While not entirely successful, Mortal Thoughts is surprisingly compelling. Headly and Moore go all-out with their working-girl mannerisms, but their friendship rings true and their ill-considered decisions are made strangely believable by their desperation.

Watching this thinly written, intellectualized caper film, one realizes how far downhill we've come since Ernst Lubitsch's Trouble in Paradise or even Jules Dassin's Topkapi. If Object of Beauty were to have worked as a comedy of manners, it would have needed a director with some champagne in his bloodstream and a cast with some insouciance in their bones.

OUT FOR JUSTICE's only real weakness is Seagal himself. Always an icon rather than an actor, Seagal's face appears puffy and he's developing jowls. This doesn't bode well for his future as an action hero, since looks count; ugly guys are relegated to the heavy roles, and it's hard to imagine Seagal settling for such an ignoble fate.

Haynes's feature debut, is an exercise in cinema of ideas that, while audacious and occasionally compelling, is ultimately less than the sum of its parts.

Unfortunately, Defending Your Life suffers from a slushy-headed pop fever.

Overall, The Comfort of Strangers seems tremendously overwrought for no good reason.

CAREER OPPORTUNITIES is an entertaining film with interesting characters the viewer can actually care about.

A reasonably entertaining blend of Three Stooges and Bugs Bunny, using gracefully choreographed martial-arts slapstick without any infantile sound effects.

The work of Hackman and Mastrantonio keeps the action afloat and more credible than it deserves to be.

Producer Irwin Winkler's directorial debut is a well-intentioned history lesson that may play like a clear-eyed relevation for the last person in the world not yet aware of the period of the Hollywood blacklist. For everyone else, Guilty By Suspicion is a mediocre, pointless non-examination of a paranoid, hysterical historical tragedy.

It's not perfect, but PERFECT WEAPON at least furnishes action aficionados with a hero who has a life beyond the floormat of a kung fu school. Speakman may augur a new breed of action hero--a 90s kind of fella who's survived both martial arts classes and sensitivity training sessions. Men will be enthusiastic over his fast footwork; women will be impressed by his ability to carry on an intelligent conversation.

As with many Hollywood films before it, TRUE COLORS is a film with no discernable reason for existence, apart from the sheer joy of the filmmaking process itself. Far from being its own reward, however, the film is a dull, unreasonable cypher.

The film's sense of humor is relentlessly smutty. Rifkin attempts to wring laughs from gross food, breasts, garbage and sex with fat women. He is largely unsuccessful.

A supremely slick piece of entertainment where style triumphs over substance.

Despite its preachiness, we all know New Jack City is making the right statement on drugs, racism, the system, etc. But the fact is it's not very good.

Most certainly, the practice of martial arts is more rigorous than the mise en scene displayed in American Ninja 4: The Annihilation would indicate. Indeed, any term denoting film structure hardly applies to this cinematic hash.

By recreating things too well, the film itself becomes as boring, indulgent and over-stuffed as its hero.

The movie almost seems the same as the Bride herself--begun with all the correct parts, but eventually self-destructing. Before it falls apart, however, The Bride of Re-Animator does still have time for a number of clever, outrageous bits.

One of the worst attempts at comedy ever filmed.

CADENCE is watchable while it lasts, with a generous leavening of humor, but the film keeps throwing emotional punches that never quite connect.

Hopkins plays the cannibalistic doctor with a quiet, controlled erudition, lacing his performance with moments of black humor. His Lecter is a sort of satanic Sherlock Holmes whose spasms of violence are all the more terrifying because they erupt from beneath such an intelligent and refined mask.

Unlike Woody Allen's New York City, which becomes a staging area for character angst and transformation, Martin's L.A. stifles the characters.

Sleeping With The Enemy teeters constantly on the verge of silliness but director Joseph Ruben keeps the cornball melodrama scaled down to a pleasant lull.

If you want to stoke children's imaginations you've got to offer them something more inspiring and graceful than this film, which could give video games a good reputation.

The puppets are depicted simply but effectively, mixing real puppets, undersized actors in costumes, and stop-motion animation. Richard Band's haunting, waltz-timed theme music is back, and visuals expert David Allen, who animated the puppets in the first film, steps behind the cameras here for a somewhat wobbly job of directing.

POPCORN seems to be a case of too many ideas; the basic story could probably have made a very effective short. The acting in the film varies greatly, and some mediocre dubbing adds to the amateur feel.

Zeffirelli's production is neither high art nor lowbrow pandering, but something in between.

This has got to be the first time in history that a boy-and-his-dog love story was ruined by having no chemistry between the romantic leads! Hawke doesn't even seem comfortable with the dog. If you want to see a great boy-and-his-dog story, check out Lassie Come Home.