52 Pick-Up is a thriller without any thrills. Although director John Frankenheimer stuffs as much action as he can into the screen adaptation of Elmore Leonard's novel (previously filmed by Cannon in Israel in 1984 as The Ambassador), he can't hide the ridiculous plot and lifeless characters.

The script is based on a little-known but nonetheless intriguing historical incident in mid-18th century South America, pitting avaricious colonialists against the Jesuit order of priests. The fundamental problem is that the script is cardboard thin, pinning labels on its characters and arbitrarily shoving them into stances to make plot points.

This social farce is excellently written, fast paced and intelligently directed. Film is hilarious throughout.

Like a relatively dark street on Halloween night, Trick or Treat is ripe for howls and hoots, but only manages to deliver a choice handful of them when the festivities are just about over.

A keenly observed and immaculately crafted vision of the raw side of life. Pic has a distinctive pulse of its own with exceptional performances by Paul Newman and Tom Cruise.

What makes this treatment unique is that the jokes aren’t so much derivative of pop culture, but are instead found in the learned wisdom of a middle-aged woman reacting to her own teenage dilemmas.

Pic has enough gore, suspense and requisite number of shocks to keep most hearts pounding through to the closing credits.

It’s another seamless performance for Hurt. Matlin, who makes her professional acting debut here and is in real life hearing impaired, as is much of the cast, is simply fresh and alive with fine shadings of expression.

'Round Midnight is a superbly crafted music world drama in which Gallic director Bertrand Tavernier pays a moving dramatic tribute to the great black musicians who lived and performed in Paris in the late 1950s.

Hogan is comfortable enough playing the wry, irreverent, amiable Aussie that seems close to his own persona, and teams well with Kozlowski, who radiates lots of charm, style and spunk.

The Jim Jarmusch penchant for off-the-wall characters and odd situations is very much in evidence. The black-and-white photography is a major plus, and so is John Lurie’s score, with songs by Tom Waits. Both men are fine in their respective roles, but Benigni steals the film.

Hopper creates a flabbergasting portrait of unrepentent, irredeemable evil.

Film is a distasteful piece of work that displays the worst in men. Leonard Michaels’ screenplay (from his novel) is all warts and no insight, full of self-loathing for the gender. In addition, film making is as tired as the material. Pic plays like a stageplay, so static is Peter Medak’s direction.

But centerstage is the completely illogical relationship between the hustler and missionary. Penn seems game and has energy while Madonna can’t for a moment disguise that her character makes no sense at all.

An unpleasantly gripping thriller... Interesting Hitchcockian guilt transference territory and Mann's grip on his material is tight and sure. Director is at all times preoccupied by visual chic.

Scripters have written inspired dialog for this quartet of plucky boys at that hard-to-capture age when they’re still young enough to get scared and yet old enough to want to sneak smokes and cuss.

Success of the low budget Chain Saw in 1974 spawned a generation of splatter films which largely have lost the power to shock and entertain. Not so Chain Saw 2. Director Tobe Hooper is back on the Texas turf he knows.

Every character is a caricature, from the rifle-toting, Bible-quoting warden (Sybil Danning) to the lineup of lovelies who parade as reform school girls. Pat Ast, as the cantankerous and corpulent head matron, and Williams play their rotten roles to the hilt and get most of the juicy lines.

David Cronenberg's remake of the 1958 horror classic The Fly is not for the squeamish. Casting Jeff Goldblum was a good choice as he brings a quirky, common touch to the spacey scientist role.

Under Nick Castle’s careful direction, scenes never become maudlin, which is remarkable considering the potential of the subject matter. Deakins and Underwood handle their difficult roles with amazing grace.

This worthy but flawed attempt to examine an independent young woman of the 1980s was lensed, in Super 16mm, in 15 days but doesn’t appear jerrybuilt.

Blake Edward’s obsession with the slapstick comedy genre has produced some all-time comedy classics and some best-forgotten clinkers. A Fine Mess belongs in the latter category.

