Diane Keaton's kooky sensibilities as a director are ideally suited to the sweet madness of Unstrung Heroes.

The central story itself is not distinctive, and though Lee certainly churns up a lot of dust, he never captures the mythic quality that made Price's original seem so much bigger than its almost generic cast of players.

Directed by Britain's Beeban Kidron, To Wong Foo has a split personality—it feels like three separate spliced-together movies with the same characters. Part I is the most fun, as we watch Swayze and Snipes undergo their transformation, a la Torch Song Trilogy.

Nadja has some delicious qualities. Most delectable of all is Elina Lowensohn as Nadja, the brooding daughter of Count Dracula, an otherworldly being with ebony lipstick, lusciously dark eyebrows, a dark hood and a great accent to match.

Except for pedophiles, it's hard to imagine who'll be drawn to this irresponsible Little Bo Peep show.

Though the actor (Walken) does little more than stroll through the film, he creates such an immediate sense of electricity that everyone else seems dim by comparison. Angels, devils or cops, they just aren't in his league.

Desperado also has some entertaining twists, some sexy goings-on, but on the whole, watching the film is about as much fun as sitting on a cactus.

This knowing, low-budget comedy will appeal to men, who'll recognize their behavior, but also to women, who'll see it as goosing the gander.

A mix of martial-arts and special-effects magic, the film serves its nonstop confrontations either straight up or with a twist (as when they involve Kombatants with special powers, like Sub-Zero, Reptile and Scorpion).

Though the script is predictable, it's not too clumsy.

Nothing more than an over-designed lobster pot. After following the beckoning twists and turns, you're left trapped and more than a little disappointed for getting in so deep.

The film fleetingly touches on the underfunding of schools and other administrative problems as well as the more compelling personal issues of teen pregnancy and violence. But the characters are so poorly drawn and underdeveloped that they seem to be little more than personifications of these societal ills.

A phenomenally atrocious movie—so bad, in fact, that you might actually manage to squeeze a few laughs out of it.

Because of the square, lackluster way that director Michael Gottleib has staged his material, the whole production seems sort of limp and perfunctory.

A captivating comic allegory about daring to be different in the face of conformity.

Even with its cyberspace connection, the story comes across as flat and tired, merely a pretext for the filmmakers' occasionally dazzling but ultimately numbing special effects. The world of Virtuosity may be spanking new, but the ideas are yesterday's news.

Part comedy of manners, and mostly gender warfare, "Something" is designed to get the partisan juices boiling. Screenwriter Callie Khouri, who wrote the marvelous "Thelma & Louise," has a gift for catching the oppression of women in everyday situations and putting a sanguine comic twist on it. But in her zeal to portray a world full of male scum, she creates a morally mismatched, pandering scenario.

Waterworld isn't "Fishtar," but Kevin Costner's pricey, post-apocalyptic sloshbuckler isn't a seafaring classic either.

This summer Bullock is in the driver's seat of The Net, a sort of chase movie on the information highway from veteran producer-turned-director Irwin Winkler, and not only is the film a comedown, it's a far less flattering showcase for her talents as well.

On the one hand, it's a diverting entertainment for children and young adults; on the other, it's a ludicrous fantasy about a war whose complexities cannot be contained by facile metaphors.

Savagely funny satire of the world of independent filmmaking.

Ultimately, [Heckerling's] portrait is affectionate and, in places, even sweet, enabling us to laugh at them and embrace them at the same time.

Ultimately done in by two-dimensional characterizations and poor acting.

It's fists and feet that do the talking in Under Siege 2 and they prove eloquent enough.

Pitiful.

Director Roger Donaldson may have started out aiming for intentional thrills, but ends up with unintentional comedy as his characters do and say the darndest things.

The great Cornish king becomes merely a corny one as the tale devolves into a compromise between the principles of Camelot and of Hollywood.

The lean and efficient screenplay, based on the book "Lost Moon," by Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger, is full of the terse poetry and dry humor of people in crisis.

Power Rangers is good junk.

