The problem with RUNAWAY is that it never reaches deeper than a playful level, amounting to nothing more than great but shallow entertainment. Selleck provides a thoughtful performance, coming across as a real, feeling person instead of the expected Rambo-esque tough-guy stereotype.

Lavish, interesting, evocative but strained and self-conscious, The Cotton Club is all watchable curiosity.

DUNE is visually delightful but choppy, confusing, and overloaded with exposition. Moreover, most of the thematic material that made the novel work--subtexts involving incestuous desire, capitalism vs. environmentalism, and Middle East politics--is simply missing.

As a standard science-fiction film, 2010 is fine. It has all the right plot elements, dramatic tension, and eye-popping special effects. The performances are uniformly good, the space-adventure scenes are excitingly handled, and the reappearance of HAL 9000 and Dullea is downright eerie. Yet it's hard to get over the fact that the purpose of this film is to tear down all the awe-inspiring effects of 2001. The sequel simply fails to fascinate and awe us like the original did.

What could have been an interesting and funny period piece under the directorship of original screenwriter Edwards is turned into a tedious, infantile mess by director Benjamin.

Jeannot Szwarc's direction is flat and uninspired, emphasizing the jokey elements without any sense at all for the material.

The basic flaw in Falling in Love, however, is that no one in the film--including the lovers--seems to be in love.

One of the most intelligent and terrifying horror films of the 1980s.

This is a terrifically witty, refreshingly unpretentious science-fiction film with the least likely and most likable heroines in memory. All the performers are excellent, especially Maroney, who can veer from petulant to heroic in the blink of an eye.

As an action picture, Missing In Action works fairly well. Norris is a worthy hero, shooting and kicking Asian enemies right and left, and the film is blessed with production values that make it quite watchable.

As slasher films go, this is about average. The sets are cheap, with most of the budget seemingly going to the gore effects.

It's light, mostly amusing, and better than the second Burns-God film, but not as good as the first.

No Small Affair, while nothing special, at least doesn't resort to the usual teen sex-fantasy cliches and gains more points for what it isn't (sophomoric) than what it is (occasionally touching).

Superbly scripted, the film features wonderful performances from all its major players. Equally brilliant, especially in a film that emphasizes script and character, is the cinematography by Robby Muller, perfectly capturing the notion of "America." A final factor in PARIS, TEXAS's success is the remarkably haunting score by blues musician Ry Cooder.

Fuller has taken a basic Agatha Christie-type plot and bathed it in social issues; A Soldier's Story is an insightful period drama as well as a totally engaging character study. The picture does become a trifle talky at times, thus betraying its stage origin, but Fuller's words are almost always interesting and powerful and make worthwhile listening.

An amazingly effective picture that becomes doubly impressive when one considers its small budget.

Contrived, shallow, distasteful, and ultimately pointless, BODY DOUBLE is more an exercise in empty cinematic style than an engrossing thriller. Although cinematographer Burum executes some absolutely breathtaking camera moves, his effort goes for naught when pitted against director De Palma and cowriter Avrech's insipid narrative. What De Palma has done here is simply take elements from two superb Alfred Hitchcock films, REAR WINDOW and VERTIGO, and combine them into one insipid film. While Griffith is sexy and appealing in her role, Wasson's character is so bland that he generates little interest.

This flawed but interesting Freudian melodrama spends about 70 minutes making points and the last 30 minutes losing them.

Crammed into 130 minutes of screen time, Le Carre's story loses much of its motivation, and although there is plenty of action and suspense, often it seems that the action is happening in the wrong places to the wrong people.

By common consensus, Stop Making Sense is the best concert film ever made.

The movie belongs to Nelson, who displays a natural screen charm, but Rip Torn also contributes an excellent performance as a good ol' boy concert promoter.

Director Robert Benton effectively re-creates depression-era Texas in this moving tale that landed the second Oscar for Field.

An admirable attempt at a fresh version of an old genre, Teachers falls short, but not by much.

Full of the lush, confusing images one comes to expect in a Nicolas Roeg film.

This movie is a compendium of every element in every inane teenage movie you've ever seen. The only reason anyone would watch it would be if they were being punished or were suffering from a heretofore incurable case of insomnia.

Shyer's direction was on the money most of the time but was just a little flabby occasionally--perhaps because he cowrote the script with Meyers and hated to lose a precious word.

If you're a Martin fan, you'll love All of Me; if you aren't, there's still enough fun in spots to make it worth your time.

Despite several bad or indifferent performances, though, the film does succeed in its primary goal, to provide 90 minutes of fast-moving and fairly exciting action.