Hazel-Dawn Dumpert

May be scant on character and plot development, but it’s rich with affection for daydream believers

The result is a sui generis, love-it-or-hate-it exercise in homegrown American surrealism.

A funny summer frolic.

Ultimately a wiser and truer film than its crass and cartoony beginnings would have us believe.

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.

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

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.

Even though he refuses to excise about 15 to 20 minutes of unnecessary material, Pappas is nonetheless a steady editor who, less intrepid than dogged, pieces together a sustainably intriguing, suitably distressing exposé.

Thoroughly mediocre.

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.

It's a setup so easy it borders on facile, but keeping the film from cheap-shot mediocrity is its crack cast.

Like a good punk tune, the filmmaker's focused energy distracts from compositional flaws, all the better to enjoy visceral pleasures such as a spot-on Zoë Pouledouris as preening singer Fauna.

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

On the strength of such skillful pacing, and the pair's beautifully modulated performances (Leary's never been so warm or vulnerable), the film builds almost imperceptibly to a climax that's as moving as it is startling.

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.

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

Narrow definitions of femininity limit the comedy and the romance.

By the time a Bollywood production number segues into the finale from "Grease," the transition not only makes perfect sense, it sparkles.

(Ferrer's) performance as the sensitive private dick borders on beatific as he stumbles about a nighttime Hollywood Boulevard waxing lyrical about "love, sex and betrayal."

Dunne is committed, thank good-ness, unapologetic for even the most fluttery sentiment or spookiest chill, enjoying the swellness of the very idea almost as much as any fanciful girl.

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.

German filmmaker Stefan Ruzowitzky sticks to the formula that made his 2000 thriller “Anatomie” a German hit, offering up a who’s who of young German stars and plunging them into hot-and-cold color schemes, freewheeling camera work and diabolical master-race conspiracies. If Ruzowitzky were as good a storyteller as he is a stylist, he’d have something.

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

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

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

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.

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

If Novocaine fulfilled the promise of its premise and cast, it could be great. As it is, the film is sabotaged by writer-director David Atkins' failure to set a consistent tone and follow through.

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.

The best thing about Committed, though, is Krueger, a filmmaker who's not only willing to lead us into the well-traveled terrain of romantic comedy, but able to show us something new there.

While the filmmakers are not above corset-drama bed-hopping and back-stabbing, it's delicious when the beds and backs belong to Uma Thurman, Tim Roth and Julian Sands.

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.

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.

It's Wilson who's the score here. Quick, scruffy and completely at ease, he takes on Jack's let-it-ride charms and foibles as if he were tossing a Frisbee with friends, and it's impossible to watch him without wanting in on the game.

Long-shelved 2001 clunker.

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.

Strictly for budding young ladies, though it does offer those who've already bloomed the grown-up pleasures of Firth, a great actor who graciously invites you to join him in the slow-burn romantic corner into which he's rapidly painting himself.

All promise and no payoff.

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.

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

Like so many movies that depend on effects for effect, plot comes in a poor second to spectacle. That leaves the Fraser, funny and sexy as hell, left with little chance to prove it.

It’s a testament to Chow's star power that, even with an accent more than casually reminiscent of Elmer Fudd's, he comes off charming, handsome and cool in a movie as ridiculous as Bulletproof Monk.

Could it get any worse?

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.

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

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.

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.

An easygoing work of unforced humor built on gags that should be stupid, but are ultimately too ridiculous to resist.

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

Juvenile, sloppy and frequently, idiotically hilarious.

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.

Written in 60 Seconds would be a more appropriate title.

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

It's Boyar who’s the find here, though, a gently magnetic presence who's all the more impressive for being thoroughly riveting despite spending most of the movie face-down on a counter.

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.

Airless, joyless, worse than you could even imagine.

Shrill and gloomy.

An intriguing failure that promises more than it delivers.

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

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.

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

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.

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

There's little to recommend Knockout.

Tiresome vanity project.

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.

Oxymoronic musings of a vain country singer.

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.

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

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

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

It's cynical and it's depressing, and I would lock a child in a room before I'd show him Mortal Kombat: Annihilation.

Fox does have a sharp sense of the absurd that comes out in silly subplots.