Beautifully crafted and highlighted by an arresting change-of-pace perf by Meg Ryan as an English teacher erotically awakened by a homicide detective. But the story's unpalatable narrative holes and dramatic missteps will hold sway over the pic's better qualities.

Director David Gordon Green has created some fresh, penetrating, beautifully drawn scenes of one-on-one intimacy…But some of what surrounds these interludes is variously misguided, fuzzy and borderline pretentious.

The season's first comet-targets-Earth special effects extravaganza is spectacular enough in its cataclysmic scenes of the planet being devastated by an unstoppable fireball, but proves far from thrilling in the down time spent with a largely dull assortment of troubled human beings.

This franchise-hungry champion of the underdog brings no sense of fun to his pursuit of bad guys; it's just the fate he's stuck with.

The souffle falls a little flat in The Ladykillers, a Coen brothers black comedy in which the humor seems arch and narrative momentum doesn't kick in until the final third.

The cutting-edge perfection of effects in Cameron and Spielberg films is replaced here by work that looks more homemade, particularly toward the end in some faintly cheesy composite shots.

Notable for Kimberly Elise's ferocious lead performance and for the bigscreen exposure pic affords the charismatic Bishop T.D. Jakes, who plays himself and upon whose works the film is based.

You can virtually see the mystique peeling away while beholding the turgid melodrama, patchy plotting, windy dialogue and, yes, spectacular combat effects of this grand finale.

Comes across in muted fashion, with uninvolving characters and lack of genuine excitement or fright creating a second-rate, second-hand feel.

Mismatched marriage of offbeat character study and unimaginative horror riffs. Most compelling element by far is Bruce Campbell's inspired performance as a nursing home patient who insists he is the real Elvis Presley.

Good for a few lascivious titters but quite lacking in the sort of comic bite and social satire one hopes for in the work of Mike Nichols.

Unfortunately, the operative word is bland, as the newcomers don't add much to the formula, leaving it to their nemeses to enliven the proceedings. Narrative drive and humor are also in short supply, which creates a serious sagsag in the middle when the novelty of the fresh components has mostly worn off.

As rich in period and historical background as it is deficient in fresh dramatic and thematic ideas.

While After the Sunset is never exactly dull and is smartly cut to a brief running time, it never quickens the pulse.

The yarn's emotional undercurrents never take hold, resulting in a picture that leaves one thinking less about the fates of the characters than about how the actors had to spend most of their working days soaking wet.

Takes itself so seriously that it never has fun with its shopworn genre elements.

Surprisingly lacks a feeling of personal urgency and insight that would have made it a distinctive, even unique contribution to the considerable number of films that deal with the war in general and Holocaust in particular.

Has absolutely nothing to say about its characters and their lamentable actions.

Visually resplendent but dramatically uneven.

The imaginatively illustrated but precariously precious film offers up a string of minor pleasures but never becomes more than moderately amusing or involving.

Penn's magnetism and hesitant line delivery create what interest there is, although the whole picture suffers from a central figure who can never get it together on any level.

At best an honorable failure, an intelligent and ambitious picture that crucially lacks dramatic flair and emotional involvement.

Lacks the special creative spark needed to lift it to an uncommon imaginative level.

Attractively designed, energetically performed and, above all, blessedly concise, this adaptation of one of the most popular American kids' books of all time walks the safe side of surrealism with its fur-flying shenanigans. The younger the viewers, the better reactions are bound to be.

Earnest and well-intentioned.

A humans vs. robots saga that feels machine-made, I, Robot looks to have been assembled from the spare parts of dozens of previous sci-fi pictures.

Handsome, respectable and well cast, elaborate production lacks the excitement and magic that would elevate the film to beloved status, and sheer abundance of CGI work weighs on it too heavily.

Te laughs "Fockers" generates are the type you feel embarrassed about almost immediately afterward.

A great title in search of a movie to live up to it, this startlingly uneventful compendium of thick-headed boy-talk and female tolerance squanders a fine cast on incredibly ordinary characters and situations.

Physicality of the second half, then, will keep the audience going, but it is not quite sufficient to camouflage the elemental silliness of storyline.

This first dramatic feature by "Hoop Dreams" director Steve James has one foot still squarely planted in the docu aesthetic and notably lacks any psychological interest or emotional depth.

Compared with high-powered action specialists like James Cameron, director Charles Russell seems content to accomplish just one thing per shot, getting the essentials on the screen but creating no special dynamic or look.

Pfeiffer tackles the part with obvious dedication, but she's thwarted from the get-go by the heavily proscribed nature of the role as written.

