Jonathan Foreman

Overall, this sci-fi/martial arts hybrid has the stale aura of a product assembled out of bits of other action movies.

Isn't just scary, charming and delightfully unpredictable - it's also smarter and subtler than any new movie out there.

Quickly morphs into a messy double message movie with motifs and clichés lifted from military courtroom films like "A Soldier's Story" and "A Few Good Men."

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

Presents an intelligent, profound and at times heartrending slice of Taiwanese middle-class existence - as seen by characters at different stages of life.

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.

A cold, emptily stylish exercise -- and one that sorely lacks the speed and vigor that made "Lola" run.

Uses the compelling true story of the triumph of the Enigma code-breakers as background for an invented but believable story of love, betrayal and heroism.

Disappointing and surprisingly crude.

A remarkable accomplishment. It takes one of the century's vast tragedies...and makes it heart-rendingly real and intimate.

Works just fine as a generic but fast-paced - and rather ugly - cop buddy flick.

Simply not up to the task.

Perhaps no movie could do Muhammad Ali justice. But this overlong but sketchy biopic by Michael Mann, in which style repeatedly tramples substance, actually does the great man a disservice.

For all its virtues, this is not a film to see on less than a good night's sleep.

Plays to none of Rock's strengths (even though he co-wrote the film with members of his HBO team) and intensifies his tendency to mug and shout.

Warm and charming and often witty, it's as good a romantic comedy as has come out for some time, with an endearing, perfectly pitched central performance that's a four-square triumph for Zellweger.

Despite its visual brilliance, its all-round cleverness, and the way it demonstrates a profound understanding of genre, the Coen brothers' The Man Who Wasn't There doesn't quite come off.

Isn't really a movie: It's a grab bag of mobster clichés lifted without finesse from "A Bronx Tale," "GoodFellas" and at least a score of lesser Mafia flicks.

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.

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

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

Though On the Run is a welcome reminder that effective thrillers don't have to be noisy or dumb, the film does contain slightly jarring moments of inadvertent humor.

Often charming and sweet, and always prettily photographed.

Boasts some genuinely intelligent and funny sequences and some nicely painful scenes of domestic tension - as well as surprisingly strong performances from actors like Neve Campbell and Donald Sutherland.

Rapturously elegant and deeply sexy in a deliciously restrained way. One of the most romantic movies I have ever seen, right up there with "Brief Encounter"and "Casablanca."

If the movie were funny, the implicit sermonizing would be more tolerable, but apart from four or five good one-liners, The Next Best Thing is a thudding failure as a comedy.

The most enjoyable western comedy since "Blazing Saddles."

A crowd-pleasing ensemble piece, whose story goes exactly where you want it to.

Turns out to be a choppily written, unevenly acted exercise, no less shlocky and predictable than any of Hollywood's average second-string heterosexual comedies.

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

The characters are tired stereotypes, the sentimentality nauseating and the situation comedy way below the standards of the very worst WB or UPN shows.

With uncommon ineptitude even by the standards of contemporary action flicks, Kyle's script submerges the inherently dramatic tale of the K-19 under a pile of clichés, while failing to tell you enough about the characters for their actions to make much sense.

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.

Laughably predictable in its plotting, crude in its symbolism, ploddingly paced and often rendered almost comical by the heavy-breathing overacting of Johansson's supporting cast.

Spectacular special effects and sets.

If you have the patience, its almost endless silences and extremely slow pacing eventually pay off.

Amateurish in the extreme, the film is a feast of bohemian cliché, bad writing and worse acting.

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

It's hoary and clunky even by the low standards of contemporary thrillers.

A lean, deftly shot, well-acted, weirdly retro thriller that recalls a raft of '60s and '70s European-set spy pictures. There are even moments when you hope it could turn into a modern "Charade."

Although Scary Movie 3 boasts the same relaxed attitude to racial and sexual humor, some of the same eye for movieland ridiculousness, along with the usual cameos (Pamela Anderson and Simon Cowell), it lacks a single explosive, roll-on-the-floor gag, and too often repeats and belabors jokes that are merely OK.

An embarrassing misfire...feels like a long, slow TV pilot about L.A. twentysomethings, only it lacks the polish and wit of your average sitcom.

Despite inadequate editing and overreliance on bad background music, The Girl Next Door doesn't disappoint.

There's no limit to Coyote Ugly's crass shamelessness.

A reminder of just how good Hollywood storytelling can be.

