The story's sweet, however stale, and many performers have energy. But screenwriters Alonzo Brown and Kim Watson drain the reality out of it.

Folks wanting to hear the usual New Testament message will be pleased; others may feel that the tension dissolves in homilies and wish the main character weren't led around by a blonde-haired little angel in a white dress.

The biggest irony of this project is that it was made by a company that calls itself Original Film but has produced perhaps the least original movie of the year so far.

Kingsley gets the film's one big emotional scene and makes it count.

You can get all of this free on television any week, so why pay for it?

Andie MacDowell bursts out of her good-girl cocoon in Crush to become a bright, bad butterfly: drinking, smoking, flirting with Ecstasy, having moaning sex on a tombstone just minutes after the funeral of a friend.

Speed Racer is chaotic as a six-ring circus, gaudy as a transvestites convention and soullessly cute as a robot puppy.

Gripping but gap-filled Seven Pounds will have half your brain asking "How could this be?" and the other half saying, "Shut up and go along for the ride!" Listen to the latter voice.

Puts more miles on plot that was worn out long ago.

Epps emerges mostly unscathed, and Dutton gives an excellent performance; he's as able before the camera as he is inept behind it.

Proves two things irrefutably. First, Fishburne doesn't get enough work that tests his acting abilities… Second, Luke's breakout performance in "Fisher" was no fluke.

The worst horror sequel of this or many another summer.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, move over: Your dramatic replacement has arrived.

It's hard to fault a script that keeps finding new dilemmas for characters and rewards attentive viewers with in-jokes.

What starts as a cute premise crashes faster than a skateboard with an oak branch shoved between its wheels.

Diary rather sloppily blends melodrama and spiritual uplift with crass comedy, sometimes in the same scene.

I also wondered how the movie got the title Cradle 2 the Grave. Nobody used the phrase; it didn't apply to any characters; it didn't even turn up in a song. Maybe the filmmakers were saving "Rotten 2 the Core" for the sequel.

This isn't nitpicking. Every bit of the tale is as full of holes as a wool sweater at a moth convention, and Shyamalan telegraphs each potential surprise.

The yarn itself is a winning one.

Partly a travelogue for the Greek islands, partly a simplistic love story, and generally a rehash of the Oscar-winning "Mediterraneo," as if we needed even the first one.

The truly appalling thing, though, is the stupidity of the screenplay by Richard Kelly.

Williamson deals mostly in cliches, as if high schoolers weren't smart enough to appreciate anything subtler.

This giddy summer extravaganza does deliver aerial thrills with eye-dazzling visuals and ear-smacking (though beautifully designed) sound.

When George Lucas last pulled off an original idea for a feature film, Bill Clinton was still thought of by many voters as overweight and chaste.

Director Doug Liman and a trio of writers eventually forget the rules they set up and hurl combatants to places they could never have seen or even known about: Who'd willingly project himself into the middle of a Chechnyan war zone?

Far be it from me to spoil the secret, but I will say this: The last reel should've been sent straight to the city dump.

Interesting and idiotic elements almost exactly balance each other.

Self-respecting filmgoers will find this a "Walk" to dismember.

Universal Studios has unloaded its entire monster catalog in this movie, which is aimed at people with the attention span of a kindergartner. Shreds of coherence and character have been sacrificed to fangs and fisticuffs at every chance.

It starts as enjoyable B-movie pulp, degenerates to camp, then turns into laughable lunacy.

The dialogue in Craig Mazin’s script crackles at its best, and the supporting characters (led by Robert Patrick as a grizzled skip chaser) have bizarrely funny moments.

It falls back on straightforward horror tactics, executed competently but without flair. It takes liberties with the second half of the book, including one big change that will leave fans of the novel growling with disbelief and disapproval.

Writer-director Reverge Anselmo has created a movie of ineptness so perfect and unified as to boggle the mind.

Errors in logic will delight the attentive.

Trying to make sense of this shaggy dog story is like climbing a mountain with glass-smooth sides and quarter-inch toeholds.

Puts a fun, frothy spin on the 1960s TV show before sinking back into the mundane.

Beach blends all the performing styles smoothly: LL's blithe coolness, Blalock's sultry ambiguity, Liotta's slow-boiling intensity, Ejiofor's dapper amiability, Phifer's brooding intensity.

Bullock good, but King reigns in movie sequel.

It's neither dull nor stimulating, neither off-putting nor engaging.

It's the poster child for bad taste, not to mention bad construction.

The story introduces a mystery halfway through to keep the plot from running out of steam, but neither its set-up nor its resolution provide much drama.

We don't need a discussion of plot in a review of a movie made from a video game, do we? Nor do we care whether the characters are complicated (no), the acting is sophisticated (no), the direction is competent (no) or the camerawork is clever (no).

Could pass for any serial killer movie except for some pertinent philosophizing about the nature of evil and the operations of the soul.

