Ed Park

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

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

Ultimately everything feels one-sided and sanitized.

So true to its title that I've forgotten many of the details already--and I just saw it this morning. This latecomer has been rendered completely obsolete by “Memento.”

Despite a late-inning swoon of pat emotional generosity, Game Six is a gratifying playground of high-wire language.

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

Dodgeball is the most satisfying comedy of the past year--at least among the ones starring Stiller.

A flatland of lowest-common-denominated retro-collegiate wackiness.

Chad Friedrichs's doc has too many rock-crit talking heads, too often saying the same thing based on scant information -- a clumsy portrait of the artist that inadvertently serves as a mirror of the critical faculty itself.

Transpires in a somewhat chintzy fantasy kingdom lousy with more cameos than your typical Love Boat season.

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

Bears some resemblance to "All About My Mother," but lacks its compatriot's flamboyance, content to traffic in glib banalities and unwitting self-absorption.

Less effective in dramatizing the choices facing second-generation Indian Americans than as a showcase for Sheetal Sheth's terrific hair.

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.)

Most of the action is tedious, and the less you pay attention to the dialogue, the less you'll feel your hand inadvertently twitching as if with joystick.

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

The self-consciousness is unintentionally touching, but it wet-blankets the film into a thirdhand lark.

A sign of The Baxter's charm is that it's essentially spoiler-proof: We know from the get-go which couples will pair off, and the pleasures lie in the spring-stepped vibe, the natty throwback wardrobe, and the intricate goofball patter.

The most blatant rip-off is of the "Rushmore" soundtrack. But Ralph Walker is no Max Fischer, and his monomania gets dull fast.

Crudely written, haphazardly acted, and improbably fun.

A bitter little fable of rent control and its discontents, Duplex moves rapidly into darkness and claustrophobia.

Emphatically acted, ponderous, and ultimately a little silly.

Club's inability to moralize saves it from kitsch.

Mike Leigh mainstay Timothy Spall deftly shades in the designated goner, fellow "Still Crazy" alum Bill Nighy is sweetly wispy as the capable fop, and anger-management counselor Olivia Williams trembles pleasantly as usual.

Adept and generally enjoyable.

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

Shark Tale's shallow plot and leagues of padding put it fully in the shadow of last year's animated underwater offering, the nifty, heartfelt "Finding Nemo."

At least Macht emerges relatively unscathed from the mess, content to brood and mutter self-loathing observations while Johansson and (most painfully) Travolta spoon their Southern accents out of a jar and spread it all over the humid scenery.