In spite of its harmlessness and enjoyable supporting cast, Oscar is irrefutable evidence of the cynicism and insularity of Hollywood power brokers and hack filmmakers.

Despite the considerable creative and technical talents of those involved, Fat Man And Little Boy is slow, stilted, and stultifying.

With friends like these, the poor guy took what he probably thought was the easy way out.

An amazing artifact; the decor and lighting mix '70s tackiness with odd '50s touches, the sound design is elaborate.

The screenplay relies heavily on movieland cliches about the mentally ill being saner than the rest of us, while Kagan's direction is unimaginative and made-for-TVish. Still, appealing performances by Winkler, Field, and Ford nearly compensate for the lack of inspiration behind the camera.

So outrageously, unregenerately stupid that you might be tempted to think it's smart. But it's not: It's as dumb as Georgia dirt.

McTiernan's extensive action background is nowhere evident in the murky, all-but-impossible to follow battle sequences.

Should please undiscriminating fans. But it in no way improves on the clichéd formula.

The film's secret weapon is its kicky soundtrack.

For all its tongue-in-cheek toying with images, it doesn't reward attempts at serious intellectual analysis. It has the air of a surprisingly juvenile lark, a pop-influenced prank whose charms are immediately apparent and wear thin with repetition.

By the film's big finale, the whole thing has begun to feel distinctly ridiculous.

What begins as an entertainingly contrived lark soon feels like a poorly plotted muddle.

Cowriter and director Joel Schumacher keeps things moving, skipping adroitly from one narrative thread to another. Well he should, since it's unlikely any of the subplots could have stood on their own, and very few penetrate deeper into the human condition than the average magazine advertisement.

Just because it was written and directed by a woman doesn't mean the title isn't exactly the vulgar double entendre you think.

Under direction that can only be described as scatterbrained by choreographer-turned-director Kenny Ortega (NEWSIES), HOCUS POCUS runs off in so many directions at once that it keeps tripping over itself behind a plot that doesn't make the slightest bit of sense.

For all the tear-jerking plot twists, it's a glumly dry-eyed affair.

The effectiveness of this kind of issue-driven give and take relies heavily on casting, and Ritchie puts himself at a disadvantage: Madonna looks terrific in a bikini but she can't act, and the younger Giannini is stunt casting.

An empty reshaping of Grand Hotel, held together by disaster in the sky. Airport will be remembered as the trailblazer of the disaster epic, one of the most trivial genres in the history of motion pictures.

It seems the children's grim purpose on earth is to be destroyed in a violent manner, enabling fearful, warlike, and ignorant modern man to learn a valuable lesson about himself.

Normally, this situation comedy would provide its own built-in laughs, but here the situations are dominated by Pryor's forced, manic behavior, which removes him from empathy and offers the subservient story nothing more than casual interest.

The good news is that Fishburne also stars, and has recruited a talented group of actors to flesh out the cast; the bad news is that no one seems to have been on hand to help out with the rest of film.

The talented Bettis works her heart out, but McKee apparently directed her to play May as a quivering crazy from the start.

Unmotivated, often plodding, and singularly without humor, this film could have been terrific.

[A] sleazy, generally embarrassing Hitchcock knock-off.

No amount of style or good acting can disguise the fact that this downbeat Israeli comedy is little more than a sudsy soap-opera with a distinctly unsavory aftertaste.

The film is a gorgeous nocturne of surprisingly little substance, a sleek advert for youthful anomie that never quite equals the sum of its pretensions.

Acouple of well-earned laughs but ultimately overstays its welcome.

Long sequences of Stone in risque sexual situations do little to counteract gratingly bad dialogue, identikit characters, and Phillip Noyce's by-the-numbers direction.