Joe Leydon

A visually inspired multi-genre amalgamation, a borderline-surreal folly that suggests a martial-arts action-adventure co-directed by Sergio Leone and Federico Fellini.

An underwhelming and derivative sci-fi thriller that's only marginally more impressive than a run-of-the-mill SyFy Channel telepic.

Equal parts hagiography and hatchet job.

Fitfully amusing and two leads generate engaging chemistry.

Silly script, broad slapstick and overstated lead perfs by B-team cast might be acceptable to target audience.

Freeway is roadkill. The directorial debut of screenwriter Matthew Bright ("Gun Crazy") is a sophomoric and morally repellent mix of fractured fairy tale, juvenile social satire, bloody mayhem and overstated B-movie melodrama.

If John Cassavetes had directed a script by Eric Rohmer, the result might have looked and sounded like Mutual Appreciation.

The Prisoner is in many ways a justifiably angry film, simmering with moral outrage. But it is also -- surprisingly, maybe even amazingly -- hopeful.

It's meant as high praise to say that, very early in Robots, the extraordinary starts to seem perfectly ordinary.

Jack Frost is a slickly packaged and engagingly sentimental fantasy-comedy that stands out as one of the season's most pleasant surprises. Pic offers a shrewdly balanced mix of humor, high concept and heart tugging, along with some amusingly impressive special effects.

A well-intentioned misfire featuring 3-D CGI animation that recalls lesser vidgames of the mid-1990s.

More than passably amusing.

More hagiography than history, Heather Rae's long-in-production portrait of Native American activist and poet John Trudell has the uncritically admiring feel of authorized biography.

Throats are ripped, heads are crushed and limbs are severed with brutal efficiency throughout See No Evil, but that's not nearly enough to dispel the sense of deja vu that pervades this generic slasher thriller.

Brimming with heart and humor -- Drumline is a formulaic crowdpleaser set in the competitive world of university marching bands at predominantly black universities.

Seriously hampered by glaring inconsistencies of tone and intent, and often feels like a series of highlights carved out of a much longer epic.

A wildly uneven but compulsively watchable mix of high camp and grand passions, soap opera and softcore sex. Very much in the deliriously lewd style of Pedro Almodovar.

Mix "Night of the Living Dead" with Sam Raimi's "Evil Dead" movies, then add a hefty dose of "Beavis and Butt-Head"-style silliness, and you have "Tales From the Crypt Presents Demon Knight," a fang-in-cheek horror thriller that likely will please fans and turn off non-devotees.

Entirely comfortable as the crude character he has honed in countless stand-up routines and TV appearances, Larry the Cable Guy sustains a level of likeability that enables him to get away with a lot more than he has any right to. But, he remains very much an acquired taste.

Still nothing but a gussied-up B movie.

Mexican helmer Carolina Rivas obviously intends her slow-paced and contemplative doc as a testimony to the indomitability of the human spirit under dire circumstances.

Far too aggressively seamy (and ferociously foul-mouthed) to please diehard fans of traditional sagebrush sagas, this misfire offers nothing in the way of wit, innovation or even marquee allure to interest auds accustomed to edgier revisionist oaters.

Key to drama's success is the artful underplaying by Kurt Russell in the lead role of Herb Brooks.

Unquestioning agitprop for vegetarianism, hemp fiber, solar energy, sustainable organic living and other causes espoused by actor-activist Woody Harrelson.

Strong performances, a few dramatically potent scenes and a vividly specific evocation of locale barely offset hackneyed and muddled elements in a script that plays like a first draft.

Obviously the product of minimal effort by all parties involved, Strange Wilderness is a slovenly, slapped-together stoner comedy.

Modestly amusing in fits and starts, Fired! proves most potent when on-screen interviewees are playing for keeps, not for laughs.

Outrageously over-the-top gore doubtless will scare off all but the heartiest genre aficionados.