As for the Nolte-Short pairing, it’ll do, but it’s no chemical marvel. Nolte, not really a comic natural, gruffs and grumbles his way through as hunky straight man to Short’s calamitous comedian.

There is not enough weight or complexity to the material to justify the serious approach, and while the potential for considerable black comedy exists, Balaban only scratches the surface. The laughs never come.

Slater, who sounds as if he is trying to imitate Jack Nicholson, is the only character who has a shading of personality. His skateboarding buddies are funny, considering one needs a glossary to translate their dialog, while the Vietnamese are mostly sleazy cardboard figures.

Pic’s cast is a grab-bag ensemble with no real center. It eventually finds its emotional core in an affair between crewmen Greg Evigan and Nancy Everhard. A sharp performance by Miguel Ferrer as a punchy, smartmouthed crewmen is diluted when character goes campily berserk.

Kevin Kline as an unorthodox but indispensable detective tracking a serial strangler infuses this improbable Gotham-set romantic policier with personality.

Slow, sonorous and largely satisfying.

This is not a laugh-out-loud film, though there is a lighthearted tone that runs consistently throughout, Griffith's innocent, breathy voice being a major factor.

Hellraiser II is a maggotty carnival of mayhem, mutation and dismemberment, awash in blood and recommended only for those who thrive on such junk.

Bogosian commands attention in a patented tour-de-force. Supporting performances are all vividly realized, notably Michael Wincott’s drug-crazed Champlain fan invited to the studio for a tete-a-tete with the host.

[An] engaging tearjerker.

It's a mature assignment for Cruise and he's at his best in the darker scenes.

The real problem is Malkovich's Valmont. This sly actor conveys the character's snaky, premeditated Don Juanism. But he lacks the devilish charm and seductiveness one senses Valmont would need to carry off all his conquests.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is a wonderfully crafted, absolutely charming remake of the 1964 film "Bedtime Story." In this classy version, Steve Martin and Michael Caine play the competing French Riviera conmen trying to outscheme each other in consistently amusing and surprising setups. Martin takes the crass American role played by Marlon Brando, and Caine plays homage to David Niven by sporting a thin mustache, slicked-back hair and double-breasted blue blazer in a sort of 1930s British yachtsman look.

My Stepmother Is an Alien is a failed attempt to mix many of the film genres associated with the 'alien' idea into a sprightly romp.

Crass, broad, irreverent, wacky fun - and absolutely hilarious from beginning to end.

There's not much kick in this cocktail, despite its mix of quality ingredients. Casually glamorous South Bay is the setting for a story of little substance as writer-director Robert Towne attempts a study of friendship and trust but gets lost in a clutter of drug dealings and police operations.

Scrooged is an appallingly unfunny comedy, and a vivid illustration of the fact that money can't buy you laughs. Its stocking spilling with big names and production values galore, this updating of Dickens' A Christmas Carol into the world of cutthroat network television is, one episode apart, able to generate only a few mild chuckles.

Not altogether charmless, Cocoon: The Return still is far less enjoyable a senior folks' fantasy than Cocoon. An overdose of bathos weighs down the sprightliness of the characters, resulting in a more maudlin than magic effort.

For the most part, pic is about as engaging as what's found on Saturday morning TV.

High Spirits is a piece of supernatural Irish whimsy with a few appealing dark underpinnings, but it still rises and falls constantly on the basis of its moment-to-moment inspirations.

This often hilarious, irreverent and offbeat comedy is the most coherent young Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar has limned thus far.

One of the oddest and most illogical murder cases of modern times is recounted in intimate, incredible detail in the classy, disturbing drama A Cry in the Dark [from John Bryson's Book Evil Angels].

Child's Play is a near-miss at providing horrific thrills in a tale of a doll come to murderous life, told with a knowing tongue-in-cheek attitude. Fun withers in stretching the thin material to feature length.

A fantastically subversive film, a nifty little confection pitting us vs them, the haves vs the have-nots.