Like his previous efforts, Jarmusch's sidelong take on Western conventions relies upon quirky tone, hipsterish performances and a highly refined visual style to put it over.

Although arresting in spots, it falls far short of bringing out the full values of the play, and doesn't approach the emotional resonance of Franco Zeffirelli's immensely popular 1968 screen version.

A study of the urban dope-dealing culture and its toll on everyone who comes in contact with it, the picture has an insider's feel that is constantly undercut by the filmmaker's impulse to editorialize.

This handsome, not unappealing look at a Scottish legend of nearly 300 years ago is too solemn, wooden and dour for its own good, and feels oddly of another era.

Unfortunately, after a relatively promising warmup, pic actually proceeds to flatten out the characters in the latter sections and to make them less dimensional and interesting than they initially seemed.

The Basketball Diaries is a weak-tea rendition of Jim Carroll's much-admired cult tome about his teenage drug addiction. Leonardo DiCaprio's committed lead performance deserves a better context than this gloss on the source material.

This trifle about a dizzy downtown New York scenester who gets a grip on her life is energized by several attractive characters and enough youthful pep to put it over as an upbeat diversion for teens and twentysomethings, though it has no more substance than bubblegum music.

A strange international odyssey that becomes more complicated and loony by the moment. Some viewers will undoubtedly tune out early, others will follow as far as they can -- and a privileged few might make it all the way.

An intriguingly plotted mystery that unfortunately forgets to put the noir in film noir. A drab, pale-looking affair without a trace of visual style, this cross-country pursuit yarn fights a losing battle to sustain viewer attention via narrative alone, so much does it flounder for lack of imagistic flair.

The demoralizing slide of the relationship between Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, from artistic comrades-in-arms during the thrilling creation of the nouvelle vague to name-calling enemies from the early '70s onward, is charted in overly academic and constricted fashion in Two in the Wave.

Todd Phillips' follow-up to the most successful R-rated comedy of all time serves up its share of laughs while not actually providing a terribly enjoyable time because of a queasy undercurrent that never goes away.

More than even the most faithful of the earlier episodes, this film feels devoted above all to reproducing the novel onscreen as closely as possible, an impulse that drags it toward ponderousness at times and rather sorely tests the abilities of the young actors to hold the screen entirely on their own, without being propped up by the ever-fabulous array of character actors the series offers.

It all ends up being a half-hour too much of a just okay thing.

Although involving, this remake of a recent French film never reaches the anticipated heights of excitement and suspense.

A low-impact romantic comedy-drama from James L. Brooks in which the central characters are strangely disconnected from one another as well as from the audience.

Predictable, cutesy and nowhere near hot-blooded enough.

Like many action stars, Statham is good at cool brooding, but West's frantic style works against this.

Will please fans of Sara Gruen's best seller, but it lacks the vital spark that would have made the drama truly compelling on the screen.

The slapstick and action comedy interludes are haphazardly executed at best, and matters aren't helped by the film's incredibly ugly look.

The overall enterprise, for all its intrigue and visceral impact, feels overly thought out, affected and forced in its stylization.

In the end, given how little goes on in Breaking Dawn - Part 1 despite the major plot points, what you're left with is to gaze at the three leads, all of whom have their constituencies and reasons for being eminently watchable. The only hope is they'll have more to do next time around.

The Rum Diary remains a relatively mild diversion, not at all unpleasant but neither compelling nor convulsive.

The new film may also serve a purpose by showcasing a dynamic and attractive new actor, Kenny Wormald but, otherwise, this is a by-the-numbers affair.

Even with the addition of new characters, such as the ones voiced by Brad Pitt and Matt Damon, George Miller's animated sequel just isn't very funny.

Whereas Peckinpah managed not only to raise hackles but to get under the skin, Lurie manages only the former, which reduces the material to the level of sensation-mongering.

Heijningen doesn't display the instinct of the best Hollywood action directors to give the audience what it craves at the big moments, except for a few gory in-your-face shots.

As novel and absorbing as In Time is in several respects, however, Andrew Niccol's latest conception of an altered but still recognizable future feels undernourished in other ways that are not as salutary, preventing the film from fulfilling its strong inherent promise.

This punishingly predictable tale will test whether sci-fi action fanboys can stomach having their cherished genre infiltrated by sentimental hokum about a down-on-his-luck dad and his spunky long-lost son.

A bold rethinking of a familiar old story and striking design elements are undercut by a draggy midsection and undeveloped characters in Snow White and the Huntsman.

