Kirk Honeycutt

Moshe, who wrote and directed, creates a boldly Expressionistic alternate reality to background this heavy-on-the-action story, but neglects narrative and character beyond the most basic strokes.

Everything today's young audiences are conditioned to want: incessant noise, jumpy editing, torrential music, shallow, overblown characters and sheer emptiness at its core. Imagine yourself trapped inside a two-hour video game, and you've got the Night Watch experience.

An artistically arresting yet narratively lame and strangely unfocused cartoon aimed at older children and young adults.

This is the perfect illustration of the banality of most scare movies.

The film isn't just not funny, it is off-putting.

This is a discouragingly limp movie in which nothing is at stake.

A wedding comedy that grows increasingly unfunny with each passing minute.

Last Night is a sex tease, but that makes it sound more exciting than it ever becomes.

Legally bland.

Charlie Hunnam and Terrence Howard put enough actors' oomph into these ledge mates to make them authentic characters even though the film fails to achieve anything like the same level of authenticity.

Sherlock Holmes goes wrong in many ways except for one -- at the boxoffice.

In I Think I Love My Wife, Chris Rock does something entirely unexpected. He isn't funny.

A dull actioner that looks like a bad video game.

There is not a credible moment in this overly calculated melodrama.

Cage supplies energy but no depth in his portrayal of a disillusioned knight. Ditto that for Perlman, who never feels comfortable in the sidekick role so he pretty much goes through the (exaggerated) motions.

There's really not much of an audience for this picture. The movie demands that its viewers put the fragmented images and information together like an intellectual jigsaw puzzle, but it never gives those viewers a good reason to do so.

Morrissey gives a stiff, awkward performance, while Stone moves dangerously close to overplaying the femme fatale. There is little if any intrigue in the story or the characters. Even the murders don't even seem to matter much.

The only thing that can explain middle-aged men acting like 6-year-olds is mental retardation, and there's nothing funny about that. The idea of middle-aged actors playing adolescents isn't much funnier. Put it this way: Such an idea does not make for an inexhaustible source of comedy.

Yet music, the one thing that might have given the film some kick, is de-emphasized, with only two songs sneaking into the picture.

Where the first film was something of a teen horror film, the follow-up, again from writer-director Stefan Ruzowitzky, is more of an unintentional comedy.

Won't likely disappoint fans of men-in-drag comedy but doesn't offer much that's original or funny.

Improbable and generally unfunny comedy.

Great comics from Jerry Lewis to Peter Sellers have turned pathetic into comedic. But James never seems to able to get beyond pathetic.

Earns an A for effort but a much lower grade in the entertainment department.

To borrow a cliche from another medium, Santa might have jumped the shark.

An innocuous -- to the point of blandness -- look at the "hardships" of a recent college grad.

It's disappointing the film is so sketchy and underdeveloped. The filmmakers may have sold their story short.

Making a vampire movie without any bite is like removing guns from a Western.

Even assuming the best possible motives by its makers, Beyond Borders runs the risk of making human suffering exotic while glamorizing white disaster relief workers in the Third World.

The Dilemma is so tone deaf to its themes that it thinks it's a light and slightly rude Vince Vaughn movie. It's not.

Fails to find the genuine drama in its story of love and intrigue.

Any movie starring Penelope Cruz or William H. Macy can't be all bad. And Sahara, which stars both Penelope Cruz and William H. Macy, proves the point: It isn't all bad.

Any resemblance between Jules Verne's marvelous science fiction novel or Mike Todd's enjoyable 1956 movie is pure happenstance. This is simply a Jackie Chan movie pitched to youngsters who enjoy slapstick fights and goofy caricatures.

The mishmash ends up as a thoroughly unfunny adult cartoon.

A mechanical sci-fi'er absent of logic or emotions. It functions as an expensive place-filler on the Disney release schedule and, as such, will be welcomed by only the least discriminating thriller fans.

Poker has proven itself a popular spectator sport on television -- at least in the short run -- but as scripted drama, where you can pretty much guess the winner of a given hand, it's dull, dull, dull.

Every move is telegraphed well in advance thanks to desultory writing, routine direction and ample musical cues.

