Tough guys snarl at each other or dive out of the way before some explosion reduces their biceps to gymboy tuna. Van Damme still talks like a Belgian choirboy. But he’s physically awesome, of course. He can do things with his body that it hurts to even contemplate. If nature intended for men to do the splits or high kicks, boxer shorts would not have been invented. As for Rourke, I am convinced he’s made entirely of leather. He is essentially a boxing glove with a heartbeat.

At it’s core, it’s just another youth-culture flick about the search for love. It’s also a mediocre bid to join the shoestring pantheon of such filmic self-starters as Spike Lee (She’s Gotta Have It) and Kevin Smith (Clerks).

A purgatory of low-budget interplanetary adventure.

The Devil's Own, which stars Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt, is so epically awful, it's practically homeric.

The only thing parents need fear is utter boredom.

The film's many musical scenes can be riveting. But Selena is less concert film than family drama, particularly focusing on Selena's struggles with her father after she falls in love with, and eventually marries, her guitarist Chris Perez (heartthrob Jon Seda).

Carrey is not only under control, but funnier than ever.

Crash doesn't extend beyond its most immediate sensationalism. When the movie does attempt to find a theme, it slams into a brick wall of mumbo-jumbo.

When Gray brings things to a narrative conclusion, the movie feels perfectly structured. If it were any longer, it would tip the overindulgence scale, and lose its effectiveness. But at 80 minutes, the film feels compact and pithily observed. And you're quite prepared to meet Gray on his next flight of self-absorbed fancy. [30 May 1997, p.N41]

The whole thing plays like some dreadful masochistic, self-pity fantasy.

Tate -- whose credits include Menace II Society, The Inkwell and Dead Presidents -- simply hasn’t developed the mature screen sex appeal to carry off this romantic lead.

Private Parts, lifted from Stern's best-selling autobiography, is a choppy amalgam of "Revenge of the Nerds," "Father Knows Best" and "Network."

Disney just doesn't know when to give up on a dead project, which is the only thing that accounts for the studio's scene-for-scene remake of Little Indian, Big City, a French farce the corporation dubbed and released exactly one year ago. (It sank faster than a canoe full of Fantasia hippos.)

When you’re through watching The Daytrippers, you think about its minor imperfections, not because the film’s bad, but because it’s so good.

Unfortunately, the story isn't inventive and Newell's methodical approach to it verges on monotony.

Paul Thomas Anderson shows off the same sort of quirky smarts that Joel and Ethan Coen did in "Blood Simple."

Not only dense, dark and deeply introspective, it's also as remote as it's chilly.

The name is enough to clue you in that this is not highbrow humor. In fact, it will appeal mostly to those who can appreciate basic juvenile humor.

In Lost Highway, David Lynch dabbles in spooky, chilly implication and a sort of hip incoherence.

Making a film about mob violence while showing restraint and humanism is a difficult procedure. Singleton and screenwriter Poirier search for some gradations within the white ranks, but for the most part, every cracker's a psycho with a short, smoking fuse.

This isn't real life. It isn't even a movie. It's an extended sitcom. And for the first time in your life, you'll actually beg for commercials.

After a somewhat promising opening, the movie falls flat.

Promises to speed up the pacemakers of grumpy old Republicans with its ruthless indictment of the unzipped presidency.

The movie doesn’t hit one out of the park, the way Get Shorty (another Leonard adaptation) did. But it racks up points with stolen bases and singles.

The new Darn Cat moves faster, has a few more laughs, nonviolent villains who are barely seen, a never-ending car chase climax, and gives more than a passing nod to such phenomena as teenage discontent.

While the plot is thin and there's little action till the big blow some 60 minutes into the film, a volcano offers a greater variety of thrills than your basic cyclone ever could.

Linklater, who introduced the blithe, but bemused slacker subculture to America in 1991, gets bogged down not only in Bogosian's for-stage structure, but especially his middle-aged perspective.

This is billed as a romantic comedy, but it's much more boring than funny.