Staggeringly cornball and squeaky-clean even when flirting with such issues as interracial sexual rivalries.

Terse and understated, this is a spy vs. spy tale designed to minimize talk and maximize action, not at all a bad thing in movies but over-worked to near-exhaustion here.

Such heart-tuggers have their appeal to some people in any era, but earnest hokum of this nature has become increasingly rare. And for a reason.

The same tone and look are maintained, but the visceral excitement is muffled by familiarity, an insufficiently conceived lead character and the sheer weight of backstory and multiple layers of deception.

Yes, it's a cartoon, but it's conspicuously unmodulated, with the volume set on high and the pacing all but pushed to fast-forward.

Some privileged nature footage from the African rain forest is dishonored by deeply silly narration in Chimpanzee.

Dark Shadows sinks its teeth half-way into its potentially meaty material but hesitates to go all the way.

A creakily old-fashioned comedy that forgot to pack the laughs along with the nudging and kvetching.

The film's inability to illuminate the finer points of the rigid form, to define what separates the great from the good, proves frustrating for the outsider.

As easy on the eyes and ears as it is embalmed from any dramatic point of view.

There's something about novelist Stephenie Meyer that induces formerly interesting directors to suddenly make films that are slow, silly and soporific.

Once you realize the film is just going to be a string of encomiums against a backdrop of frantically edited archival material in which few shots are allowed to stay onscreen longer than three seconds, it's clear that no meaningful analysis of the woman's career or political agenda will be forthcoming.

Every character here is so squeaky-clean, and the prejudice as depicted is so toothless and easily overcome, that the film feels like a gingerly fantasy version of what, in real life, was an exceptional example of resilient trail-blazing.

The fact that the three actors who do most of the fooling around — Robert De Niro, Diane Keaton and Susan Sarandon — have a combined age of 202 pegs this as a sex romp for the Viagra crowd.

As the enduring success of this property has shown, there are large, emotionally susceptible segments of the population ready to swallow this sort of thing, but that doesn't mean it's good.

Dazzlingly designed and staged in a theatrical setting so as to suggest that the characters are enacting assigned roles in life, this tight and pacy telling of a 900 page-plus novel touches a number of its important bases but lacks emotional depth, moral resonance and the simple ability to allow its rich characters to experience and drink deeply of life.

Would have made for a fine film noir 60 years ago but feels rather contrived and unbelievable in the setting of contemporary New York.

It is nonetheless imaginative in a highly familiar and ultimately tedious way.

Nicely cast and made with as much conviction as can be brought to something so intrinsically formulaic.

With Melissa McCarthy playing a one-woman demolition team who, for 95 percent of the running time, is a genuine affront to nature, there are unavoidably some laughs here, although the gifted comic actor got more of them in less screen time in her previous films than she does in this starring role.

Pretty when it should be gritty and grandiosely noble instead of just telling it like it was, 42 needlessly trumps up but still can't entirely spoil one of the great American 20th century true-life stories, the breaking of major league baseball's color line by Jackie Robinson.

In trying to merge this alarmist theme with an old-fashioned murder mystery, the filmmakers throw at least one plot-twist sucker-punch too many, leaving the viewer with an “Oh, come on” reaction to the entire film.

Never less than watchable and loaded with trademark negativity so extreme it's sometimes funny, the new film is nonetheless saddled with a protagonist so narrowly and unlikably presented that, in the end, he doesn't seem worth the time devoted to him.

The Pact demonstrates both why people respond to horror and why it's so routinely scorned.

A credibly drawn central character is trapped inside a half-cooked dramatic stew in Hello I Must Be Going.

Eccentric, misguided and occasionally charming and sweet, this curiosity item with Sean Penn in one of his nuttier performances is unlikely to be embraced critically or commercially.

Feels slight and pretty ordinary by the end, with no edge or compelling insights, just a reasonable feel for teen attitudes and banter.

Deftly playing Tina Fey's feminist-icon mother, Lily Tomlin all but steals Admission, a knowing but uneven comedy about the neuroticism of the college-admission process on both sides of the equation.

Danny Boyle has great and plainly evident fun adding twists and curves and tunnels and endless style to his modern London noir Trance, but he makes so many left turns that the film turns in on itself rather than going anywhere.

The constant repetition of these shock tactics, in lieu of genuine suspense, makes The Wolfman feel cheap, despite the vast amounts obviously spent on Rick Heinrichs' opulent production design, the extensive visual effects, the more-than-effective special makeup effects, Milena Canonero's luxurious costumes, Danny Elfman's insistent score and the tony cast.