When the film stumbles to its last and silliest conclusion, you realize much of the plot line was unnecessary -- or couldn't have happened at all!

Offers an amusing break to the undemanding.

Watching this is like sitting by a pinsetter at a bowling alley. That's too bad, because the picture had potential.

A mind-numbing carnival of violence.

I realize fantasy-based action movies aren't supposed to be as complex as William Gibson's novels. But do they have to be this simple-minded?

It's not only an ultraviolent, ludicrously inconsistent rip-off of Bradbury's idea, but it poisons the well for future efforts.

I do have one overpowering Y2K fear: that Hollywood will keep belching out movies as excruciatingly dull, brutal, mindless and overlong as End of Days.

Harden and Tierney waste performances of moderate complexity, Baranski adds her usual brand of silky sarcasm and Rip Torn provides a welcome presence as Cole's jolly campaign manager.

If you're the kind of person who goes to the movies primarily to watch faces melt to pulp, you won't be disappointed.

Unimaginative.

How bad, really, could it be? I couldn't have guessed.

As in most cheap futuristic movies, everything is dark or illuminated by a drab bluish glow. The buildings look grubbily similar to each other, so every location has to be identified onscreen. Of course, that saves the audience the trouble of paying attention.

In its design, at least, Mindhunters"surpasses all other Christie knockoffs.

Lawrence plus latex equals laughs.

Writers Pamela Falk and Michael Ellis aim for the soufflé-style comedy audiences ate up greedily 40 years ago, but the film falls flat.

There's nothing wrong with Simpson's performance that a head transplant wouldn't cure, and the grinning Reynolds looks Botoxed into immobility.

Like the star's acting, the movie is bland, full of good intentions and generally as stiff as a fireplace poker.

Messing may simply be one of those actresses who's the right size for TV and the wrong size for the big screen.

A punch-drunk lightweight. Inside the ring, it lands some forceful punches. Outside the ring, it stumbles around, swinging wildly at nothing, until it collapses.

About 45 minutes into Swordfish, the picture degenerates permanently from drivel to sleaze (only a short drop).

Wilson brings low-wattage amiability to his part, as always. Hudson's mismatched with him but tries to set him afire.

Someone Like You is from Hollywood's bottomless box of cliches.

It relies on short bursts of Lawrence's zaniness, punctuated by an occasional joke about stinking feet or vile breath. For his admirers, that will be plenty.

By refusing to take anything seriously (including himself), Shatner lifts the movie to a truly funny level of absurdity. Soon, though, it goes back to being the type of buddy picture Hollywood stamps out like stale cookies.

The best way to sit through Max Payne is by using minimal brain.

It honors the tone of that wonderful comedy while setting it in present-day New York City.

Better than you might expect, if you didn't expect it to be any good.

The movie briefly suggests Viola is an incestuous psychotic.

It's cheerful nonsense from blithe beginning to obvious end.

Has any movie this millennium had less reason to exist than First Daughter?

Creature is refreshingly and intentionally silly, in an era when horror has devolved mostly into torture porn and high-tech, computer-generated assaults on our senses.

I'm afraid it just stinks.

Randolph and Parker play fair with us, setting up a motive early and clearly. Yet whether you buy the motive or find it far-fetched, it almost immediately tells you who's responsible for the death.

The writers supply character traits that seem to point toward a pay-off but never reach one. People all end up as tight-lipped, indistinguishable automatons who plummet 50 feet down jagged rocks with scarcely a scratch.

Director Rob Cohen shoots believable action sequences, too. Nobody jumps the gap between skyscrapers or falls 40 feet, then gets up and runs away.

What a riveting movie The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen might have been! And what a rickety mess it turned out to be when the people responsible lost faith in the origin of the material!

As dry as a high school history book, solemn as a funeral service, humorless as a Politburo meeting, bloated as a waterlogged corpse and unbalanced as a bout between a debutante and a sumo wrestler.

Abbott, Petroni and director Michael Rymer do exploit the visual and aural cliches of vampire movies from the last 20 years: The creatures wear tattoos, shave their heads, listen to blistering rock and dress in black leather. For a band of societal outsiders, they're pathetically conformist.

It's yet another warm, fuzzy, New-Age tale that cozies us into believing the grave doesn't mean oblivion.

The film works best as an extended "Twilight Zone" episode.

Totally underwhelming.

Sometimes seems longer than a rainy Super Bowl.

You won't see a single joke here you haven't encountered before, all in funnier forms.

Whenever the tires stop screeching and the fenders slamming, the story lands in a brutal pile-up of cliches.

Designed to appeal to people who thought "She's All That" was too mentally demanding.

The Observer won't let me get stoned before a review, so I'll never know what How High would be like after a big fat blunt. Without one, it's sloppy, broadly funny in spots and chaotic.

Babbit clumsily underlines emotional moods.

Of COURSE it's bad. It was always going to be. But it's worse than necessary.

Cuba Gooding Jr. lands on his behind more often than a one-legged figure skater, and the preschooler next to me giggled every time.

