Ken Fox

There are no two ways about it: A chubby-cheeked dummy doing stuff it shouldn't be doing is spooky stuff. But Wan isn't on such sure footing with his actors -- Wahlberg is stilted as the tough-guy cop, and Kwanten is blandly uninteresting.

Lawrence is a comedian with talent who rarely uses it for anything worthwhile, and here he makes a halfhearted, paycheck-collecting effort that's actually in perfect keeping with the rest of the movie's tired, recycled tone.

Too dumb to take seriously, but just silly enough to be sort of fun.

A clear, unbiased documentary examining of the UNSCOM debacle would benefit anyone attempting to make sense of the dire situation. This, unfortunately, is not that documentary.

The results are only so-so.

Isn't nearly as bad as it might have been.

It's painfully corny and surprisingly vulgar, but this embarrassing attempt at a father-son heart-warmer just happens to feature two Hollywood legends, and they're both in terrific form.

Flashy, "MATRIX"-style action sequences trump ideas; it's hard not to feel you've just watched a feature-length video game with some really heavy back story.

In Koepp's comedic variation on a similar theme, the dead are not just unhappy -- they're irritatingly needy.

Lacking so much as a shred of wit and crammed with more product placements than jokes, this unendurable stoner comedy clearly disproves the movie-formula wisdom that two guys, one Xbox and a 2-foot-long bong add up to something funny.

A bizarre hybrid between Euro erotic thriller and a parable of Jewish awakening.

The energy is infectious, and while the female empowerment angle is no doubt sincere, the whole up-tempo construction jiggles a bit too much to be taken seriously.

Romano is no match for his heavy-hitting supporting cast: Next to the seasoned likes of Harden or Rip Torn, who's hilarious as Cole's campaign manager, Romano's presence barely registers. Aside from the charming Tierney, there are no surprises in Mooseport.

What a waste. Check out "Breakdown" or Aldo Lado's 1971 Italian giallo "Long Night Of The Short Dolls" for a far better treatments of the same subject.

This abysmal "Spider-Man" satire has more in common with the lamentable spate of "Epic" and "Date Movies" than Zucker and Nielsen's truly funny "Naked Gun" series.

The humor is too adult for children and the plot far too childish for most adults; in fact, everything about the film is really too silly to warrant much consideration.

Lars Von Trier's silly script about a group of pistol packing misfits gets better treatment than it deserves, thanks to a fine young cast and the game direction of Thomas Vinterberg.

If anyone is to blame for this bomb it's Forte: He wrote the thing, and one would assume he's the one responsible for those uncomfortable silences where jokes are supposed to be.

A stew of silliness that's so ridiculous it's almost entertaining. Almost.

In light of the recent plight of real New York City-based filmmaker Micah Garen, who was kidnapped and nearly executed while attempting to make a genuine documentary in Iraq, the whole endeavor seems simply foolish.

Though written by Wes Craven and his son, Jonathan Craven, this is pretty standard stuff: A lot of creeping through dark tunnels with just enough characterization to help you keep track of who's still alive, but not enough gore to really satisfy fans of Aja's bloodbath.

It doesn't meet the minimum number of laughs to qualify as a comedy -- two would have clinched it -- and it's far too asinine to be taken seriously.

Boasts spunk, imagination and a strong performance from Smallville's very talented Sam Jones III.

Marred by lack of a clear strategy and an over-reliance on audio-visual trickery.

There are worse movies, but that's no excuse. Rarely has so much money delivered so little entertainment.

With all the glossy sex, you'd be forgiven for thinking Zalman King was directing, except that even King knows you don't need such a ludicrously complicated plot to show pretty people having sex. Each character is so burdened with gratuitous back story that it's exhausting trying to separate the grain from the chaff, until you realize none of it matters at all.

Sticky sweet sentimentality, clumsy plotting and a rosily myopic view of life in the WWII-era Mississippi Delta undermine this adaptation of an unpublished novel by David Armstrong.

A cheesy romance tricked up in cheap sanctimony.

The year's most eagerly anticipated green-eyed monster finally rears its ugly head, not with his trademark radioactive roar, but a deafening yawn.

While the homeless, the mentally ill and the generally downtrodden are scattered about like so much shabby furniture, Rifkin has no qualms about wallowing in their filth, but he misses the tragedy of their lives -- just as he misses everything else.

With scenes that must surely rank among the most revolting ever committed to film.

Even worse than its hypocrisy, gratuitous homophobia and cheap proselytizing, the movie is dull.

