Jessica Winter

Bruce looks hot and underplays handsomely as always, but Hostage is a steaming pile of siege clichés and screaming unlikelihoods.

Hysterical but inorganic, lacking blood, sweat, or tears.

Improbably, the sequel only ups the ante on its predecessor's comedy-of-embarrassment quotient.

Choppy, overlong documentary.

Mistakes self-pitying embitterment for carry-on endurance, and manages to have its causality both ways.

Gonick's visceral impulses have drawn comparisons with John Waters, but the starry-eyed collision of gross-out gags and candy-sweet sentiment owes as much of a debt to the Farrellys as Bruce LaBruce.

Amid the complacent self-congratulation...is a bizarre reactionary bent.

L'affaire du collier was a convoluted palace intrigue that Shyer and screenwriter John Sweet don't bother to unpack, crafting instead an endless illustrated Harlequin paperback of mawkish backstory and corset-popping purple prose.

Hammer betrays a tiresome attachment to cross-cutting ladyporn with antiquated educational filmstrips, to no real end but snarky giggles.

There are many dramatic possibilities in an interracial lesbian romance set in a provincial town, but Out of Season focuses on the women's fears of commitment, which would be fine - even refreshing - if they seemed to, well, like each other or something.

Too flimsily built and baldly unfunny to bolster Cruz's charms, but Almodóvar's blessed Virgin is, as usual, winning and guilelessly seductive.

The traumatized critic must struggle to avoid capital letters in urging patrons to steer clear of the colorfully cast but unbearable Spun.

The rock hero starts out dead and so does the movie.

Sahara is many things, but it is not a movie. It is the skull-splitting cacophony of 21 producers and four screenwriters (that we know about, anyway) standing in the same room shouting into their cell phones.

Plumbs new depths of craven heartstring-yanking.

Dippy romantic thriller.

John Corbett shuffles in for yet another tour of duty as the bland requisite love interest.

A bad one-night stand endured with a jailbroke cad and his put-upon travel-agent pal that hinges somewhat on the characters' impression that Frank Sinatra is still among us.

The script, allegedly by "Donnie Darko's" Richard Kelly, throws together tangentially related plots like cats in a sack.

Quek is compelling not for her ideas but the tangled path by which she came to them.

Hoffman has no particular argument to make, and neither does the movie -- just befuddled disgust with The System in general and the right wing in particular.

Vomitous.

Ms. Cruz...once again proves her inability to give a bad performance even under the worst of circumstances.

Hide and Seek follows no semblance of internal logic--the unveiling of Charlie is a ludicrous cheat, the last reel a unique paroxysm of rancid idiocy.

Can't transcend its own suffocating milieu.

Nothing much happens, and that's the point, but all this wheel spinning could have used more grease.

Agathe de la Boulaye, as The Painter, gives off an appealing air of good-natured amusement, which is appropriate given her surroundings.

An arthritic exercise in self-pleasurement.