Hazel-Dawn Dumpert

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.

The music, it goes without saying, is great.

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.

The film is nothing if not benign, but its merits are moot for those above 7 or so.

This bleak debut feature from writer-directors Alex and Andrew Smith would be all but impossible to sit through if it weren’t for Ryan Gosling and Clea Duvall.

An intriguing failure that promises more than it delivers.

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.

Juvenile, sloppy and frequently, idiotically hilarious.

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.

The genuinely fascinating story is one of revolutionary intention and unrelenting grit, but while Mario is a competent enough filmmaker, he has neither the urgency nor, frankly, the chops to make his own movie fire up.

Tiresome vanity project.

It's the spark and surprise of good sketch comedy that makes this film really work--the laugh-out-loud moments are worth the wait.

(Linney and Ruffalo) are just beautiful enough, in fact, to be in the movies and still remain convincing as authentic folk, and their performances are tremendously moving.

A funny summer frolic.

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

The film is exhaustive -- and ultimately exhausting.

In Fitzgerald's hands, freestyling is an all-good means of personal expression and communal identification. The dark side of rap he treats only superficially, shortchanging a well-rounded discussion in favor of wholehearted celebration.

Breaks in the film's otherwise smooth continuum, however, are bridged by Hutchins' soulful performance, and by Chaiken's excellent feel for the grace notes and steady tempo of native New York life, the sacredness of female friendship, and the precarious balance between love for oneself and for others.

Ultimately, however, a too-earnest script that pins the future of this community on a school-district singing contest, undercuts the film's natural performances and its sedate, contemplative pacing.

This ode to wrestling one's way out of youth's shell holds up surprisingly well.

Freshened immensely by pitch-perfect song parodies, a batch of hilarious faux album covers, nimble improv from the ever-marvelous cast, and a palpable love for the subject matter.

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.

Maglietta, whose soulful countenance and offhand grace are soothing to behold, and Ganz, who says more with a shrug and sigh than most poets do with a sonnet.

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.

Yu’s filmography includes dozens of pictures between 1965 and 1994, but with its nonstop flurry of fighting, ersatz bloodletting and incidental hilarity, this remains his signature work.

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.

A kind of folktale, rooted in poignant personal experience.

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.

Poignant portrait.

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.

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.

Written in 60 Seconds would be a more appropriate title.

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.

It makes a convincing argument that Dowd's personal history is a kind of history of the 20th century itself, encompassing the era's art, science, commerce and politics.

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

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

All promise and no payoff.

It's the filmmakers' post-camp comprehension of what made old-time B movies good-bad that makes Eight Legged Freaks a perfectly entertaining summer diversion.

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.

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.

If there's anyone to credit for The Butterfly's eventual triumph over the inherent fatuousness of the material, it's the great Serrault and his tiny leading lady, who matches her elder nearly line for line and look for look.

(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."

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.

There's no doubting that Williamson is a man who knows and loves his genre, and all the scary, screaming, sniggering fun continues here.

Airless, joyless, worse than you could even imagine.

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.

Paula Gray wrote the script (it was her UCLA senior thesis), and if there are gooey spots, there's also nicely turned, lived-in dialogue and a gentle affection for all her characters.

Lovely ensemble piece.

Startlingly affecting -- What emerges is a picture of an illness that causes enormous suffering but whose origins and treatment continue to elude even those doctors who pay attention to it.

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

Could it get any worse?

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.

The result is a fast-paced, brilliantly edited indictment that's as hard to turn away from as it is infuriating to watch. The irony, of course, is that Greenwald deploys the tricks of the trade every bit as knowingly as the evil geniuses at Fox.

For a film hinged on one of the more passionate art forms, it's all a little bloodless.

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

Tavernier's documentary about the famed Paris Opera Ballet is itself a graceful thing, a fleet-footed yet substantial examination of what it means to devote one's life to the art of dance.

The Sex Pistols themselves were bloody magnificent.

Despite some grace- ful performances, especially from Ruehl and Kazan, the result is a tepid repast at best.

Where Káel stumbles is in having his stars lip-synch, sometimes poorly, to a recording. It's a devil's bargain that allows for more natural staging, but that fails to convey that an opera's power lies less in cinematic shadings of character than in raw emotions refined by the spectacular art of a rigorously trained human voice.

Enlightenment Guaranteed is a parable of alienation and rediscovery told with such affection, insight and visual elegance, it could never be taken as preachy or stern.

Rather exciting, rendered in a bright sunset palette and a mixture of expressive, boldly drawn traditional animation and fluid computer-generated imagery.

The problem with Rush Hour is that the film isn’t a partnership, it’s a Chris Tucker movie with Chan as straight man.

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.

Me Without You is at its truest and most affecting when it steps back from the gig gling, bitching and nail biting to reveal how the compulsion to control and appropriate can be born of simple love and admiration.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

The dialogue is blunter, and harder for his amateur cast to pull off, while Lewis' stridency, however justified, ultimately jars against the film's tender, all-is-love fantasia.

Director Stephen Hopkins (Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child) and writer Akiva Goldsman (Batman and Robin) layer a ridiculous time-travel tale with the story of a dysfunctional family Robinson, impressive special effects, and IKEA does Star Wars production design.

Oxymoronic musings of a vain country singer.

To see the film in this meticulously restored and remixed version is like watching it for the first time, so clear is the sound, so vivid the sights.

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.

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.

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.

A modest pleasure, driven by a jumble of Old West signifiers and goofball modern flourishes.