The scenario (written by Carl Binder, Susannah Grant and Philip Lazebnik) is disappointingly wan and obsequious.

This spooky film's ostensible subject—an environmental illness known as multiple chemical sensitivity—is merely a starting place for this mesmerizing horror movie, feminist tract and medical mystery.

Sometimes thrilling, but rarely inspired, it is thoroughly-almost perfectly-adequate.

An enchanting Italian serio-comedy about the most unlikely of cinematic subjects-the origins, structure and reach of poetry.

A celebration of buddies and butts, it's an unconventionally structured, wonderfully acted group portrait of the regulars at a Brooklyn cigar store.

As if aware that Congo is the least interesting adventure ever filmed, screenwriter John Patrick Shanley (who once wrote a funny movie called "Moonstruck") tries to inoculate the activities with humor.

Party Girl, which director and co-writer Mayer made for less than $1 million, is hip and contemporary without being archly so.

While this adaptation of Waller's treacly bodice-ripper leaves out a lot of the lurid excess, it is not altogether free of pomposity.

This doggy flick, starring Matthew Modine, Nancy Travis, Eric Stoltz and Max Pomeranc, is one of the weirdest, most depressing family films ever made.

Brad Silberling, a TV director (Brooklyn Bridge, NYPD Blue) making his feature debut, obviously is out of his element in this grandiose extravaganza of sets and effects. Still, that doesn't explain the inert performances of Moriarty and her henchman, Eric Idle, and sundry other supporting characters. Much of the blame belongs to Sherri Stoner, Deanna Oliver and the many ghost writers who created this ghoulish hash of teen romance, father-and-child reunion and monster mash.

With pulpy material to begin with, the film's ham-fisted, novice director Robert Longo seems to be the major incompetent. [25 May 1995, p.M24]

A rambling disappointment.

Cuaron approaches the film not as a fairy tale for children, but a work of magic realism. And perhaps best of all, he doesn't talk down to young folks, in the audience or in the cast. The performances are as natural as skinned knees and missing teeth.

Director John McTiernan, who redefined the action genre in the original "Die Hard," does devise some smashing explosions, crashes and so on, but nothing really new.

Everyone is convincingly miserable, and audiences are likely to follow suit.

Most egregiously, the filmmakers set up a classic struggle between right and wrong and then, in a coy coda, refuse to take a stand.

The caper isn't as passionate as the title suggests—in fact, it's facile—but Ryan and Kevin Kline, as her attractive opposite, are irresistible together.

One of the most extraordinary films of the year.

Soderbergh soaks the screen in moody, swimming pool hues to suggest the characters' murky motivations, and uses different textures of film stock to distinguish between the multiple layers of flashback. [28 April 1995, p.N44]

Has John Carpenter lost his mind or just his talent? On the heels of In the Mouth of Madness comes the director's rehash of the 1960 classic, Village of the Damned. Unfortunately, Carpenter simply makes a hash of it.

In his [Ice Cube's] dramatic roles, Cube's raised eyebrows usually unleashed a fearsome glare and a hint of danger; here, his expressions are more quizzical, amused or confused. He plays against type, just as the movie itself plays against hype.

Its attitude seems to be: You met her and liked her in "Speed," now get to know her better. But while it's easy to like her, liking the movie is another matter.

There's little momentum, no real story line, just Carroll's tediously inevitable descent from low to lowest.

Only a fool -- or someone who's never had a boss -- could completely dislike George Huang's Swimming With Sharks. A revenge comedy in which a much-wronged employee ties up his insensitive, abusive boss and gets a little payback -- puny offense by puny offense -- the film is like Death and the Maiden for disgruntled employees. [12 May 1990, p.B07]

All Jimmy wants is for his life to return to normal. But Price and director Barbet Schroeder haven't done a very good job of letting us know who this guy is—or even what normal is to him. Schroeder also shifts back and forth between a tone of earnest homage to the mood and feel of the classic thriller to one that sends up the genre, laughing slyly behind its back.

