Gregory Weinkauf

An affecting film, but it just may not be everyone's cup of cyanide.

Doesn't even play fairly by its own rules. What emerges isn't a romantic comedy at all, but rather--very much like "The War of the Roses" a few years back--a cleverly disguised monster movie.

what we've got here is a little propaganda film. A mild one, certainly, but the cliché of DIY hopefuls (band) versus the Big Machine (music industry) foments the same tedious struggle of art versus commerce.

Once Connell finds his feet, he just may stride forth with his Important American Movie. Until then, The Opportunists is simply a whiff of great unwashedness yet to come.

Knockout's heart is in the right place, but it drags because of tedious earnestness and shallow "You go, girl!" feminism.

This movie's just so-so, but at its heart lies a true leading lady.

If only the sum of this thunderously self-important "true story" outweighed its often fabulous parts, but it resorts to throwing up hollow icons in that most ignoble of losses, the expensive mediocrity.

Hypochondriacs and germ freaks may dig it.

Sensational yet sadly unsatisfying.

Another disposable kidnapping thriller.

Satisfying in its setup and execution, and the Catholic guilt streaked through its dank, rainy atmosphere serves it well. Nonetheless, the story's subtleties in this version are often outweighed by melodrama, sometimes verging on sap.

All in all, this is every inch a TV movie.

Tethered to screenwriter Gail Parent's adaptation of Dyan Sheldon's novel, plus the demands of bigwig producers, it's a testament to Sugarman's artistry that she sustains her funky playfulness--a hallmark of her earlier work--throughout most of this film.

Loses significant points for its lazy story and complacent delivery.

Despite the tighter rewrite and the slicker production, it's obvious that Shimizu is still searching for what scares him, and until he finds it, he doesn't stand--ahem--a ghost of a chance of frightening us.

Beneath its satisfactory chops this movie -- like Ms. Croft herself -- is stuffy and soulless.

This trifle is better approached as a suburban haunted-house attraction thrown by enthusiastically confused teenagers. It's a little bit eerie, completely disjointed and sporadically amusing--kind of like "Lost in Translation," but with wanton slaughter. Do not expect more.

This elegant vision of sexual roles is certain to make a lasting impression and is likely to provoke explosive dialogues in Denny's and sidewalk cafés from here to Monaco.

While it's marvelously refreshing to observe Mother Nature obliterating L.A. and New York along with caricatures of ghastly world leaders, almost everything good is in the trailer, save perhaps brief run-ins with malevolent wolves and Ian Holm.

A sharp and pungent distillation of the book. However, as far as the theme of childhood under duress goes, I found "My Life as a Dog" or the stridently Irish "Into the West" to be significantly more fulfilling.

Visit Red Planet, and you'll boldly go where everyone has gone before.

Austere little creep-out.

You'll get that $8 nap you've been craving.

Sadly, though, the movie as a whole feels blatantly dedicated to fleecin' da kidz.

Don't expect to be wowed by a vast spectrum of delicacies, as the buffet here is composed of entirely obvious ingredients.

Thing is, movie's 100 percent mystery-free, but mildly creative, mixing Psych 101 with cynical Hollywood in-jokes with Tylenol-sponsored grainy-cam footage. Best revelation is source of Myers' superhuman strength: eats big rats, apparently.

A very dull movie.

Very sketchily based upon "The Reluctant Debutante" (minus the charm, plot, and characterization).

A vicious, hard-core version of "Thelma and Louise," going nowhere near the Grand Canyon but leaving a trail of carnage in their wake.

It is unfortunate that von Trotta does not trust her audience enough to think for themselves -- her themes are carved on a sledgehammer en route to our skulls.

It's dank, moody and sorrowful (all pros for this critic), but also tediously vague, thematically plodding and often eye-rollingly absurd in its grimness. Some may swoon; I yawned a lot.

For a general audience the entertainment factor is quite low. The project may best serve us not on the screen, but in a time capsule.

Once the terror ends and the credits roll, we finally get to the best part: a merciful escape.

Pretentious yet devoid of poetry, left-of-center yet artless, this well-intentioned trudge does not exist to be enjoyed or appreciated so much as to be coddled and patronized as one would a retarded child.

It's Tommy's job to clean the peep booths surrounding her, and after viewing this one, you'll feel like mopping up, too.

Sits before us like an exquisite platter of wax fruit, colorful, flavorless, and, if you eat it, very likely to come back up.

This compression of logic--coupled with two hours of ham-fisted delivery--guarantees that Antitrust won't jangle your nerves but will intermittently split your sides with laughter.

