Jack Mathews

Allen was out of his element in creating characters who feel like East Coast cousins of the Clampetts, and his dialogue has never been more banal or forced.

Despite the audience pandering -- not just in its violence, but in its wall-to-wall sexual vulgarity -- there are terrific elements in Baby Boy.

Sitting through the film is punishing work. The jittery closeups create a response that is more physical (I'm thinking nausea) than emotional, and there are no respites.

It's in French with French actors, but its film noir sensibilities have a filtered Hollywood vibe about them. In other words, it's pretty much a mess.

Features some of the year's most beautiful scenery and two of its most wooden characters.

Farrell, adding to the case for his impending stardom, locks into his role with the laser precision of the sniper's rifle scope.

Amen is propelled by a most dubious assumption -- Gerstein's belief that if the German people knew of the Holocaust, they'd stop it.

A guy flick, but I can't imagine many male viewers actually identifying with Elliot or his friends. The depression would be unbearable.

The World has a pokey pace, but it presents a uniquely powerful look at the new big kid in the global economy.

Has many of the qualities that made the actor such a great target for self-parody in Spike Jonze's "Being John Malkovich" - it's sober, deliberate, self-consciously mysterious and no fun at all.

Sillier than it is clever, and Toback's self-indulgence is tiresome. He's a genuine auteur, all right, but his life and the funky tastes that inspire him are just not as interesting as he thinks they are.

Trying to resist Reese is like trying to resist Reese's Pieces: They're always the same but you can't help yourself.

The source for Jieho Lee's The Air I Breathe is an ancient Chinese proverb about the four cornerstones of emotion - love, pleasure, happiness and sorrow. But Lee and co-writer Bob DeRosa went 0-4 with their convoluted screenplay, making me thankful they didn't try to adapt the Seven Deadly Sins.

Notre Musique is a cry against war and man's inherent needs for tribalism and violence, a position that wouldn't start a good argument in a college cafeteria.

There's an inherent distance between movies and their audiences that -- combined with the distance between 9/11 and today's opening of the film -- The Guys can't bridge.

A vanity project by a moderately talented artist that has moments of real brilliance in it.

D.O.A.P. would be more effective, and more entertaining, if it took a cue from "Dr. Strangelove" and used Sterling Hayden's paranoid, quick-triggered Brig. Gen. Jack D. Ripper as the model for Cheney to get more outlandish behavior from him.

While I understand Vergès' oft-repeated claim that he wants to use these sensational cases to point out that the French were no better than the Nazis in their treatment of colonial subjects, it's impossible to overlook his glib dismissal of his clients' crimes and the smug righteousness that rests in the smirk constantly on his face.

The Beat That My Heart Skipped has nonetheless brought attention to a nearly lost classic. For more than two decades, "Fingers" was not available on video or DVD and was rarely screened. But it's available now, and if you've never seen it, put it on your must-rent list immediately.

Feels like a college knockoff of Billy Wilder's "The Apartment."

The result is a long night of confrontations that feel heavily rehearsed and unlikely. There are some good moments, but I didn't believe any of this.

Surely, this bloodthirsty comic farce about a sadistic backwoods family being hunted by a sadistic backwoods sheriff is the "Citizen Kane" of hix-ploitation horror.

A combination ghost and shaggy dog story that is so well-made and acted you can nearly overlook its murky, unsatisfying ending.

The movie never really comes alive, and Crialese's coyness with Lucy's character is more frustrating than mysterious.

Earnest but ambling drama.

Looks stunning, but it's an ill-conceived mess that plays like two movies awkwardly spliced together. In one movie, parents are asked to stand by while the kids are entertained with cute animal tricks and slapstick pratfalls. In the other, the kids will be hushed while the parents are treated to inside jokes.

Among the creepiest adult monologues you'll hear in a regular theater this year comes from Karen Young in Heading South, a well-acted but misguided tale of displaced sexual longing on the beaches of Baby Doc Duvalier's 1970s Haiti.

The intimate love story is overwhelmed by the carnage. It may be an accurate picture of life in Medellin, but it's not convincing.