Mini-Review: Portmanteau drama in the _Grand Hotel_ mould, and quite comparable.
Mini-Review: Unimpressive and implausible psychological study of a man's disintegration, lacking the sleazy authenticity of the novel.
Mini-Review: Spectacularly violent sword-and-sandal epic utilising the latest in computerised trickery; the results delights the eye, though the ear quickly tires of bombastic dialogue, more often yelled than spoken.
Mini-Review: An entertaining and sometimes savage account of the last moments of hard-core films, just before the industry switched to video; witty and satiric for much of the time, it is spoilt by its use of gratuitous violence to overcome its narrative flaws.
Mini-Review: The bottomless pit of the Spielberg genre, a silly tale which takes forever to get going and is acted by children who have not studied elocution. The trick effects when they come are OK, but it's a long annoying haul to that point.
Mini-Review: Predictable action drama, made with some skill but too obvious in its plotting to create much suspense.
Mini-Review: Slow-starting adventure romp with much ingenuity and too much brutality and horror. In the US it caused the creation of a new censor certificate: PG(13).
Mini-Review: Commercially very successful, this attempted wrap-up of the Saturday morning serials of two generations ago spends a great deal of money and expertise on frightening rather than exciting us. Second time round, one can better enjoy the ingenious detail of the hero's exploits; still, there are boring bits in between, and the story doesn't make a lot of sense.
Mini-Review: An earnest and slightly uneasy attempt to combine a narrative of an innocent in peril with a polemic exposing an unlovely regime; it works better on the level of a suspense drama than as a political one.
Mini-Review: Only the Minis survive in this remake, which is otherwise a straightforward revenge thriller with little wit or interest.