Jackson undermines solid work from a good cast with show-offy celestial evocations that severely disrupt the emotional connections with the characters.

Except for the physical aspects of this bleak odyssey by a father and son through a post-apocalyptic landscape, this long-delayed production falls dispiritingly short on every front.

Cute and clever though the plot may be, everything is played out in the broadest possible terms without an iota of nuance or subtlety.

There's nothing funny, provocative or involving about what "Shrek" co-writer Joe Stillman and the team from Madrid-based Ilion Animation Studios do with the notion here.

Teasingly enjoyable rubbish through the first hour, Orphan becomes genuine trash during its protracted second half.

Worst of all, it just feels tired and recycled.

If auds swallow this odoriferous exercise in calculated career repositioning, they'll swallow anything.

Satisfying neither as character study nor as straight-ahead actioner.

An ultra-arty "The Sixth Sense" that deliberately inhibits comprehension of the story until the very end -- and arguably continues to inhibit it even then -- pic features certifiably talented people on both sides of the camera collaborating on a project that probably shouldn't have been undertaken in the first place.

Without Watts, Scott Coffey's feature-length expansion of his identically titled short wouldn't amount to much.

The subject being race relations, Manderlay is bound to stir considerable debate in intellectual circles, but given the director's abstract style and use of characters to enact an agenda, it's a discussion that will exclude the general public, who will ignore it as they did "Dogville."

Overstuffed and fatally miscast, All the King's Men never comes to life.

A demolition derby starring some of the most expensive cars on Earth, Redline portrays a world so drenched in wealth it gives off a stench.

A ranting, claustrophobic drama that trades in shopworn paranoid notions, William Friedkin's overwrought screen version of Tracy Letts' play assaults the viewer with aggressive thesping and over-the-top notions of shocking incident, all to intensely alienating effect.

Result is still innocuously mild and inconsequential.

A dramatic situation that should be wrenching is mostly tedious in Reservation Road.

Without the pleasure of watching Cate Blanchett continue the role that launched her to stardom, there would be little to recommend this latest of many cinematic and television accounts of the celebrated monarch's life.

It's a quick trip from whimsy to silliness in Be Kind Rewind, a notably ephemeral work by Michel Gondry, whose flights of fancy can't overcome the egregious illogic of the premise.

Conventional where it should be bold and mild where it should be wild, 10,000 BC reps a missed opportunity to present an imaginative vision of a prehistoric moment.

It's hard to find the genuine heartfelt moments in The Lucky Ones.

An annoying example of self-therapy posing as art.

Oddly misanthropic, occasionally amusing but thoroughly cheerless holiday attraction that is in no way a family film.

This botched remake of "The Day the Earth Stood Still" seriously dishonors the seriously fine 1951 sci-fi landmark on which it's based.

With "Shampoo" and "American Gigolo" now distant memories, the time evidently seemed ripe for another Hollywood stud movie. Despite Ashton Kutcher’s believability as an older woman’s kept boy, Spread isn’t a patch on those previous films.

Represents a passable follow-up to the venerable Peter Pan story and mercifully, at 72 minutes, is exactly half the length of the last attempt at same, Steven Spielberg's lamentable "Hook."

A Steve Martin vehicle that's not prankish or weird enough by half.

A strained and pallid concoction that won't fire the collective imaginations of modern children.

Kasdan's direction here is even less energized than his writing.

Possessed of another outstanding wall-to-wall score by Philip Glass but rather fuzzy in its message, entry differs from its predecessors in that roughly 80% of its images are derived from existing sources and have been "tortured and recontextualized" to unusual and sometimes extreme effect.

An ideal rainy day matinee attraction for well-to-do ladies of a certain age.

A certain staleness hangs over the proceedings despite the best efforts of the cast and the fun-minded creative team.

Impeccably crafted but dramatically dull.

Recycles familiar adventure and cartoon devices with minimal wit and flair, and the lack of imagination will seem all the more dramatic to audiences in comparison to the winningly sophisticated "Shrek."

A bland and dour screen version of Sebastian Faulks' highly engrossing bestseller.

A generally old-fashioned costumer that runs out of gas even faster than does the tempestuous love affair between writer George Sand and poet Alfred de Musset that it so devotedly recounts.

Saddled with a sentimentally "sincere" subject and lacking the stylistic and humorous cachet of the recent computer-animated smashes.

A thriller more contrived than it is exciting.

Largely listless and witless, this extensive reworking of the 1968 sci-fi favorite simply isn't very exciting or imaginative; most surprisingly, given the material, it's also Burton's most conventional and literal-minded film, the one most lacking in his trademark poetic weirdness and bracing flights of fancy.

