Shrill, undermotivated, feature-length catfight.

Well made but unlikable and dramatically absurd picture.

Wallow in Hollywood hipster self-absorption.

The story of a veritable devil who comes to test and destroy a family of faith, The King is a noxious film morally and an aggravating one dramatically.

A flighty and unnecessary send-up of reality television.

Once the revisionist frisson of a black Jesus, not to mention Mary, Joseph and Judas, has worn off, one is stuck with more mundane matters such as story dynamics, visual style and character verisimilitude, much to the misfortune of the audience.

Rarely has a picture been so self-consciously designed to be a culturally meaningful touchstone, and fallen so woefully short, as Southland Tales.

The effects are snazzy, even if they pass by quite quickly, and there's enough going on to keep audiences watching, if not entirely happy. Smith, Theron and Bateman capably handle the main roles, but such is the skimpiness of the scenario that no further characters make any impact.

A stillborn would-be comedy.

An indigestible gumbo of Southern Gothic ingredients seasoned with snake oil, biblical hash and thoroughly unpalatable spice.

Conservatives score a few political points but aren't very funny in An American Carol, a cheesy spitball directed at the very large target of a Michael Moore-like filmmaker.

Cleverly titled but noxious British comedy.

The way the picture dwells almost exclusively on cinematically exploitable elements -- gangbanger crime, prostitution, honor killing, terrorism paranoia -- gives it a sordid patina that even the classy, able thesps can't offset.

A shrill, mechanical comedy.

On a moment to moment basis, however, picture continuously skirts very close to the ludicrous in its advanced-stage grimness and outre forms of torture foreplay.

The novelty value is completely gone the second time around.

An exercise in improv-derived filmmaking that simply proves once again that there's no substitute for a good script.

A shrill, strained and shallow riff on a tired idea.

There is no one to become attached to in The Four Feathers, no interest or sympathies appealed to or engaged.

Feels like a film from several years ago, one of the many made in the wake of "Pulp Fiction" that tried and failed to be as clever as its progenitor.

A remarkably mirthless and inept romantic comedy.

The dramatic trajectory is frightfully obvious, the characters tediously one-dimensional, the dialogue banal.

With a far-fetched script that might barely have passed muster at the B units in the old studio days, this Dimension release will command a certain up-front attention due to cast topliners.

The submarine goes deep but the story never does in U-571, a good old-fashioned WWII picture that is exciting in only the most superficial way.

Another tale of out-of-it working-class men cooking up a harebrained scheme to improve their lot in life.

Arid, self-consciously arty and emotionally uninvolving.

Sure to turn off general viewers due to its emotional inaccessibility, multitude of narrative problems and preoccupation with a torture Web site.

Passably interesting psychological study of emotionally wounded characters until it commits dramatic suicide by showing its true colors as a tricked-up "Fatal Attraction" wannabe.