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.