It's hard to care even just a little when you have no idea what's at stake or why, be it Heaven or Hell.

"Queer as Folk's" Peter Paige makes a strong debut as a writer/director with this original black comedy.

Todd Komarnicki's screenplay relies heavily on red herrings and a host of suspects (there are more murderers swanning around Hill's sleek offices than there were aboard the Orient Express) to keep audiences distracted from what, in retrospect, is really pretty obvious.

But good intentions aside, Tucker and codirector Petra Epperlein only further confuse the issue: Their rap-video stylings and use of non-source music create the impression that you're watching characters trapped in a Tom Clancy Xbox game.

A handsomely produced but unintentionally risible film that mistakes high grotesquerie for high gothic.

Levinson, who has directed enough films to know better, should recognize a stinker of a script when he smells one: Instead clever laughs he serves up sloppy schtick, dead spots filled with lame ad-libbing and Walken crooning "The Happy Wanderer."

Thank God for Brooke Shields: Spitting spite with every remark she hurls at her long-suffering mother, she's a revelation.

It's just plain lurid when it isn't downright silly, and that "drunk cam," a blurred, cockeyed lens through which Sonny's soused point-of-view is shown, is just a terrible idea.

Sitting through this charmless romantic comedy is like going to a restaurant and being seated next to a drunken couple who argue throughout dinner: It's messy, embarrassing and absolutely none of your business, but there's no escape.

Still passable popcorn fare, even if you'll barely taste it before swallowing.

Andreas' cast and crew, however, have done an admirable job of backing up that hilarious title with an intelligent little film that knows its limitations and makes the most of a shoestring budget.

For all its maturity - and nice performances from Johnson and Phoenix - the film winds up dancing around the 500-lb gorilla in the middle of the room rather than facing the pathology of its real subject head-on.

"Alien" redux.

Says many things at once without much perspective or clarity.

This madcap paranormal love triangle is charming on its own terms.

You'll laugh and hate yourself for it.

If you pitch your expectations at an all time low, you could do worse than this oddly cheerful -- but not particularly funny -- body-switching farce.

Not since Larry Clark's "Kids" (1995) has the threat of HIV infection been used so gratuitously, driving a narrative that ultimately has nothing to do with the AIDS crisis.

The music is surprisingly good and there's a skateboarding bulldog that you've just gotta see to believe.

Lee obviously wants to portray Ethan as something other than the dutiful No. 1 son, but Ethan isn't entirely convincing as a doped-up street hustler.

It's undone by a murky palette, silly horror-movie cliches, dumb dialogue and a confusing climactic sequence.

An unconvincing and uninvolving psychological thriller.

We already knew Hudson and McConaughey weren't exactly Gable and Lombard from their first romantic pairing in "How To Lose A Guy in 10 Days," but director Andy Tennant's complete lack of inventiveness comes as a surprise.

Garish, animated junk.

Singaporean writer-director Eric Khoo's third feature is a beautiful, contemplative study of love -- unrequited, unfulfilled and reborn.

To say Wes Craven's rewrite of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's 2001 "Pulse" isn't as bad as it could have been sounds like faint praise, but Kurosawa's "Pulse" is one of the true masterpieces of recent Asian horror, and the track record for Hollywood horror redos isn't great.

If you're feeling open-minded and a little adventurous, this chilling exploration of the gender gap from Gallic bad-girl Catherine Breillat is worth a look.

Set mostly over the course of a single evening, the film is lugubriously paced and filled with improbable turns of events.

Derivative, indifferently acted, artlessly photographed and awash in nudity and rudimentary gore effects, this direct-to-DVD feature mars the producing debut of longtime horror and exploitation distributor Media Blasters.

Filled with short, rapid-fire takes, edited to a pulsating beat and punctuated with blasts of noise...the style suits the often violent material, as well as Arquette's remarkable physical performance.

It can make for entertainingly silly viewing, but it should come as no surprise that the film's plea for tolerance and unexpectedly tragic ending -- an unfortunate throwback to the Dark Ages of gays in films -- rings equally hollow.

With its porno plot, Undressed production values and ersatz "Will & Grace" banter that manages to be crude without being the least bit funny, Q. Allan Brocka's debut is a tasteless comedy that nevertheless leaves a nasty flavor on the tongue.

The film only gains its footing in the final half hour, when Griffin and Solvang interview a healer who regularly performs female circumcisions and, finally, two people who actually have AIDS.

Filled with forced yuletide cheer and mixed messages about the true meaning of Christmas, this loud and obnoxious holiday comedy boasts a fine cast and little else.

