Chuck Wilson

The new thriller Misconduct is getting kicked to the curb by its distributor, which is too bad, because director Shintaro Shimosawa's debut feature boasts an elegant visual style and a mystery plot with so many absurd twists that the film becomes enjoyable high melodrama.

If your cell phone vibrates while you’re watching One Missed Call, go ahead and answer, because even a wrong number will be more exciting than what’s happening onscreen.

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

Strictly Urban Comedy 101, as if the filmmakers had neither the inclination nor the chops to move the genre past timeworn stereotypes.

Menzies should be just the spark to bring Underworld back to life, but it doesn’t happen. Screenwriter Cory Goodman (The Last Witch Hunter) isolates Marius from Selene and the other major players so that Menzies is left adrift, like a great fighter without a worthy sparring partner.

Dark House is one nutty horror movie, but what's crazier still is how well it works — until it doesn't.

The flashbacks are wittily gothic, and the present-day murder scenes have the absurdist, chain-reaction intricacy of the "Final Destination" deaths.

The co-directing brothers Goetz prove adept at building escape-the-bad-guy action sequences, but they continually run up against the story's Marquis-de-Sade underpinnings.

The smash-and-crash chase scenes are numbingly dull.

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.

To help Prinze sail past the eventually unbearable clichés of Kevin Falls and John Gatins' script, director Mike Tollin has assembled an impressive supporting cast.

The director and her capable cast appear to be caught in a heady whirl of New Age–inspired good intentions, but the spell they cast isn't the least bit mesmerizing.

Most of the animated sequences, capably mixed with live action, leave a bad aftertaste, particularly when the ultimate fate of one beaten and battered human bystander after another is left callously unresolved. In other words, parents beware.

Rich with comic potential that goes unfulfilled, time after stupefying time.

A horror movie that's not horrific enough, Soul Survivors plays like a "Twilight Zone" by way of "Touched by an Angel."

There are many things absent from this found-footage horror movie, including suspense, logic, and originality.

Screenwriters Andre Fabrizio and Jeremy Passmore fail to conjure a single witty line. Nor is there any finesse to be found in director Brian A. Miller’s inept staging of car chases and shoot-outs.

There are all sorts of noteworthy people in this silly vampire epic, including acting greats Sir Ben Kingsley and Geraldine Chaplin, but the only artist this critic wants to heap praise upon is the regrettably unidentified Supervisor of Blood Splatter: Nice work, dude.

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.

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.

The only time the actors appear to have accelerated their own heartbeats is in two paintball scenes, as well as -- professionals all -- the fart-lighting contest. It's pretty pathetic.

McCormick and screenwriter J.S. Cardone don’t have one original thought between them, but they do appear to share an obsession with characters opening hotel-room closets in which the steel hangers gleam ominously.

Director Chuck Russell ("The Mask") and screenwriter Thomas Rickman don't need new agents -- they need backup careers.

Refreshingly quirky comedy.

Queen Latifah gets co-producer and scenarist credits for this anemic comedy, and also a supporting role that amounts to the worst performance of her career.

Full of shuttery jump cuts set to music cues so loud your heart can't help but convulse, Darkness should have been left to molder in Miramax's vast vault of horror-movie stiffs.

Full of gumption, Clarkson and Guarini soldier on, seemingy unaware that the perfectly adequate singing voices that brought them to the big screen are being drowned out, on a half-dozen same-sounding songs, by an overlayered backup group.

This movie could have easily been shot as porn, a transition that would have given it a modicum of respectability and, better still, true social purpose.