There's a genuinely tragic side to Stuart's character, and for the movie to work the filmmakers have to keep it in balance with the comedy so that the pathos of his life doesn't kill all the laughs. But Ramis can't keep the movie's tone under control, and, as a result, it teeters precariously between farce and wake.

Relentless formulaic fodder for the explosion-starved; it's loud, shallow, sexist and a complete waste of time.

[Leven] keeps the film's tone light and ingratiating. And, though the material is thin, the actors do seem to be getting a kick out of playing off each other.

Writer Alan Sharp gets so caught up in the legend and the lush language that he doesn't seem to know he's written "Death Wish" in kilts.

Jefferson in Paris is nevertheless a disaster, intellectually infuriating and thoughtlessly racist.

Some of it is funny -- particularly the physical comedy. Most of it is not.

A lifeless pop vision of the future that tries too self-consciously to be irreverent, hip and cutting edge.

Taylor Hackford's film version of the Stephen King novel, has a whopping list of shortcomings -- and yet it still manages to be an engrossing, unsettling and, at times, powerful psychological thriller.

The hero's hilarious efforts to become an ROTC commander at a Virginia prep school are more than enough ammunition for this riotous military parody.

At its worst, which ends up being most of the time, the movie traps us in art-house pretentiousness, as we're obliged to follow the yearnings and abstract corruptions of the urban zestless.

As the vengeful Candyman, Tony Todd remains both a tragic victim and a frightfully menacing supposition, enough so that you'll think twice before repeating that full Candyman mantra in front of your bathroom mirror.

As Benny (short for Bernadette), a big-boned, headstrong lass who strains winningly against the restrictions of family, religion and just plain growing up, [Driver's] a comedic breath of fresh air, easily the best thing about the movie.

Hogan seems skittish about going all the way with the darker side of his material...It's a bright, buoyant comedy about a very sad young woman -- and, regrettably, the mix just doesn't work.

Outbreak is an absolute hoot thanks primarily to director Wolfgang Petersen's rabid pacing and the great care he brings to setting up the story and its probability.

Adapted by Hooper, Stephen Brooks and Peter Welbeck from a King short story, The Mangler is ludicrous from start to finish: Its plot lines dangle, its effects fail to dazzle and the acting and directing are uniformly bad. The movie looks as if it's gone through its namesake, the five-ton, 40-foot-long Hadley Watson Model-6 Steam Ironer & Folder. Even the least demanding of genre fans will be hard-pressed to tremble in its presence.

An uncompromising, emotionally draining drama that presents the urbanization of New Zealand's Maori as a cultural disaster, one that is mirrored in the shards of a shattering marriage. This explosive first film by director Lee Tamahori focuses on the transformation of a battered wife, but its story is fueled by the machismo of the disenfranchised Maori male.

The movie is as insistently bubbly as the Bradys themselves, but it does run out of carbonation before the end. "Bunch" fans won't mind a bit, while others will be amused by the juxtaposition of the family's wholesome idyll with the harsher realities of life in the '90s, as evidenced by "Roseanne," "Married ... With Children" and "Grace Under Fire." [17 Feb 1995, p.F01]

By the end, the film deteriorates into a combination sensitivity session and pep rally.

It's brutal, horribly manipulative, and we've seen this stuff before in better pictures.

A more kid-friendly version of "Dumb and Dumber." And there's even a moral: "Yahoo for education," though the movie doesn't really put any muscle behind it.

The Quick and the Dead is made bearable by director Sam Raimi, who bombards us with frenetic editing, crazy-angle shots and enjoyably cartoonish cliches. But all the stylistic sleight of hand in the world can't hide the central problem: The star of the show is more Dead than Quick.

This is exactly the kind of weird, sardonic texture the movie is aiming for - and unfortunately, most of it occurs in the first half of the story.

Roos and director Herbert Ross pave the long and grinding road to self-fulfillment with miles and miles of counterfeit poignancy.

A bewildering, boring assembly of rock-video-surreal nightmare sequences with more repetitive episodes than Groundhog Day.