The message this oddball film propounds is pretty much standard stuff on the Oprah circuit.

Farley -- one of the few comedians who could ever be justly accused of debasing the pratfall -- has made a film that's tantamount to watching an overweight man slip on a banana peel for nearly 90 minutes.

The devout will no doubt enjoy this picturesque dramatization of an inspirational story many have known since childhood; others may understandably expect something more.

Given Argento's willingness to attempt the controversial book at all, she pulls a surprising number of punches. What at first appears to go too far in reality doesn't go far enough: Argento doesn't even broach the subject of child prostitution.

Rather than remake the entire original movie, Simon West and screenwriter Jake Wade Wall have taken only that now-classic first act and padded it out into a dull, filler-filled feature that's remarkably void of any new ideas.

Mean-spirited and depressing, this horror movie in comedy disguise delights in the twin spectacles of morbid obesity and domestic abuse, of which children are often the target.

Nicely shot around New York City, this dodgy mixture of cutesy romance, dark satire and murder mystery uses the same central conceit as Neil LaBute's "Nurse Betty."

Meng's film, which uses a fairly sophisticated flashback structure to reveal the secrets of Ah Na's past in China, touches on a number of very serious subjects: the business of illegal immigration, the exploitation of "aliens" and the treatment of people with AIDS in China. But it's also filled with touches of humor.

Is there anything remotely new left to be said about the world's oldest profession?

It took a century of innovation in the field of cinematic special effects, but finally the head of Marlon Wayans could be successfully grafted onto the body of a baby.

In the long, hit-and-miss career of writer-director Alan Rudolph, this misbegotten comedy falls squarely into the miss bin.

By turns fascinating and intolerable.

Most significant and contrary to the Mormon Church's ongoing position, the film depicts Young as present when the plot is hatched to slaughter the emigrants. Needless to say, this workmanlike but unflinching film won't be playing in Utah anytime soon.

So silly it's best taken ironically. But the film, much of it shot digitally, is also astonishingly beautiful.

Spin it however they like, the troubled but talented Lohan isn't what's wrong with this misbegotten mess.

We're treated to endless scenes of women getting slammed, thrown and clothes lined, while men's genitals are grabbed, groped, stroked and tasered. It's all just as painful as it sounds.

So consistently awful, it's almost entertaining.

The real-life Modigliani did indeed live a short, tragic life, but this factually inaccurate, plodding film makes it feel twice as long.

Though the film springs an okay twist at the very end, there's a good chance you won't be awake to see it.

DeMeo is not without talent; he just needs better material.

Sex and psychosis mix in this nice looking, Super-8 psychodrama from Patrick McGuinn, the son of former-Byrd Roger McGuinn.

It's all a pretentious bore that feels twice as long as it's two-hour running time.

The result is yet another tired, ultimately incoherent horror movie that undoes the promise of its pretty good premise and potentially interesting story structure with dull scares, sloppy ending and a pair of unconvincing, leaden lead performances.

Quite possibly the final word on a much-maligned genre.

Plenty of bone-crunching brawn, but not a brain cell in sight.

Adam Sandler can breathe a sigh of relief: Thanks to this crude, bafflingly unfunny comedy from fellow SNL alum Mike Myers, Sandler can rest assured that his "You Don't Mess With The Zohan" won't go down as the worst movie of 2008.

The original English scripts certainly were peppered with sly, topical asides aimed squarely at adults. Paul Bassett Davies' updated screenplay attempts to follow suit, but what passes for topical these days is pretty much limited to industry inside jokes and constant allusions other movies. Thankfully, the animation itself is thoroughly inspired.

Like so much dope humor, Soling's logic is fuzzy, and you'd have to be pretty high to find any of it funny.

With friends like these, the poor guy took what he probably thought was the easy way out.

The film is an encouraging effort from McCrudden -- he manages to avoid the staginess of the recurring two-characters-in-a-hotel-room set-up -- and features a standout performance from Williams.

Benigni's artfully composed images are as empty as his political convictions.

For all its sensitivity, the film abounds with movie cliches about the developmentally challenged.

Folks watching any movie that opens with a shot of a butt crack (with the possible exception of "Lost in Translation") can't claim they weren't warned.

The real-life Hayata plays himself with little conviction, while the rest of the Spanish-speaking cast give the impression that they don't have the slightest idea what their English-language dialogue means.

The script too often sounds like an encrypted communique itself, and it's tiring trying to keep all the nonsensical space-jargon straight. The effort is more demanding than hanging onto a joystick, and not entirely worth the effort.