What follows is very gruesome indeed, though the footage of people being chased by hideous ghosts soon becomes rather dull.

Staggers between flaccid satire and what is supposed to be madcap farce.

Amateurishly written and directed, and so predictable that it hurts.

What makes 8 Mile transcend the formulaic nature of its plot is the way it makes these rap competitions compelling even for those unfamiliar with rap music, and its scrupulous, loving rendition of a grim, wintry Detroit circa 1995.

Powerful, provocative and often surprisingly funny, this may be the year's outstanding documentary.

Visually unimpressive and laden with awkward dialogue; its primary interest doesn't lie in its storytelling but in its sociology -- in the window it opens onto a Muslim Middle Eastern society in transition.

So patchy in its laughs, so calculated in its grossness and so lacking in genuine comic exuberance, it makes you look at "Road Trip" in an admiring new light.

Though never dull and often visually beautiful, this work of operatic sweep doesn't fulfill its own ambitions.

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 bad film with some oddly charming moments.

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

A charming, (mostly) briskly unsentimental love story, written, directed and acted with remarkable assurance.

The Rock deserves better than The Rundown, a brisk, good- hearted but predictable and uninspired - not to mention bone-crunchingly violent - action comedy.

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

An example of Hollywood schlock from the team of Joel Schumacher (director) and Jerry Bruckheimer (producer) that lacks the faintest trace of imagination or genuine feeling.

Rescues a rarely performed tragedy and makes a brilliant case that it is the Shakespeare play for our time.

Perfectly enjoyable swashbuckling, eye-catching entertainment.

The sheer loathesomeness of protagonist Stephen Glass as portrayed by Hayden Christensen makes Shattered Glass hard to watch.

A perfectly enjoyable sci-fi thriller.

Much less mawkish and predictable than you might expect.

More prettily photographed pretentious rubbish from the ridiculous Peter Greenaway.

What makes Final Fantasy a final failure is a predictable, nonsensical plot, laughably lame dialogue and a surfeit of cloying environmentalist piety.

It's an original, and a gamble, and one of those movies that works better than it should, despite considerable flaws of conception and execution.

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

A lobotomized attempt to make a no-budget John Waters movie, Men Cry Bullets is a painful reminder of just how bad indie cinema can be - especially when it plays with gender roles. It's desperately unfunny and dreadfully acted, written and directed.

A delightful, fresh dark comedy.

Director Alfonso Cuaron ("A Little Princess") gets vivid, convincing performances from a fine cast, and generally keeps things going at a rapid pace.

The film's tongue is so firmly in cheek that, without being a spoof like "Dragnet" or "The Brady Bunch Movie," it has more in common with the "Austin Powers" films.

A non-thrilling occult thrillersolame and unoriginal that it would be an embarrassment for any director, much less a talent like Roman Polanski.

A profound disappointment, given its cast and source material.

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.

It's hardly a dramatic story. You learn absolutely nothing about her personal life. But there is plenty of drama in that amazing, soulful voice and the songs she sang.

Undeniably powerful, grimly fascinating.

Although the jokes aren't as consistently funny as those in "Lock, Stock," once again writer-director Ritchie demonstrates a deeply pleasurable combination of verbal flair and visual wit while conveying the genuine, intimidating hardness of the English working class and its love of language.

A big, incoherent bore, interesting only as an example of assembly-line movie-making gone awry.

Shapeless, tedious, hopelessly bad sequel.

The acting, camera work and writing are all crude and amateurish, even by the standards of student films.

A terrific work of political and social satire set in a Nebraska high school that has the intelligence of (the less coherent) "Rushmore," while painting a much darker picture of politics and human relationships.

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

Almost everything about Ice Age proves to be disappointingly generic.

A far more impressive and affecting piece of filmmaking and storytelling than most movies put out by Hollywood this year, and offers, as a bonus, a glimpse into a fascinating, contradictory society.

There are some charming moments and some funny scenes along the way. But you end up feeling sorry for the likes of Ron Howard, Karen Black, Fred Williamson and Peter Bogdanovich, who agreed to play themselves in cameo.

Predictable, rarely scary.

Vastly superior to the small and independent films that have come out during the last six months.

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

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.

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

Unfortunately, you are often distractingly aware that you are watching re-enactments of real events.

The result is inept, tedious kitsch that even at its best feels like John Waters minus the joie de vivre.

So daring and unsparing in its depiction of the psyche and experience of adolescent girls that it's hard to imagine an audience that wouldn't find it deeply provocative despite a slow pace.