Pic lapses into formulaic predictability with nearly an hour of frenetic chase scenes and technically perfect explosions from Industrial Light & Magic. Action comes sporadically alive in scenes with scientist Jones, who becomes possessed by the spirit of an evil Dark Warlord that entered his body during the same fateful mishap that brought Howard to Earth. There is an abundant amount of special effects wizardry that emanates mostly from Jones as he transforms into a monster, but it is not spectacularly unique enough to distinguish this film from other, more entertaining, sci-fi thrillers.

Instead of creating an eye-opening panorama, Flight of the Navigator looks through the small end of the telescope. Life on Earth is magnified but without an expansive vision.

Writer-director Tom McLoughlin, who made the scare entry One Dark Night, puts comic spin on some of the predictable material and turns in a reasonably slick performance under the circumstances.

Master manipulator Stephen King, making his directoral debut from his own script, fails to create a convincing enough environment to make the kind of nonsense he's offering here believable or fun.

Heartburn is a beautifully crafted film with flawless performances and many splendid moments, yet the overall effect is a bit disappointing. Where the film does excel is in creating the surface and texture of their life.

Pic provokes a few chuckles along the way, but no guffaws.

James Cameron's vault into the big time after scoring with the exploitation actioner The Terminator makes up for lack of surprise with sheer volume of thrills and chills - emphasis is decidedly on the plural aspect of the title.

Roman Polanski's Pirates is a decidedly underwhelming comedy adventure adding up to a major disappointment.

Williams can be a terrific actor/comedian, but the spark isn’t there. Somehow, Murray might have come up with cleverer ways of getting back at complaining guests (Andrea Martin, Steven Kampmann), nerdy, sex-crazed weaklings (Rick Moranis and Eugene Levy, respectively) and the other expected amalgam of folks.

Film lacks much of Mamet's grittiness, but is likable in its own right.

Director John Carpenter seems to be trying to make an action-adventure along the lines of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. The effect goes horribly awry.

A few amusing little notions are streched to the point of diminishing returns in Psycho III.

In Under the Cherry Moon, Prince tries to direct too, giving himself a lot of closeups kissing but hardly any of him singing. What is left is a trite story about a rich girl and a poor musician (Prince) that's set on the Riviera and shot in, of all things, black and white.

Ruthless People is a hilariously venal comedy about a kidnapped harridan whose rich husband won’t pay for her return.

Nonstop banter between the two stars is rowdy, intimate, natural and often very funny. Hyams keeps most of it fresh, including the action ending, staged within one of Chicago’s architectural spectacles, the cavernous, glass-enclosed Illinois State Building.

Script delivers any number of wise old Eastern homilies. Anyone over the age of 18 is liable to start fidgeting when Macchio dominates the action, but then viewers beyond that advanced age are irrelevant with this film.

Loss of intrigue with a scattered plot involving art fraud and murder is made up for by an often witty, albeit lightweight dialog led by the ever-boyish star Robert Redford.

A warm, comedy-laced doomsday story. Using clever one-liners and many humorous situations, Brickman manages successfully to sugarcoat the story’s serious message.

A pic that skillfully combines comedy and thriller, romance and sleaze

Paucity of invention here lays bare the total absence of plot or involving situations.

Comic book crime meller suffers from an irredeemably awful script, and even director John Irvin’s engaging sense of how absurd the proceedings are can’t work an alchemist’s magic.

Tobe Hooper's remake of Invaders from Mars is an embarrassing combination of kitsch and boredom.

Jake Speed is fun - a deliberately mindless adventure that keeps tongue firmly in cheek.

Cobra is a sleek, extremely violent and exciting police thriller.

This time around, co-scripters Mark Victor and Michael Grais (who wrote the first Poltergeist with Steven Spielberg) have the focus of evil in human form, in the perfectly cast, since deceased, Julian Beck.

Set in the world of naval fighter pilots, pic has strong visuals and pretty young people in stylish clothes and a non-stop soundtrack.

Coline Serreau's comedy about three hardened bachelors saddled with a newborn baby, produced on a modest budget and without bankable talent, is warm, hilarious and well-made. Serreau's direction is bright and confident, avoiding the saccharine pitfalls of the material.

What could have been a better film delving into complexities of one tough-but-vulnerable alcoholic sheriff out to bust a cocaine ring, instead ends up an oddly-paced work that is sometimes a thriller and sometimes a love story, succeeding at neither.

