Lou Lumenick

A lame comic tribute to the dwindling band of "Star Wars" aficionados, is one of those be nighted projects whose back story turns out to be significantly more compelling than the movie itself.

Looks great but moves like molasses, is more interesting than truly involving.

You gotta give credit to any first-time direc tor who attempts an homage to classic screwball comedies on a shoestring budget, even if Kettle of Fish ends up not exactly being the catch of the week.

A schmaltzy filmed record of a Nashville concert given by the legendary former rocker, who has morphed into the new Kenny Rogers.

The sort of enigmatic movie that many critics embrace because it's open to endless interpretation.

The pleasant but forgettable Adult Beginners strains a bit too hard for a happy ending, and tends to lay on the schmaltz and metaphors (like the swim class that gives the film its title) with a trowel.

While Amen works as a history lesson, it's less effective as a thriller, since the outcome is sadly all too well-known.

The movie fails to add up to the sum of its laborious parts. There's no emotional investment in any of the characters, and you can see the writer-director's windup con coming a mile away.

Shepard, who directed "The Matador" and the pilot for "Ugly Betty," can't quite get the disparate elements of The Hunting Party to mesh into a satisfying whole.

A glorified TV movie.

Even a great British cast and obscenity-laden gangland dialogue aren't enough to make what amounts to an extended acting exercise into much of a movie.

Many of the kids seem to be social outcasts of one kind or another, but Spellbound, which will show on cable later this year, doesn't dig deep enough to disturb the movie's relentless feel-good tone.

A glossy, empty and ultimately unsatisfying — if undeniably entertaining — movie.

Ultimately fails to make its case that five teenagers were sent to jail for a crime they didn't commit solely because of institutional racism.

A chilly, pretentious and talky drama.

Hard-core Hitchcock fans will not find much in the way of revelations.

Parker is watchable chiefly for Statham, who exudes effortless cool and excels in hand-to-hand combat, as well as demonstrating his skill at wielding some very unlikely weapons.

Basically "Jumanji" in outer space -- and even without Robin Williams, this is still a singularly loud, charmless and overbearing family movie that could use a hit or two of Ritalin.

Interestingly for an Israeli movie, the bombers are not Palestinians -- they're young, ultra-Orthodox fanatics.

Needs less talk, more music.

After a promising start, writer-director Daniel M. Cohen pours on schmaltz straight out of the similarly themed "Diamonds," including the proverbial hookers -- with hearts of gold.

It may take a scorecard to keep track of the complicated relationships in this sorry clan.

A ho-hum male weepie/road comedy that's worth watching mostly because of a once-in-a-lifetime gathering of England's greatest working-class actors.

While there are some giggles in the film-within-the-film (also called "Road to Nowhere"), the artsy-fartsy direction and flat-as-a-pancake acting (including a cameo by Variety columnist Peter Bart as himself) invites invidious comparisons to "Mulholland Drive."

Has its moments, but overall the effect is uneven.

To enjoy this film, it helps to check your brain at the box office.

Filmmakers Sam Green and Bill Siegel tend to shy from tough questions, allowing their subjects to wax nostalgic about bomb-throwing as yet another youthful folly of the '70s. That's tougher to swallow than some boomers' claims they didn't inhale.

Directed with sledgehammer subtlety by Dennis Dugan ("I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry").