Dennis Lim

It is not, the filmmakers stress, a sequel to "Four Weddings and a Funeral" (which writer Richard Curtis was also responsible for), but it fits the latter-day Hollywood definition of the term -- same movie, only worse.

The only flicker of thematic interest -- AM radio obsession as psychopathology -- is duly subsumed into a sea of desperate soundtrack come-ons.

Groove is less a work of subcultural ethnography than a curiously dorky act of hipster sincerity, less party movie than cheesy valentine

Peaks early with a vertiginous dogfight; thereafter, spotty CGI and a bamboozling plot conspire toward a colossal anticlimax.

A breezy first-person video essay that goes in search of the average Asian American woman, all the while wondering if there is in fact such a thing.

A pale, patchy amalgam of the year's two unfairly reviled interplanetary adventures, "Supernova" and "Mission to Mars," the lunkheaded Red Planet distinguishes itself with a touching pretense of scientific veracity.

You can see the strenuously grand conclusion of Alex Winter's clammy psychological thriller, Fever, coming a mile off, but the director's impeccably chic expressionism and Henry Thomas's persuasive, dread-soaked performance make the wait a painless one.

Much of Undercover Brother plays as a funnier, if similarly addled, "Bamboozled."

The finale is a near-abstract mess (decapitation, impalation, "Alien" birth) -- in an empathic gesture, the filmmakers end it all with a few sticks of TNT.

Japanese director Ryosuke Hashiguchi ("Like Grains of Sand") enriches his rendition with melancholic ambivalence, sociological specificity, and a knack for delicate epiphany.

Even from deep in a K-hole, you'd need about 10 seconds to figure out the remaining plot twists in this jaded muscle-queen morality tale.

Manipulative and cloying, Pieces of April turns into something altogether creepier, even pathological, whenever first-time filmmaker Peter Hedges (screenwriter of "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" and "About a Boy") brings up race.

Matching their superbly expressive computer-generated counterparts, the actors are all enjoyably hammy, but the real star of Antz is the art direction, a marvel of teeming detail wittier and more sophisticated than the script.

Apparently reassembled from the cutting-room floor of any given daytime soap.

Roughly splits the difference between "Six Days, Seven Nights" and "9 1/2 Weeks." Which is something like the nth-order derivative of an infinite regression.

The flashes of emotional eloquence from the actors (especially Fitzgerald and Julianne Nicholson, as the radiant vet student who befriends both boys) are muffled by the ultimately asphyxiating preciousness.

Yet another black comedy that misunderstands and misrepresents the genre.

The Wayans brothers' new bottom-feeder signals its utter exhaustion -- and barely veiled contempt for the audience.

Makes the strongest case for retirement since late-period Roger Moore.

The result is a freakishly potent farce.

"The only thing that matters is the ending," Mort declares in the closing seconds, just as the director is serving up a colossal (and literally corny) stinker. But for Depp, it's yet another daunting mission accomplished with wit and ingenuity.

Made with no discernible craft and monstrously sanctimonious in dealing with childhood loss, it might as well be called "Pray It Forward."

Limps into theaters at long last, practically begging, with every arthritic pratfall, to be put out of its misery.

An all-access fan's valentine as artfully scrappy and likably wide-eyed as its subjects.

The shabby metaphysics and complete absence of internal logic are perhaps meant to charm, but only add to the eye-gouging irritant factor.

Swaddled in the posh vulgarity that passes for awards-season elegance, Memoirs is deluxe orientalist kitsch, a would-be cross between "Showgirls" and "Raise the Red Lantern," too dumb to cause offense though falling short of the oblivious abandon that could have vaulted it into high camp.

Largely innocuous and forgettable, Polly lacks "Mary's" romantic pathos and psychosexual anxiety and is a few squirmy set pieces shy of "Meet the Parents."

The panoramas of vacant lots and boarded-up buildings, cheesily scored to lugubrious music, get monotonous, until you realize that repetition is precisely the point.

Cavite is such a shrewd melding of form and content that any seeming contradictions and shortcomings end up working to the film's advantage.

The scenario eventually becomes so coincidence-choked that the filmmakers have no choice but to play it for mild snickers.

Unable to capture either its wit, psychological acuity, or formal rigor, the movie essentially reduces the schematic, seesaw narrative to doomy clichés.