The tale of American photojournalist Richard Boyle’s adventures in strife-torn Central America, Salvador is as raw, difficult, compelling, unreasonable, reckless and vivid as its protagonist.

Legend is a fairytale produced on a grand scale, set in some timeless world and peopled with fairies, elves and goblins, plus a spectacularly satisfying Satan. At the same time, the basic premise is alarmingly thin, a compendium of any number of ancient fairytales.

Audiences will respond to the very strong performances of the two leads, especially Walken in one of his best roles.

Absolute Beginners is a terrifically inventive original musical for the screen. Daring attempt to portray the birth of teenagedom in London, 1958, almost exclusively through song is based upon Colin MacInnes' cult novel about teen life and pop fashion in the percolating moments just before the youth cultural explosion in the early 1960s.

This madcap spoof on The Incredible Hulk is an outlandish mix of gory violence and realistic special effects.

Critters resemble oversize hairballs and roll like tumbleweeds when prodded into action, the perfect menace for this irritatingly insipid and lightweight film which unfolds with plodding predictability and leaves few cliches unturned.

As always, director Stephen Frears does a superb job of work when given a good script, and this is a very good script. It’s peopled with interesting characters, allowing for a gallery of fine performances and situations.

Distinguished by superb ensemble acting, intelligent writing and stunning design.

The Money Pit is simply the pits. There is really very little else to be said about this gruesomely unfunny comedy. Unofficial remake of the 1948 Cary Grant-Myrna Loy starrer Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House begins unpromisingly and slides irrevocably downward from there.

Cast of cartoon misfits is still basically intact and if Police Academy 3 has any charm it’s in the good-natured dopeyness of these people. No bones about it, these people are there to laugh at.

Drawn from real life, the conflict between cultures is good for both a laugh and a sober thought along the way.

Seneca acquits himself very nicely, while director Walter Hill pulls of the expected professional mob, but he pushes so hard for pace that he skates right over the opportunities for thought that the subject calls for.

Director Russell Mulcahy can’t seem to decide from one scene to the next whether he’s making a sci-fi, thriller, horror, music video or romance – end result is a mishmash.

Helen Shaver, playing the lead, does a most commendable job as a character who starts by being all tied up inside, and ends up by melting and opening up to emotions she couldn’t even conceive before.

A rather intelligent (if not terribly original) look at adolescent insecurities.

Filmmakers Sean S. Cunningham and Steve Miner scored hits with several simple Friday the 13th films but tackle a more complex story here with embarrassing results.

The virtual absence of anything interesting happening between them - like plausible attraction, exotic, amazing sex, or, God forbid, good dialog - leaves one great big hole on the screen for two hours.

The Hitcher is a highly unimaginative slasher that keeps the tension going with a massacre about every 15 minutes.

Michael Ritchie’s direction lacks his usual bite and eye for detail. There is nothing spontaneous about the action and football footage is also surprisingly dull.

Basic premise here is so strong that it proves well-nigh indestructable, even in the face of numerous implausibilities, some silly dialogue and less-than-great casting in secondary roles.

With its emphasis on youthful idealism despoiled by treacherous, manipulative adults, Lady Jane emerges as a tragic historical romance tinged with a strong 1960s feeling...Performances are all top-drawer, beginning with newcomer Helena Bonham Carter in the title role.

He (Allen) makes nary a misstep from beginning to end in charting the amorous affiliations of three sisters and their men over a two-year period.

It’s a loving caricature of the nouveau riche (Beverly Hills variety) and although it is more of a comedy of manners than a well-developed story, there are enough yocks and bright moments to make it a thoroughly enjoyable outing.

Scenes on the ice look great and Lowe truly looks like the fast and accurate son-of-a-gun hockey player he’s supposed to be.

Not so much about power as about p.r., this facile treatment of big-time politics and media, featuring Richard Gere as an amoral imagemaker, revolves around the unstartling premise that modern politicians and their campaigns are calculatedly packaged for TV. In spite of relentless jet-propelled location hopping that helps to stave off boredom, Power never gets airborne.

The Trip to Bountiful is a superbly crafted drama featuring the performance of a lifetime by Geraldine Page.

David Beaird avowedly set out to imitate the screwball comedies of the 1930s and 1940s and has succeeded admirably, thanks to adorably spunky Deborah Foreman and her stuffy foil, Sam J. Jones. They make quite a pair.

Director Sidney J. Furie fills in the rest with breakneck action and some dandy dogfights. Much of the dialog is simply laughable.

Troll is a predictable, dim-witted premise executed for the most part with surprising style.

The Clan of the Cave Bear is a dull, overly genteel rendition of Jean M. Auel's novel. Handsomely produced on rugged Canadian exteriors, this is the story of pre-history's first feminist.

Watching Revolution is a little like visiting a museum - it looks good without really being alive. The film doesn't tell a story so much as it uses characters to illustrate what the American Revolution has come to mean. Despite attempting to reduce big events to personal details, Revolution rarely works on a human scale.

It’s a dazzlingly successful addition to [Kurosawa's] distinguished career.

It may be a long way to go to a distant sun system to get to a familiar place, but the $33 million project is largely successful in establishing a satisfying bond.

At two-and-a-half hours, Out of Africa certainly makes a leisurely start into its story. Just short of boredom, however, the picture picks up pace and becomes a sensitive, enveloping romantic tragedy. Nonetheless it’s a long way to go for a downbeat ending, which may hurt broad appeal.

Chillingly hilarious.

There are some great scenes and great performances in The Color Purple, but it is not a great film. Steven Spielberg’s turn at ‘serious’ filmmaking is marred in more than one place by overblown production that threatens to drown in its own emotions. But the characters created in Alice Walker’s novel are so vivid that even this doesn’t kill them off and there is still much to applaud (and cry about) here.

Clue is campy, high-styled escapism. In a short 87 minutes that just zip by, the well-known board game's one-dimensional card figures like Professor Plum and others become multi-dimensional personalities with enough wit, neuroses and motives to intrigue even the most adept whodunnit solver.

As a sequel to Romancing the Stone, the script of The Jewel of the Nile is missing the deft touch of the late Diane Thomas but Lewis Teague's direction matches the energy of the original.

Chorus often seems static and confined, rarely venturing beyond the immediate. Attenborough merely films the stage show as best he could.

Spies is not very amusing. Though Chase and Aykroyd provide moments, the overall script thinly takes on eccentric espionage and nuclear madness, with nothing new to add.

Robert Altman directs a fine cast with all the authority and finesse a good play deserves, so it's too bad the play fooled them all. Sam Shepard's drama of intense, forbidden love in the modern West is made to seem like specious stuff filled with dramatic ideas left over from the 1950s.

Young Sherlock Holmes is another Steven Spielberg film corresponding to those lamps made from driftwood and coffee tables from redwood burl and hatchcovers. It’s not art but they all serve their purpose and sell by the millions.

Beyond its visceral appeal, Rocky IV is truly the worst of the lot, though Stallone himself is more personable in this one and that helps.

Pic shies away from the world of classical dance, personified by leading man Mikhail Baryshnikov, in favor of Gregory Hines' 'improvography' and assorted modern stuff in blatant music video contexts.

Cannon’s remake of King Solomon’s Mines treads heavily in the footsteps of that other great modern hero, Indiana Jones – too heavily. Where Jones was deft and graceful in moving from crisis to crisis, King Solomon’s Mines is often clumsy with logic, making the action hopelessly cartoonish. Once painted into the corner, scenes don’t resolve so much as end before they spill into the next cliff-hanger.

Weak script, poor acting and miscasting aside, it's the power of the subject that makes this an enjoyable ride. Writer/director Richard Brooks thoroughly researched the Territory of the compulsive gambler and captures the obsession with almost a documentary eye.

Target is a spy thriller that's not only completely understandable and involving throughout, but also continually surprising along the way. It also strangely contains a few scenes of dreadful writing, acting and direction.

The pic is loaded with jock humor and incidental comments that allow the characters’ frustrations to seep out. Audiences will love Burstyn’s warm wrinkles and visit with her daughters to a male strip joint, as well as Hackman’s workmanlike heroism.