A no-frills, workmanlike picture.

Glover turns in a solid job but, as with Hackman, he remains one-dimensional.

Donohoe as the vampire seductress projects a beguiling sexuality that should suck the resistance out of all but the most cold-blooded critics. She is also hilarious, a virtue shared by everyone and everything in The Lair of the White Worm.

Genuine and moving... Script is remarkably mature in its dealings with teens.

Director Mira Nair indulges in some melodramatic explorations, however, dangerously verging on a romanticized Oriental tearjerker mood.

Solid performances by leads James Caan and his humanoid buddy-cop partner Mandy Patinkin move this production beyond special effects, clever alien makeup and car chases.

It’s an uneven melodrama where Tom Hanks exhibits flashes of brilliance as a caustically tongued stand-up comic in a strange, undefinable romance with protege Sally Field.

Buoyed by a beautifully measured star turn by Whoopi Goldberg and a smashing screen debut for young Neil Patrick Harris, Clara's Dream is a powerful, unabashedly sentimental drama.

Cronenberg handles his usual fondness for gore in muted style.

Patty Hearst puts forth much less than its pretensions. Frequently wrapped in surrealistic stylization, film manages only to tell Hearst's side of her kidnapping ordeal.

In an unexpectedly enjoyable way, Crossing Delancey addresses one of the great societal issues of our day - the dilemma of how the 30-ish, attractive, successful, intelligent and unmarried female finds a mate she can be happy with.

The film is full of singing, as the characters break into familiar songs at family gatherings or in the local pub. This isn’t a film based on nostalgia, though; its very special qualities stem from the beautiful simplicity of direction, writing and playing, and the accuracy of the incidents depicted.

A complex, turbulent tale told with admirable simplicity. Film successfully operates on several levels – as study of the primacy of the family unit, an anguished teen romance, a coming-of-age story and a look at what happened to some political radicals a generation later.

Perhaps the saddest chapter in the annals of professional American sports is recounted in absorbing fashion in Eight Men Out.

A mesmerizing reconstruction and investigation of a senseless murder. It employs strikingly original formal devices to pull together diverse interviews.

Fresh, colorful and inventive, Married to the Mob is another offbeat entertainment from director Jonathan Demme.

Robert Englund, receiving star billings for the first time, is delightful in his frequent incarnations as Freddy, delivering his gag lines with relish and making the grisly proceedings funny.

Tucker represents the sunniest imaginable telling of an at least partly tragic episode in recent history.

A film of challenging ideas, and not salacious provocations, The Last Temptation of Christ is a powerful and very modern reinterpretation of Jesus as a man wracked with anguish and doubt concerning his appointed role in life.

Curtis steals the show with her keen sense of comic timing and sneaky little grins and asides.

Monkey Shines is a befuddled story about a man constrained from the neck down told by a director confused from the neck up.

Very little of this is interesting or amusing on paper, which must have been a real challenge to director Randal Kleiser, who ably keeps all the surrounding players in tune to whatever it is that Herman’s up to at any given moment.

One of the most entertaining, best executed, original road pictures ever.

As high tech, rock hard and souped up as an action film can be.

The Dead Pool isn't the best and brightest of the Dirty Harry films, either, but just as invincible. It's possible that Clint Eastwood and crew are just enjoying a bit of self-mockery with this one.

Coming to America starts on a bathroom joke, quickly followed by a gag about private parts, then wanders in search of something equally original for Eddie Murphy to do for another couple of hours. It's a true test for loyal fans.

An unparalleled technical achievement... Yet the story amounts to little more than inspired silliness about the filmmaking biz where cartoon characters face off against cartoonish humans.

Schwarzenegger, who when he dons a green suit is dubbed 'Gumby' by Belushi, is right on target with his characterization of the iron-willed soldier, and Belushi proves a quicksilver foil.