Ultimately a mess of diverse ingredients that sorely could have used a rigorous screening process to eliminate all the chaff.

If drive-ins still existed, this film would rule there for weeks.

So second-hand and disposable is it in every respect.

A deeply metaphysical film by contempo Hollywood standards, this middlebrow trifle may engage the emotions of a certain tier of young professional women.

The gambits in Ghost Dog seem simply like literary and cinematic games devoid of any larger meaning.

Overstays its welcome by at least a half-hour after never getting very high off the ground in the first place.

A well-upholstered but hopelessly contrived romantic comedy, Picture Perfect is too ineffectual to tickle either the funnybone or the heartstrings.

The spectacle of Kenneth Branagh and Judy Davis doing over-the-top Woody Allen impersonations creates a neurotic energy meltdown in Celebrity, a once-over-lightly rehash of mostly stale Allen themes and motifs.

At nearly three hours, however, it rather overstays its welcome, trying the patience even as it sustains intrigue regarding its final revelations.

Schneider hams it up as a paunchy middle-aged Hawaiian stoner in an eyebrow-raising ethnic caricature that more than once calls to mind Mickey Rooney's unfortunate Japanese turn in "Breakfast at Tiffany's."

Too familiar in its basic trajectory to be fresh or compelling.

Could scarcely be more dazzling on a purely visual level, but it's mortally anemic in the story, character and thematic departments.

Scarcely more amusing than spending 90 minutes in a pre-K classroom.

Lahti's feature directorial debut walks an innocuous middle line between the story's maudlin possibilities and its meaningful potential.

As overblown as it is overlong, Bad Boys II is an enervating case of more is less.

Director Renny Harlin has unfortunately adopted a let's-try-anything attitude that translates into a chaotic and unattractive visual style.

Bloody but anemic story.

Could use a little extra comic poundage. The Farrelly brothers' latest sees the team tapping a sweeter, milder vein of humor than their outrageous norm.

By far the least ambitious, and certainly the least interesting, animated feature to come out of Disney in quite some time.

A contrived but entirely workable premise is given a well-tooled treatment in Sweet November, a femme-slanted doomed romance with a heavily calculated feel to it.

Essentially approaches its subject seriously, but does take stabs both at horror and grotesque comedy, neither with much success.

Like "Waiting to Exhale" except more so, film jerks from scene to scene with little sense of rhythm, continuity or dramatic shaping.

Revives the format but not the fun of classic Hollywood screwball comedies about rediscovering the virtues of a former mate.

Breaks down when it gets to the distant future, which in this case isn't a good place to be stranded.

Harmless tale of the giant pooch helping out some itinerant performing animals while longing for home will go down smoothly with the preschool faithful, but anyone over 5 will feel antsy even given the brief running time.

A lot of talent on both sides of the camera operating in low gear.

Will serve as an excellent gauge of any viewer's tolerance level for schmaltzy contrivance and manipulation.

A very vulgar pro-faith comedy rather than a sacrilegious goof, Dogma is an extraordinarily uneven film.

A disappointingly routine thriller that prefers to lean on tired Hollywood conventions rather than to explore fresh dramatic and stylistic territory.

An empty shell.

Achieves some glancing poetic effects during its first hour, but becomes gross and exploitative during the shooting rampage of the final act.

Funny as much of the action is, however, the approach feels rather less fresh, and the gross-outs seem more gratuitous.

Series regulars Chevy Chase, Beverly D'Angelo and Randy Quaid (who joined for "Christmas Vacation") are all back for more, and thank God for Quaid, who injects a few bracing shots of mangy humor into what is otherwise a lukewarm brew.

Engagingly intriguing throughout most of its slightly overlong running time, and perhaps the strangely mesmerizing mood Lynch has orchestrated for the entire "Twin Peaks" undertaking should not be underestimated at this juncture. But the feeling persists that, to a considerable degree, Lynch is marking time with this project, creating new riffs and variations on themes he had already largely worked out.

Pic fails to provide any hard facts or make any incriminating connections that a reasonably informed person doesn't already know about, so intellectually Moore is largely preaching to the converted in this blatant cinematic 2004 campaign pamphlet.

An artistically experimental, ideologically apocalyptic blast at American values that is as obvious in intent as it is murky in aesthetic achievement.

Lacks the antic energy and inspired imagination that might have put this over as a sharp-witted community comedy in the Preston Sturges vein.

Seems bent on creating equal-opportunity offense to many groups, but more often than not is appalling simply for its silliness and lack of comedic control.

