The big absence here is the man himself; Gibney couldn’t get the jailed Abramoff on camera, either due to unwillingness or a Justice Department intervention. Whatever the reason, it’s crippling.

Diced into hash, the action sequences are unusually painful: poundingly loud and punctuated by Liam Neeson's bark, Bradley Cooper's manic heehawing and a total lack of clarity.

The sequences in Micmacs are contorted too: impressive and bendy and aggressively shallow.

No viewer goes into this movie expecting John Cassavetes's "Husbands," least of all from soft-serve director Denis Dugan (You Don't Mess with the Zohan).

Never is the material excited into the kind of playful uncertainty that Rivette all but trademarked; the inertness of the performances robs the movie of spirit.

The movie you were hoping to avoid.

A proper profile of Hefner would start and end with sex, and not merely glance on casualties like Dorothy Stratten (and even the loveless Hef himself). The movie can't seem to get it up.

Marvel at the desperate spectacle of three comic leads-Aniston, Bateman and Watchmen's Patrick Wilson as the original donor-being outperformed by the wide-eyed Robinson, a quiet collector of silences. These stars will never be as young as he is; you wish they'd all stop trying.

Here's a film that definitely wants to play Hollywood dress-up.

The script, credited to one Bert V. Royal, seems to have been run through an out-of-control sass machine (seriously, it'll make you appreciate Diablo Cody's tact).

Material like this doesn't require the additional strain of overnarrated freeze-frames, a "Cuckoo's Nest" supporting cast of adorable crazies and a Glee-ified musical number set to Queen and David Bowie's "Under Pressure."

What was Clint thinking? (Or Martin Scorsese, when he made "Shutter Island," for that matter.)

This can't be a faithful facsimile of the literary phenomenon currently turning soccer moms into Scandinoir crackheads. Nor can ethical journalist Mikael (Nyqvist), an uncoverer of conspiracies, actually be the dull, Windbreakered nonaction hero onscreen.

From its title on, Come Undone is as dully generic as is imaginable.

The more substantial material, including Spitzer's feuds with vindictive New York politician Joe Bruno and financier Ken Langone, gets short shrift.

You keep waiting for the movie to grow a brain, for that random attractive neighbor (Wilde) to turn out to be a decoy, for Banks herself to become suspect. Nope. The Next Three Days morphs into "The Fugitive" on steroids.

The movie dies onscreen; it might be the best advertisement for avoiding the glories of Italy ever released by a Hollywood distributor.

Like a stumpy limb requiring quick cauterization via steam pipe (our first cringe), the Saw series is begging for closure.

Listen to the rhythms of "Broadcast News" - from Holly Hunter's daily crying jags to William Hurt's cock-of-the walk patter - and you'll hear how romantic comedy can approach an art form, a roundelay that requires the ear of a conductor. How Do You Know, James L. Brooks's latest, has such tone-deaf passages that it feels made by a totally different man.

There's really no focking place for the franchise to go anymore.

A typically lax late-period Ferrara work, far from the glories of "King of New York."

How does one remain an unapologetic fan of Vaughn, abrasive though he is, even as his material fails him?

Sandler's puppy-dog persona is just about ready to be put down. From its title on, this is entertainment for extremely lazy audiences.

Please. If you're going to ask audiences to submit to a dim theater themselves, at least greet them with the proper monster they paid for.

We've seen Nicolas Cage when he's angry-and we like him when he's angry. So why does this painfully loud revenge movie skimp on the Cage rage?

In theory, there's nothing wrong when a movie reminds you of TV. (That's where the fun is, anyway.) But when a movie resembles a long-lost, corduroy-clad episode of "The Rockford Files," that's a problem.

A perfectly boring movie from Julian Schnabel - is it possible?

None of this is particularly well wrought, and only a bizarre gas mask worn by the séance leader counts as an inspired (if slightly silly) touch.