Neither convincing nor remotely dramatic.

Some wonderful films have come out of Iran in the past few years, but A Moment of Innocence, by highly regarded director Mohsen Makhmalbaf, is too smug and too self-indulgent to count as one of them.

Mostly ludicrous, but occasionally effective.

Entertaining as he is, there are many times when you wish you'd been given a few more facts and numbers so you could understand what the young CEO and his colleagues were celebrating or bemoaning.

Part sitcom, part comedy of manners - but it lacks the courage to deal honestly with class and ethnicity.

Almost too creepy to be poignant, and generally funny only in an uncomfortable, squirm-in-your seat way.

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.

You have to sit through 90 minutes that feel like three hours.

Boisterously amusing.

One of those French films whose makers won't lower themselves to tell a story in a way that is entertaining or compelling.

Kevin Smith's attempt to combine sketchy low comedy with long-winded theological speculation results in a mostly unfunny and occasionally tedious mess.

A smarmy, smirky but ultimately boring film.

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.

Two things make this film slightly more interesting than its American B-movie equivalents. There's the artless way it shows the French state exercising its power and the charisma of French stars.

Even if this film may irritate some people who remember "the movement" differently, it's nevertheless a fascinating and often moving document of recent history.

Egoyan treats the Armenian genocide and its aftermath as a metaphor for cruelty and denial -- an exercise in either pretension or timidity that exploits this tragedy.

Has the cheesy, deadened feel of a straight-to-cable film.

An extraordinary documentary about an extraordinary man that brings to urgent life potentially dry questions of American foreign policy in the 1960s.

It turns into something that is much smarter, and in a gentle, low-key way, tougher and funnier than you expect.

Cheerful, slightly cheesy entertainment that uses the latest special-effects techniques to breathe life into a venerable film tradition.

Anyone interested in this remarkably prolific author would be better off visiting a library or bookshop.

This second installment of Lucas Belvaux's acclaimed "Trilogy" is decidedly inferior to the first: a farce that simply isn't funny.

Contains too many weak performances and predictable lines to succeed, but it's probably the best rave movie so far.

Smug, often tedious, and comically crude.

Every possible film student visual cliché (plus quite a few from the world of music video) gets a thorough workout.

Revels in the sensual pleasure of music while capturing brilliantly the tension that grips any theater company before the curtain goes up.

A sophisticated, stylish, fast-moving piece of work.

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.

If Schwarzberg had chosen to concentrate on eccentrics, rural artists or people like his New York bike messenger, female aerobatic champion and California cliff dancer, "Heart and Soul" would have been a much more interesting film.

An example of lazy, dumb and couldn't-care-less hack movie making.

Isn't as bad as the year's first abysmal Martian movie, "Mission to Mars," but it's pretty close.

Resolves the romantic dilemma in the most artificial and unsatisfying way. A blaring swing score and some obvious dubbing do little to ease the pain.

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.

An ugly, failed attempt to pull off a "Heathers"-style, teen-oriented black comedy.

The film is clearly an unfinished work and one that feels like a ragged assemblage of parts from at least two entirely different movies all with the same cast.

A haunting, superbly made film. But it's also an unrelentingly sad and depressing experience.

Unfortunately, Impostor doesn't do much with its template, despite a remarkably strong cast.

Boasts several fine performances and some elegant, eerie black-and- white photography.

A messy, woefully uneven chick flick.

A gorgeously photographed, sun-baked fable.

It makes not just the "Thief of Baghdad" and the junky Ray Harryhausen movies of the '60s and '70s but even Disney's recent "Aladdin" seem positively multicultural by comparison.

Visually stunning.

The pace slackens a little after the first hour, but the photography by Remi Adefarasin and music by Magnus Fiennes keep the emotion stoked.

An affectionate, often clever and unflaggingly funny satire.

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

Often darkly funny and very well acted, it's a pleasingly subtle, Hitchockian thriller with dark comic overtones.

Fascinating, beautifully photographed portrait of a vanished community.

It is not only an amazing technical accomplishment, it's also the wittiest and best-voiced animated movie to come along in years.

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

Doesn't have the emotional heft of his "Children of Paradise," but it's still moving.

An ultra-stylized, empty mess.

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

It reeks of contempt for the audience. This is not just a "B-movie" -- it's a B-movie that fails to entertain on any level.

The very effectiveness of After the Life's depiction of its main characters makes its immediate predecessor seem that much more of a waste.

A wonderfully acted, strangely low-key prison movie.

