Omnibus movies -- those composed of several individual segments by several individual directors -- can pose a special critical problem, presenting works of wildly different merits under one unifying title. But it perhaps is silly to worry about this, or even to mention it, when the overriding idea is as …

More of Dudley Moore's comedy routine as The Happy Drunkard, suitable for a Hal Roach two-reeler, but now extended to the face-freezing lengths of a second feature film -- through adoption proceedings ("We take drinking problems very seriously around here"), a bout of poverty, and finally a period of indistinguishable …

From Sergei Paradjanov (The Color of Pomegranate, The Legend of Suram Fortress): more of the same, only less. There is the customary treasure chest of clothes and artifacts from another time and place. (Period: Once upon a Time. Setting: Fairy Land.) And a moment, early on, when a photographed still-life …

Okay, they've got a title, but where to go from there? The sole survivor of a Jonestown-ian suicide cult seems to be pursued from beyond the grave by its barbecued leader -- not pursued in a straight line, but by first zigzagging through all of her mates in group therapy. …

German director Percy Adlon's first film in America, aglow with the optimism of the American Dream. The story of a Bavarian tourist (the hefty Marianne Sagebrecht, of Adlon's Sugarbaby), who is abandoned by her travelling companion -- husband? -- in full mountaineering costume at the edge of the Mohave Desert, …

A true Vietnam War story, safely apolitical, celebrating individual effort and lamenting any loss of life on either side. It hovers (literally at times) around Lt. Col. Iceal Hambleton, who's downed on a reconnaissance flight in V.C.-occupied territory and makes his way back through the jungle under the protective eye, …

The Dark Ages -- and very dark indeed, not just in illumination but in literal deed: eating without utensils, nose-blowing without hanky, a newborn babe abandoned in the snow, the hemorrhaging mother ravished in the castle dungeon, a little incest, a little patricide, a little Christian immolation. This sort of …

Tim Burton oversees a lavish and garish horror comedy that captures the spirit of Halloween as deeply as, but no deeplier than, the Woolworth's costume department. Not for lack of expenditure. The best special effects that money can buy do not, however, come with any guarantee of charm -- one …

Tim Burton oversees a lavish and garish horror comedy that captures the spirit of Halloween as deeply as, but no deeplier than, the Woolworth's costume department. Not for lack of expenditure. The best special effects that money can buy do not, however, come with any guarantee of charm -- one …

Small, humanistic British crime thriller (for all its computers and gadgets), punched up, and almost out, with a baroque visual style of deep perspectives, low ceilings, angled cameras, inky shadows. The heist itself works up some suspense, when not reminding you, with its remote-control ambulatory ashtray, of the Australian farce, …

A major flare-up of liberal paranoia, from a director chronically afflicted by it. It is only because of him and his prior attacks -- Costa-Gavras, by name, and Z, State Of Siege, Special Section, Missing -- that we can be sure this movie is Serious. Otherwise we might make the …

Tom Hanks, who needs no incitement to act immature, is here given carte blanche: a runty twelve-year-old, towered over by the cute blonde in his class, makes a wish to be "big" and has it granted overnight by a coin-operated fairground wizard. (Technically, he not only gets bigger, but older …

An important thing to remember for the less attentive follower of the French cinema is that Luc Besson (the director of this English-language production) is not Luc Beraud. The second of these Lucs made a quite good little film called Like a Turtle on Its Back. The first one made …

The gimmick of mismatched twins separated at birth: if it was funny before (Start the Revolution without Me), perhaps lightning could strike again. Or if not a bull's-eye, at least somewhere on the target, say about the first ring from the outermost. That would be, and is, not bad at …

Pee-wee Herman's second feature film, a sodden misfire. What went wrong? He's a gentleman farmer this time (still with his white loafers, red bowtie, etc.), and an "inventor" after the fashion of George Washington Carver ("the father of the peanut"), who plays host to a travelling circus and especially to …