It's got a little kick to it.

"Axe" is not art by any means. It's often overly taken up with resolving itself. But Myers and others create an enjoyably loose, anti-slick feeling about the affair.

After 36 years of making movies, Polanski may be off his creative rocker, but he's still having fun.

Written and produced by John Hughes, it's a kiddie action comedy much indebted to Hughes's "Home Alone," but with much less of its meanness.

Undercover Blues offers a perfectly enjoyable, completely forgettable hour and a half. After all, how hard is it to watch pros like Quaid and Turner have a good time knocking around with a lovable baby? As Quaid coos to the toddler, "It's a bad world, isn't it, sweetheart? You 'n me 'n Mom are gonna make it better, right?" Quaid, Turner and the kid do make this movie better, but it isn't good enough.

Another Stakeout -- like the original, directed by John Badham -- feels more like a rousing encore than a bold, new development. It's basically straight-out situation comedy, merely punctuated (or interrupted) by the evil doings of hitmen, FBI agents and other gun-toting suits. To those who seek these things, don't worry: People still get plugged with bullets. But comedy is the main artillery and Dreyfuss and Estevez, effortlessly replaying their elbow-nudging relationship, do most of the shooting.

Crowe has said he envisioned "Singles" as a celluloid album, and like an album, one comes away remembering some parts more fondly than others.

The performers all seem to be relishing this sendup, but we're always aware that it is a vehicle better suited to the stage. In trying to open it up some for the screen, Bogdanovich and scriptwriter Marty Kaplan have presented the original play as a series of flashbacks that come upon Caine as he sweats out the play's Broadway opening. All this does is slow the opening and delay the close.

Final Analysis, an implausible psycho thriller with Kim Basinger, Uma Thurman and Richard Gere, has so many twists, turns and backward leaps, the actors tackle their work like trained poodles in a circus act.

Let's make things perfectly clear. "Gladiator" is utter trash masquerading as an action picture with a message. You can listen to the lip-service about the importance of an education, about the evils of boxing, and laugh. It's a joke. The filmmakers know it. You know it. "Gladiator" is a fight movie, pure and simple. It's about breaking jaws, cutting eyes open and beating your opponent into a bloody pulp. It's about the joy of winning ugly. If you like your meat red, this one's for you...What makes "Gladiator" so watchable is the primal excitement of those life-and-death bouts. The fighting is choreographed convincingly by boxing coordinator Jim Nickerson and director Rowdy Herrington and it's filmed with gritty vitality by Tak Fujimoto, Jonathan Demme's cameraman.

The overplotted but predictable thriller "White Sands." Written by the same guy who tried to scare Harry Homeowner silly with "Pacific Heights," it's got all the ingredients, though none of the gumption, of a good adventure. It's suspiciously trendy.

Like most thrillers, from "Fatal Attraction" to "Basic Instinct," the ending can't possibly live up to the expectations it creates.

With a few elements drawn from classic weepers, and with fairly spirited performances from the cast, "Heart and Souls" has its moments

"Mr. Jones" does have some things to savor. Director Mike Figgis, who made "Stormy Monday" and "Internal Affairs," has a distinctive, atmospheric touch. There's something memorably restless about Gere's performance. He never stops. Olin gives her white-uniformed, statistics-spouting, let's-work-together role an off-center appeal. And there are likable supporting performances from Delroy Lindo, as a construction worker who befriends Gere; Lauren Tom, a hauntingly beautiful but distraught mental patient; and Lisa Malkiewicz, as a bank teller who giddily falls for Gere when he effortlessly calculates accrued interest on his account. But these worthy elements can't completely disguise the conventional medicine we're ultimately being asked to swallow.

If watched from a mildly amused, forgiving distance, the movie has its enjoyable moments—good and campy.

Filmed in velvety browns, with shafts of sunlight filtered through old windows, The Haunting of Julia is a definite cut above the current horror movie cliche, but yet not up to the classic psychological ghost-story level it aims at.

Kloves has taken us on one more ride down this same old Texas highway, with its cheap motels and gloomy cowboys. Ain't much more to it than that.

Something is missing, and you feel that its absence prevents both the characterization and movie from going decisively over the top.

They're certainly no Aykroyd and Belushi, or even Myers and Carvey, but Farley and Spade manage to wring humor from a series of juvenile setups and predictable pratfalls. The belly laughs come easy when Farley's tumbling down a mountain or being dragged behind a car by his necktie. Director Penelope Spheeris ("Wayne's World") keeps up a head-banging pace, barreling past Spade's flat jokes and Farley's limited character range.

True Believer is a thriller about moral rejuvenation, and there's not much wrong with it that another actor in the lead wouldn't cure.

There's a certain trashy fun to this combination of "Blackboard Jungle," "The Principal," "Dangerous Minds" and the old "Miami Vice" TV series.

Two if by Sea, directed by Australian Bill Bennett, suffers from a symptom common to romantic comedies that begin after the couple have visited the haystack: There's simply no more sexual tension. Without it, you'd better be as good as Tracy and Hepburn.

[An] appealing, if overcooked romantic comedy.

Handsome and well-acted, the film's ultimate success depends on the heat between Ryder and Day-Lewis, and it simply isn't there. The attraction is fatal alright, but it certainly doesn't seem mutual.

Madonna, the real Madonna, is precisely what "Truth or Dare" promises to deliver, raw, kissing-close and uncensored. But what we get in this sometimes engrossing, sometimes appalling, always entertaining film is something other than "real," something that may in fact be just as revealing as the real thing itself.

The result is an unusual movie about acceptance, tolerance, support, sex and fun among a group of longtime female friends who meet for three weekends within a year. Women viewers are not likely to be surprised by their conversation; men may be.

Though appealing in its wispy way, "Manon" is only a continental soap opera.

A faithful adaptation of Craig Lucas's popular play, it proves a feast for love gourmands, especially those with an appetite for body-swapping. The less starry-eyed viewers -- and probably the hard-working leads Meg Ryan and Alec Baldwin -- will remain starved for the comparative profundity of a leaky "Love Boat" rerun.