For more than an hour, schmaltzmeister Luis Mandoki (Message in a Bottle) directs as if on assignment for Miramax.

Not quite a romance by numbers, Prime is nevertheless a movie we need like a hole in the head.

The usual pop-culture jokes, disco tunes, and sarcastic narrator are on hand to prevent atrophy, but by the time the sky really does start "falling"--courtesy of an alien invasion-- Chicken Little's frantic efforts to stay farm fresh have started to wear on the nerves.

Outside of the Jordan inner circle, this family-versus-business parable comes across as slight, familiar, and in dire need of seasoning.

Qualifies as the most indulgent kind of homemade project, laden with tediously inspirational dialogue and visuals that seem shot through half-fizzled Yuengling. Kudos to Gores, at least, for acquitting himself as an actor.

Tepid lesbian comedy.

An ugly-duckling fable populated with grotesques out of John Waters, Pizza attempts an unlikely mode: earnest camp.

Often laughably overwrought rehash of "An Officer and a Gentleman," ekes out enough of a subtext on competition to qualify as a non-fiasco.

The lack of energy suggests the film might as well have been constructed from outtakes.

Because the metaphysics driving it are so fuzzy, this is the rare horror film where even sludgy viscera elicit only yawns.

Werner Herzog's "Wheel of Time" was, in a sense, the Buddhist equivalent of this film, as well as a more illuminating look at the power and transience of ritual.

The scariest thing in the movie is a cameo by Scott Baio.

The movie finally undermines all pretensions of satire with its geeky eagerness to subvert expectations.

Based on characters created by Rodriguez's then-seven-year-old son, Racer Max, the film doesn't belong in wide release. It belongs on a refrigerator door, alongside "100%" spelling tests, old lunch menus, and notices from the PTA.

Roos forecasts and explains every development with a title card, a device not unlike having someone yammering in your ear throughout the entire feature run time. In a more self-effacing director's commentary, he might have asked us, at least, to forgive the pun.

There's no guiding power at work here; it's Evolution without a shred of intelligent design.

"It is a study of the psychopathologies of perversions," co-director Federico Sanchez says in the press notes for Eternal, which is certainly one way to rationalize a trashy lesbian vampire flick.

Whether it's the guitar-strum soundtrack, "lyrical" cornfield shots, or arrhythmic performances, Steal Me has at least one indie-film cliché too many.

Feels motivated by envy more than anything else-it's a sour, petty act of mockery that values its own ineptitude over genuine cleverness, travestying Quentin Tarantino and others simply for dreaming up gimmicks that worked.

Ironically, Leiner's two monuments to pothead delirium seem vastly more coherent than this hazy attempt to mine the zeitgeist, a film every bit as pointed as its nounless title.

Fuu . . . cryin' out loud, this movie's dumb.