David Hiltbrand

The whole project is a cloying, artificial mess. The slapstick comedy doesn't bite, and the formulaic sentimentality doesn't grip.

To give the film its due, the stupidity is served up with energy and good pace. But it takes a thin premise and stretches it like Silly Putty. The title should really be "Obvious and Obviouser."

Even though it's all preliminaries, no main event, Grudge Match is harmless enough as entertainment. Just not as harmless as its poor protagonists.

If Stealth were a recruitment film for aircraft-carrier duty, one would be tempted to say, "Mission accomplished." As a feature film, it's a washout.

Dopey but resourceful yukfest.

Doom is, to its detriment, a remarkably faithful re-creation of the massively popular video game. In other words, it's a dark, violent, nerve-wracking, trigger-giddy waste of time.

BMH2 is a harmless, genial outing, a comedy that is amusing without ever rising to the level of funny. You sit through the film with a smile on your face, waiting for the laughs that never come.

A strident and shocking jumble, Shadowboxer suggests what you might come up with if you decided to inject John Huston's dark 1985 film, "Prizzi's Honor," with Oedipal overtones.

The left hand doesn't know who the right hand is shooting in State Property 2, Damon Dash's prodigiously muddled thug-life sequel.

With his beard and '70s clothes, Reynolds looks like Val Kilmer playing Jim Morrison. Before things go precipitously south, he gives an endearing performance that proves he's ready for far more substantial roles than Van Wilder.

Though imaginatively directed by Harald Zwart, Mortal Instruments, which is adapted from Cassandra Clare's YA novels, is marred by significant flaws.

A brazen, earsplitting, eye-popping, oddly satisfying action extravaganza, though it veers wildly off-target in its second hour.

This isn't a movie, it's an animatronic theme-park ride - an artificially processed, easily digestible treat for kids.Ho, ho hum.

Get the soundtrack; wait for the movie to come to CMT.

This one is so bad that even Ed Norton couldn't get this mess to move through the sewer.

Blended throws a lot of things on the screen, but in the end, it has to confront its awkward and artificial "romance." And that's just ugly.

You want to cut Cop Out some slack because it's just so darn eager to please. So let's grant that it will make a reliably fun companion when it's on cable 10 times a week.

If the Brothers Grimm had devoted themselves to farce rather than scary fairy tales, they might have produced something like Seventh Son, a whacko sword-and-sorcery exercise.

The acting is better than the script deserves and Lexi Alexander's cut-to-the-hearse direction lends the film considerable kick.

The Boy Next Door aspires to be a cautionary tale, but it unspools like an infomercial - with a shockingly gory ending.

With no clear idea how to end the movie, which has come to resemble an excessive episode of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, writer/director Stuart Beattie (G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra) uses an old but still effective Hollywood trick: He blows up everything on the screen to smithereens.

A vast disappointment.

An odd mix of stiff and sumptuous.

Can be described as whatever is the opposite of a Christmas classic.

An extremely broad and sometimes crude comedy.

Nothing gets taken here except your ticket money.

This insipid take on the teens-in-peril formula, with a snake-bit ghoul chasing kids around the bayou, is truly a fangless task.

As a cinematic experience, it's like being locked in a coffin for an hour and a half.

The story and the humor get progressively skimpier than an Ipanema bikini.

When the big caper finally arrives, you will neither grasp nor care about what's going on.

It would be inaccurate to say there are plots in New Year's Eve. There are a number of setups, and these get shuffled through faster than a card dealer in Atlantic City.