A creepy, atmospheric little film that uses a great cast to its best advantage. Worth seeing.

With remarkable visual panache and a keen sense of irony, Stanley Kubrick rehabilitates Stephen King's trashy, terrifying novel. Not a horror film in any traditional sense, but a perversely comic, occasionally frightening melodrama of intrafamilial rage, THE SHINING retains the Oedipal structure of King's narrative while running rings around its pulpy sensibility.

A darker, richer, and more elaborate film than the original; it suffers most from being just what it is: a middle chapter with no real ending. [Special Edition]

THE LONG RIDERS is one of the last great westerns made in America, directed tautly by Walter Hill from an excellent, well-researched script. The cinematography by Ric Waite is magnificent, the period is beautifully captured, and Ry Cooder's outstanding score nicely incorporates folk music of the era. The whole feeling of this film is one of antiquity, an atmosphere marvelously created by Hill and enhanced by a superb cast.

This is a wonderfully simple idea that succeeds very well indeed: take a bunch of kids from New York's High School of Performing Arts and let them strut their stuff. Fame shows us how much life there still is in moribund genres like the musical.

Obviously relishing the chance to show everything they couldn't back in the early days of exploitation horror, the New World gang breaks all the monster-movie taboos while injecting heavy doses of black humor.

This feeble attempt to revive the characters from the popular TV series "Get Smart" copies the show, but without the sharp humor that made it so popular.

A little stingy in the action and thrills department, but Moore, in his limited way, seems to be having a good time.

The Tin Drum is a disturbing film, rich with black humor, that takes a decidedly bitter and horrific look at the German people.

Although not as powerful, impressive, or exciting as Suspiria, Inferno is still intriguing, effective, and stylish enough to make the narrative unimportant.

One of the most genuinely haunting ghost stories in recent years, The Changeling is much eerier and more effective than the overrated and bombastic Poltergeist.

GILDA LIVE is simply "The Best of Gilda Radner," as the comedienne reprises her most popular characters from TV's "Saturday Night Live" (then at the peak of its initial success). Radner fans may find this a welcome compilation, but there's little here that wasn't done better on the TV show.

With cheesy special effects (even the volcano isn't convincing, considering the film cost $20 million) and a hole-ridden script, this film offers precious little to like.

The two leads are honestly played, and there is a nice feel for the scariness that sex has for adolescents, but the screenplay gets bogged down in silly subplots and stereotypes.

Not everyone's cup of tea, but definitely a must-see for fans of the band.

Vincent turns in a fine performance as the rootless drifter who enters a community gripped by fear and comes to care enough for its denizens to put himself on the line for them.

The rare expert film bio. Coal Miner's Daughter features an Oscar-winning performance by Sissy Spacek as country music queen Loretta Lynn. Masterfully directed by Michael Apted, the film traces the famed country singer's life from her beginnings in a tumbledown shack in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky, through her huge success, marital discord, and battle with prescription drugs.

So ludicrous it's quite funny.

This remake of the classic Hitchcock mystery is a far cry from its predecessor, lacking the style and subtle humor of the master.

Although Foxes's attempt to delve into the problems of modern-day teenagers is admirable, its screenplay is frequently trite, lacks any leavening humor, and too easily ties together its plentiful loose ends with a contrived plot device.

The supporting cast is excellent, especially Scott Wilson as an astronaut who flipped out on the launching pad and aborted his mission. Offbeat, visionary, and challenging.

Wise Blood, an unusual mixture of comedy, tragedy, satire and horror, is an uningratiating but haunting work.

Though the plot is that of a simple revenge western, director George Miller infuses the film with a kinetic combination of visual style, amazing stunt work, creative costume design, and eccentric, detailed characterizations that practically jump out of the screen and grab the viewer by the throat.

Douglas grins and grimaces through his role as the ultimate defender of beautiful Fawcett, and it's all pretty dreadful.

Viewers are spared nothing as Steve Burns undergoes degrading brutality after brutality; virtually nobody is portrayed sympathetically.

The film's real problem is Carpenter's diffuse narrative, which introduces far too many characters--forcing the director consistently to cut away to each story strand, thus destroying much of the suspense. What does work, however, is Carpenter's unmatched visual style and the marvelous photography of Dean Cundey.

The film lacks the usual juvenile raunch, but it also lacks brains in telling its story of an all-night scavenger hunt, involving a lot of dumb jokes and predictable situations.

Abandoning the gritty realism of his first two films, BLUE COLLAR and HARDCORE, screenwriter-turned-director Schrader here adopted a sleek and stylish approach. The result was one of his most satisfying attempts to mesh a European sensibility and his own obsession with moral drift and emotional alienation.