A misfire. The film that wants to be lighter than air instead crashes to earth with the swiftness of a concrete parachute.

The Change-Up bravely attempts to revive the dormant subgenre but it's a lame effort that grows increasingly frantic and foul-mouthed as the realization sets in that the gimmick isn't working.

The cast, which includes Alfre Woodard and Debra Winger, manages to give thoughtful performances that salvage the film's integrity.

Anne Hathaway's charms barely rescue this exercise in lame comedy and romance.

Not a single person in this ensemble comedy doesn't suffer from colossal stupidity.

British writer-director Roland Joffé dips a toe into explosive material - the Spanish Civil War, betrayal, sainthood, Opus Dei - but all these big themes and characters slip from his grasp.

Given how insultingly fanboys are portrayed, even the fan base could be put off.

It is so outrageous with its ethnic caricatures, hokey plot and twin-brother mix-ups that you know the whole thing is a lark.

Certainly for most audiences the viewing experience will prove not only tedious but bewildering.

When under water, the action-adventure Into the Blue has genuine thrills. Above water or on dry land, this is one dead fish.

Here, due in large measure to a highly derivative screenplay, the director allows several reckless, unprofessional cops drive the movie into utter nonsense.

Why Hugh Jackman was so excited by Mark Bomback's script to star and produce the film is as big a mystery as why such talents-on-a-roll as Ewan McGregor and Michelle Williams joined the cast.

Nothing von Trier presents here, whether real or imagined, is fresh or new.

Obviously, Munro is reaching for something about how people allow themselves to get mired in the past. But his characters and situations are so exaggerated and dreary that his point gets quickly lost.

Lights will put in more appearances at festivals before achieving a brief theatrical window for Kaurismaki devotees to gaze through. Most will do so with discouragement.

This time, tedium sets in early and never loosens its grip. The gags are obvious, predictable and dull.

Nothing un-beguiles a fairy tale more than forced whimsy and labored magic, which is precisely what plagues Ella Enchanted.

Fleischer stages one chase scene with a bit of comic flair but otherwise never locates that mix of macabre action and comedy that at least made "Zombieland" amusing.

A coming-of-age tale and a JFK assassination conspiracy movie. The first half of that equation works nicely...But the assassination story line is absurd.

Moore stays "on message" here from first shot to last. There is no debate, no analysis of facts or search for historical context. Moore simply wants to blame one man and his family for the situation in Iraq the United States now finds itself in…So the real question is not how good a film is Fahrenheit 9/11 -- it is undoubtedly Moore's weakest -- but will a film help to get a president fired?

The film feels sleazy and nasty --- but without the pulp kick of filmmakers who know how to do sleazy and nasty.

It plods along at a sluggard's pace through a weak premise with crude execution and even cruder characters to arrive at an unearned sentimental ending.

Veteran TV director Michael Lembeck slides the movie into a sitcom mode that only further deadens the thin material. While Vardalos and Collette shine in the musical numbers, why didn't he bother to give the musical sequences a bit of pizzazz?

A Christmas comedy where laughs and even Christmas joy are in short supply.

A slow meander through the mostly stagnant life of a character hardly worth the bother.

Watching Gerrymandering is like taking a course on a subject you keenly want to learn about only to discover the lecturer is a boring, old windbag.

The fifth outing for the slime-dripping, shape-changing creatures, the Aliens are looking a little dogged, perhaps ready for the Alien Retirement Home. Meanwhile, the Predator warriors, who never achieved the artistic heights of their counterpart, look better invisible. When visible, they resemble robotic can openers gone berserk.

Inkheart goes crazy with fairy tale characters popping in and out, all sorts of fantastical creatures materializing and so many rescues one loses count. Yet the movie fails to involve the key constituent: the audience.

Filmmakers have long recognized that high school makes a terrific arena for social satire and comedy in films ranging from "Heathers" to "Mean Girls" and "Election." There is a glimmer of such a comedy in Full of It, but this is quickly swamped in overextended gags and broad caricatures.

