Hazel-Dawn Dumpert

By the time Princesa finally slides into halfhearted melodrama in its last quarter, we're only too happy to follow Fernanda back to the rim and a little excitement.

The best parts of the film...are often distractingly slick enough to cover the film's overriding lack of soul.

Attack of the Clones' high-definition surfaces are certainly impressive, but they offer no lifelight, nothing to put your arms around.

The photography is clear and colorful, the acting just fine, and the pace steady. However, the wan script by Geert Heetebrij imbues the brothers with so little personality that their respective transformations -- pack no emotional punch.

While The Business of Fancydancing is a thoughtful and complex work of sound and vision, it doesn't seem quite right to call it a film, for a couple of reasons. First of all, it is plainly, if crisply, shot on video, with a bright, shiny surface that fairly screams low-rent. Second, the whole business is strangely non-cinematic.

The film isn't really about much and so feels patchy and forced, with elements more calculated than inspired, more urgent than exciting.

The film is never less than lovely to gaze upon, shot in saturated colors, richly appointed in period trappings and peopled only by the very beautiful. But it is also, by its end, too silly to take seriously.

The Amateurs is nothing if not easy to watch. Yet, as a writer, Traeger is consternatingly adolescent and glib.

Narrow definitions of femininity limit the comedy and the romance.

Stettner's vision of both women lacks fullness, relying on stereotypes of feminine strength and vulnerability.

Nothing, in fact, really fits together, most notably the partnership of Ford and Hartnett: Looking weathered yet professional, Ford carries what he can, but pretty and sullen Hartnett barely comes to life, leaving his partner stranded, and straining.

A blandly competent dramatization of the famed Texas lawmen's post–Civil War history starring the blandly handsome tube stars

The flashes of warm, human talent that pulse periodically from the ensemble -- Byrne and Foxx, particularly -- only make their presence in this terrifically bad movie all the more baffling.

If there's any reason to watch this otherwise inept romance, it's to witness the late Nell Carter nail a Louis Jordan tune, and to see master comic Jonathan Winters downplay his more manic tendencies and effortlessly spin gold from straw.

In lieu of developing a plot, the brothers opt to cram their cache of forced quirks and hit-or-miss sketches into a framework of predictabilities.

All promise and no payoff.

While Gardos knows what to ask -- and though Kinski and Johansson both easily command attention -- the filmmaker lacks the storytelling sophistication to answer with anything but prettily rendered cliches.

Voice-overs and commentaries are piled on top of contrived intimate moments until, despite some easygoing performances, the movie -- the actual movie -- is a blur of undercooked motivations and halfhearted improv.

Assante, restrained and thoughtful, reveals Vinnie's midlife bewilderment as much as his bred-in machismo. His performance is too delicate, though, to stand up to the rigidly formulaic schemes

The lack of cohesion and conviction is disconcerting, and it allows the movie to veer dangerously close to exploitation. Its subjects -- and its viewers -- deserve more.

The rather sad performances boast more clams than a Pismo beach party.

This is high school fantasy straight outta Compton. As such, it has a certain compelling enthusiasm.

There's nothing like a feature-length video game to make you feel you're being played.

Thoroughly mediocre.

There's little room for Kuki to evolve into anything approaching an actual character, and it would take an actress far greater than Basinger, who gives it her all, to make something of the role.

You can't see the movie for the footage, so thick is it with digital tricks and furious action.

John Turtletaub directs Gerald DiPego's silly script, pumping it full of sudden shocks and cheap dramatics where there should be steady tension and character development.

As usual, the final fight-scene extravaganza is outstanding, but it’s hardly worth the dreary hour and a half that precedes it.

The first half-hour of The Core is hip enough to its own moribund formula that for a brief, shining moment, there's hope the film will actually be a goofy gas instead of the effects-bound lump it becomes.

So many stars means so little room for character and plot.

Might make a fun Lifetime TV movie -- if it weren't quite so morose.

Strangely drab.

Paymer is the key to this mild-mannered comedy built on easy setups and borscht-belt one-liners.

Never really gets across the essence of who the band members are and why they inspire such fidelity.

The young filmmaker clearly needs to experience a bit more of la vraie vie before his own observations can take in more than the clumsy romantic feints and parries of early adulthood.

It's a case of persona overwhelming presence, and the butterscotch smoothness that was such an asset opposite George Clooney's glittering cool in "Out of Sight" is all but lost in the sheen of this high-gloss production.

