to help people endure almost unimaginable horror.

Although an improvement thematically over the first film (the childlike awe of the original has been replaced by a very adult fear of impotence), Poltergeist II is terribly disjointed and dramatically unfulfilling.

While the original was a rather cerebral exercise in suspense, the American version has predictably been given a more visceral dimension. The new version is more simplistic, but still works on its own level.

Works better as a look at life among a family of Croatian immigrants in Vienna during the nightmare years of the Balkan conflicts than an exploration of the psychosexual tension between a prostitute and her son.

Even Nicholson's presence can't lift this trash to a one-star listing.

Director Kevin Reynolds isn't so much inspired as determined to tell it with period accuracy, without bothering to be historically accurate.

As movies go, it's far from perfect, but it's always human.

Uniformly predictable complications ensue.

A lovely-to-look-at photo album treatment of Golding's heart of darkness pessimism, this movie misses the point and mood of Lord of the Flies completely.

F. Scott Fitzgerald's tragic love story was brought to the screen with surprising vitality under Brooks' expert hand. He drew fine performances from Taylor, Johnson, and others in a sumptuous MGM production that captured the flavor of expatriate life in the City of Light.

It's wholesome fun for the whole family.

Forgetting that French New Wave directors often turned to Hollywood for inspiration, cinema snobs will doubtless be outraged that Hollywood would dare remake such a beloved Rohmer masterpiece, when in fact, tone aside, "Chloe In The Afternoon" isn't all that different from "The Seven Year Itch."

The rockabilly killer is probably the most entertaining slasher ever to grace the screen--sort of like Elvis Presley playing Norman Bates, complete with musical numbers. Usually it's no mystery why some films go straight to video without theatrical release, but this movie is far above the caliber of most straight-to-video releases.

This film doesn't know who its target audience is. Adults will find it plodding and predictable. Parents of small children should think twice about letting them see this film: the violence is cartoonish, but still brutal, and much of the dialog will be over their heads. Perhaps teenagers will enjoy it (perhaps they'll get some really neat ideas from it, too). John Hughes' vision of Dennis is much more menacing than Ketcham's fans and parents of small children might reasonably expect.

To his eternal credit, Jones gives his considerable all and even coaxes a startling note of poignancy from one scene, while Smith just bops along, lobbing gags and grinning at the special effects.

The downside is that many of these characters are hastily sketched and their stories unsatisfactorily developed.

The plot itself isn't really strong enough to stand alone. And that leaves the film an essentially conventional whodunit, if one with a rather unconventional sleuth at its center.

Everything about Takashi Miike's brilliant and blood-soaked crime thriller comes as a shock.

A leaden excuse for family entertainment, loosely inspired by Jules Verne's 1873 novel, coarsened almost beyond recognition and dominated by Jackie Chan's comic martial-arts schtick.

It's a shame it's not a better movie, but its small virtues include an uncompromising performance by English actor Jonny Lee Miller.

In all, it's fairly harmless, tolerably sentimental and mildly entertaining: just the thing for the kind of holiday afternoon when you've had way too much of your relatives.