Jonathan Foreman

Elegantly photographed family saga that brims with period detail. Unfortunately, the underlying story is less than compelling,

A witty and quietly charming road comedy.

The gleeful teen-horror spoof that proves that the Farrelly brothers have no monopoly on outrageous, politically incorrect comedy.

Bland, occasionally funny.

Fascinatingly, many of the interviewees disagree vehemently about Holmes' personality: some of his co-stars and colleagues found him repellently abusive and selfish.

It's not to say that the adolescent humor isn't funny; some of it is hilarious. It's just that this movie lacks the overarching comic sensibility that made "Mary" and even Adam Sandler comedies like "Happy Gilmore" and "The Waterboy" so satisfying.

But given the potentially gripping subject matter, the film is fatally underedited: Every scene feels too long.

When it was first performed in theaters a couple of years after the L.A. riots took place, Twilight: Los Angeles must have been very powerful. Unfortunately, director Mark Levin's filmed version lacks that impact.

Unfortunately, you really only hear about prostitution from the side of the pimp.

With its endless takes of characters silently waiting, say, or getting out of bed, this is the kind of film that can be seen only after a full night's sleep. But it is also clever, funny and sometimes moving.

While the film contains some terrific, realistically bloody battle scenes, it has a distinctly Germanic feel, both in its epic heaviness and in the peculiar way it revises the history of the American Revolution.

By far the best thing about Pitch Black is the cool-looking lighting and photography.

Represents a kind of progress. Where once only a few ultra-talented, lucky black filmmakers got to make big studio movies, now we have standard-issue Hollywood schlock that happens to be made by, about and for African-Americans.

It tries to be an update of "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" crossed with "Pygmalion," but while it has some funny and even original moments, it's too predictable to be "all that."

Essentially a feature-length commercial for both the growing sport of competitive cheerleading and ESPN2 .

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

Besson is unable to weave the comic scenes together with the serious gory ones, so both seem increasingly jarring and unbelievable.

It's hard to feel anything but disappointment and boredom by the time the picture grinds to a mystical ending.

A gorgeously shot endurance test that is impossible to get through on anything less than a full night's sleep and a double shot of espresso.

Begins exceptionally well. Indeed, for at least its first half it's an unusually thoughtful, admirably underplayed piece of work of disorienting, rather harsh realism that builds its mysteries in pleasurably oblique and unpredictable ways.

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 rather crude affair that feels like a student film, due to performances that often lack conviction and would-be "street" dialogue that rings false.

Visually flat and uninteresting and too often feels like a (leisurely paced) filmed play.

A hokey, overblown and deeply unsatisfying movie.

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

Pumped-up, dumbed-down Bond, with tattoos instead of brains.

It's a lumpy and disorganized film that remains unsatisfying, perhaps because the fundamental oddness of having sex in public for money as a way of life remains just as mysterious at the end of the film as in the beginning.

Not a movie but a live-action agitprop cartoon so shameless and coarse, it's almost funny.