The character relationships are solid and there's blessed little in the way of smug, smart talk

Its talky, sluggish script is so bereft of thrills -- intellectual or otherwise -- that even the film's one masterfully staged sequence... falls flat.

If it works at all, THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES functions as a curio for a tube-fed generation nostalgic for the good old days when TV was still a safe place to hide.

Thin story collapses under the leaden star chemistry; capable supporting players can't save this dud.

The film presents its characters in a series of vignettes rather than in a traditional story. While it gives evidence of cinematic skill, it has a tendency to draw attention to its film-school parentage.

POINT OF NO RETURN remains entertaining, mainly thanks to Fonda. One of the sleekest and smartest of the young stars of the 90s, she makes a highly watchable action hero in a genre usually dominated by muscle-bound men.

Handsomely appointed and faultlessly acted, but no more alive than a well-dressed corpse.

Sentimental and predictable, Meily's sweet-natured feature-film debut was hugely popular in the Philippines; its day-to-day details will be exotic to non-Filipino audiences but the characters' dilemmas are couched in the universal language of sitcom complications and fortuitous resolutions.

Voight's performance -- one of the film's pure, trashy delights -- is all leer, sneer and macho swagger, while the rest of the actors feel like the disposable snake-fodder they are.

Its mediocrity guarantees this lavish, soggy retread of futuristic Australian action classic "The Road Warrior" a place in the ranks of forgotten extravaganzas.

Feels more like a 90-minute pilot for a TV series than a feature film.

Both enjoyably lighthearted and proof that even the most stridently purist approach to filmmaking can produce a cliched romantic comedy.

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

Although superficially an odd couple, the outspoken Barr and the restrained Dench work together surprisingly well and a steady stream of jokes aimed at both adults and kids keeps this genial entertainment galloping along at a brisk pace.

Grateful fans so enamored of traditional Irish folk music that they don't care how they come by it may enjoy John Irvin's folk-filled feature, but while there's lots of great Ceili music on tap, it's wrapped in a story so traditional that it's not especially interesting.

Like most contemporary romantic comedies, the film's plot works only if you accept that everyone behaves like a complete and utter idiot at all times.

Hardcore Bond fans may be dismayed by some of the changes, but no one can deny that the action scenes staged by director John Glen are some of the most spectacular of the entire series and well worth the price of admission.

A sweet-natured ode to rave culture saddled with a ridiculously clichéd plot line.

Unfortunately, the result is little more than a glossy parlor trick, a stripped-to-the-bone "Of Human Bondage" recast with two women.

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.

When characters aren't quoting Alfred de Musset, they're speaking in aphorisms of their own, and the dialogue is stylized and stilted. Happily, Kaas, one of France's most popular jazz singers, has a sensuous, sonorous voice, and Lelouch uses it as often as possible; in many ways, the film is a musical.

Only Lynch's over-the-top network executive stands out in this otherwise bland film that tries for satire but neglects to be funny.

More music and less melodrama would serve audiences better.

While the cast is uniformly committed, some are able to make more of the material than others.

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.

It comes as a huge disappointment, then, that having cast Witherspoon as Miss Sharp, director Mira Nair and Oscar-winning screenwriter Julian Fellowes (Gosford Park) were unable to resist that impulse to find 21st-century prototypes in 19th-century literary characters, fictional creations whose values lie not in the way they reflect our own narcissistic times, but the way they reveal so much about their own.

Where Coffy had an exhilarating sense of fun underlying the mayhem, Foxy Brown is a darker, more mean-spirited picture. Rather than treating Foxy's travails as a setup for the inevitable vengeance, it seems to revel in her degradation.

Most of the plot twists are confusing and haphazardly developed, leaving the movie as little more than an excuse to show off Stan Winston's admittedly effective gore effects.