Writer-executive producer John Hughes conjurs up a romance between Candy’s teenage son (Chris Young) and a local girl (Lucy Deakins), but that proves the film’s biggest letdown. Last third of the film is a real mess, as filmmakers try to whip up a crisis that will unite the family, with the redheaded twins getting lost in a mineshaft during a wild rainstorm. Despite all this, the Aykroyd-Candy pairing is charmed. Stephanie Faracy is excellent as Candy’s sweet, happy wife, and Bening is also savvy in her role.

A fanciful and funny bush league sports story where the only foul ball is its overuse of locker-room dialog.

Tug-of-war for dominance among the trio provides the interest in an otherwise ordinary crime story, as Harmon and Connery end up working to piece together clues in a convoluted smuggling caper.

Director/co-writer Gary Sherman demonstrates absolutely no interest in whether this film ever has a modicum of meaning as he rushes from one special effect to another. Even there, Sherman arrives too late.

A shrill, unattractive comedy.

A 13-year-old junior high kid Josh (David Moscow) is transformed into a 35-year-old's body (Tom Hanks) by a carnival wishing machine in this pic which unspools with enjoyable genuineness and ingenuity.

Director George Roy Hill shows little distinction with this material [from Jay Cronley’s book], but then again, the material here isn’t very distinctive. Some of the setups work better than others, though most are of the sitcom variety.

The battle scenes in Rambo III are explosive, conflagratory tableaux that make for wrenching, frequently terrifying viewing. Always at ground zero in the chaos is Rambo - gloriously, inhumanly impervious to fear and danger - whose character is inhabited by Stallone with messianic intensity.

Crocodile Dundee II is a disappointing follow-up to the disarmingly charming first feature with Aussie star Paul Hogan. Sequel is too slow to constitute an adventure and has too few laughs to be a comedy.

Willow is medieval mishmash from George Lucas, a sort of 10th-century "Star Wars" tossed together with a plethora of elements taken from numerous classic fables. Even if Lucas has bastardized his own story with derivative and unoriginal elements, kids probably will love it. For MGM Pictures, b.o. should mean recoupment of its large investment.

Although their duel offers original effects-laden thrills and stunts, it’s too little and too late.

Maniac Cop is a disappointing thriller that wastes an oddball premise and offbeat point-of-view.

Wim Wenders returns to Germany with a sublimely beautiful, deeply romantic film for our times. (Review of Original Release)

Film perfectly weaves together the gruesome behaviour of these bloodthirsty creatures and the comic asides that keep things gliding along.

Two Moon Junction is a bad hick version of Last Tango in Paris down to the poor imitative scoring by Jonathan Elias. Sexual obsession might be the aim, but the result is anything but hot.

With a couple dozen stunt persons and an earthy, warm and supportive partner (Pam Grier), Seagal kicks, kills and crushes with his skillful hands one handful after another of street hoods who try and thwart his mission.

This probably is as good a nightmare as any impressionable boy could have and still be suspenseful enough to get most adults’ hearts going.

Writer-director Hayao Miyazaki has essentially padded a television half-hour into a sluggish theatrical feature.

A solidly crafted depiction of some current big-city horrors and succeeds largely because of the Robert Duvall-Sean Penn teaming as frontline cops.

This novel-cum-feature film (from Jay McInerney's book) is a distinctly morose and maudlin journey through one man's destructive period of personal loss.

Beetlejuice springs to life when the raucous and repulsive Betelgeuse (Keaton) rises from his moribund state to wreak havoc on fellow spooks and mortal enemies.

Biloxi Blues is an agreeable but hardly inspired film version of Neil Simon's second installment of his autobiographical trilogy, which bowed during the 1984-85 season. Even with high-powered talents Mike Nichols and Matthew Broderick aboard, World War II barracks comedy provokes just mild laughs and smiles rather than the guffaws Simon's work often elicits in the theater.

Miami field trip only brings a pastel backdrop to the insipid infighting of the boobs in blue.

Little Nikita never really materializes as a taut espionage thriller and winds up as an unsatisfying execution of a clever premise - a teen's traumatic discovery that his parents are Soviet spies.

