Dennis Lim

A nasty piece of work, and it's nasty in a particularly ostentatious and sophomoric way.

It's forgivable, and even appropriate, that Mondays itself suffers from a certain lack of definition -- a drifting, repetitive dead-endedness that, at the inconclusive finale, shows no signs of abating.

Game Over's brazen lopsidedness may diminish its credibility, but it taps into the essence of all conspiracy theories-the desperate desire to believe.

While Strand's gay-shorts series took a tentative step toward maturity with 2000's “Boys Life 3,” this fourth anthology represents a full-blown regression.

Good-natured but labored, the film clings to its lone gimmick with increasing desperation.

At once robust and ethereal, this is an existential ghost story, with fresh blood pulsing through its veins.

Captures the latent anxieties of a hazy, ambling existence with pinpoint accuracy.

Weirdest, funniest studio release of the summer so far and a bona fide cult object in the making.

This is pure essence of Bay--it's big, it's loud, it has no context, and if you show up tanked, I'm sure it's really quite poetic.

Pitched somewhere between Oliver Stone's "JFK" and the Seinfeld parody thereof, Neil Burger's debut never quite transcends jokester status -- it's a veritable menagerie of shaggy dogs, red herrings, and wild geese -- and the punchline doesn't live up to Barry's dead-eyed, perfectly chilled delivery.

Like "Blissfully Yours" and Apichatpong's first feature, the exquisite-corpse road movie "Mysterious Object at Noon" (2000), Tropical Malady promotes new ways of seeing.

Flawless never approaches the rancid bluster of "8MM," but it's an equally dishonest piece of manipulative hackwork.

By the end of this wholly disorienting experience (this must be what it's like to be held captive in a Long Island supper club and force-fed hallucinogens), there's only one thing we damn well know, and it's that Kevin Spacey sure as hell believes he was born to play Bobby Darin.

Bad Santa is a one-joke film; to his credit, Thornton embodies that joke with vicious, vaguely insane conviction.

The film slips into a coma early on and never awakens.

A blitz of anti-authoritarian poses so feel-good you'd think someone was selling you sneakers.

The mode is hysteric-Hitchcockian, the result mostly devoid of suspense.

You're paying for the view, and it's truly breathtaking.

16 Years' greatest asset may be its star: Trainspotting's McKidd, coiled and queasy, transcends the dubious romanticism and hard-man clichés of his role -- he exudes a commanding air of constancy in a film that teeters between the rapturous and the ridiculous.

It's instructive that Waking Ned Devine is being so aggressively sold as a feel-good comedy; the "good" feeling in question is called condescension.

Needless to say, the movie fails as a cautionary tale. But it fulfills its summer air-conditioning duties with flippant ease, and its enjoyably cloddish attempts at political relevance add a fascinating layer of incongruity.

Don Argott's lively documentary, ostensibly a paean to alternative pedagogy, extends its subject a long leash, and he in turn does his damnedest to sabotage the project. Rock School ends up being a movie about just how little fun rock 'n' roll can be.

A flabby farce in which everyone seems to be making it up as they go along.

This Canadian cheapie plays like an above-average "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" episode, filtered through the sensibility of early David Cronenberg.

Obsessives will be familiar with the "new" material (almost all available on the original DVD), which elaborates on the time-travel metaphysics and tightens the emotional screws. Donnie (Jake Gyllenhaal) shares one additional tender exchange with each family member

Hudson keeps the movie rambling and episodic, deferring to the imposing backdrop whenever possible.

The flavor is textbook '90s indie -- self-regarding quirk with an occasional spasm of Solondzian incorrectness.

The title is, to say the least, an understatement. Witchcraft has rarely looked more prosaic and less sexy than it does in Griffin Dunne's Practical Magic.