Assassins. Finally, finally, a Sylvester Stallone movie in which the actor utters not a single idiotic line. Sure, there are dumb moments aplenty in this tale of an assassin (Stallone) who decides to go straight when his "mark" (Julianne Moore) turns out to have more integrity than his unseen boss and the other assassin (Antonio Banderas) who's competing for the kill. Ably directed by Richard Donner (Lethal Weapon), the movie reinvigorates Stallone's claim to stardom by restraining his worst impulses, and allows Banderas to balance things out by going wild.

Amateur. Hal Hartley's arid, deadpan style has its limitations. While the director's affectless approach heightened the psychological drama (and comic tension) of previous films like Trust, this tale of three porno-industry lost souls trying to find escape, identity and redemption is too structured to arouse either laughs or sympathy. Moving out of the complacent suburbia of his previous films into the grungy alleyways of downtown New York, Hartley needs a jolt of energy to match, but he never finds it--not even during a whimsical electroshock torture sequence.

Apollo 13. Ron Howard is a child of TV, so it's to be expected that his latest film, like all the others, always tells you how to react. That worked fine in Splash, Parenthood and The Paper, enjoyable films with regular outbursts of comedy. But Howard is at his worst when he takes things too seriously, and he treats the near-fatal Apollo 13 mission with unquestioning reverence: a historical symbol of American heroism. Rarely does he touch upon the terror of dying in space or the weird spectacle the mission became after the public learned of the impending doom. It's a detailed, technically superb movie with a monotonous point of view: that the astronauts suffered nobly. Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton and Kevin Bacon star.

BABE. Animal training and animatronics blend seamlessly in this terrific children's story about a polite piglet who breaks through the rules of barnyard conformity to do her own thing--herd sheep. Made in Australia, with perfectly-cast voices and an impressive assemblage of good-looking animals, the movie has storytelling chutzpah on its side: The scenes are playfully divided into episodic chapters, and the atmosphere feels like it was painted onto the screen directly from the most imaginative kids' books. Thankfully, dark, Orwellian moments keep the cute bits in balance--something more children's movies ought to do.

BAD BOYS. Does the world really need another Lethal Weapon-type movie? Testosterone-brained producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer think it does. So they've harnessed their glands to make this amazingly mindless and uncreative prick flick starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence. Machine guns fire (but never hit the heroes), cars explode, bad guys come back to life at the last minute, nothing anyone does makes any sense, and everybody says "fuck" at least 47 times. And it's long. All in all, an excruciating piece of work.

THE BASKETBALL DIARIES. This autobiographical retelling of Jim Carroll's teenage slip into heroin-addicted oblivion during the mid-'60s invests too much effort in gritty realism and not enough into rounding its character or forming a narrative. We basically see the addict fail to redeem himself over and over, until one day, miraculously, he does. As directed by Scott Kalvert, a verteran of MTV videos, the movie is a stylish late-night lark with all the insight of a one-note after school special. Tough, naked performances by Leonard DiCaprio, Lorraine Bracco and Ernie Hudson only accentuate the film's shortcomings.

BATMAN FOREVER. This summer's Batman has a new face (Val Kilmer), a new girlfriend (Nicole Kidman), a new sidekick (Chris O'Donnell, playing Robin), and two new villains (Jim Carrey and Tommy Lee Jones) to battle. He's also got a new director, Joel Schumacher, who directs the spectacle with a glossy light touch that seems altogether more appropriate than the self-consciously moody approach Tim Burton took during the first two outings. Though the series has never been worthy of the hype it has generated, this one's pretentious aspects are transparent enough that you can enjoy the movie for the slick, stupid, self-referential commercial that it is. For once, nobody will believe the lie that a film about a comic book character adds up to a grand artistic vision; that's a blessing that makes this picture the lesser of the three evils.

BEFORE SUNRISE. Richard Linklater's latest picture follows a one-night romance between an American Slacker and a Parisian beauty as they stroll about the streets of Vienna. The film is talky as can be, but all the talk is directed toward emphasizing the gradual connection of two souls, and the result is touching, almost haunting. Despite minor annoyances, Ethan Hawke does a good job in his boyish role, while Julie Delpy is perfect as a French fantasy girl too smart to enjoy being a French fantasy girl.

