Waiting to Exhale. The story of four African American women looking for Mr. Right and finding, for the most part, Mr. Already Married. This movie starts out with some gleeful, man-bashing humor, then tapers out into sentimental overkill. Though the story is ostensibly about women learning to feel complete by themselves, the movie is actually obsessed with men, man-hunting, looking pretty for men, and how great it is to have a man around, if you're a woman. Angela Bassett gets stuck playing a completely unsympathetic character, while Whitney Huston is saddled with the role of the boring good girl. Loretta Devine and Lela Rochon are quite good though, and this movie gets bonus points for portraying affluent, African American women in Arizona.

A WALK IN THE CLOUDS. From Alfonso Arau, director of Like Water For Chocolate, comes this pleasantly magical-realist W.W.II-era romance about a GI (Keanu Reeves) who pretends to be the husband of a lovely, troubled woman (Aitana Sanchez-Gijon) to save her from the tradition-obsessed wrath of her father (Giancarlo Giannini), head of a family-run vineyard in Napa Valley. Arau's direction is smile-inducing and swift, and the actors are all charming, especially Anthony Quinn as an unflaggingly earnest, chocolate-chomping grandfather. But the movie's combination of love, family and good cheer is almost too perfect, too postcardy. Remarkably, what saves it is Reeves' laughably monotonous performance--just the weird element the picture needs to keep its innocence interesting.

THE WALKING DEAD. The "untold story" of the black experience in Vietnam is the subject of this trite, lifeless movie. As the four main characters trudge through jungle swamps and endure skirmishes with the Viet Cong, we trudge through flashbacks and endure a series of revelations reflecting the following sentiment: If it ain't Charlie in the fields, it's The Man giving commands, and if it ain't The Man giving commands, it's The Man back home; and if it ain't The Man back home, it's the woman back home.

WATERWORLD. "Was this your big vision?" the tattooed child asks at the end, and you might be thinking the same thing after watching $200 million in sets and special effects wash away in this ill-conceived spectacle. Good enough to sit through but not nearly good enough to justify its magnitude, the film stars Kevin Costner as a seafaring Mad Max type who eventually saves a scruffy girl (Tina Majorino) and a bland love interest (Jeanne Tripplehorn) from a gang of cigar-chomping baddies led, all-too-familiarly, by Dennis Hopper. The sci-fi premise and watery atmosphere have potential, but the picture evaporates into a series of bloated, ineffective action set-pieces.

Welcome To The Dollhouse. This startling, original movie about the misadventures of a school loser manages to be very funny and very disturbing at the same time. The details and nuances of nerd-life--the ugly glasses, the awkward gait, the sugary snacks--are intimately and lovingly chronicled in this independent film, which won the Grand Jury award at the Sundance Film Festival. Dawn Wiener (Heather Matarazzo), a homely, unfashionable outcast with an unfortunate last name, is the scapegoat of her school, her family, and perhaps the world. When she falls in love with a popular high school boy it seems possible for a moment that anything can happen; but, as always, things for Dawn end in humiliation. Anyone who has ever been betrayed by the promises of beauty, femininity, belonging and romantic love will appreciate the relentless dissection of these myths here.

When Night is Falling. This story of forbidden love is sure to mesmerize from start to finish with its visually stunning cinematography and set design. The two hesitant lovers, Camille and Petra, are perpetually swathed in warm rose and gold tones and surrounded by an exotic circus of images contrasted with the wintry blue light of the Canadian winter. It's true: You'd have to be pretty cold-hearted not to feel writer/director Patricia Rozema's sense of tenderness and romance. But the plot is a tease. Though Camille is a theologian at a Christian college, the tension between religion and homosexuality--between private and public, individual and society--are only superficially developed. Nonetheless, the film retains a less-is-more resonance that leaves the mind free to admire all the pretty pictures.

WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING. This romantic comedy provides Sandra Bullock, last seen as the bus driver in Speed, the chance to capitalize on all her best (and most obvious) qualities: her boisterous laugh, her uncertain smile, her shy sex appeal. Bullock plays a lonely subway-booth clerk whose dreams of finding Mr. Right are realized after she pretends to be a comatose man's fiancee (so if you want to get technical about it, the film should really be titled While You Were Comatose). Bill Pullman, as the eventual suitor, is Bullock's appealing mirror image: they're the model of coupled cuteness. Unfortunately, this cuteness is infectious, turning into a disease that spreads over the whole movie until even the loathsome and tacky characters start acting cuddly. It's a bit much.

Wild Bill. Despite a great start, Walter Hill's western based on the life of Wild Bill Hickok ends up falling flat. The opening series of vignettes from Hickok's life is exciting, non-linear and has exactly the kind of legendary aura that makes westerns so much fun. But after the vaguely Oedipal plot kicks in, you can abandon all hope of glimpsing fun again as twenty minutes of story get stretched into sixty minutes of movie. While the plot chugs on you can check out the terrific sets; not since Altman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller has the old west looked so muddy and inconvenient. Jeff Bridges is great as Bill--too bad he doesn't have much to do. He does, however, look mighty hunky in long hair and suede britches, if you're into that kind of thing