Has its moments, especially when lithe, beautiful bodies twirl themselves around the dance floor with appealing athleticism. But as a movie trying to deliver comedy, drama and romance, you might want to sit this one out. It's not terrible, mind you, but it just isn't very good.

Paints itself into a corner, creating a static situation in which everyone is either stymied or wracked by indecision, leaving the movie free for its two male leads to wallow in self-pity, remorse and bad behavior.

Lame and unconvincing teen comedy.

An unremarkable romantic comedy that gives short shrift to both romance and comedy.

The naturalistic style of the film is completely at odds with the hokey melodrama.

"Apprentice" lurches from one been-there-done-that sequence to another.

Ironically, what the comedy lacks is the sly imagination and satirical underpinnings of the best sex comedies from that (Doris Day) era. Instead, exposition is poorly executed, genuine laughs come infrequently and you quickly lose confidence that the filmmakers even understand what their basic joke is.

The technical barrage of visual and digital effects, quick cuts and strobe lighting does produce something akin to the sensation of playing a video game. So why, one wonders, don't potential viewers simply play one instead of watching this pale imitation?

Few films have ever ended on such a low, anti-climatic note as The Zodiac.

You sense in every frame the strain to be lighthearted. Consequently, A Good Year is at times downright clumsy. You know what the filmmakers are trying to achieve and see the labor going into the attempt, but for them to fall so short is unsettling.

First-time director Paul Abascal brings no style or personality to this B-movie exercise. Except for Farina, the actors go through the paces as if they too lack conviction in the proceedings.

The biggest disappointment is the rigorously rote nature of the characters and story line in Geoff Rodkey's script

Bruno is only intermittently funny and all too often the "ambushes" of celebrities and civilians look staged. The movie is even a tad -- dare we say it? -- tedious.

Eye-popping yet ultimately thin and shallow as a page in a graphic novel.

Poor writing, an indifferent production and sincere but often wooden acting make "Season" one big strikeout.

Indeed, White Swan/Black Swan dynamics almost work, but the horror-movie nonsense drags everything down the rabbit hole of preposterousness.

The blues music in "Moan" is superfine, but my oh my, what to make of the ripe Southern cliches and this absurd story. The film is so jaw-dropping awful that it just might become a boxoffice hit.

Emerges as a lackluster and nearly charmless affair.

The film is a misfire, which you feel more acutely given the talents of those involved, including director Rodrigo Garcia ("Nine Lives," "Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her") and rising star Anne Hathaway.

It's all Kovacs for 94 minutes. Which means the viewer experiences a perilous tug-of-war between annoyance at the extreme artificiality of the conceit and admiration of the gutsy performance by an actress who must, literally, carry the movie. Annoyance wins out, unfortunately.

Comedies don't get much more unfunny than Father of Invention, a lame and somewhat preachy comic take on a father trying to get back into his daughter's good graces.

Dennis Lee comes up empty. Kids, parents, siblings, an aunt and an estranged wife all bicker and yell, but the noise cancels itself out. The movie is one long argument, tiresome and repetitive, that produces more heat than light.

An artistic fiasco that cuts across genre lines and all logic to become, perhaps, an instant midnight movie.

Doesn't so much borrow from other movies as settle into a comfort zone of raising provocative questions regarding love, commitment and marriage only to dismiss them with a brush of a hand as so much dandruff.

This implausible plot full of holes does pave the way for a series of Cedric the Entertainer skits and physical gags. None of these is very funny. A few are painfully unfunny. In either case, the movie comes to a standstill. It's a pity no one thought to screen old Bob Hope movies to see how to integrate comedy into genre filmmaking.

Hollywood's latest virtual movie, features impressive action sequences -- all created through technology -- a thin story, cardboard characters and snicker-inducing dialogue.

The drama never comes together in a smart, meaningful way; indeed, most revelations border on the banal.

What is puzzling is the incompatibility of the two leads with their roles. Raven is supposed to be a high school senior on a road trip to check out prospective universities. But she acts like a adolescent on a sugar high during a weekend sleepover.

While not the worst in recent 3D films, Gulliver's Travels is more gimmicky than a crackling good yarn.

There is certainly talent on display here, but their work fails to come together into a coherent entertainment.

