Delicatessen is an ingeniously funny film with a surprisingly sweet romance at its center.

A thoughtful, atmospheric thriller.

Ron Shelton's second outing since his breakout success with Bull Durham aims to be a high-energy remake of The Hustler in a street-basketball setting, but succeeds only intermittently.

Rodney Dangerfield has always had the potential to be one of the funniest men in American movies, and when filmmakers have taken advantage of that potential, the results have often been hilarious. Unfortunately, LADYBUGS squanders his talents in a cheap and crude comedy.

Clearly designed to be a family entertainment, THE CUTTING EDGE has a by-the-numbers quality that's only partly concealed by smooth production values and consistent--if uninspiring--performances.

The worst things about Basic Instinct, though, are the explicit "love" scenes. They're supposed to contribute to a heady equation in which sex, violence and psychology are fused; instead, they're gratuitous, exploitative, and entirely unerotic.

The filmmakers have allowed themselves an overlong 140 minutes in order to preserve as much of the plot as possible, but they have bypassed many of the novel's key ideas and ironies.

An ambitious drama about gang warfare and the culture of violence, American Me is nothing if not earnest. Unfortunately, this doesn't mean it's a particularly successful film; for every bluntly powerful moment, there's another that's crude and obvious, sometimes excruciatingly so.

Clocking in at just under two hours, MY COUSIN VINNY moves at an extremely leisurely pace for a Hollywood farce. But that's just one indication of what makes this appealingly quirky comedy stand apart from more run-of-the-mill fare.

Virtual reality aside, THE LAWNMOWER MAN suffers all the usual problems: the cliched story is further undermined by wooden performances (Fahey, his naturally dark hair stripped to the consistency of a Harpo Marx fright wig, is particularly excruciating) and the inevitable [spoiler omitted] ending.

Levy can't seem to tell if something is funny or not and keeps up the sledgehammer intensity throughout every scene, comic subtlety and timing abandoned in a desperate attempt for laughs--even pained ones.

GLADIATOR breaks no new ground, but it pays off scrupulously, fulfilling--in fact, catering to--audience expectations at every turn. This may not sound like much of an achievement, but when theaters are full of movies that don't deliver on their implicit promises, it's nice to see a movie that gives audiences exactly what they've paid for.

Unfortunately, it is the spirit of adventure that is distinctly lacking in MEMOIRS OF AN INVISIBLE MAN, a dismayingly flat and predictable, special-effects-laden action thriller.

WAYNE: "No way, Professor; we just needed a story so we could string a lot of gags together without it getting too boring."

Medicine Man tries hard to be a film for all tastes, but it ends up appealing to none.

"Masala" refers to a mix of varied spices, and one of the strengths of MISSISSIPPI MASALA is its own collection of colorful characters.

Fried Green Tomatoes is an engaging if sentimental tale, charmingly handled by producer-turned-director Jon Avnet (Risky Business) and flawlessly acted by its four female stars. Plaudits must also go to Geoffrey Simpson, for his splendid cinematography, and to Thomas Newman for his drama-enhancing musical score.

Zanuck and Dexter employ an elliptical narrative style, stringing together vaguely connected scenes that nervously cut away before their full, depressing implications can sink in. The result is a lack of any meaningful character development or narrative drive.

Alas, even the lowest expectations go unmet by FREEJACK, which turns out to be an inexplicably lame, penny-pinched futuristic actioner.

This jovially sinister, middle-class morality tale-cum-horror show is predictable, implausible and fiendishly entertaining.

Marketing-minded folks may be quick to position Guncrazy as a 90s take on Bonnie and Clyde (1967), and its title is certainly meant to evoke Joseph H. Lewis's 1949 classic Gun Crazy. But this film is by no means as brash, startling, or iconoclastic as either. Its quieter character-study nature has more in common with They Live by Night (1949), its remake Thieves Like us (1974), and Badlands (1973). Compared to these three landmarks, Guncrazy comes up lacking in lyricism and resonance, but it does give ample pleasures thanks to a subtly self-aware sense of humor and fine performances by itstwo leads.

Paul Schrader's study of a middle-aged drug dealer, is a return to the director's thematic roots, an exploration of the dark side of the American psyche.

Animator/fabulist Hayao Miyazaki pays homage to Hollywood’s wartime adventure films in this masterwork built around the adventures of a high-flying pig.

A treat for Cronenberg fans, though this could hardly be called a gripping, or emotionally involving, story; you're more likely to need a can of bug spray than a hanky.

Releasing one's self to the new rhythm of this film can be difficult; the story is allusive, the Island history sketchy, and the precise relationships of the family members undefined. Yet, if her suggestive presentation escapes straightforward analysis, one cannot help but be mesmerized by Dash's unique vision.

Grand Canyon successfully recreates the random, haphazard ways in which individual lives intersect, and captures the sense of menace and disintegration that permeate contemporary urban life.

As star, director and co-producer, Streisand shifts the book's focus from the Wingo past to the Tom-Susan love affair. This could have worked had Streisand directed herself better--if, indeed, she had directed herself at all. Instead of a performance, we get smirks, poses, campy shots that linger on her outrageously long manicured fingernails, and radiant, cloying smiles. Streisand's inadequacies, though, are more than compensated for by Nolte's compelling Tom. He brings conviction and depth to the role, treading a fine line between self-pity and self-respect and exposing his frailties with a rare sensitivity.

Once the film gets bogged down in the outback, however, it comes to a virtual stop. Wenders seems to be saying something pretty banal about the emotional emptiness of the recorded image as opposed to the "real thing." If that's the point, why make a film at all?