Jonathan Foreman

Takeshi's elliptical directorial style here is overwhelmed by the script's crudeness and lack of narrative power.

Boring and irritating, and also mildly offensive in its ignorant depiction of both Judaism and Catholicism.

Long stretches of Mike Figgis' film are jaw-droppingly pretentious or painfully dull... Nevertheless, there are clever, funny, erotic and visually beautiful moments scattered throughout the film.

Though shamelessly derivative and amoral, The Girl Next Door is nevertheless funnier and smarter than most of the pathetic dreck aimed at the nation's teens.

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

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

Every good joke in the movie is to be found in those trailers.

There are some decent jokes along the way. And none of the performances is bad. But they are limited by the script, which allows each character only one comic note.

The documentary equivalent of a Southern Gothic novel.

Part of the problem is that the Finbar character is both underdeveloped and unattractive - you don't get a sense of why anyone would miss him, let alone go searching for him in the snow. [17 Mar 2000]

There is something offensively lazy about the thinness of the Jaglom's movie-industry characters, the simplistic problems they face, and the clumps of clumsy, apparently improvised dialogue they have to deliver.

Not entirely bereft of chuckles, though it misses one comic opportunity after another (the best jokes are in the trailer).

Much less mawkish and predictable than you might expect.

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

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

A slack-paced, surprisingly bland affair, filled with jokes that sound like they should be funny but aren't.

One of those exercises in romantic whimsy that misses its mark: It's alternately sappy and uncomfortably harsh.

By far the best and cutest thing about How the Grinch Stole Christmas is the dog Max.

It isn't particularly subtle or original. But it's a good-natured late-summer romp fueled by Lawrence's manic shtick.

It is worth catching The Singing Detective to see the brilliant Robert Downey Jr. in another extraordinary performance... Unfortunately, the film itself doesn't really work despite its lineage.

Isn't boring, but it is sanctimonious, relentlessly predictable and willfully ignorant of the period it's set in.

Draggy and contrived.

The sad truth is that TV series like "Dawson's Creek" do a better job with precocious teen dialogue.

Without a real story to go with the notion of Farm Belt "wiggas," the humor wears thinner and thinner until it disappears.

Slick but painfully precious, it strains to be darkly romantic but is bereft of genuine feeling.

It's only when you're leaving the theater that her spell wears off and you realize just how bad the movie, directed by Andy Tennant, really is.

Has moments that are eerily beautiful and genuinely moving -- and some that are surprisingly vulgar.

Generic memoir of lower-middle-class "white ethnic" life in the '50s.

A lazy and uninspired knock-off of the hilarious 2002 movie "Road Trip."

Large chunks of the film seem like a record played at the wrong speed: The tempo of the dialogue as delivered doesn't match the lines as written, and the filmmakers are too lazy or too inept to make their convoluted premise jibe with any recognizable idea of human nature.

As mechanical and predictable as a cuckoo clock, it shouldn't work half as well as it does.

Unfortunately, Scorpion King has none of the qualities -- epic sweep, relative originality and heartfelt bloodthirstiness -- that made "Conan" so trashily entertaining.

Has its heart in the right place -- and in a season filled with somber or goopy Oscar contenders, it makes a perfectly decent date movie.

Graham is funny and adorable in this endearing little romantic comedy.

Although Vatel is trying to say something about freedom and gilded cages, it feels more like a behind-the-scenes look at the high-end catering business.

Exciting stuff in its primitive, predictable way.

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

Recycles gags from various, more successful gross-out and romantic comedies, but without any zest or imagination.

Even a hardened voyeur would require the patience of Job to get through this interminable, shapeless documentary about the swinging subculture.

It's muddled and shallow and obvious. Worse, it fails as entertainment, being so ineptly directed and written it often has the feel of a high school production by kids with more money and ambition than talent.

A profound disappointment, given its cast and source material.

Isn't quite up to the comic standard of Rob Schneider's 1999 hit "Deuce Bigalow, Male Gigolo."

Very, very funny, albeit inferior in a number of ways to the original.

Cinematographer Darius Khonji does a superb job of conveying both the sensual beauty (there's a spectacular moonlight-on-the-water sex scene with Leo and the lovely Ledoyen), and the darkness of Richard's paradise lost.

A messy, woefully uneven chick flick.

It's an even rarer pleasure to see a film that combines exciting action with a smart, well-informed script and vivid yet restrained performances.

Woo has never been particularly good at human stuff, and to the extent that Paycheck is, or should be, a love story, it feels forced.

Has some entertaining moments, thanks mainly to Bullock herself, who is surprisingly glamorous as well as endearing.

Its faults -- banal dialogue, ludicrous and uninspired plotting, dull but vicious fight scenes -- make you realize just how much the summer action movie has declined in the last few years.