Lacks any of the socio-economic or political concerns of "The Big Chill." Indeed its shallowness is reflected in one character's abiding concern with his receding hairline.

Yuzna appears to be searching for jokes in every scene. The high-key lighting and bright sets also seem geared to comedy. But since he lacks a true comic script, he comes up with mostly dead air. [28 Feb 1992]

The movie clumps through one witless if not wince-evoking sequence after another without the relief of laughter.

Michael Dowse's aggressively unfunny film which seeks the lowest common denominator in nearly every scene.

At roughly the halfway point, the movie turns into a low-budget gangster picture, which sacrifices character and themes to the kind of action mayhem all too commonplace in studio thrillers.

Despite an outlandish premise, Next suffers from being too conventional.

The film's pretentious style and fractured storytelling preclude any audience involvement in the coy melodrama.

This remake turns a fondly remembered horror/thriller into a mild and tedious suspense film.

The acting is overly broad, so even the dimmest light bulb in the audience gets the gags.

Nothing anchors the lighter-than-air story as it drifts away under the direction of Stephen Norrington ("Blade") into an FX stratosphere where wit, character and vigorous storytelling cease to matter.

Lame sketch comedy, an uninspired performance from Will Ferrell and an overall failure of the imagination turn Brad Silberling's Land of the Lost into a lethargic meander through a wilderness of misfiring gags.

A lackluster affair, devoid of laughs and just about anything else one might construe as entertainment.

Just lousy.

Splinter is a bad idea, borrowing body parts, as it were, from old horror flicks to genuinely unsatisfying results.

The film might amuse some, especially fans of Alfred Hitchcock, but is likely to annoy almost everyone else.

A bottomless pit of lame characters, horror-film cliches and improbable monsters.

This Mexican action flick from director-writer Beto Gómez has all the makings of a great comedy only no one told the filmmakers.

There is no purpose to the film other than random blood splattering amid scenes of bondage, primitive savagery and S&M eroticism. The film is numbing and dumb with its hero indistinguishable from its villains.

For those wearied by cliches about poverty, rote characterizations of minorities and shocks for their own sake, best to avoid "Cracktown."

Fails to exploit the myriad comedic possibilities, settling instead for broad, unconvincing slapstick aimed at 12-year-olds and gags Shakespeare would have rejected as ancient.

What the problem comes down to is a group of filmmakers making misguided choices in an effort to broaden the movie's demographics beyond those who attend X Games.

The Banishment (Izgnanie) starts off like a thriller with a car roaring into the city and a clandestine surgery by a man to remove a bullet in his brother's arm. Then, ever so slowly, the movie falls into the clutches of long, solemn stares into space, meaningful drags on cigarettes, cryptic dialogue revealing little and a tiny drama that feels old, tired and empty of real purpose.

A laugh-starved comedy that seeks to plug into the comic stylings of Mo'Nique for its energy and humor.

One of the unfunniest comedies ever. Punch lines are lifeless. Characters are borderline catatonic. Running gags can't even walk.

Combining the ludicrous with the lurid, Twisted is twisted all right.

The film seems nearly writer-free. Absolutely no time gets wasted on story, character development or logic.

The scariest thing about this film is how desperate the makers are to earn a scream.

Odd too, for a film that wants to correct impression anyone had as to the abilities of black U.S. soldier in combat, are the ethnic cliches about Italians and Germans, to say nothing of rednecks.

Longing makes you long for a good movie. Tedious and long-winded even at 90 minutes, this German film, written and directed by Valeska Grisebach, tells a mundane tale of adultery that lacks even the slightest insight.

Rarely do films from Hollywood emerge in such an inane manner. Its rote characters are inevitably in predictable situations with no subtext or subtlety to any of their predicaments.

All the while, the music screams and clamors like an ignored child because director Xavier Gens and writer Skip Woods can't pump suspense into this inept mess.

Dirty Deeds is as feeble as a teen comedy can get.

The writing is rudimentary and the direction often awkward, but Mo'Nique would confound a veteran director.

No one on the creative side has his eyes on the characters, so they flounder in a sea of misguided energy.