A dismaying dearth of romantic chemistry -- during their brief scenes together, the two (Pitt, Roberts) actually seem afraid to touch each other -- and we end up with a Frankenstein's monster of a movie: lots of interesting pieces cobbled together with all the stitches showing.

If only director Walter Hill and his coscreenwriter David Giler had scribbled a punch line for all these punches, this rage-in-the-cage redux would be more than merely a limp showcase of machismo so passé as to embarrass your average Australopithecus.

The new version by Harold Ramis trots out a load of bargain-rack gags, tarted up with pricey effects for the A.D.D. generation. Woe to those who cannot leave well enough alone.

What do you get when you cross a passé "swinger" (Will Stewart), an exhausted "lost in L.A." setting, a sloppy "screenplay" and dull "direction" (by Paul Duran)? This!

The urge to laugh is superceded by the urge to slap everybody and command them to stop embarrassing all of humanity.

This bloody stab at William Castle's 1960 gimmick flick substitutes chaos for chills.

Emits the embarrassing aura of a filmmaker desperate to be considered cool, yet utterly inept at finding original ways to reach that status.

Forces its snuggly weirdo upon us and instructs us from the get-go to love him.

At its best (which isn't much), Le Divorce blusters along with the tolerable tedium of had-to-be-there home movies; at its worst (which is about 90 percent), it illustrates why the French went and invented the word merde.

Any cassette of "Millennium" would serve up better thrills and chills.

Unhampered by imagination and driven solely by libido.

Taken as a whole, the movie seems to be searching for a harmony it never really achieves.

Amid a rather routine plot and standard cop-show stylings -- just doesn't add up to much entertainment value.

The fleeting moments of dry wit are too sparse to hold the movie together, so instead McAbee takes the kitchen-sink approach, hitting us with whatever he's got.

Exactly as you may expect, this thing is good for a few cheap little laughs and no more.

Lured to the project with John Cusack as her original co-star (cruelly replaced by Matthew Broderick), Nicole Kidman phones it in.

There's way too much schmaltz in the mix. Even the musical score bombs: Throbbing, eerie techno simply does not suit a character trapped in the 1940s.

Mostly this happy train wreck feels like a longer, better movie that was chopped up and reassembled by retarded monkeys; what should have been a rush instead feels rushed.

Less a spiritual quest than a very self-indulgent gimmick movie that could use a strong shot of inspiration.

Moments of strained mirth indicate how false and fabricated the whole enterprise really is--just a couple of well-to-do superstars doing their darnedest to prove to us that they're regular folk. And failing.

What Lies Beneath is my head on the movie theater floor, snoozing through this film.

Wrenches paltry giggles and cheap warmth from a screenplay that makes "Son in Law" seem like Sam Shepard. But wretched Affleck is the real liability.

We're in for a long, unpleasant, reactionary ride.

With a movie like this, there's no risk of spoiling the ending, because the entire plot is merely a formality trudging toward a foregone conclusion. The viewer's biggest challenge is to survive fits of yawning so violent they could disrupt ornithic migratory patterns.

A shame, this frenetic mess, as there were loads of reasons to be hopeful.

Happily stuck between a rock and the deep blue sea.

With a sneer and a wink, Drowning Mona plunges us into a fresh deluge of idiotic Americana .

The movie climaxes with an entire audience farting -- a more concise review than this one.

It's just that this clunky, inane vehicle sputters barely a few feet down its quaint English highway before you want to bid it "do zvidániya, dumb-ass!"

Doesn't swing, doesn't score, can't make it to first base, never even drags its sorry ass out of the dugout.

A mind of overcooked pasta and a stomach of iron may get you through it, but it really is worth considering how desperately you need cheap chuckles while executive producer Adam Sandler and his favorite charity case laugh all the way to the bank.

Such a remarkable rift between its charming source material and its heinous cinematic realization that the producers may as well have skipped the hassle of securing licensing rights and simply called this mess Mike Myers: A--hole in Fur.

Ultimately it's an ugly, insipid rape fantasy, nothing more.

A strong contender for Worst Picture of All Time.

All in all, the only lesson here is how to irritate. This is a stupid movie for stupid people. If you're a stupid person, knock yourself out. Please

As in the comparatively quaint original film, there are whiffs of greed, carnage, social upheaval and the triumph of the numskull, but it's all rendered noxious nonsense by zooming hot rods, vague T&A, irritating jump-cuts and a bunch of dipshit Power Ranger wannabes slamming in hell's moshpit.