BOYS ON THE SIDE. The boys are on the side indeed, with the main dish of course being women--their feelings towards life, men and especially each other. Whoopi Goldberg and Mary Louise Parker are budding odd-couple-style buddies making a road trip from New York to Tucson, and Drew Barrymore is the bubbly friend who joins them. It's all merriment and Cranberries songs until the three women arrive in the Old Pueblo, where they become housemates and emotions start running deep. This unabashedly button-pushing movie from director Herbert Ross (Steel Magnolias) actually manages to achieve the right tone for its manipulations, and you don't mind giving in to them--not even when terminal diseases and vagina jokes are thrown into the mix.

THE BRADY BUNCH MOVIE. Here's a story. Of a Hollywood gimmick: Giving old TV shows expensive big-screen whirls. The idea is to strike gold. Just like Wayne's World. Until the audience hurls. ...Still, The Brady Bunch Movie does pretty well for itself, especially during the giddily absurd opening scenes, with their perfect casting and meticulous recreation of the show's flaky style. The picture's lack of its own ideas--other than the single joke of Brady obliviousness to the '90s--causes the latter half to lose air like one of Bobby's flat bicycle tires, but fans of The Bunch should be tickled nonetheless.

BRAVEHEART. Writer-director Mel Gibson clobbers the audience with three hours of blunt storytelling about a rebellious Scottish clansman who led soldiers into effective battle against British tyrrany. Much of the movie's violence is grippingly effective, especially a couple of well-orchestrated fight sequences that, though aesthetically closer to the limbless knight scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail than the poetic violence of Sam Peckinpah, are still quite powerful. But Gibson's relentless chant of "Freedom!" and the film's overtones of romantic martyrdom don't really stick; mostly, the movie leaves you with a dispiriting sense of human brutality.

THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY. Based on the popular Robert James Waller book, this Clint Eastwood tearjerker glorifies an affair between a neglected housewife (Meryl Streep) and a worldly photographer (Eastwood). And oh, what a lovely fantasy for lonely middle-aged housewives it is: The sex is great, the encounter is brief, and there are no consequences afterwards. It's about as passionate and tough-minded as a Hallmark card, but Streep's expert performance renders many of the scenes touching enough to draw out a tear or two.

The Brothers McMullen. Like El Mariachi, here's another mini-budget indy film more notable for its creator's success story than for the movie itself. Writer-director Edward Burns made the picture for about 20 grand, yet he somehow managed to achieve the quality level of a million-plus commercial feature. Too bad the sappy story, which follows the doubt-riddled romantic lives of three Irish-Catholic brothers, hits so many transparent notes; you get the sense the film is trying to be knowing and insightful when much of what it's saying has been recycled from last year's men's-liberation books. What keeps the movie afloat are its fresh lead performances, especially Mike McGlone as the guilt-ridden nice guy and Burns himself as the cynical stud.

BULLETS OVER BROADWAY.In this comedy of concessions, John Cusack plays an aspiring 1920s playwright who must continually compromise his latest work in order to see it produced. Woody Allen's screenplay and direction are smoother than usual, and he's managed to fill the movie with fun performances from several actors who don't normally get the chance to shine--Dianne Weist, Jennifer Tilly and Michael De Luca, to name a few. The laughs are plentiful, and when all is said and done Allen actually manages to throw in some meaningful commentary too. All things considered, he's in great form.

BYE BYE, LOVE. As three divorced fathers, Matthew Modine, Paul Reiser and Randy Quaid stumble their way through this McMovie about custody exchanges and mid-life romantic grief. Quaid's pissed-off character is the only one with any appeal, but that doesn't amount to much, not even during the film's centerpiece: an uninventive blind-date scene with Janeane Garofalo. Serious themes are verbalized to the point of embarrassment, comic sequences are ridiculously constructed, and the movie vanquishes all dignity with its insistent return to McDonald's (which obviously funded the picture).

CASPER. That friendly little dead kid from the comic-book '50s has been resurrected for the computer-generated '90s. His movie, which unlike last summer's The Flintstones, has the quick pacing and good cheer necessary to get audiences past a typically slim, gadget-ridden storyline. Actors Bill Pullman (likable as always) and especially Christina Ricci (who has become eye-catchingly lovely since her days in The Addams Family) are responsible; playing an afterlife researcher and his lonely daughter, they provide the movie with just enough soul to get by. Casper doesn't do too bad in that department, either. Also starring Cathy Moriarty and Eric Idle.