The film quickly becomes a vortex of father-son bonding and rivalry, and what could have been a mere travelogue becomes a bumpy exploration of male identity and communication.

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.

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

Still, the big-show musical payoff is good fun, and Black and his little doppelgangers have it all over "Daddy Day Care."

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.

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

Both visually and emotionally, a panoramic picture; Mehta wields a master's hand as she weaves together vistas of urban and pastoral India with thoughts on the nature of man as it keeps cycling out in the specifics of history.

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.

Long-shelved 2001 clunker.

That nothing more monumental than an everyday life has occurred to any of the subjects is perhaps the film's most compelling aspect.

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

Shrill and gloomy.

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.

On a purely visual level, Finding Nemo is as gorgeous a film as Disney's ever put out, with astonishing qualities of light, movement, surface and color at the service of the best professional imaginations money can buy.

Even if Signs suffers a little from uneven pacing and mismatched tones of reverent homage (to "The Birds" and "War of the Worlds"), soul-searching and silly comedy, the jokes are clever, the tension continual and expertly calibrated, and the performances -- are both deep and moving.

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.

Heartwarming here relies less on forced air than on Petter Næss’ delicate, clever direction -- and a wonderful, imaginative script by Axel Hellstenius.

The film may be rife with emotional declarations, but rather than the studied sentiments of news anchors and politicians, these ruminations have the quotidian ring of real people struggling with a standard vocabulary to describe something unthinkably new.

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

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

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

It's (Stuart's) utter believability that lets us follow him into the ecstasy of absurdity that is the rest of the film.

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

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

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.

A work of top-shelf schlock.

On its own, the story is tepid, and less than original. What draws us in is the way in which Gatlif sets it against a rich Andalusian backdrop.

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

The film's best and scariest moments come when Miles is confronted with scenes that he translates into proof of the Wendigo's power.

The story's charming, the set pieces are wildly inventive, and even the throwaway one-liners, about everything from movie-animation pioneer Ray Harryhausen to the old Oscar Meyer jingle, are hilarious.

The movie is not without charm or humor, but it leaves little for Lane to do besides chuckle at setbacks as if they were naughty children.

Well-acted, briskly paced and prettily photographed, the film is a mild-mannered family story with a caring heart, and that's ultimately enough to make its 104 minutes worthwhile.

Does have its charms.

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.

Demme (Monument Ave.) brings a sure hand with pace and structure to the soft-at-heart script by Robert Ramsey and Matthew Stone, allowing Murphy, Lawrence and company to sit back and focus on the job at hand -- making us laugh.

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.

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

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

Strangely drab.

It requires nothing more of a viewer than quiet complaisance, which is rewarded in turn by pleasant scenery, a few mild laughs, and the dependably involving presence of Weaver and, especially, Neuwirth.

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

To watch Joplin, Rick Danko, Jerry Garcia and Mickey Hart, all massively wasted, giggling and jamming, is a delight tempered by the knowledge that Joplin would be dead just months later, with the rest but one following after.

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.

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.

Signals the real end of the party, charting a denouement that arcs from blissful ignorance to violence and its ever-present threat to a final retreat.

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.

Aside from isolated flares of unchecked emotion ...Bouquet's Lucie is too far removed from our ken of romance and overriding purpose, or from Berri's for that matter, to be embraced entirely.

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 performances are revelatory.

It becomes clear that all this man-child craves is to be loved and, thus, saved.

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.

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.

Dean Parisot's direction of the funny, affectionately satirical script by David Howard and Robert Gordon is crisp and assured.

As always, conversation is the constant threading together Rohmer's stately pace and episodic structure, the thing he uses to show us who his characters are and what their friendship entails.

A wonderful movie. For every misstep there are the sublime expressions of agony and ecstasy of which Herzog is a master.

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

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

By cinematic standards, not exactly scintillating stuff: The mix of archival materials, talking heads and dramatic readings is strictly PBS 101. Filmmaker Peter Gilbert's great achievement lies in his integration of disparate historical threads and voices into one steadily paced, riveting tale.

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.

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

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

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

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.

For the most part, the action, shot entirely on Hawaii's famed North Shore without blue screens or tanks, is awesome, all swirling turquoise tubes, thundering foam hammers and sleek, graceful riders.

The result is a carefully wrought, historically grounded and thoroughly absorbing look at a quintessential American experience.

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.

While the film strives to prove its cool, it's also built on the insufferably antique idea that some flattery and a good fuck are all any woman needs.

Trueba reveals his subject organically, letting the music speak for itself.

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.

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.

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.

Miraculous photography.

If director Scott Elliott falters, it's only in the spots where he tries to comment on her (Alice's) persecution without being complicit in it.

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.

The director is Garry Marshall, but The Princess Diaries is no where near as nauseating a fairy tale as Marshall's "Pretty Woman."

Nettelbeck's storytelling grace, however, only highlights her clumsy script, which drags the viewer through an all-too-predictable menu of catharsis and romance that can overpower the film’s subtler, more complex flavors.

Perhaps because this is director Yoji Yamada's 77th movie, every aspect of his filmmaking is placidly assured and meaningful.

Not only relates the astounding story of the expedition and its unimaginable hardships, it presents a thoughtful study of a time when there were adventurers who might actually respond to an advertisement reading "Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold . . ."

Film is a ghostly and gorgeous tale of a court magician, the legendary Abe no Seimei.

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

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

The good news is that this off-the-wall ensemble comedy may just be the summer's happiest surprise.

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.

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

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

Rozema seems determined to defrill the Austen trend and charge it with a fiercer sort of femininity.

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.