Bill Gallo

Like hundreds of doomed movie protagonists before him, the hero of Life as a House doesn't have long to live. By the second reel, you may find yourself wishing his time on the planet was even shorter.

Overloaded with oddities but a bit short on horse sense, this is one of those stubbornly defiant, attitude-driven movies that's so busy scrambling genres, breaking rules, and dashing expectations on the road to becoming art that it slips off into the ditch.

Atkins has trouble keeping the tension high and the jokes rolling. Halfway through he begins tripping over the noir genre's dark rules, and in the end he veers off into a haze of romantic redemption that Billy Wilder and Nicholas Ray would have scoffed at.

What a shame to squander the dramatic riches of Jones's life on third-rate caricature and paint-by-numbers storytelling.

A thoroughly unremarkable police action movie starring the magnetic Samuel L. Jackson.

Mangold gets stuck in the gooey sweet spots of his tale a little more often than he breaks loose with a bracing jolt of perversity.

Hamburg's smartypants banter is a bit spotty, but the bathroom humor, of all things, hits the mark, and Stiller's trademark wide-eyed bafflement wins the day again.

Connie and Carla doesn't just do violence to the memory of Wilder's brilliant sex farce (Some Like It Hot); it's so clumsy, it might give cross-dressing itself a bad name.

The low-wattage thrills, lukewarm jokes and unconvincing caricatures we encounter in The Big Bounce simply don't generate that kind of excitement.

In Mary Katherine Gallagher's dogged perseverance, it's easy to find not only cheap laughs but real soul. In her way, she's a saint.

Consistently fails to deliver the charm it presumes to have.

Villain? Great. Verdict? Average.

Marsh's flat-footed recitation of Believe It or Not crimes grows tedious, and his condescension to present-day citizens of the town (implying they're as grotesque and doomed as ever) rings false.

Runs two hours and 20 minutes and plays like 10 days in the county jail.

Get out your hankies and weep for the heart-tugging disaster Message in a Bottle.

Along with his tedious array of tricks and twists, Parkhill stuffs the film with enough dizzying flashbacks, camera jitters and rock-and-roll editing techniques to drive a 14-year-old MTV addict nuts.

Here's a fervent, G-rated version of contemporary life in which the divine overcomes the earthly and miracles are commonplace. It's aimed squarely at the emerging Christian market.

The witless inanity of After the Sunset is so numbing that the sole reason for any living creature to sit through it--man, woman or household pet--is to marvel at the speed and variety of actress Salma Hayek's costume changes.

The cumulative effect of the movie's many Kodak moments and stretches of greeting-card sentiment is that they kill us with kindness.

Witless, terminally irritating remake.

In this beautifully devious, exceptionally well-made entertainment, Mr. John Frankenheimer does it all, and more, with the assurance of an old master.

Loquacious and dreary piece of business.

This special-effects-crammed action blockbuster is not rocket science. It's more like rocket fun.

The moviemakers have eliminated the finer points of the novel in favor of broad strokes. Very broad strokes.

In his observant, swiftly paced Stardom, Arcand does it all with relentless wit, high style, and a suggestion of tragedy.

Flecked with delicious malice, and the kids, especially newcomer Coughlin, performs with verve and high energy.

If the Navy is looking for splashy recruiting tools, it could do worse than Stealth, a zillion-dollar action movie stuffed with futuristic jet fighters, glamorous carrier pilots and an overload of explosive, mostly digital derring-do.

Moviegoers might have preferred a little more care with the characters. As it is, Alma comes off not as a courageous trailblazer but as an indiscriminate adventuress.