Lawrence Van Gelder

Combines old-fashioned boys' adventure with a heavy-handed modern lecture on parenthood. The film possesses a decent heart but suffers from a simple mind.

Serious, competent and unsurprising debut film.

Sheds heat but insufficient light.

The buoyancy is only intermittent.

Though it generates its share of unintentional giggles, Desert Wind does manage to take us to a seldom-visited place: the hidden corners of the straight male mind.

A well-cast disaster movie more notable for special effects and stunts than for credible drama.

The Time We Killed has the raw intimacy of a filmed diary, but as with reading a stranger's journal, it eventually gets dull.

Where "Ringu" derived its power from the simplicity of its premise and the purity of its execution, One Missed Call staggers under the weight of its director's taste for baroque excess.

What results is a candy-colored broad comedy with noteworthy performances.

A rare and often chilling glimpse into the culture of North Korea.

Instead of sending up their cinematic sources, the creators of Muppets From Space rely too much on this spent screen fuel. Frenetic movement and loud music overwhelm warmth and compassion, and the balance of character, plot, irreverent humor and innate decency that made some of the earlier Muppet movies so welcome is lost.

Rather than seeming classic, Freeway appears to be another film maker showcase, a derivative apprentice work.

This sweet-natured but plodding adaptation of a young-adult novel by Carl Hiaasen could have used a little less broad satire of corporate greed and a few more, well, owls.

While instructive on environmental concerns about the impact of logging, Butterfly does not reward those who seek dispassionate psychological insight into the zealous Ms. Hill.

Structurally, Sex, Politics and Cocktails is wildly, almost frantically inventive, with techniques ranging from stop-motion to split-screen to silent film-style intertitles. But no amount of directorial trickery can mask the essential vacuousness of the story and its characters.

It is a measure of the shortcomings of this genial, well-meaning but ultimately unenchanting film that scene after scene is stolen by the second bananas.

The offending videotape is never seen, but the entire film is built around its absence. Periodically, the film returns to a written police account of the video, which scrolls up the screen, documenting the animal's suffering blow by blow to the sound of ominous music.

Turns out to be a pretentiously righteous drama that drowns any claim to serious attention in a sea of superficial characters.

Ordinary lives have become an ordinary film.

Mr. Morel's predilection for murky, nearly pitch-black cinematography and spare, elliptical dialogue indicates his debt to filmmakers like François Ozon and Claire Denis, but Three Dancing Slaves lacks the psychological precision of Mr. Ozon's or Ms. Denis's work.

The novelty of a bloody horror film built around a malevolent doll carrying the soul of a serial killer has worn thin.

People who are immune to atrocious acting in minor roles; to occasionally poor dubbing; to a totally unoriginal story; to the sort of sloppiness that allows at least one reference to the octopus as a squid; and to a climactic sequence that looks like feeding time at the aquarium when it is at all intelligible, will cull the exceedingly minor rewards of "Tentacles" from some realistic underwater photography, a nicely manipulative opening sequence in which the baby vanishes; and the bobbing corpse gimmick that was more shocking than anything else in "Jaws."

Mr. Rodriguez seems unsure what his film is really about, making the moral of the story -- "dream an unselfish dream" -- feel more like a vaguely judgmental homily than a satisfying conclusion.

Repackaged as cyberthriller, the old time-travel adventure returns in this stylish but overplotted and ultimately illogical combination of science fiction, mystery and romance.

Belly is a film that begs for a pat on the head for its virtue while catering to cinematic tastes more interested in crotch shots, topless dancers, wall-sized television screens, ganja galore and, wherever possible, crime without punishment, all to the accompaniment of a high-octane soundtrack.

Leave It to Beaver is the sort of movie that could be described as good clean fun if it happened to be good or fun.

Plods along, never catching dramatic fire, sometimes suffering from amateurish acting and often relying on its intrusive and treacly music to impart mood and rhythm.

Sometimes even a talented lineup produces unexceptional results.