Andrea Gronvall

Grating romantic comedy.

Equally as offensive as the movie's smorgasbord of smut and violence is the lingering whiff of colonial-era orientalism, a Western predilection for regarding Eastern cultures as innately idle, lascivious, and irrational, and thus ripe for intervention.

The resulting mix of hagiography and war epic is so muddled that characters keep addressing each other by their first names, the better to tell them apart.

This movie is too pedestrian for camp, and too scattershot for an action comedy.

Loosely adapted from Alex Flinn's young-adult novel, this "Beauty and the Beast" update is a pallid, formulaic teen romance that might have benefited from a little snark.

As usual, Cage alternates between leaden line readings and thunderous outbursts, making his accomplished costars Ulrich Thomsen and Stephen Campbell Moore look even better.

Frenetic and self-conscious to the point of tedium.

Romantic comedies should never be this exhausting. Despite a few good zingers, Mars Callahan's vitriolic take on the sexes sinks under the weight of its secondhand psychobabble and smug apercus.

Paul Bartel's "Death Race 2000" is a beloved camp item, but this slick, loud, violent remake is pitched at the video game crowd.

Platinum-selling singer Usher is one hell of a clotheshorse, but he's too amiable to be convincing as a leading man--not that anyone is particularly believable in this feeble comedy.

Ryan, barely refining her "When Harry Met Sally" persona, is a dud; Annette Bening, playing the best friend who sells her out to a tabloid, is better in the scenes she doesn't share with her.

Years on the Hannah Montana TV series have not adequately prepared Miley Cyrus for screen acting.

To call this Kevin James comedy fatuous might be misinterpreted as an attack on the star's girth--so how about inane, tepid, lazy, puerile, phony, and unfunny?

It's not scary because not one second is believable.

This bloated 2006 historical epic flatlines early and never regains a pulse.

Stunning vistas of New Zealand's rolling countryside aren't enough to carry this lame 2006 horror spoof.

Costars John Cleese, Jean Reno, Alfred Molina, Andy Garcia, and Jeremy Irons look either bored or desperate, gasping for laughs in an airless screenplay.

Williams's overacting, Russell's pinched melancholy, and Highmore's unflagging chirpiness would be trying enough on their own, but the convoluted story, with its pileup of obstacles and coincidences, makes this sophomore effort by director Kirsten Sheridan (Disco Pigs) an exercise in dissonance.

The narrative is murky and ludicrous, the action violent and nihilistic, the contemporary western ethos painfully pretentious.

As an actor Austin is still a lightweight, but Rick Hoffman (Hostel) fleshes out a recognizable character.

The special effects are better and the dialogue slightly more humorous than in the first movie, but the anti-Arab subtext is repugnant.

Inexplicably, Butler continues to get work in romantic comedies despite his limited range and boorish persona.

Al Pacino chews up so much scenery it's surprising there's any left by the end of this fetid thriller.

Wahlberg turns in one of his worst performances ever, but then he's saddled with preposterous scenes.

Like its methane-filled outhouse that explodes right on cue, this sequel to "Daddy Day Care" (2003) smells.

The set-up is tediously slow, while the later murders are packed so tightly it's like watching a blender on high speed.

Not a movie, just one gigantic commercial for Hasbro.

With artifice as layered as the tiers of a marzipan cake, this resembles nothing so much as a stale Rock Hudson-Doris Day comedy.