Short on real drama and incident and long on tedium.

Del Toro clearly knows his way around the camera, but the shadowy eeriness that saturates the early going slowly becomes monotonous and winds up being just dull, and even partially obscures the action in the long underground finale.

Instead, director Jon Turteltaub has taken the easiest road, emerging with a soppy, soft-headed disease-of-the-week-style piece that sentimentalizes or opts out of every interesting issue the script raises.

The story is undoubtedly weird, but perhaps more so on paper than on the screen, since Russell and his actors have played it mostly straight in attempting to confer psychological validity on all the untoward developments.

None of the characters is given much depth or meaningful backgrounding, leaving the capable thesps with plenty of anguish and emotion to play but not much else.

Unfortunately, almost everything about the film is so unbelievable and misjudged that only the most gullible audiences will feel any transporting thrill at the end other than from the movie finally being over.

A coming-of-age piece that is slight to the point of anemia, Unstrung Heroes sports a willful eccentricity that almost immediately becomes annoying.

The Hudsucker Proxy is no doubt one of the most inspired and technically stunning pastiches of old Hollywood pictures ever to come out of the New Hollywood. But a pastiche it remains, as nearly everything in the Coen brothers' latest and biggest film seems like a wizardly but artificial synthesis, leaving a hole in the middle where some emotion and humanity should be.

If you're going to ask an audience to sit through a three-hour, nine-minute rendition of an oft-told story, it would help to have a strong point of view on your material and an urgent reason to relate it. Such is not the case with Wyatt Earp, a handsome, grandiose gentleman's Western that tries to tell evenhandedly more about the famous Tombstone lawman than has ever before been put onscreen.

Rather like a cross between "Up in Smoke" and an episode of "The Jeffersons, Friday is a crudely made, sometimes funny bit of porchfront humor from the 'hood.

It's a very academic movie about academics that belongs in academia, not movie theaters.

Half formulaic and half simply unimaginative.

A picture too simplistic and sentimental for art seekers and too rough for general audiences.

After slipping badly with the second installment two years ago, the Narnia franchise does a full-on belly flop with this third.

Clearly nothing but a paycheck project for all concerned, this is definitely the least and hopefully the last of a franchise that started amusingly enough a decade ago but has now officially overstayed its welcome.

Certain to create a gaping divide between generational and aesthetic camps, Sucker Punch is a largely grim and unpleasant display of technical wizardry wrapped around a story that purports to be inspirational.

The deadening and sometimes laughable litany of shouted military-style dialogue eventually pummels into submission any hope for fresh creative angles on this well-worn format.

The central battle between fearsomely independent corporate mavericks and hostile big government has been updated in a half-baked, unconvincing way that's exacerbated by button-pushing TV-style direction, threadbare production values and blah performances except for that of Taylor Schilling in the central role.

Even as she is the center of attention here in a double role, the jury is still out on Gomez's bigscreen potential; she's not very appealing or magnetic here, nor does she display any particular comic gifts for this sort of broad fare.

Although one would never have expected to find her in a film like this, Dawson, by dint of enthusiasm, is the only actor who rises above the material with her dignity intact.

Immortals is not only entirely without humor, but is dominated by a lot of huffing and puffing, thunderous self-importance and windy Socratic quotations about the immortality and divinity of men's souls. You just have to roll your eyes after a while.

Singleton's action thriller has a decent sense of propulsion but, after a faintly intriguing start, the convoluted plot mechanics overwhelm everything else, making you feel you're watching a detailed blueprint for a movie, and an increasingly far-fetched one in the bargain.

This wan, mundane coming-of-ager focuses on kids enacting a pale imitation of '50s car-centered, "American Graffiti"-style time-killing, with the impediment of exceptionally dull dialogue.

This is a relentlessly mechanical piece of work that will not or cannot take the imaginative leaps to yield even fleeting moments of awe, wonder or charm.

The problem with the script by Susser and David Michod, working from a story by Brian Charles Frank, is that Hesher's uncouth behavior is so aggressively pushed to single-minded, crudely exploitative effect.

A miscast James Franco and a lack of charm and humor doom Sam Raimi's prequel to the 1939 Hollywood classic. Oz the Wimpy and Weak would be more like it.

Not the worst but is very far from the best film the star has made in his career.

Allen the writer-director has gone tone-deaf this time around, somehow not realizing that the nonstop prattling of the less-than-scintillating characters almost never rings true.

You almost feel sorry for Tyler Perry, stepping out of his own universe for the first time to try to expand his range and finding himself in something as thoroughly dismal as Alex Cross.