In fact, for long stretches, especially during the first hour, it's as soporific as watching a bank of security cameras.

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

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

A quietly compelling documentary that is refreshing in both form and content.

Comes closer to what a Bond movie should be and once was.

Like "Beneath the Veil," it gives a human face to those who have suffered from the Taliban's tremendous cruelty, and those who have been maimed in the war to end their rule.

Oddly undramatic.

Though not as witty or accomplished as you'd expect from its pedigree, "Le Divorce" provides welcome relief from the lame-brained trash Hollywood has foisted on the public this summer.

Fluffy, inconsistent, but enjoyable.

While Star Trek: Nemesis isn't nearly as good as the best Nicholas Meyer-written movies like "The Undiscovered Country," it is far from the worst, thanks to the topical issues it raises, the performances of Stewart and Hardy, and that essential feature -- a decent full-on space battle.

Thanks to the amateurish, spectacularly talent-free quality of its cinematography, direction, writing and acting, Emerald Cowboy is simply impossible to sit through.

Bleak, demanding stuff, and its hand-held documentary-style photography is harder on the stomach than "The Blair Witch Project."

It is often as powerful as it is elegantly shot. Unfortunately, Szabo tends to tell this rather predictable tale in an obvious yet uneven way.

Bereft of inspiration, the agonizingly witless screenplay - blamed by the credits on George Gallo - resorts to pathetic cheap jokes about flatulence and impotence, lame slapstick and that juvenile gag about the horror of two men waking up naked in the same bed.

Travolta is terrific as a bad guy, making Saint almost sympathetic. His co-stars however, flounder in a sea of bad lines, with poor Romijn-Stamos getting stuck with the worst.

A lame, glossy and disastrously misconceived film about three ditsy sisters dealing with the death of their horrible father.

Unashamedly vulgar and exuberantly politically incorrect.

Audiences may find that the deliberate, Kubrickesque pacing -- without his intellectual rigor -- causes them to tune out.

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

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

For the most part, it's both sitcomishly predictable and cloying in its attempts to be poignant.

A gleefully cunning comedy.

It too often looks and feels like a high-concept home movie, thanks to cinematography that's crude and ugly even by the standards of documentary video. But Group is also a remarkably believable piece of improvised theater.

This film of mistaken identity, murder, class envy and (bi)sexual tension doesn't live up to its own promise.

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.

Fake-sounding dialogue, some over-deliberate performances and five amazingly trite linked stories.

Moves at a leisurely pace, and it cries out for a narrator or even just an organizing principle.

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.

Generally delightful, and reminiscent of two vanished ages: when men were men, and when movies were movies.

Branagh's attempt to meld Shakespeare's densely verbal early comedy with Broadway show tunes fails, thanks to stunt casting, poor singing and dancing, and the incompatibility of the two art forms.

After a dreadfully clunky start, Left Luggage picks up and becomes quite moving.

Surprisingly smart and satisfying.

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.

A campy docu-drama about the secretly gay world of 1950's muscle magazines.

There's some lumpy writing and uneasy acting, but it's easy to see why this charming, inventive film won prizes at festivals in Berlin, San Francisco and Newport, R.I.

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

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

Unfortunately, this version of the familiar formula lacks the inspiration, genuine wit and raunchy charm of 1998's outrageous "There's Something About Mary."

Much of Tomcats is actually boisterously, crudely entertaining.

Much has, and will, be made of the grisly scenes throughout the film.

An awkward hybrid of genres that just doesn't work.

Better than any automobile flick put out by Hollywood in a while and, thanks to some genuinely exciting moments, it is easily the most entertaining so far of this summer's big, brainless action movies.

Greengrass' direction is uninspired, but there is powerful chemistry between a workmanlike Branagh and (real-life girlfriend) Bonham Carter. And her original, seductive and always believable turn as the difficult-but-lovable Jane raises the movie above all its flaws. [23 Dec. 1998, p.44]

Much of the resulting material is very funny, though there are a few times when the filmmakers patronize or mock their subjects in a way that makes you uncomfortable.

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.

Peter Farrelly is angry at Miramax for marketing his and his brother Bobby's new film as a follow-up to their surprise smash hit, "There's Something About Mary."

I was pleased by the forthright defense in Friendly Persuasion of Iranian cinema's use of children.

Beautifully shot and often moving.

Atrociously written.

