VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED projects the most basic of human terrors: the fear of group power overtaking individual will is expressed in the children as well as in the government and medical establishment which intervene in the realm of the body by manipulating reproductive decisions.

A star vehicle for rapper Ice Cube (who also cowrote and coproduced), Friday is a lighthearted, comedic presentation of the realities chronicled in dramas like "Boyz N the Hood."

While You Were Sleeping is a mild romantic comedy rooted in class anxiety, but it's nice to see perennial loser-in-love Pullman ("Sleepless in Seattle", "The Last Seduction") get some. Respect, that is.

Jim Carroll's dreamy, pseudo-poetic memoir of a misspent New York boyhood - standard equipment for alienated adolescents of the 90s - is predictably re-tooled as an anti-drug message vehicle.

For everyone who's just dying to know (and can't guess) what it's like to work for Joel Silver, Hollywood mega-producer and notorious egomaniac, Silver's former assistant George Huang has fashioned this mean-spirited revenge comedy. Kevin Spacey is awe-inspiring as the Silver-esque Buddy Ackerman; Frank Whaley is his wimpy whipping boy.

Classy film noir, as you would expect from a team including director Barbet Schroeder (Reversal of Fortune); writer Richard Price (Clockers); and Nicolas Cage, as a loopy, iron-pumping mobster.

Often funny, darker than you'd expect, and firmly grounded in Franken's extensive experience of the 12-Step worldview.

Aside from the racial twist, this is pretty conventional fare, but it's consistently diverting.

Depp's considerable personal charm is the movie's greatest asset. The story is painfully insubstantial, and Dunaway is sadly wasted in the shallow, predictable role of a woman whose barren life blossoms under her husband's renewed attention.

Rob Roy succeeds more as an old-fashioned romance (nice to see Jessica Lange, instead of some babe du jour, as Rob's fiercely proud wife), than as an action epic.

Grown-ups will come away feeling violated by the film's clumsy comedy, ancient plot, and unimaginative action sequences.

Jefferson in Paris is a rich confection indeed, filled with tidbits about fashion, customs, art, and commerce in 18th-century France and America. But like a meal consisting of nothing but petits-fours, this lavish biopic is too much dessert and not enough main course.

If this pairing sounds like movie magic to you, we're sure you'll love the picture.

How well you'll tolerate this utterly unhinged quasi-feminist comic book fantasy depends on your Lori Petty threshold. As the title character--a smartass riot grrrl who rolls through a fanciful postapocalyptic landscape in a tank, occasionally pausing to snuggle and bicker with her mutant kangaroo boyfriend (Ice-T) -- Petty's onscreen virtually nonstop, and her hyperkinetic mugging, jerking, whining, and sassing wears thin after a while.

Kathy Bates, so memorably creepy in "Misery", delivers what may be 1995's most underrated performance in this implicitly feminist melodrama.

Predictable and ultimately saccharine, but occasionally enlivened by Wayans's rather vicious comic sensibility.

Exotica sounds terrifically lurid and interesting, but like most Egoyan films, it's far more interesting in the telling than in the watching.

This lackluster sequel forgoes everything that made the original a superior horror film in favor of simplistic genre cliches.

This unashamedly old-fashioned coming-of-age story is nothing new, but remains highly watchable nevertheless.

Noted French filmmaker Demy's wife Agnes Varda helmed this intensely personal tribute to her late husband. It is her third such tribute and is the only one to look deeply into Demy's vision as a director and his filmmaking techniques.

Ultimately, the comedy here is grounded in self-hatred, hostility, and despair. Nearly everyone who wanders through this brash and deliberately tasteless film is stupid, ungainly, or grotesquely tragic. But this only heightens the pleasure during moments of delirious merriment.

The best part of the movie is the fetid, oppressive atmosphere Hooper works up inside the sweatshop that evocatively serves as an industrial hell. The Mangler itself is an imposing creation, and its gory activities (which are more so on an unrated video version) pack an occasional chill, but too much of the movie is devoted to slack plotting and overstated acting.

There's little new here, but uniformly powerful performances (especially Owen's) give the tale unexpected power and depth, and the exotic details--like the elaborate tribal tattoos worn by Nig's gang, or the Maori chants Boogie learns in reform school--make the Heke family's descent into misery seem fresher than it otherwise might.

A funny, savvy, camp yet family-friendly look at the Generation-X TV icons.

There seems to be a message here about being true to yourself, but it's hard to find it under the blubber jokes.

A good premise spins out of control in the hectic final hour.

The film should have featured more absurd and nonsensical elements. Certainly the plot is ridiculous, and so completely illogical that to see it fall by the wayside in favor of some inspired lunacy would not have been a loss.

Hip, jokey western from cult director Sam Raimi. Recommended as an antidote to anyone still suffering from Wyatt Earp hangover.