After a strong run of films during the past decade, David Cronenberg blows a tire with Cosmopolis.

This middle portion of an intended trilogy will only play to the converted who have already seen Part I, and then only to the most gullible among them who will swallow mediocre filmmaking for the sake of ideology.

The comedy just isn't that funny and the enterprise never finds an exact tone.

Lars von Trier cuts a big fat art-film fart with Antichrist. As if deliberately courting critical abuse, the Danish bad boy densely packs this theological-psychological horror opus with grotesque, self-consciously provocative images.

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.

This hokey thriller reps what one can only hope will be a one-of-a-kind hybrid between a World War II actioner and a ghost story outfitted with innumerable false-alarm shock cuts and shot with enough colored lights and filters to delight Baz Luhrmann.

Screechily abrasive and sorely lacking in elements that engage the imagination.

Defiantly uncommunicative picture.

Universal’s attempt to find gold by bringing to new life one of the mustier items in its vaults is pure hokum and scarcely of the first order.

A dreadfully dull, completely conventional story of a young wife's recuperation from being unceremoniously dumped, this is a by-the-numbers bit of emotional calculation without a single fresh, original or offbeat move in its system, apart from a nifty opening sequence.

Has the distinction of being a major motion picture that's far less imaginative, and quite a bit more stupid, than the interactive game it's based on.

Begins as though the filmmakers imagine that they're making a daringly anti-p.c. serio-comedy, but long before it's over, the picture is wearing its bleeding liberal heart all over its sleeve.

An uncommonly dour and even grim action thriller that globetrots as diversely as a James Bond film but offers a very limited view politically, emotionally and dramatically.

A noxious little tale of Wall Street types whose amorality knows no limit, Rick takes smarmy knowingness to ludicrous extremes.

Speak a great deal, but they don't have much to say. A dull ensembler.

Delivers only annoyance and impatience.

The director doesn't display the spirit of a natural entertainer; while intellectual notions abound, he never grabs the audience by the hand to pull them into the tale emotionally.

Nine very good actors are wasted, if not embarrassed, by the thoroughly unconvincing shenanigans perpetrated by first-time writer-director Michael Clancy, while a tenth -- Zooey Deschanel -- somehow manages to float ethereally above it all with her dignity intact.

Goes down like sour eggnog on Christmas Eve.

Its politics and dramatic line are familiar and far from convincing.

Traditionalists and older viewers in general will scoff, while pop culture addicts will no doubt go with the flow.

Star-driven, high-minded claptrap that, fatally, can't even rig a rooting interest in its central love story.

Never comes close to making the case that its subject is worthy of the viewer's interest.

This overwrought and egregiously self-serious thriller about the poisonous fruit borne of child abuse grows more ridiculous by the quarter-hour and is poised for a theatrical life span scarcely longer than that of its eponymous insect.

Lusterless trifle.

Just compare their superficiality to the complex characters in "From Here to Eternity" and what's missing here becomes terribly clear.

Cronenberg is a master of creating and sustaining a mood of insinuating cool and dark allure, but while the director remains firmly behind the wheel for the first hour or so, he cracks up toward the end with sequences that send the film and the audience into a ditch.

This is one of those high-concept pictures with a big windup and weak delivery.

Blandness and lack of daring characterize nearly every minute of the very long two hours, which are marked by a high degree of professionalism at the service of little content.

This butterfly just doesn't fly. Icy, surprisingly conventional and never truly convincing.

An aggravating romance that runs only 78 minutes but ends not a moment too soon.

The most banal and indulgent of Gus Van Sant's periodic studies of troubled kids, this agonizingly treacly tale comes off like an indie version of "Love Story" except with worse music.

As it thuds along from one wolf attack to the next, Catherine Hardwicke's first film since taking leave of Bella and her toothy friends adamantly refuses to provide any wit, humor or fun.

Arriving eight years after the lame third installment in Dimension's profitable series, this seems like far too little way too late.

Despite a couple of unconvincingly upbeat tacked-on moments at the end, Project X basically reads as nihilistic, as not believing in or standing for anything. Not even fun.

This low-rent, R-rated "Rush Hour"-ish comic caper could have been several notches better with more charismatic leads and some dialogue upgrades but still would have felt like a genre hand-me-down.

Embalming the simple and simplistic yarn in an amber glow that is all but suffocating and banishing from it any traces of humor and spontaneity, director Scott Hicks serves up this treacly tale with absolutely no trace of self-consciousness about the material's cliches or simple-mindedness.