So tedious it's almost worth watching to see just how bad acting, inadequate direction and most important, a criminally crass and unimaginative screenplay can make so little out of a proven idea.

Recycles the teen romantic comedies of the last few years...and it's easily the worst of the lot.

The demands of formula eventually stifle anything that even looks like inspiration or honesty.

James' character is a charmless, boring lump and it's very hard to care if he gets the girl or not.

The "Jurassic Park" movie franchise does not evolve. Quite the opposite: It degenerates at great speed.

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

It's hard to imagine how Shyer and script writer John Sweet could have brought this tale to the screen in a cruder, cornier or less interesting way.

Though it sometimes feels as if it's four hours long, Underworld has going for it an intriguing fantasy premise, an eventful plot and a look that is diverting, if finally a bit monotonous.

But even that talent (Freeman) isn't enough to distract you from the general predictability of Spider or the absurdity of its elaborate last-minute plot twists.

A crude, manic and embarrassingly unfunny satire that feels off from beginning to end.

The result is an intermittently instructive and amusing jumble that might have been seen as daring and "transgressive" in both form and content if it had been released, say, three decades ago.

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

The whole movie is so ineptly written and directed that its 90 minutes seem to take twice as long.

A cast almost talented enough to distract you from Ted Griffin's gimmicky screenplay.

A beautifully filmed, scrupulously authentic but strangely evasive exercise in combat ultra-realism.

Laughs are few and far between, and the film feels brutally long.

Prime date fare, but cotton-candy light and occasionally just a little too whimsical.

There are a few ingenious zig zags in its otherwise by-the-numbers plot...but what keeps you interested... is the sheer movie-star presence of the actors in the lead roles.

A pointless, wincingly snide exercise.

A particularly gross exploitation of the Holocaust for financial gain.

Visually stunning.

Bland, occasionally funny.

Relentlessly stupid.

They may not have made another "Back to the Future," but to their credit, the makers of Clockstoppers don't patronize or underestimate their pre-teen audience nearly as much as has become customary.

Works unexpectedly well for its first three quarters.

It's a thinly disguised lecture about intolerance, spotted with historical inaccuracies and groaning with dialogue so dreadful that it makes a fine cast look ridiculous again and again.

During an endless, maudlin last act, it becomes more and more difficult not to laugh -- or barf -- as the protagonists tearfully come to terms with their issues.

More tedious than affecting.

About three-quarters of the way through, Havana Nights suddenly becomes laugh-out-loud awful, with dreadful, lame lines delivered painfully badly - as if a different screenwriter and director had taken over for the movie's final act.

One of those thriller-comedy combos that never get the balance quite right.

Boasts exceptionally attractive locations, but its painfully amateurish plotting, dialogue and acting -- combined with slack pacing -- make this Beijing-set indie romance something of a trial.

This movie, cynically and patronizingly aimed at Seagal's predominantly "urban" audience, is sad, tedious proof that even violent exploitation isn't what it used to be.

It strains belief that nuclear weapons couldn't kill off the dragons, but three people with crossbows could.

What dooms Never Die Alone even as amoral pulp entertainment is the screenplay by neophyte James Gibson, which combines clichéd characters and a contrived plot with stale dialogue.

A strange Gallic imitation of a Woody Allen comedy, replete with a neurotic older hero.

This inferior sequel is doomed by a lousy - and extremely vulgar - script.

Doesn't press all its obvious lessons, and there are actually a few surprises -- and even a couple of moving and interesting moments -- before an all too predictable resolution.

Could have been written by a computer programmed to cannibalize previous sci-fi films.

Essentially a downscale TV movie about spousal and child abuse.

Alas, the laughs - courtesy of screenwriters J. Mackye Gruber and Eric Bress and director David R. Ellis - are unintentional.

Sometimes hilarious but mostly sitcom-esque geezer comedy.

Lacks even a trace of imagination. Its by-the-numbers plot is depressingly familiar, and each line of dialogue is so predictable that the script... could have been generated by a computer.

Richard Jeffries' script tosses together bits of plot borrowed from such "bad things happen when you leave the city" classics as "Straw Dogs" and "Deliverance" without any awareness of how or why genre conventions work.

Doesn't live up to the promise of its trailers.

A cute, often very funny romantic comedy and an effective vehicle for Matthew Perry.

Its bawdy honesty eventually gives way to convention, sentimentality and a frustratingly silly ending.

An ultra-stylized, empty mess.

Would be a perfectly decent B-action movie if it weren't shipwrecked in the last act by laughably ridiculous plotting and a lazily executed climax.

More prettily photographed pretentious rubbish from the ridiculous Peter Greenaway.