It is really Savage, best known for his role as the little boy in The Princess Bride, who is particularly winsome as the smart-alecky Dad stuck in his kid’s pint-size body.

Starring as the prison in this rough penal pic with its special effects-laden horror story is the 87-year-old Wyoming State Penitentiary, which has attracted tourists rather than cons since 1981. The structure takes on all the menace of the house in Amityville Horror or hotel in The Shining.

Frantic is a thriller without much surprise, suspense or excitement. Drama about an American doctor's desperate search for his kidnapped wife through the demi-monde of Paris reveals director Roman Polanski's personality and enthusiasm only in brief humorous moments.

Essentially a collection of sweetly autobiographical anecdotes of English family life during World War II.

As a director, Lee fails to strike the right note between realism and fantasy, and the heavy subject matter just falls with a thud. As an actor, however, Lee does a good job creating a sort of black babe in the woods.

Unrelentingly bleak, Ironweed is a film without an audience and no reason for being except its own self-importance. It's an event picture without the event. Whatever joy or redemption William Kennedy offered in his Pulitzer prize-winning novel is nowhere to be found, surprising since he wrote the screenplay.

A better-than-average supernatural tale [inspired by Wade Davis’ book] that offers a few good scares but gets bogged down in special effects.

Regarded as essentially unfilmable by many observers, so Philip Kaufman has pulled off a near-miracle in creating this richly satisfying adaptation.

She's Having a Baby is an oddly uneven and quasi-serious look into the angst of the early years of a contemporary marriage that parallels TV's thirtysomething. There are many comedic setups which, if they were with less architypically drawn characters, might have delivered the laughs with the refreshingly innocent joy that has been the hallmark of other John Hughes pics.

A tongue-in-cheek sci-fi action pic which owes a considerable debt to the Mad Max movies, Cherry 2000's greatest asset is topbilled Melanie Griffith, who lifts the material whenever she's on screen.

From the start, the film bowls you over with excitement and for those who can latch on, it’s a nonstop ride.

Billed as a comedy/horror flick, Return of the Living Dead Part II is neither scary nor funny and adds salt in the wound with an obnoxious soundtrack of grating rock music.

Carried by snappy dialog and a wonderful ensemble full of familiar faces.

Batteries Not Included could have used more imaginative juices to distinguish it from other, more enchanting Spielbergian pics where lovable mechanical things solve earthly human dilemmas. Still, it’s suitable entertainment for kids.

Enormously entertaining, Broadcast News is an inside look at the personal and professional lives of three TV journlists.

Overboard is an uninspiring, unsophisticated attempt at an updated screwball comedy that is brought down by plodding script and a handful of too broadly drawn characters. Only element that occasionally lifts pic is the work of the redoubtable Goldie Hawn, who gives a gem of a performance.

Watching Oliver Stone's Wall Street is about as wordy and dreary as reading the financial papers accounts of the rise and fall of an Ivan Boesky-type arbitrageur.

A fun and delightfully venal comedy. Very clever and engaging from beginning to end.

It is up to young English thesp Bale to engage the viewer's interest, which he does superbly.

Manon des Sources is the poignant, but more dramatically wobbly, followup to Jean de Florette, producer-director Claude Berri's risky two-film adaptation of a novel by Marcel Pagnol, who, unsatisfied with his own next-to-last feature in 1952, expanded it as a two-part novel.

John Hughes has come up with an effective nightmare-as-comedy in Planes, Trains & Automobiles. Disaster-prone duo of Steve Martin and John Candy repeatedly recall a contemporary Laurel & Hardy as they agonizingly try to make their way from New York to Chicago by various modes of transport.

3 Men and a Baby is about as slight a feature comedy as is made - while at the same time it's hard to resist Tom Selleck, Ted Danson and Steve Guttenberg shamelessly going goo-goo over caring for an infant baby girl all swaddled in pink.