It's hard to pinpoint what's most insulting about this obvious propaganda piece.

Leave something on the shelf long enough and it'll either ripen like cheese or rot like garbage. Guess what: This ain't Camembert.

Chase is a veritable black-hole of mirthlessness who sucks every ounce of fun out what might otherwise be a fairly diverting comedy.

Good-natured fun; it doesn't always work, but it's not for want of trying.

Yes, it's really silly, and no, you won't remember a thing about it the second it's over, but adults looking for fast moving, non-violent fun that kids might actually enjoy could do a lot worse.

Like everything else about this insulting romantic comedy, the Jessica Alba/Dane Cook love match is degraded by vile jokes, a boorish attitude toward women and a smutty tackiness not seen since those stupid nudie-cuties of the 1960s.

Routine thriller.

Scenes are woefully under-rehearsed, and much of the obviously improvised dialogue would seem entirely random if it weren't so repetitive.

Some of the humor is pretty raunchy (there are quite a few sex-related scenes and jokes) and tasteless. Adults old enough to appreciate the choice electro-boogaloo soundtrack and get the "Mr. Roboto" jokes will doubtless find the rest of it painfully dumb.

Instantly forgettable but fun while it lasts, Disney's live-action adaptation of the classic cartoon is an ideal action-adventure thrill ride for kids who may be a little too young for the latest Bond extravaganza.

It's a forgotten piece of history worth recounting. One only regrets it wasn't better recounted than it is here.

The Duffs are certainly cute together, but not even their natural chemistry can enliven all the preachy bits about hard work and the meaning of happiness.

Unless you grew up in an Italian-American neighborhood like the one featured in this contrived but pleasant enough comedy, you might not know that "chooch" is slang for jackass, a likeable loser who can't help but screw up.

Overall the movie is too stupid to offend any but the most sensitive viewer.

The sadists responsible for the painfully unfunny "Date Movie" (2006) are back, and this time they've outdone themselves: This theater-clearer is even less amusing than its terrible predecessor, a spoof so devoid of laughs it can longer be categorized as a comedy.

Director Scott Kalvert returns to wring every last cliché out 1950s juvenile delinquent movies, without adding anything particularly fresh to the formula.

All of this of course would be forgivable if it all added up to a scary movie or made even a lick of sense, but Balaguero manages to disappoint on all possible fronts.

An ugly, unfunny frat comedy.

Dull and unimaginative.

Once LL Cool J, easily the film's most magnetic presence, is out of the game, the whole thing falls apart in a hazy, confusing mess.

This terrible sequel to a bad movie was directed by Fred Savage, the now-grown star of "The Wonder Years," though there's no evidence of any behind-the-scenes adult supervision.

You'd have to be more than merely intoxicated to find anything about this dismal stoner comedy remotely funny. You'd have to be unconscious.

The choice is yours: Shell out 10 bucks for this dire spoof of recent romantic comedies a la "Scary Movie" and "Not Another Teen Movie", or toss your 12-year-old nephew a quarter and get him to act out scenes from his favorite movies for 80 minutes: The entertainment value will be about the same.

There's no getting past the shockingly poorly dubbed voice work of the English speaking cast; Meyer's voice is particularly shrill and grating.

A misconceived roundelay that crosses the thin line dividing gross-but-funny from just plain gross.

Too lazy to play your own d--- video game? Lucky for you there's horror director-for-hire Uwe Boll, who's making a career out of adapting successful Atari and Sega games into tedious popcorn fare that's the ultimate in cinematic passivity.

Filled with long, obviously improvised pseudo-philosophical ramblings about nothing -- and that's before the drugs kick in.

A turkey with all the trimmings.

The cast isn't bad but the movie is, and Amir's use of Holocaust imagery is cheap and unnecessary; Jo and Alexander could just as easily have died on the Titanic. At one point the dialogue is completely drowned out by the roar of the surf, and that is no doubt a blessing.

This relentlessly name-dropping comedy lacks the teeth that could have made it really interesting.

It's all wonderfully trashy fun, but the good times come to an abrupt halt when the filmmakers, hoping to capitalize on the starlet's sensational death in 1967, cheaply dramatize the car crash that took the lives of Mansfield, her driver, her friend and lawyer, and Choo Choo.

This film represents a perfect match of filmmaker and material. Akerman's fondness for long, static takes and circular, recurring dialogue perfectly suits the maddening repetitions that set the tone of Proust's darkest work.