Chuck Wilson

A compelling but ultimately unsatisfying film.

Feast isn't the least bit artful, but it is gleefully gruesome, which may be all one can ask of a no-budget monster movie.

Initially amusing, ultimately wearying mock documentary.

This film looks so good, thanks to some impressive production work (nice rainstorm) as well as Andrew Huebscher's vibrant cinematography, that one wonders, as one dull scene after another rolls by, why director Andrew Putschoegl - and co-writers Large and Kyle Kramer - didn't lavish half as much attention on the script.

Filmed in Iceland, Beowulf & Grendel is beautiful, grungy and a little too tasteful for its own good. You can practically feel the filmmakers yearning to have Beowulf and Grendel go all Rambo on each other.

In the 17-million-copy land of "Twilight," the calling card isn't blood and fangs, but the exquisite, shimmering quiver of unconsummated first love. By that measure, the movie version gives really good swoon.

Imagine I'm Beautiful is a thematically ambitious character study trapped inside the limiting strictures of a crazy-roommate thriller.

Diaz and Collette are believable as sisters, but their performances rarely surprise -- in a more interesting movie world, they'd have switched roles.

The best news here is Adrienne Barbeau, the 1970s TV star and B-movie queen (Swamp Thing), who invests the role of Anthony's aunt with a worldly-wise sensuality that suggests a long-lost cousin of Tony Soprano.

Nearly drowns in languor, only to be saved by Milos and Isaacs, who are sexy, movie-star talented and, together, really good kissers.

As in all his films, there's a sense that honest human emotion bores Fleder, but he gets points for packing the trial with fine character actors.

The nonstop jumping around undercuts Meily's momentum, especially in the film's overly languorous final third. Still, there's a refreshing optimism fueling his take on working-class life, as if Meily views friendship and neighborly generosity as currencies equal to cold, hard cash.

LaPaglia is a fine actor, but not even he can redeem such bathos.

This low-budget horror comedy arrives via a lively trailer and a witty print ad, yet the film itself never quite takes off.

The women are terrific -- they know a thing or two about modulating pathos -- and watching them is a pleasure, even if the lines they're speaking sound like those of a world-worried, first-time playwright.

Actress Amy Smart (Crank) has a knack for bringing a spark to mediocre movies, which she does again in this amiably dull dance drama.

There are funny moments -- a cameo from Debbie Reynolds, an Evita sing-along -- but the film grows progressively more dispirited.

The film moves in fits and starts, and is way too long, but it may prove memorable, if only for the sweet, marvelously inventive performance of Kevin James.

This crazily ambitious film is saddled with a musical score that's often jarringly jolly and a screenplay so busy jumping from platoon to platoon that no single story ever takes hold. Yet, all is not lost. The photography and period detailing are excellent, and Taub, who displays real feeling for the innocent bystanders of war, finds the occasional small, surprising moment.

Perry has great casting instincts, and in Elba and Union he's matched two gifted, equally gorgeous actors, both of whom seem ready to make sparks fly. If only their director would let them.

Scenically beautiful, rhythmically uneven comedy.

Audiences will probably be miles ahead of the plot, but may not mind, since the cast bring a committed, lived-in quality to their performances.

Krampus, sad to say, is a disappointment. It's alternately funny and intense (don't take the wee ones), but never enough of either to form a cohesive whole.

The final match stirs briefly, but when it's over, the movie's energy crashes right back down again. Disappointing.

A tougher, more experienced director may someday force Holmes to surprise first herself, then us.

The stark prison Sabrina and a half dozen final contestants inhabit make the torture chambers of Hostel look inviting, but to their credit (perhaps), screenwriter Robert Beaucage and director Josh Waller never sugarcoat their grim tale.

The Sisters may be worth a look, however, for the work of the magnificent Bello and Tony Goldwyn, who's never been better than as the married man with whom Marcia has an affair. Their final clench is pure, guilty-pleasure melodrama, which means it's not the least bit Chekhovian.

The film has spunk. Unfortunately, the gore comes with brutal regularity, so that, despite Farmer and Isaac's attempts to liven things up, the film still just wears you down.

Formulaic but innocuous little movie's one clever moment, a sing-off between choirs standing on their respective church steps, trying to lure in Sunday-morning worshippers.

The film is jammed with incident and detail but there’s little flow to the storytelling.

His is a valiant story, though it doesn't quite work as a nearly 90-minute documentary -- the Cadigans simply don’t have enough material.

You have a movie with everything it needs save one crucial element: emotion.

Phoenix, who initially seemed the kind of actor who was too cool, too angry, to appear in studio pap such as this, is a magnetic presence, despite the numbing pathos surrounding him, but isn't that what we used to say about Travolta?