Transcends its video-box-shelf-filler pedigree only when it's actually indulging in guy stuff, mostly of the frat-boy, beer-commercial variety.

Jabberwocky is not a Python film, a fact most obvious in its marked lack of humor.

Bad in such a bizarre way that it's almost worth seeing, if only to witness the crazy confluence of purpose and taste.

It's perhaps Greendale's greatest flaw that, rather than stirring the blood, its heartfelt call to arms comes off as a sentimental, even trite, notion from an increasingly distant past.

There's little to recommend Knockout.

How much can one girl grapple with over the course of an hour and a half?

By the time we get to the big finish, it feels as if we've merely been poked repeatedly in the ribs with a really good-looking stick.

Glitter is, if nothing else, comfortable with what it is, namely earnestly made, wholehearted schlock.

Sarkissian's script is both overwrought and undercooked, crammed with floridly senseless speeches.

An intriguing failure that promises more than it delivers.

To call the film contrived would imply that some sort of effort had been made, when Sweet Home Alabama is nothing but dead lazy and slow — y'all.

Written in 60 Seconds would be a more appropriate title.

Won't be of much value to anyone besides die-hard Cubs fans or the Santo family itself.

A flimsy premise to begin with, it’s been punctured beyond repair by an amateur script from Bill Kelly and director Hugh Wilson (The First Wives Club), and by Wilson’s shocking ineptitude with dialogue, framing and pace.

Long-shelved 2001 clunker.

Too much of a mess to say anything with assurance, pieced together as it is from mismatched institutional movies such as "Cool Hand Luke" and "Shock Corridor" -- with "Lord of the Flies" thrown in for good measure -- and turning on plot points that simply don't wash.

While Kaminski understands that movie terror comes in at the eyes, he has little skill for connecting sensation to hearts and minds.

And like, the movie's got all these bright colors and shit, so it's not some fuckin' boring art film, and the new wave soundtrack is awesome.

The uneasy meeting of cultures is mirrored all too well in the stiff and clumsy direction.

This new feature has replaced the original's benevolence, taste and wit with cynicism, armpit humor and manic, desperately unfunny padding.

Whatever ghost-story intrigue the film musters gives way to a tedious cycle of fighting, screwing, shouting and storytelling stuck together by two hours worth of hard-boiled dialogue gone gummy.

Director Mel Smith (Bean) struggles to make up for the lack, clumsily juggling screwball dames and criminal elements, and trying to disguise the film's marked lack of vitality with split-screen tricks, jokey camera angles and a limp musical montage.

It's noisy, it's flashy, and it's deadly dull -- without the goofball, horror-nerd energy of Kevin Williamson, who wrote the first film, this essentially storyless picture, written by Trey Callaway and directed by Danny Gan-non, revolves doggedly around Hewitt's tits.

Directed by Donald Petrie ("Miss Congeniality") with about as much substance and style as a ham sandwich. It's a heavy hand that damps down such airy creatures as Hudson and McConaughey.

Tiresome vanity project.

It's bad enough that Australian writer-director Pip Karmel feels she must attempt the alternate-reality gimmick.

Writer-director Jon Gunn and co-writer John W. Mann can't fashion a meaningful parable from their knot of dangling plotlines and absurd scenarios.

This feeble remake offers little more than two pretty and willing leads who nonetheless can't hide their embarrassment over being set up as distractions to hide the film's thorough lack of coherence and appeal.

What could have been a fascinating exploration of geographical mayhem becomes instead an exercise in tedium.

Sandler is -- à la "The Wedding Singer" -- in his washout romantic mode here, and no amount of spastic-colon jokes, cartoon violence or good-buddy cameos (Al Sharpton, John McEnroe) can distract from the fact that Gary Cooper he ain't.

Airless, joyless, worse than you could even imagine.

Since neither (Chapelle nor Koontz) seems to have any idea as to how to make an actual movie, they abandon form and reason and throw every stock trick in the book at the screen to see what sticks. And what sticks is the murky goo of storytelling gone bad.

Oxymoronic musings of a vain country singer.

Shrill and gloomy.

A work of top-shelf schlock.

There are gruelingly unfunny gags, an unspeakable soundtrack featuring BTO and Billy Ocean, and Victoria's Secret mannequin Heidi Klum as a model who demands that her pussy hair be styled into a bushy red heart.

Could it get any worse?