The lameness of the gags and dialogue and the film's frequent deep dives for the bottom at the expense of real comedy speak to desperation in Hollywood to figure out the audience for contemporary naughty comedy.

Bad enough to create one of the most joyless Christmas movies ever, but then to go for an unearned feel-good ending adds insult to injury.

This thoroughly repetitive, ill-conceived and poorly executed effort -- with an emphasis on the word "effort" -- defeats these two talented people more often than not.

Well, that didn't take long. Everything fun and terrific about "Iron Man," a mere two years ago, has vanished with its sequel. In its place, Iron Man 2 has substituted noise, confusion, multiple villains, irrelevant stunts and misguided story lines.

The movie strands you in two miserable flats with these cliche-ridden characters and a static love story that is as predictable as it is pedestrian.

Only Diaz shows spark because the actress knows how to simultaneously play nice and be a nasty character, thereby gaining audience sympathy. Everyone else hits one note, and it isn't nice.

Nothing is bleaker than failed black comedy, which this is.

Over-the-top -- and ultimately tiresome -- female mud-wrestling, kick-boxing and cat fights in a parody of old exploitation movies.

Director Alex Proyas resolutely thinks in B-movie terms. Even with an A-list budget, he oversells every plot point and gooses the thrills with hokey lighting, bombastic music and serious overacting.

What finally undoes the struggle to maintain suspense is Goyer's dialogue, which is consistently hokey.

Muddled and uninteresting.

A bland, formulaic picture where romance and comedy are noticeably absent. A more wooden and uninspired effort from talented people behind and in front of the camera is difficult to imagine.

Casa feels like a miss. The digging into each of these women's lives stays shallow and seldom uncovers anything unexpected.

Has no inherent laughs, so an extremely versatile and talented cast struggles mightily to make something funny that simply isn't.

Simply weird. The funny has gone missing.

Runs 96 minutes but feels like so much more. There is only one gag.

Zoom is a movie that would make Dr. Frankenstein proud. Put together with parts from so many other movies, the thing positively clanks.

Pretentious to the core and lacking any context or credible characterizations.

(Perry) style is too crude and stagy for Shange's transformative evocation of black female life, and his moralizing strikes exactly the wrong notes to express the pain and longing that cries out from her heated poetry.

Beerfest is tedious and, at 112 minutes, too long to sustain a sophomoric, one-joke comedy even for the presumed target audience of older male teens and the college-age crowd.

What fans of the original movie, "Charlie's Angels," which was fun and good-natured, will make of this sloppy mess is hard to guess.

We can be grateful to a stellar cast and some discipline on the part of Matt Aselton, a commercials director making his feature debut, that Gigantic doesn't go completely overboard. Nevertheless, the film will appeal mostly to festivals and adventurous audiences.

From its uninspiring title -- and certain turnoff for young males -- to its limp slapstick and uneven acting, A Cinderella Story arrives with a dull thud.

The clumsy and cliched approach by writer-director Bala Rajashekaruni robs the movie of any dramatic punch.

Not only does the film stumble badly from one skit to another, the skits themselves have too much dead air.

A banal revenge melodrama-cum-detective story, but fans of the video game on which it is based should not be alarmed.

Insipid, predictable, broad comedy mixed with Disney Family Values makes for one exasperating sit.

For the most part, the acting is shrill and cartoonish. Indeed, most of the actors appear to be, in the finest desi filmmaking tradition, from the filmmakers' close circle of friends and family.

Paper Man is a bad idea, and the film, despite a few brave and good performances, never recovers from awkwardness of its premise.

The film doesn't just fail, it actually gets sillier by the minute.

The new gimmick here is that all the flying body parts and absurd impalements come in 3D. And that's about as inspired as anything gets in this edition. Story and character get chucked to the sidelines as the arena has room for only death scenes.

Feste, who has one previous effort as a writer-director, last year's "The Greatest," fails here to do the most basic thing -- give an audience a rooting interest, or any interest at all, in these four troubled people.

Not much to laugh at.

A viewer is challenged to guess what the filmmakers thought they were doing. A 1930s screwball comedy with a modern sensibility? A misguided valentine to those who march to the beat of a different drummer?