One expects razzle-dazzle dance sequences to lift this movie above its clichés, but they are few and far between, which is not only disappointing, it's downright baffling.

What's memorable here is the sparkling chemistry between Bates and Woodard, whose scenes together are a pleasure to watch, even as one thinks that their next outing should be to co-teach a master class entitled, "How To Rise Above Cliché."

This ensemble drama is passionately acted and nicely shot, but the storytelling of first-time writer-director Dan Kay is infused with an archaic naiveté.

It's short, this movie, an attribute Sandler himself might take heed of, and if the teenagers in the back row are laughing harder and more often, you might at least find yourself smiling (guiltily) every few minutes.

Less about music than about the possibilities of the IMAX system itself.

In this serviceable remake of the fondly remembered 1959 Disney comedy (which starred Fred MacMurray), an impressively dexterous Tim Allen plays Dave Douglas.

The story may not be new, but Australian director John Polson, making his American feature debut, jazzes it up adroitly, with a nifty, staccato editing technique that suggests Madison's inner turmoil and, in the process, fills in some of the shading missing from Christensen's performance.

The career of the lovably tense Zahn may benefit more from this movie than that of Lawrence, who’s funny, here and there, but who appears to be working at half speed.

Gibson and Good deliver such emotionally honest performances that we wish them a happy ending, no matter how many movie clichés have to be trotted out to get there.

Cox’s delivery of Churchill’s “We will fight on the beaches” D-Day speech surely ranks among the best, but it’s a problem when a narrative feature’s most powerful scenes are drawn from historical text.

Mandoki's a pro, but a juiceless one, with only enough energy to reach the finish line, which becomes the viewer's goal as well.

The movie deflates, but you still can't take your eyes off Gershon, who does her own singing, is fearless in the one girl-on-girl make-out scene, and is mesmerizing throughout -- an underused Barbara Stanwyck in a Gwyneth Paltrow age.

Even the director's flat-footed moves can't quell Martin and Latifah, whose combined energy is fearsome and sometimes most amusing.

Despite crisp photography and the director's gift for building a scene, the film doesn't click until the third act, when Mos Def's performance as Dre's protégé appears to energize everyone around him.

In the end it doesn't lead to much beyond weepy melodrama. Still, McGuigan draws committed performances from a talented cast.

The killer in this nasty yet taut slice-and-dice 'em horror flick is a collector of eyeballs, which he removes from his screaming victims with an efficient single swooping motion of his talon-like index finger. If that image makes you grin not cringe, then this movie's for you.

Eventually it all starts to feel like an extended European perfume ad: pretty but eye-rollingly pretentious.

Director Roger Christian (Battlefield Earth -- yes, that Battlefield Earth) and screenwriters Scott Duncan and Ned Kerwin have been influenced more by James Bond than El Mariachi–style spaghetti Westerns.

Sleek, not-quite-trashy-enough melodrama.

This peculiar little comedy, shot on digital video, gets points for editorial pizzazz, but earns a big zero for content.

Aiming to elicit a last-minute shiver from the audience, Gaghan is likely to get instead a mood-destroying giggle.

There’s no point slamming this fart-and-burp teen flick, since the chortles of the 11-year-old boys -- and the men with an 11-year-old's disposition -- at a recent mall screening can't be denied.

The only thing more boring than a vampire with moral issues about biting people in the neck is a werewolf who’d rather become fully human than howl at the moon once a month.

Proteus carries an air of forced-wit experimentation that never quite gets its anachronisms in order -- this 18th-century tale features a Jeep, a radio, and female court reporters with typewriters and bouffant hairdos.

At only 84 minutes, Phone Booth's brevity turns out to be its only saving grace.

The director pulls back from the hotel, placing it against the skyline of our beautiful city, which appears to be waiting, patiently, for a more original exploration of its inhabitants.

Anemic.

Bridging the Gap is gorgeous and weird.

Amiable but not especially funny film.

A film where everyone -- white, black, gay or otherwise -- is equally, lovably dumb.

Coury has made a technically polished first film, but her sense of comic timing and sexual politics is strictly borscht belt.

Lotus Eaters, which McGuinness co-wrote with Brendan Grant, is maddeningly shallow—maybe that's the point—but McGuinness does have talent.

Isn't art, but as date-night fright flicks go, it's effective.

Aided by capable if unnecessary 3D effects, Petty displays a flair for staging violent action, but he's trapped inside a broad comic set-up that doesn't mesh with the story's innate meanness.

A twisted black comedy -- The accomplished ensemble meshes nicely, but the actors all look pale and exhausted, an effect that may be a byproduct of the film’s photography, which is terrible.