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

In any case, the presence of O'Hara, Kline, Ramis, Black, Tomlin and John Lithgow (who plays Shaun's father) serve mainly to underline the feebleness of the screenplay and the slackness of the direction.

Never less than breezily entertaining.

The sequel's battle scenes -- especially the climactic assault on the Helm's Deep fortress by the armies of darkness -- easily put those of the "Star Wars" series to shame.

Exciting stuff in its primitive, predictable way.

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

A criminally slow, all-but-laughless blaxploitation comedy.

A slow, self-consciously low-key, very dull film that strains for eeriness with long silences and affectless performances.

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.

So unsparingly honest in the way it treats human cruelty and resilience that it makes fashionably bleak films like "In the Company of Men" and even "Boys Don't Cry" seem unforgivably trite or exploitative.

Adequately funny but predictable sitcom

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

This must be one of the worst movies ever to get a big-screen release. If it weren't so boring, this unbelievably bad indie sex comedy would be worth going to for five minutes of laughs at its sheer incompetence.

It's so painful to sit through you eventually stop feeling sorry for the floundering cast.

It's a film that reeks of stupidity and cynicism, one that makes you feel soiled just to have sat through it.

The filmmakers' smug Bay Area bigotry is all too obvious in gratuitous, mocking swipes at Heidi's Southern background.

Sheer delight. An ensemble comedy-drama that recalls Robert Altman's best work.

Heavy-handed, predictable and almost completely unbelievable.

A particularly gross exploitation of the Holocaust for financial gain.

If this cheesy, cheap-looking update of "A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court" had been co-produced by the Ku Klux Klan itself, it could hardly be more repellently stereotypical.

A stunning achievement, every bit the equal of the classic moun taineering book which inspired it.

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

A relentlessly grim, rather heavy-handed drama of family dysfunction.

Essentially a downscale TV movie about spousal and child abuse.

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

This brisk, British-American co-production is one of the better political/historical documentaries to come out in some time.

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

Takes you on a fascinating and picturesque journey into a relatively unfamiliar culture.

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

A misguided exercise - a crude merger of "Fiddler on the Roof" and "Schindler's List" that somehow reminds you of "Hogan's Heroes."

More impressive than the sight of these acts on an eight-story screen is the excellent six-channel IMAX sound system.

The film is worth seeing for George Clooney's performance. More than ever he seems like a Clark Gable for our time.

A misfiring black comedy oddly reminiscent of all those bad 1990s movies about strippers getting killed at bachelor parties.

Its plot and political symbolism manage to be both over-familiar and confusingly muddled.

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

Essential viewing not just for those fascinated by adventure, exploration and survival, but for anyone interested in the magic of leadership.

A pointless, wincingly snide exercise.

Crippled by lame storytelling.

Draggy and contrived.

It's a funny and occasionally poignant movie.

Flat dialogue and stiff performances (especially by the street kids, like Ballesteros, turned into actors by Schroeder) don't help.

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.

All of the characters in this story of love, guilt and redemption feel like real people, facing real dilemmas, and you truly care about what happens to them

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.

One of those rare recent films whose emotional power resonates long after you've left the theater.

A rare and welcome reminder of how original, provocative and moving a low-budget independent film can be.

Courageous, convincing performance by Dunst.

About two-thirds of the way through, a stupid, hyperbolic sensibility takes control of the project, running it screaming off the rails.

Looks and feels like a bad imitation of "Trainspotting" without any of that film's wit or charm.

As entertaining as it is amazingly faithful.

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.

It's unfortunate that the people DuBowski profiles tend to be self-indulgent or otherwise unappealing. It's still more unfortunate that the film focuses more on relatively easy issues of acceptance.

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.

Eyes Wide Shut is Stanley Kubrick's Hindenberg.

Best watched while doing a crossword or reading the paper.

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

Everything about National Security is so lazy and uninspired, it's hard to believe that director Dennis Dugan also made "Happy Gilmore," arguably Adam Sandler's funniest movie.

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.

A pathetically inane and unimaginative cross between "XXX" and "Vertical Limit," it could only harm the careers of everyone involved in its making - including top British stage actors Rufus Sewell and Rupert Graves.

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.

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.

Not only is Adored amateurish and mawkish even by the standards of American "gaysploitation" cinema, it's weirdly shy about showing nudity and sex.

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.

Visually gorgeous despite its low budget, The Terrorist is a haunting film.

Even the lovemaking scenes between two of Hollywood's most attractive stars -- often shot from above, like Cinemax soft porn -- are so unerotic, they make your skin crawl.