In his first major role, the Irish actor Farrell deflects the script's more dubious aspects through sheer magnetic presence.

Raw, fascinating, often unpleasant film.

The scenario is stale but the actors are faultless.

Dusted off for one more run-through, and for those who applauded "Titanic's" old-is-new ethos, the moth-eaten, barely breathing Anna and the King will serve as a slap in the face.

Splendidly entertaining.

Director John Stockwell keeps the proceedings casual, and the film is admirably at ease with its dutifully trite plot and porn-worthy dialogue (most of which vanishes under the crash of a wave or the roar of a jet-ski anyway).

Enemy of the State isn't really a smart film, but it makes a concerted stab at pretending to be one.

Earnest and misguided in equal measure, The Theory of Flightis ostensibly a bold and rare attempt at depicting disabled people as sexual beings, but the notion is couched in such spurious and schematic terms that the film never really stands a chance.

A road movie, though there's a decided lack of forward motion.

Nowhere Man, despite a tossed-off ending, is a compulsive bit of meta-exploitation.

There's a certain satisfaction in recognizing that Harold -- even when he inevitably starts to feel, just like a human -- remains something of an a--hole.

To call Twelve and Holding cartoonish is to put it mildly. Marked by reckless tonal shifts, Anthony Cipriano's screenplay traffics in sensationalism and sentimentality.

It's an astonishing Kidman who contributes the film's -- and maybe the year's -- most inspired turn.

Skin is less life story than luxuriant mood bath.

Just when you think it can't get any worse, Maze rams home a body blow -- equating the involuntary spasms of Tourette's with the ungovernable impulses of the heart.

There's no gold dust to be found here, just an awful lot of stick-on glitter.

Hovers between mythic poetry and earthbound grit; the result is an inert, drably florid spectacle.

Kormakur's debut feature fulfills the basic requirements of good slacker comedy: It's grounded in quotidian tedium and frustration, and it acknowledges both the humor and pathos of the relevant coping mechanisms (here, lackadaisical flings, porn addiction, amnesia-courting binges).

The film isn't short on ideas, it's just that those ideas are dumbfoundingly pretentious and trite.

So seamlessly and comprehensively dreadful that its very existence (let alone its appearance in theaters) beggars belief.

Live by the meta-movie rules, die by the meta-movie rules: Rhinoceros Eyes is a parable on cine-enchantment that itself fails to enchant.

One of the cruddiest-looking movies ever made.

Lifshitz successfully maneuvers his trio of outcasts toward a state of grace: His vision of misfit utopianism, in its own quiet way, is as defiant as anything in Fassbinder.

Sometimes exerts the gross-out fascination of reality TV's muckier specimens--its arc suggests a slow-motion "Fear Factor," or "Extreme Makeover" in reverse.

A disappointing nosedive into the mainstream for John Maybury, the Derek Jarman acolyte who transitioned successfully from experimental work to features with 1998's hallucinatory Francis Bacon biopic "Love Is the Devil."

As with Téchiné's best work, Strayed is a peculiar, lingering blend of robustness and delicacy--a movie with hardly a single wasted frame, incongruous word, or false gesture.

Winds up a sweetly nonchalant and excellently unwhiny allegory of seeking and gaining entry to the Caucasian fortress that is present-day America, or at least nocturnal New Jersey.

Sputters to a dead halt right out of the gate. One labored scenario follows another.

Tumbles happily into every pitfall that lines its well-trodden path.

Still astonishingly vital at 96, the Portuguese maestro Manoel de Oliveira here takes a becalmed trip through stormy waters.

Given that The Eye plays out without so much as a single new idea or real surprise, it's a testament to the Pangs' knack for composition and editing -- or Orange Music's merciless Psycho-tronic score -- that the movie goes boo as effectively as it does.

Thrives on vivid incidentals and telling details.

Easily the artiest queer stroke movie of the year.

The beauty of Sandler's performance -- a superbly modulated suite of crestfallen groans and grimaces -- is he often seems to be reacting not just to his crazy wife but also to the dismal movie he's stuck in.

Jordan and Kirsten Russell, as the deadbeat-hooker love interest, bring the film to intermittent life, suggesting several more dimensions than the stale, futile scenario ever allows them.