Rosman and Wendkos run dry of ideas in the film's inert, overextended finale, when the "Believe in yourself" speeches grow so thick that even the Duff-devoted may start rolling their eyes.

Maher's filmmaking is competent -- the sets are inventive, and all the camera angles match up -- but someone should have warned her that neither she nor her young cast is experienced enough to pull off the line “The only people buying it are the faggots.”

This perfectly distracting, ultimately unsatisfying film feels like a James Bond flick in which the stand-in got the lead.

A little of this goes a long way.

The virus is spreading, but the filmmakers don't appear fully committed to the idea of a zombie apocalypse, so no sense of dread (or suspense) ever takes hold.

Begins so well that it's painful to watch it degenerate into tried-and-true frat-boy humor.

Duff, who became a teen-set role model portraying Lizzie McGuire for Disney, has sold over four million records and toured to packed houses, yet screenwriter Sam Schreiber and director Sean McNamara, both making feature debuts, set her up to sing just one song through to completion.

What's missing is any sense of why such a handsome man is afraid of women. That makes the premise hard to swallow, especially since Harrington is too commanding to be a believable dweeb. The actor does achieve moments of pathos, only to be undone by a silly script.

For this violent yet gore-free film, clearly designed for horny teenaged video game wizards, writer-director Kurt Wimmer stages a succession of fight sequences that pit V against helmeted thugs who appear to have raided the Star Wars storm trooper costume closet.

Beautiful in its dark, contrasting blues and blacks, Underworld is nonetheless a remarkably humorless movie, and not even the adroitly hammy Bill Nighy, as the vampire king, can leaven the overwrought seriousness of it all.

Off sorority row, the movie goes flat for increasingly long stretches, with the filmmakers displaying so little understanding of or genuine feeling for the mentally challenged that they never advance past stutter-and-stumble humor.

One feels sympathy for the ensemble, which, absent full-bodied characters to inhabit, mug furiously, as if big gestures conjure big themes.

This is efficient, soul-numbing moviemaking, diverting enough for blistering September afternoons when what's onscreen is secondary to how high they've cranked the air conditioning.

Sam Esmail’s first film has a visual assurance that suggests the arrival of a gifted director, but the characters he’s created are so off-putting that viewers aren’t likely to appreciate the beauty surrounding them.

Writer-director Mick Garris has a real feeling for the horror master's melancholy worldview - love is loss - but he's too reverent toward the original story, the ending of which, both on the page and, now, on the screen, lands with an overly elegiac thud.

First-time screenwriter James C. Strouse (in whose hometown the film was shot) provides so few clues to the source of Jim's malaise, or that of his entire sad-sack family, that the movie remains rudderless and not the least bit believable.

Creepy enough at first, this relatively gore-free film gradually becomes a stifling talk-fest in which superb actors drone on for so long about the nature of belief that one longs for a juror to spew a little pea soup.

A last-minute flurry of action and a final plot twist aren't enough to redeem this busy but tedious thriller.

Running Scared is decently acted and divertingly brutal, but it's also a giant step backward for its maker.

Mostly, Shafer and co-writer Gregory Hinton lack a strong-minded viewpoint, or a sense of humor, about a world in which the DJ has the power to unify, if only for a night, men of godlike beauty and the mortals who worship them.

Surely the only thing more excruciating than being trapped in a car with a bratty child is having to sit through a road-trip movie that features two of them.

Those expecting a reunion with Jackson, Travolta's “Pulp Fiction” co-star, should be prepared: They don't interact at all, which is a bit like casting Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and not letting them dance together.

In many ways, Marshall and Barrymore are an equal match -- while both have a flair for the small touches that build a good comic scene, each lacks the complex layering of motive and emotion that make a human life believably real.

Heartfelt yet overly schematic debut feature.

Parkhill's heart seems to belong to 1940s film noir, where a lonely man could be driven half-mad by the sight of a mystery woman performing a hot flamenco dance, a scene Parkhill stages here to unintentional titter-inducing effect.

Scimé and Adkins have real chemistry, but the script is forever cutting back to quirky, talkative Katie, and any chance of exploring the complexities of a relationship between two men, one of whom is intractable, is lost.

The cast of the original looks Shakespearean in comparison to Cook and her hapless cohorts, but to be fair, those first dead ducks had a real script to explore, which this bunch does not.

This film is lean, tight and irredeemably vile. People are gonna love it.

This should have been Beatty's "Wonder Boys," but the filmmakers don't seem to realize they've sent their hero on a sexual adventure that neither his heart nor his dick needs to take.

[A] clever but emotionally unengaging movie.