J. Rentilly

Although Steal This Movie isn't worth the price of admission, it is worth sneaking in to see D'Onofrio and Garofalo's splendid performances.

Chilling and technically proficient and, also, fairly hollow.

Reddin's script lacks the sophistication that might make the film's message about guns more than a 90-minute public service announcement with a good cast.

What distinguishes The Watcher from all the films it consciously or unconsciously emulates is the intermittently witty, offbeat writing of debuting screenwriter David Elliot.

Its film school aesthetics and sophomoric storytelling are sense-deadening.

Only so much (pop)cornball tubthumping, a sweeping, occasionally stirring, always gorgeous bit of action-figure history.

What elevates Gladiator to the near-greatness it occasionally achieves is the performance of Russell Crowe as Maximus.

Does boast, as a major plot point, a dog's bowel movement. And things do go 'boom!' quite spectacularly and frequently enough to distract from the truth that there is virtually nothing going on in this whole movie that Nintendo hasn't done better.

An enormously satisfying corndog of a movie.

The journey -- long, dark, pungent, and twisted as it is -- is well worth the taking.

A cinematic lowpoint, even within its decidedly lowbrow genre, the teen gross-out sex romp.

Simply, one of the year's best films.

A brilliant, haunting film.

Murphy still knows how to please a crowd.

Mind-achingly mediocre in every regard.

Confirms its place as one of the best first films in recent memory, and one of this year's very best films.

The only danger in seeing this film is in busting a gut at its unintentional hilarity.

A frenetic, aggressively unfunny one-joke merging of "Beverly Hills Cop" and "Tootsie."

The saddest part about 28 Days is it's more fun when it's drunk.

One of this year's most dazzling entertainments, not to mention one of the best comic-book movies ever made.

A must-see movie, simply for its awe-inspiring production values, but you'll feel nothing but punished by Tarsem's ghoulish parade of images.

Endgame has become a nincompoop's travelogue, drenched in stage blood, fake beards, and crappy special effects.

Rocky & Bullwinkle is the new millennium's "Howard the Duck."

Pop junk, an airport paperback, literally, turned into a mid-budget devil thriller.

Crowe has never been better.

The Big Kahuna -- for its superb performances -- wants to be too much, but is about too little, working better as a series of fine monologues than as a cohesive story, the film's makers trapped somewhere between potential and reality, deal unclosed.

It is ultimately the film's reliance on this thumping action assault that keeps it from true summer-movie greatness.

A James Bond crib, minus the exotic locales, hot chicks, and finesse.