John Anderson

This is a movie for younger children -- they won't notice that the children deliver their lines with all the conviction of an airline flight boarding announcement.

Granted, the mayhem is inflicted mostly on zombies and other Halloween decorations that have come to life courtesy of the ancient curse unleashed by Sydney. But the casual decapitations and dismemberments transition from vaguely entertaining to annoying, mostly because there’s a lot less story than there are special effects.

The film should have been played for pure farce and is not, hence the head-scratching in which a viewer will engage before very few bodies are cold.

Not as bad as it sounds nor as good as it might have been.

Cinema-as-shoplifting is okay, as long as you still get the feeling it's for a greater good. But that's something The Tourist is sorely missing.

You can’t say too many nice things about “Atlas.” You wouldn’t want to encourage people. And yet this cacophonous, big-budget, Jennifer Lopez-powered movie/videogame just might offer up a justification for humanity, while at the same time suggesting we need one.

So mild, so benign, its humiliation-to-vindication are so predictable and its old-folks jokes so feeble.

Jiu Jitsu is an ambitious undertaking in its way, one that will probably tickle hardcore martial-arts and samurai movie fans, although the attraction may be more academic than adrenaline-fueled.

The director's apparent blindness to the epic banality of her subjects suggests that the whole project is one royally misguided mess.

Putting a bona-fide imbecile at the center of all this leads, inevitably, to far-too-predictable situations in which he will do the wrong thing, say the wrong thing, sob uncontrollably, and generate no sympathy at all.

If Aeon Flux is what Charlize Theron does to pay the bills while otherwise being engaged in "Monster" and "North Country," it's probably a reasonable price to pay. For her. For us? No, no, no.

Likké should be applauded for tackling a subject that's bristling with sociopolitical thorns and that raises some provocative questions, particularly about what we find attractive in other people and why.

Despite all the nervous tension, the central drama is flawed - Jonathan isn't trying to find a killer. He is the killer. Something is lacking in the dramatic equation.

Ricki Lake, who occupies one of the lower links on the TV trash-talk food chain, is promoted to ugly duckling in Mrs. Winterbourne, a film that waddles through the movie-memory super-mart shoplifting everything but charm.

The emotional aspects of the story are treated with such a heavy hand, the supernatural aspects are so vague and uninvolving, and the group dynamic is so unconvincing that one can't quite imagine why anybody bothered.

The action is plentiful, but not particularly well-executed (though lots of extras are), and neither Mr. Evans nor Ms. Armas is really a comedian.

This is a kid’s movie for kids and may find a fervent audience among them, thanks to the way it conforms to the idea that virtue, hope and integrity are the exclusive purviews of youth.

The special effects are effective and aggressive, although one might occasionally confuse a divine vortex with a flushed toilet.

Take a ridiculous premise, marry it to a situation that is bound to resolve itself in the most obvious way, and keep the whole thing rolling with juvenile gags. What do you have? Television. Or “If Lucy Fell,” whose writer-director, Eric Schaeffer, certainly knows television. Or knew it.

The problem with Thinner, which went unscreened for critics, is that it's medium-level King. It lacks the gravity of "Shawshank" and the crazed obsession of "Misery." It's more like "Needful Things," another good film of a lightweight story, with a few more servings of gore and gross-out humor to hold us over until the next big thing.

The trick is getting from a conclusion made five minutes into a movie to an ending 90 minutes away. It can be a scary prospect. In The Sweetest Thing it is mostly a hoot.

Does for industrialists, politicians, pro-football owners and lawyers what Christopher Guest's "Best in Show' did for dog owners -- but without the skewer.

Mostly, Cats is a confusing litter box of intentions, from its crushed-velour aesthetic to its strip-bar sensuality to its musical cluelessness.

Fredrik Bond’s direction and Matt Drake’s screenplay deliver a charisma-free trip into a world of gratuitous violence, contrivances and tedium.

Hot Pursuit is about two women finding sisterly common ground despite ethnic, religious, philosophical, temperamental and/or phonetic differences. It also seems an inevitable stop on Hollywood’s perpetual recycling drive, which caters to an audience perfectly content with the creaky and familiar.

The go-for-broke plot twists are daring, but because there's no sense of background to the characters, one gets the sense it's all being made up as Baigelman goes along.

Directed by Ernest Dickerson, the film looks fine, as one might expect, but isn't particularly funny and often makes no sense.

It’s a daring movie in its way—suicide is often inexplicable, and Phil treats it exactly that way. But Mr. Kinnear might have had more confidence in his audience, and maybe in himself.