Ed Park

A huge problem with the whole shebang is that the impressions (all courtesy Cornwell and Sessions) are shaky at best.

Playful and sentimental, with comic-book characterization and a half-orphaned, filially righteous head case, Janice Beard resembles a British "Amélie."

The adventure-book pace and topsy-turvy English setting evoke the feel of Stephen Sommers's "Mummy" films.

Despite the wall-to-wall shagging in Cin's loft, -- this Three Days of the Condom is less Last Tango in Sydney than "When Harry Met Sally."

SK3D, alas, banks it all on a dead-end VR aesthetic, albeit one emitting a certain black-hole fascination.

Emphatically acted, ponderous, and ultimately a little silly.

The acting is deliberately bad, directed to an ostensibly dreamlike flatness; and it's also just plain bad.

Too stupid to be satire, too obviously hateful to be classified otherwise, Frank Novak's irritating slice of lumpen life is as reliably soul-killing as its title is nearly meaningless. ("Good Housekeeping" magazine's legal muscle forced a last-minute change.)

Fun and nourishing, Charlie's the topsy-turvy equivalent of a three-course dinner in a single stick of gum.

Nathalie is intricate, provocative, cleanly acted, but it's never entirely convincing--and never more so than in the table-turning climax.

Succeeds as the rehumanizing of a near mythical figure.

Both a heartwarming tribute to the late Beatle and a study of hair patterns in the aging British male, Concert for George, recorded at the Royal Albert Hall a year to the day after Harrison's death, manages both reverence and joy.

Falls into the clotheshorse cliché: all dressed up and no place to go.

Grim headlines aside, FireDancer is hard to recommend, with its haphazard tone, wobbly acting, and cipher-like lead.

Though it's high time for a probing drama that illuminates the labyrinth of America's immigration system, those responsible for Green Card Fever should have their artistic licenses revoked.

Though The Sea (and the sea) wants to capture some elemental, unruly truths, it's ultimately an over-lacquered jidai-geki curio, something for the appendix of the next book on Kurosawa.

The clunky manipulations of plot, and the sorry fate awaiting everyone in this foggy House is less wrenching than acted.

Despite a fairly explicit lesbian boobfest (projected attendance just went up!), the film is more good-natured than provocative.

Numbing but effective debut.

Though the acting is tentative at times, with performances not quite landing on the same page, Evergreen is a compassionate slice of Pacific Northwest misery.

Their opposites-attract trajectory entertainingly reaches an applause-inducing climax -- but heeding Eddie's exegetical advice, Prince refuses to end on such an easy emotional note.

More fun to listen to than watch -- though this still leaves the problem of dialogue.

A shamelessly recycled vision of decrepit high tech.

Though the characters are in fact sustained improvisations, the roles feel inhabited rather than acted -- a quality acutely present in scenes of excruciating awkwardness.

As hackneyed as they come, but the overall mood is less cynical than affectionate.

Adept and generally enjoyable.

Crudely written, haphazardly acted, and improbably fun.

His story is sad but not humorless.

Marred by a rambling voice-over at one end and a pat therapeutic resolution on the other, the film has a nice half-hour patch somewhere in the middle.

All stand-up comedy is oral aggression, but Cho's is an especially fascinating strain.

Brims with storytelling flourishes and gently deployed life lessons that even accompanying adults may dig

A nimbler approach to border crossing, German-born director Fatih Akin's In July resembles a shaggier "Serendipity," with a similar moony conflation of coincidence and destiny.

If you doubt whether Honey can scrape together the dough, this is probably the movie for you.

Camp is self-conscious when the teens aren't singing, but the quote marks fall away as soon as they lift their voices.

As genre comeuppance, this might have been nasty fun, but the movie barely makes sense, with its unbelievable naïveté and arbitrary flashbacks.

Yuki's streamlined revenge story (the furious, elegant choreography is by HK maestro Donnie Yen) has in its modest dimensions a surprising grace.

A looking-glass cover version of "The Truman Show," the maudlin Jim Carrey vehicle Bruce Almighty lets the comedian ply his rubber-limbed shtick as well as indulge his pursuit of sappiness.

Proves infertile in more ways than one.

The most romantic New York movie since August's "Happy Accidents."

Braff's naive romanticism is also lovely proof of the film's innocent heart.

Aware of its awfulness.

A pleasurably intense burst of anarchy with no moral in sight, thank God.

Contains exactly three decent jokes, all stuffed in the last 15 minutes.

At least Sean Astin, as a scene-chewing prima donna, seems to be having a good time--and mom Patty Duke gets to call him a "turd."

Solidifying his funnyman rep, Ashton Kutcher appears as oldest child Piper Perabo's model-actor boyfriend, a delightfully brainless narcissist.

One leaves the film with the Twilight Zone sense that the place isn't quite the hellhole prior reports have suggested.

As parody, it's toothless and often smug, but as random Ferrellspeak generator, it has its delights.