CIRCLE OF FRIENDS. Girl meets boy, girl loses boy, girl wins boy back. Nothing new here, right? Absolutely. But for simple romantic pleasure, you can't beat this film's bright green Irish setting and the winning performance of Minnie Driver in the female lead. Driver's character may not have a Barbie Doll physique, but her intelligent, sensitive personality leaves no question why the best-looking guy on campus (Chris O'Donnell) falls for her. This is a cute, lightweight, and amiably sexual movie with a lot of heart to make up for its lack of originality.

CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER. This Tom Clancy adaptation is the most ambitious yet, shuffling dozens of characters and sub-plots within a complicated story about an Executive-Branch-ordered mini-war against a Columbian drug lord. Philip Noyce's direction is crisp and swift, but for what? For a two-and-a-half hour sermon on the ethical use of covert military operations? Who needs that? Clancy and the screenwriters blow the opportunity to provide a larger understanding of the whole drug-war issue, and what they have left is little more than a pleaser for Clancy's fans. Harrison Ford gives one of his least interesting action-movie performances as uncorruptible CIA agent Jack Ryan.

CLERKS. This black-and-white, low-low-budget movie documents a day in the life of an unassertive convenience-mart employee and his obnoxiously irreverent buddy from the video joint next door. Though thoroughly crude, the cartoonish entourage of Slacker-inspired storegoing misfits are frequently funny, and the picture has the charm of something made exactly as the filmmakers wanted it, with all idiosyncrasies intact.

Clockers. Spike Lee's adaptation of Richard Price's intricate novel follows a young park-bench drug dealer (Mekhi Phifer) who may or may not have been the gunman in a murder. In spite of his overemphasis on style, Lee successfully juggles a number of characters whose lives affect each others' like chess pieces in a microcosmic Brooklyn neighborhood, including the wire-pulling dealer who runs the show (Delroy Lindo) and a friendly homicide cop played (very engagingly) by Harvey Keitel. Because the story is more a societal character study than a mystery, don't expect the oomph of Do the Right Thing; the film deals in texture and dialogue, not bright action. And while it's a cut above most other movies in drug-related black cinema, unfortunately the content doesn't reach much deeper.

Clueless. This is the movie you'll hate to love, full of innocent, likeable characters with completely unbelievable lives. Far from an offshoot of one of those Fox TV programs, this latest effort by Amy Heckerling (who also delivered Fast Times at Ridgemont High) is an original, engaging portrait of Beverly Hills high school life in the '90s, which remains sincere however fantastic the lives of her characters become. Clueless is top of the line, "kids rule" cinema.

CONGO. After being spoiled by Jurassic Park, you can't help but feel that something's missing from this summer's Michael Crichton thriller. Where are the moral issues? Where are the scientific tangents? Where are the dinosaurs? Following a handful of differently motivated explorers into the heart of an African jungle, this Frank Marshall-directed spectacle feels hollow every misstep of the way. Marshall transparently uses the plot as a chassis for a series of action set-ups, and the characters as vehicles for one-liners. There's no wonderment to fill in the gaps. Amy, the gorilla who talks via computerized bodygear, has more heart than anyone else in the picture.

CRIMSON TIDE. Tony Scott, director of Top Gun, once again glorifies a division of the armed forces with commercial editing rhythms, overpowering sound effects and monotonously slick cinematography. This time the action takes place aboard a nuclear submarine, which may or may not have orders to launch the first strike of World War III. Though mutiny and torpedo battles are involved, the movie's only real meat comes from the verbal sparring between Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman, two stereotypically diametrical officers who argue endlessly over a trumped-up ethical question about whether to follow orders or follow your heart. Even without a periscope, you can see the finish coming from miles away.

Crumb. The unusual life of comic-book artist Robert Crumb gets dissected in this rewarding documentary by Crumb's friend, Terry Zwigoff. Without passing judgment or drawing conclusions, the movie takes an in-depth look into Crumb's dysfunctional childhood family and contrasts it with the dark, psychologically unnerving stories in his cartoons. The details that emerge are painful, sad, and often funny; Crumb turns out to be the sort of character whose idiosyncratic life and work connect in several dimensions, many of them hidden, all of them fascinating.