"Cop Out"

Let's see: There's a world-weary older white cop with a fast-talking, hyperactive black partner, and they're chasing down bad guys. The soundtrack is studded with old-school classics such as The System's "Don't Disturb This Groove," Run-DMC's "King of Rock" and the Beastie Boys' "No Sleep 'Til Brooklyn."

And who's the man behind those squishy-sounding synthesizers driving the action? None other than Harold Faltermeyer, creator of the legendary "Axel F" theme from "Beverly Hills Cop." Why, he hasn't scored a movie since the days when Bruce Willis was starring in Seagram's Golden Wine Cooler commercials.

Yes, despite its contemporary setting, everything about "Cop Out" reeks of the early 1980s. But although director Kevin Smith would love to turn Willis and Tracy Morgan into Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy, this is not "48 Hrs." -- although frequently "Cop Out" does feel like it's about 48 hours long.

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"Shutter Island"

“Seen any walking nightmares lately, marshal?” a woman asks deputy marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) late in director Martin Scorsese's "Shutter Island." She’s a psychiatrist, although she might as well be a psychic: Daniels has been prowling around the creepy corridors of the Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane, and he’s witnessed enough scary sights to fill a month’s worth of bad dreams.

It’s 1954, and psychiatric hospitals are not far from the dismal days of ice baths, crudely administered electro-shock treatments and other atrocities. In Ashecliffe’s Ward C, patients are still stripped naked and locked up in filthy, dark cells where their bodies rot and their minds deteriorate. The conditions in Ashecliffe’s other buildings are slightly better, although nobody’s going to mistake it for a country-club prison.

Adapted from Dennis Lehane’s novel, “Shutter” is a freak show with artsy pretensions.

Read the full review here.

"Edge of Darkness"

"Payback," "Conspiracy Theory," "Ransom," "Lethal Weapon, Parts 1-4": They're all included in the Mel Gibson mash-up known as "Edge of Darkness." It's probably too late for Warner Bros. to change that title to "Mel's Greatest Hits," which is pretty much what "Edge" turns out to be.

But have you ever had the bad luck to pick up one of those greatest hits collections that turns out to be mostly mediocre re-recordings of favorite tunes? Unfortunately, "Edge" is like that, too.

Read the full review here.

"Yor, the Hunter from the Future" (1983)

An incredibly dim-witted caveman-meets-super-science picture, this Turkish-made foolishness is absolutely astounding in its total disregard for logic, continuity and credibility. At least "Yor" provides plenty of unintentional laughs. The atrociously dubbed dialogue permits the primates to mouth such zingers as "Sink your teeth into this!" and "Your jealousy burns you like the fire." The prehistoric monsters are frightening as only papier-mache creations can be; when a comrade warns Yor about the approaching "creature of the night," he should have added, "You might get tangled up in his wires!"

A booming disco theme adds the final straw that breaks the dinosaur's back. It might have passed muster on Saturday morning television, but served up on the big screen this Turkish turkey is hard to digest.

"Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!" (1990)

Director-writer Pedro Almodovar scored a major hit last year with his hilarious "Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown," one of the rare foreign-language films to make a splash in mainstream houses. "Women" was a manic romp about a TV star driven to near-distraction by a misguided affair, a tame topic easy for the mass audience to take. For his encore, "Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!," Almodovar has tackled a variation on John Fowles' "The Collector," hardly anyone's favorite book. Even more provocative is his decision to make his story of a mentally disturbed man who kidnaps a woman and "teaches" her to love into what is essentially a romantic comedy. Perhaps its greatest truth comes from two of its characters watching a movie in production: one notes that the film is more a love story than a horror story. Replies the movie's director, "Sometimes the two are indistinguishable."

It would probably be much more difficult were it not for Almodovar's dazzling leads, Victoria Abril (one of Europe's hottest stars) and Antonio Banderas, both of whom manage to be not only funny, but also stunningly attractive while doing unattractive things. Banderas plays Ricky, recently sprung from an asylum and nursing a domestic fantasy involving ex-porn star Marina Orsorio (Abril), who's now trying for a career in legit cinema. Ricky follows her from the set of her latest picture, traps her in her apartment, and bombards her with a mix of kindness and dominance. The personality evolutions that follow won't surprise anyone, but Almodovar gives the story the same splashiness employed in "Women," with electric colors and creative camera angles putting a chic sheen on what could have been sordid.