It's something you'd think only the crassest of Hollywood producers would come up with - injecting sex appeal into an event as ghastly at the Nanjing massacre - but it's an element central to The Flowers of War, a contrived and unpersuasive look at an oft-dramatized historical moment.

A creaky haunted house that, once the big twist is revealed, makes very little sense at all.

Unfortunately, John Moore has directed these sequences in a way that makes the incidents look so far-fetched and essentially unsurvivable that you can only laugh.

A film that seems drained of life and ideas rather than sustained by them.

Crude, repetitive and rigorously single-minded, the popular actor’s writing and directing debut lays it all on a bit thick, as the few points the film has to make are underscored time and time again.

Basically the film consists of a bunch of techies in white shirts and glasses laboriously discussing their views, exchanges you get the feeling the filmmaker thought would come off as humorous.

Few pretty actresses have so thoroughly discarded their vanity in an outright vanity piece as Jenny McCarthy does in Dirty Love, so it's unfortunate for her this exercise in comic self-abnegation, which she wrote for herself, falls so awfully flat.

Silk is a snooze. Vacuous, arid and terminally dull, this adaptation of Alessandro Baricco's freak bestseller hasn't a trace of real life or energy to it, and is hamstrung by a lethargic lead performance by Michael Pitt.

Guy Ritchie shoots a blank with Revolver, which replays the low-life criminal shtick from his first two features with an ill-advised overlay of pretension. The action, attitude and wise-guy talk all feel moldy this time around.

Reheating the ingredients can't disguise how stale they are, as setpiece after setpiece strains to whip up excitement, only to fall flat while reminding of previous sequences that did such things ever so much better.

This is a sloppy stew in which the ingredients of battle action, murder mystery, little-kid sentiment and history lesson don't mix well.

An endlessly sentimental fable about sacrifice and redemption that aims only at the heart at the expense of the head. Intricately constructed so as to infuriate anyone predominantly guided by rationality and intellect.

A series that's provided a successful, moderately enjoyable ride up to now blows its tires, gasket and transmission on its way to flaming out in Fast & Furious.

Much of the confusion, as well as the lack of dramatic rhythm or character development, results directly from Bay's cutting style, which resembles a machine gun stuck in the firing position for 2 and a half hours.

Senselessly long at two-and-three-quarters hours and with a protracted climax that eradicates any goodwill established in the fastidious first couple of reels.

A very earthbound comic fantasy, a racially flip-flopped "Heaven Can Wait" redo stuck in a purgatory with just enough meager laughs to keep it from a more fiery fate.

Newman's charismatic, multishaded performance elevates the hodgepodge caper comedy a couple of notches above its preposterous plotting and self-consciously movieish texture.

The sight and sound of Lawrence in fat-lady drag remains engaging throughout; script may often let him down, forcing him to keep things afloat almost single-handedly.

Viewers who sit through Exit Wounds should at least do themselves the favor of staying for the end credits, which feature some truly funny off-color banter between Anderson and Arnold on the latter's ostensible talkshow.

May hold some appeal for Latino auds in the Southwest but will fold after a couple of rounds in the big arena.

Roman Coppola's first film has sympathetic aims but is distressingly lacking in flair, style, wit or fun.

As dull and arid as a hike through the desert.

Strictly a minor-league late fall entry.

A romantic comedy as lamely generic as its title.

Awfully lame bigscreen debut for pop diva Britney Spears.

Banal and trite where it could have been insightful and emotionally truthful, this Fox release is also notable for featuring the first disappointing performance by teen star Natalie Portman.

A thick slice of bogus inspirational cheese that only makes itself look bad by recycling so many golden movie memories.

A boner-headed comedy whose sense of gross-out humor is calculated rather than inspired.

In outer space, no one can hear you scream -- of boredom.

A hillbilly romantic comedy in which the hillbillies show up but the romance and comedy never do.

A useless remake of Mike Hodges' 1971 British gangland cult classic.

A staggeringly misguided stab at making the past come alive by people who have absolutely no feel for period filmmaking. Banal at best and laughable at worst.

Animation is dull and characterless, and vocal talent has evidently received blanket direction to, when in doubt, shout.

Evinces no interest in such niceties as credible dialogue, character motivation or forward momentum.

Director Jon Turteltaub's insistence upon hammering every point home with giant closeups and relentless musical underlining makes this insufferably cloying and sickly sweet.

Johnny Depp's impersonation of the Thompson figure is effective up to a point, but it's hard to imagine any segment of the public embracing this off-putting, unrewarding slog through the depths of the drug culture.

A perfectly dreadful film.