Jonathan Foreman

Fitfully funny at best, it's a sophomoric, facetious road comedy.

Turns out to be an exercise in flatulent pretension, puffed up with a bogus, empty "spirituality" and dependent on a plot filled with implausibilities.

That it is such a powerful and indeed beautiful film is simply extraordinary.

This crude, deeply dishonest documentary does no such thing. David Russell's fictional "Three Kings" does a much better job.

May be the creepiest and most original horror film since John Carpenter's classic "Halloween."

Summer Catch is the sludge at the bottom of the barrel.

Surprisingly charming and even witty match for the best of Hollywood's comic-book adaptations.

The problem with Gigli is that it is an inept attempt to do Elmore Leonard by Martin Brest, a filmmaker whose coarse sensibility makes him catastrophically unqualified to the task.

There's something oddly endearing about the Barenaked Ladies. And by the end of the movie, you begin to see just what it is that inspires such intense fan loyalty.

Despite its talented and/or attractive cast, Heartbreakers is an ugly movie: The kind that makes you feel slightly soiled afterwards.

There isn't a line you haven't heard or a stock character you haven't encountered before.

It's a shame that, on top of everything else, the second movie version of The Quiet American -- Graham Greene's brilliant 1955 novel about the French Indochina war -- should be so visually disappointing.

The smartest movie to come out this year, and it could hardly be better cast.

Relentlessly stupid.

This otherwise undistinguished thriller about cloning is the most entertaining movie from the aging action star for some time.

It lurches ineptly from lame comedy to hokey melodrama.

The whole thing is shot in an irritating, self-conscious way.

For some reason, the people who make modern musicals don't like to let you watch dancers dance -- there are still too few moments when you get to enjoy choreography from a dancer's hands to her feet.

Easily one of the most enjoyable big-budget Hollywood movies to come along in a while, Rock Star is an unexpected pleasure.

Despite a script that occasionally calls for some embarrassingly awkward lines, Kollek's cast generally acquits itself well.

It's actually the surprisingly compelling plot and the often hilarious dialogue that keep you watching this tale of passion and murder in a Samurai militia unit - not the beautiful scenery or the elegant color palette.

A unique, priceless portrait of the now legendary leader, and of his beautiful country when it was in the grip of a disastrous civil war.

A beautifully shot, well-acted movie that manages to make a complicated, real-life story without much drama feel like a thriller.

Uneven, self-conscious but often hilarious spoof.

Could hardly be more predictable.

It isn't entirely clear if Games People Play is a spot-on but longwinded and excessively campy spoof of those TV "reality" game shows... or just a particularly ingenious and sleazy example of the genre.

Engaging in a soap operatic, rather glib way.

Formulaic but surprisingly charming.

Lighthearted and smart enough to be one of the best Altmanesque ensemble comedies of the last couple of years.

Stinks even by the standards of late summer movie garbage.

May well be the dullest and most pointless version ever filmed, thanks to a stunningly bad lead performance by Ethan Hawke.

A deeply pleasurable, old-fashioned blood-'n'-guts adventure film.

If it weren't for a terrific central performance by the Icelandic pop singer Bjork, Dancer in the Dark would be all but unwatchable.

Thanks to a superb performance by Isabelle Huppert, it's compulsively, gruesomely watchable.

Darkness Falls was formerly known as "Tooth Fairy," but could just as well have been titled "Dumb Then Dumber" for the way its plot makes decreasing sense even by the low standards of B horror flicks.

It's all so insincere, you can almost imagine the filmmakers rubbing their hands together at the prospect of ripping off the public.

Too often seems like a slightly silly film.

A noisy, amateurish mess that doesn't work on any level - an extended, clich-ridden MTV video set to anachronistic bad music.

It's a film noir spoof, replete with hard-boiled narration, lounge-music soundtrack and dramatic black-and-white photography.

Sometimes hilarious but mostly sitcom-esque geezer comedy.

Hollywood movies are rarely as contemptuous of the audience as Dragonfly, with its half-witted, treacly New Age sappiness and its mechanical borrowings from other, better supernatural thrillers.

It's a wretchedly dumb, lazy and incoherent movie that's magically rendered watchable by Eddie Murphy's charm and Robert De Niro's presence.

Works unexpectedly well for its first three quarters.

Occasionally amusing, extremely gross, but mostly tedious.

It's only because the performances are so vividly entertaining -- Mandvi and Puri are particularly good -- and the painstakingly reconstructed locations so lovely that the saggier sequences are tolerable.

One of the most thrilling - and authentic - mountain-climbing films in recent memory. Unfortunately, it's also burdened by one of those every-line-a-wretched-cliché Hollywood screenplays.

An ideal antidote to the big-budget bores that studios put out in late summer, The Tao of Steve is a charming, funny and refreshingly smart Gen-X romantic comedy in the tradition of "When Harry Met Sally" - with the bonus of an engagingly laid-back Southwestern flavor.

Sucker bait for the sort of credulous cinast who'll buy anything ugly and boring that looks like it's avant-garde...rancid stew of cheap shocks, sleaze and phony artiness.

Francois Ozon, perhaps France's hottest director of the moment, is often better creating stylish visuals than dramatically credible situations, but Criminal Lovers is never boring.

The screenplay by Zekri (based on Jorge Amado novel) is crude stuff, and director Ossama Fawzi gets such cartoonish performances from his cast, it's hard to care about the characters.

This film is fighting the good fight, albeit in a rather heavy-handed way.

A genuinely clever plot.

Amazingly amateurish, the film lands wide of satirical targets that should be impossible to miss.

Unfortunately, the mind and motivation of Otomo -- remain a mystery.

Transcends ironic grunge-glamour and achieves a beguiling combination of dark comedy and genuine sweetness.

Lacks the humor and charm that fills the book and makes it so much more than a catalog of suffering.

The movie that deserved to win the Oscar for foreign-language film, and one of the best movies ever made about life behind the Iron Curtain.

Slow and predictable, and the characters are so poorly written that its hard to react to them in any way.

The latest episode of this ongoing masterpiece of reality TV -- which every seven years revisits a group of English people first interviewed as 7-year-olds in 1964 -- is every bit as enthralling as the earlier ones.

The contrast between Chan's charm and physical prowess and Tucker's lack of same is even more dramatic in this tiresome, leaden sequel.

It's perfectly entertaining (and well-executed) in its cute, undemanding way.

A strong, early candidate for the worst movie of the year.

Its superb performances, music, photography, dialogue, its rhythms of tone and theme all complement each perfectly.

An elegant, quietly comical but slightly constricted period piece whose stately pace is all but offset by several impressive performances.

A sometimes glorious, sometimes disastrous folly.

A formulaic and predictable movie that combines minimal characterization with some irritating implausibility.

The best thing about Equilibrium is its impressive look. Along with its generally fine cast and some well-choreographed fights, that goes a long way to making the movie watchable -- despite its underlying stupidity.

Surprisingly enjoyable, as adaptations of cult comic books go, thanks to a sense of humor all too rare in the genre, winning performances by Ron Perlman and Selma Blair, and a sweet romance of the kind that made "Spider-Man" a richer experience than its competitors.