The cancer of dishonesty begins to grow half an hour into the film, and it riddles the picture by the end.

Repeated lapses in continuity and common sense.

Ghost Ship, which can best be described by altering one consonant in the second word, sustains the stylishness of its opening for exactly three minutes.

Director Richard Donner finds a few startling images for bloody battle scenes, but awful dialogue prevents the actors from giving performances of any depth.

There's one thing to be said for The Perfect Man: It confirms my belief that I'll never need to see another Hilary Duff movie until (1) she turns 30 or (2) she plays a crackhead in "Requiem for a Dream II."

The filmmakers find "laughs" in sadistic violence.

Adults will wish the movie were less simplistic, obvious, clumsily plotted and shallowly characterized. But what are adults doing in the theater at all?

Darabont and Sloane stumble consistently and fall into the abyss.

Pitof can be blamed for the 89-cent digitized sets, the jerky or rubbery special effects, some clunky performances and more continuity errors than I could count.

Should appeal to anyone who likes films as mushy and unsurprising as baby food.

I think this camp classic is an accident along the lines of "Showgirls": howlingly funny, filled with gratingly earnest performances, riddled with dialogue that will be quoted at parties.

No one associated with the film tries very hard, from cinematographer Peter Deming -- San Francisco has never looked so drab -- to composer Mark Isham, whose watery jazz score is meant to summon melancholy but merely relieves insomnia.

As close to perfectly unwatchable as it can be.

Technically, the film can stand with most releases. The cast includes veterans Hal Linden, Paul Rodriguez and Jennifer O'Neill, all of whom do good work.

This script by the husband-and-wife team of Leora Barish and Henry Bean is hopelessly contrived and takes forever to get to the point. (I warn you: The film does not absolutely identify the killer.)

Hector Elizondo, who has appeared in all 15 of Marshall's features, turns up as a Basque rancher and adds a bit of sparkle. I just wish Marshall's good luck charm was not a 70-year-old actor but a fresh, honest screenplay.

Director Ken Kwapis uses those monster infants perfectly, down to a funny final outtake.

The best work comes from Timothy Dalton as the grizzled, Scots-accented head of the Pinkertons.

Characters behave arbitrarily and incredibly, and a clumsy resolution brings the film to a thudding halt.

Eventually, though, the movie turns into a "Touched By An Angel" knockoff that dares us not to reach for a hankie while we succumb to its comforting message.

Delivers the kind of vengeance fantasy women unhappy with their husbands may want: Vicarious satisfaction, however clumsily delivered, is better than no satisfaction at all. Just be sure to stop by the lobotomy clinic en route to the theater.

Even if we leave aside the obvious time travel paradoxes, we can have a good horse laugh at the rest of the plot's inanities.

The supporting cast is almost uniformly good, from Conchata Ferrell as a sympathetic waitress to Erick Avari as a corporate type with a surprisingly big heart and a hidden silly streak. Turturro relishes his quiet overplaying and steals the bulk of his scenes.

Excruciatingly flat comedy.

De Niro wears a shamefaced look most of the time, as if doubly embarrassed: He agreed to a movie he knew was worthless, yet he's too lazy or indifferent to give us his best.

A painful bore.

Passed as slowly as if I'd been sitting naked on an igloo, Formula 51 sank from quirky to jerky to utter turkey.

Isn't satisfying or surprising. It doesn't even make sense from scene to scene.

Just when the story reaches its idiotic nadir, Neil (Diamond) shows up to save the day with a song and a smile.

M. Emmet Walsh and Elizabeth Franz enliven the film as a couple across the street...These wonderful old actors briefly raise the level of the picture to the kind of warm but honest drama it ought to have been.

It's well-shot and well-edited by Hollywood standards, though special effects don't reach the top Hollywood level. The stars have their hearts in their work: Cameron and Johnson don't have great depth but give their all. Currie makes a subtle villain.

Like the Big E himself. It starts out fast, dangerous, sexy, confident, funny with an edge. It ends up confused, bloated, unable to leave the stage when it should.

Spade, who almost invariably plays smug or smarmy characters, proves he really can act.

A frenzied, cacophonic cartoon.

As a British politician said of a corrupt but articulate peer, "The Cat in the Hat" is like a rotten mackerel seen by moonlight: It shines as it stinks.

Utterly generic.

Zomboid, convoluted excuse for a thriller is among year's worst.

After five minutes, Christopher Walken vanishes. We wait vainly for the next 90 minutes for someone, anyone to bring that kind of danger, unpredictability and vitality to a story as drab as army fatigues.

Let me say, in my desire always to be positive, that Serving Sara is the funniest film I know where a man sticks his arm up a bull's rectum to massage its prostate.

The movie is somewhat below average. The plot doesn't always hold together.

The assault is against our ears, as the soundtrack pours forth a stream of thrash and Goth music.

It's bombastic, chaotic, plodding, visually dreary and patchily written.