Enjoyable as much of "Tie Me Up!" is (and many of the scenes involving the vivacious Loles Leon as Marina's meddling sister are amusing), you can't help but wonder how it could be misconstrued by real-life Rickys; at a time when the terrorism of stars by demented fans is front-page news, this story comes off as irresponsible, almost a fairy tale for voyeurs. Almodovar's style is seductive, but his message is extremely questionable.

"Sweet Dreams" (1985)

"Sweet Dreams" is the very Hollywoodsy biography of country music legend Patsy Cline, a rowdy good-time gal who managed to lead a turbulent life while rising to stardom via such hits as "Crazy," "She's Got You" and "Walking After Midnight."

Jessica Lange plays Cline and gives her friskiest, most intriguing performance to date. She's matched by Ed Harris as Cline's second husband Charlie Dick, whose love for his spouse could not always override the call of the bar. There's a volatile chemistry between the actors, whether they're flirting (which they do a lot of) or feuding (which they do a lot more of).

But Lange and Harris have to fight against a choppy screenplay that zooms through the last seven years of Cline's brief career, giving us only fleeting glimpses of her domestic troubles -- when she sang about cheating men and honky tonk nights, she knew what she was speaking of -- and her bumpy road to the top of the charts.

In "Coal Miner's Daughter," Beverly D'Angelo played Cline and sang with her own voice; Lange is dubbed with Cline's original vocal tracks and lip-synchs convincingly. To some viewers this may seem like an actress taking the easy way out. Perhaps so, but it also enables those of us who aren't students of country music to hear that magnificent alto in all its glory.

There's an uncomfortably high gloss to almost everything in the movie, from the Army barracks to the lowdown bars where Cline got her start to the lower-middle-class home of Cline's mom (the superb Ann Wedgewood), and that hardly helps to lend credibility to a story that frequently seems to wobble on the edge of fiction. "Sweet Dreams" ultimately short-changes its colorful subject, although not for lack of trying on the part of Lange, Harris and Wedgewood.

"Strapless" (1990)

If you've seen either "Plenty" or "Wetherby," two previous works by writer-director David Hare, you can sense he's drawn to self-possessed women harboring inner storms. In "Plenty," his heroine is a former spy with an unquenchable thirst for thrills in the post-WWII world. "Wetherby" is built around a schoolteacher whose guilt and sexual repression drive her to murder. Both pieces offer sterling roles for the lead actress (Meryl Streep in "Plenty"; Vanessa Redgrave in "Wetherby"), and "Strapless" continues Hare's salute to fascinating, challenging women.

Blair Brown, in a performance that demonstrates how little of her talent is seen in the weekly "Days and Nights of Molly Dodd," plays Lillian Hemple, an American doctor working in a British hospital. Reserved and aloof, Lillian is a marked contrast to her sister Amy (Bridget Fonda), a playgirl who will go to any lengths for a good time. On vacation, Lillian meets Raymond (Bruno Ganz), a seemingly wealthy businessman whose immediate interest in her both frightens and intrigues her. "I like the early part" of relationships, she says, noting that she loses enthusiasm in the long run.

She's lying, but it's exactly what Raymond wants to hear. Acting on impulse for the first time in her life, Lillian allows Raymond to talk her into a quickie marriage, an arrangement that leads to personal disaster.

Hare's scripts have never been easily accessible, and although "Strapless" is slightly more in the mainstream than either "Plenty" or "Wetherby," it's no crowd-pleaser. It is, however, a good deal more insightful and thought-provoking than anything else currently on view. The situations will ring true to anyone who has ever placed their faith in the wrong person or wrote off someone who later made a surprising comeback.

There are no martyrs or villains at work here, just characters with strengths and weaknesses that the audience must judge. Lillian is a gifted physician from a medical standpoint, but she's not willing to take a human interest in her patients; Amy seems to be nothing more than a dizzy bon vivant, but finally shows she has more determination and strength than her "serious" sister; what Raymond does is not in any way admirable, but it seems almost forgivable, since he acts out of self-preservation. If the central metaphor is not terribly strong (Amy creates strapless dresses; Raymond leaves Lillian "strapped"), the performances are. Brown downplays her usual charm to emphasize Lillian's self-motivation, and we feel empathy rather than pity when Lillian begins to realize the gravity of her mistake. Hardly a sex symbol, Ganz still projects an air of sensuality that makes him a convincing seducer.

Fonda, taking the smallest of the three leads, shows her work in "Scandal" and "Shag" only hinted at what she can do; her combustible combination of beauty, comic timing and an ability to find the bottom line in her characters make her one of the top discoveries of the past few years.