Has little to say to moviegoers. Goldberg's direction is all flash and no substance, and his story and characters offer little reason for viewers to empathize with such self-pitying characters.

Even during the climax, the film still is struggling to introduce the world of the film and its strange rules.

In the end, it isn't so much that the New Arthur isn't the Old Arthur. Rather it's the anti-Arthur.

It is truly a mess.

A gloriously lead-footed excursion into time travel with all the accoutrements of 1950s science fiction: an absurd plot, cliched characters, corny effects and a race against time to save mankind.

The Swedish video and commercial director seeks artistic adventure but winds up with pointless self-indulgence.

How can a director as savvy as Lee make so many errors of judgment regarding taste, tone, intention and dramatic structure?

The sheer nastiness of the jealous one-upmanship and angry sabotage puts a damper on the yuletide comedy. You're much better off watching a DVD of "Bad Santa."

One can reflect on what the young Coppola, with his masterful camera work and vivid imagination, might have done with such an opportunity. Unfortunately, the present-day one produces only tepid and tired imagery that would not earn high marks in any film school.

It's discouraging to witness a filmmaker who clearly yearns for the indie world yield to the temptations of mindless movie manufacturing. At least Figgis made it as soulless as possible.

The claustrophobic and poorly executed Caffeine is either a play in search of a movie or a movie in search of a play but, either way, it's searching for the wrong thing. What it desperately needs are laughs.

Going the Distance is, in a way, a remarkable film: It's hard to imagine any romantic comedy going wrong in so many different ways.

A lame comic idea poorly executed dooms Sex and Death 101 to failure.

The direction is as flat as the script is thin, forcing actors to stumble through roles that make little sense. Costumes and sets border on the grotesque. Mehta is a fine enough filmmaker that this one can be written off as an aberration. Sometimes East and West really aren't meant to meet.

The film lacks a controlling point of view to guide an audience through so improbable a tale. Nothing in the movie is funny -- aside from giggles provoked by misfired jokes -- or romantic or dramatic.

The movie, which opened last week in Seattle and opens Friday in Los Angeles, isn't so much getting a release as an escape. The movie is directed, shot, acted and outfitted with special effects -- such as that guy (Michael Deak) in the monster suit -- so as to make American International horror films of the late '50s and '60s look like sophisticated gems.

Never gets off its high-concept stool long enough to explore what makes weddings so exciting and nerve-racking and treacherous. It flounders instead in juvenilia and bitchiness.

Alas, this is just film ugly.

Working from a flawed premise with characters lacking credibility and plot turns more moronic than funny, the movie flatlines in about five minutes.

Snyder and writers David Hayter and Alex Tse never find a reason for those unfamiliar with the graphic novel to care about any of this nonsense. And it is nonsense.

A cloyingly sentimental story that rings false in every moment.

A complete wipeout.

A deeply dispiriting movie, not just because it is grindingly bad but because Jane Fonda actually chose this for her comeback after a 15-year absence from the screen. But it's worse than that. Fonda, one of the best actors of her generation, is downright awful in a role she could have -- and probably should have -- sleepwalked through.

Paints a surprisingly sour portrait of nearly all its characters, so much so that even the final-reel redemption rings hollow and forced.

A muddled and routine murder mystery tricked up with a science fiction gimmick that wouldn't pass muster for a "Twilight Zone" episode. The writing is poor, but the direction is even poorer. This is a film to delete from one's memory bank.

Without Antonio Banderas, The Big Bang would be a whimper of a movie, too awful to watch.

In his second feature as a director, Gallo acts as writer, director, producer, star, cinematographer, production designer and editor. Thus, the failure is all his.

Here's the deal: The worst sex cartoon in Playboy's long history can't compete with the sheer vacuousness of this inane comedy.

A lame comic premise, a tiresome-bordering-on-obnoxious protagonist and a script devoid of humor is a lot to overcome for any movie, and Surviving Christmas is not the one to do it.

The film doesn't know what it wants to be -- reality programming pushed to the max or a satire of reality TV? -- but it winds up as an exercise in the rankest sort of cynicism.