Luke Y. Thompson

Deserves an A for ambition, but the final product is a pastiche of too many predecessors.

The problem with Spartan isn't so much that it's mediocre, but that it could be a whole lot better.

Lurie's politics aside, it's astonishing that a man who once reviewed films keeps churning out movies full of cinema's most hollow clichés; indeed, he turns out stuff that's even more disjointed and improbable than the most mediocre fare.

If you like stuff breaking in THX, Swordfish delivers like no other this year. Bring earplugs.

The week's most pleasant surprise.

Essentially the movie's an excuse to show off cool gadgets and co-star Angie Harmon's cleavage.

Delivers genuine scares.

Part female revenge flick, part Saturday Night Live skit, part courtroom drama, and part religious tent revival, this movie never congeals into anything worth watching.

The first great film of 2005.

Either a bit more humor or a bit more heart could exponentially improve things.

What keeps Love in the Time of Money from being truly awful is the fact that the actors give it their all -- they may be in contrived situations, but by golly they'll make the best of them.

As a date-night movie for women of 50 or thereabouts, chances are it'll do the trick.

Too bad very few of these high jinks are actually funny -- the outtakes at the end of the film suggest a more relaxed ensemble vibe that the film proper was unable to retain.

Ustaoglu has pulled off a rare feat in this film, enlightening us about a horrible situation while never losing sight of his central tale of friendship and loyalty.

Sigourney Weaver and Julianne Moore share their pain in a depressing World.

While some of Max's pranks are exhilarating and funny -- the movie takes too long setting things up and, once the pranks are over, dawdles to its inevitable conclusion.

If you have any desire to see this movie, you really should go rent "The Longest Yard" instead. It's available on DVD, and the '70s hairdos alone are worth the rental price.

All the ladies get repeatedly naked, which, after all, is why you're going to go see it. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Only Quaid, as a semiretarded horny robot, and Cleese as a fussy chauffeur hologram seem to get it. Even Murphy, as the titular nightclub big shot in outer space, forgets to be actually funny until the climax.

It makes as good a case as any for the use of animation as a medium for serious, mature features.

If you like your substance short on style, or just want a change of pace from "X-Men," this is the film for you.

For strict action and a heftier soundtrack, “Dogtown” is king, but for audiences craving a story with their stunts, it's time to get Stoked.

Lackadaisical feel of the film; Freundlich is unable to generate much suspense.

As it stands, there's some fine sex onscreen, and some tense arguing, but not a whole lot more.

Simmons plays it understated, conveying a sad-sack quality that's more relatable than Charley's irrational catatonia. The movie should have been about him instead.

Fright fans could do a lot worse than The Eye; the Pangs have talent, but when they realize that a film isn't the same thing as a feature-length commercial, perhaps they'll provide us with some more original visions.

There's nothing particularly wrong with this whole setup; it's just very by-the-numbers.

The computer-enhanced vehicle chases look fake, but the hand-to-hand combat scenes are the best of the year.

There's enough substance here to make Crazy/Beautiful more than worthwhile for its target audience, and certainly more useful than the standard teen crapfests.

The movie combines drawings, photos, hazy filters, superimpositions and computer effects into a pastiche both beautiful and disturbing.

The big-screen surround-sound effects are nice; too bad they're the only aspect of the film that's ready to rumble. And parents, be warned: There's an astonishing amount of bloodletting for a PG-13 film.

Actually quite amusing, thanks mainly to a script that keeps the gags flying so fast that even though so many of them are bad, they're quickly followed by something new, and occasionally something good.

Every plot point is obvious a mile away to anyone who's ever seen a film, and made even more obvious by the fact that the camera blatantly points out clues shortly before they're put to use.

The setup's a bit reminiscent of "The English Patient" -- except that Beart's much easier on the eyes and ears than Ralph Fiennes is -- but Strayed is even slower moving, if you can believe it.

Dude, where's the script? Just Awful.

Ong-Bak's script, if you can call it that, is nothing but a series of setups for star Tony Jaa to show his stuff.

Be forewarned: The rural Irish accents may be incomprehensible to viewers who aren't accustomed to them.

You will regret paying money to see something that unfolds rather like something you'd watch on TV when you're ill and bedridden and confronted with nothing else but daytime soaps.

Like most films of its type, Something New is not tough to sit through, but the thought of paying full price to see it isn't especially desirable.

If sudden loud noises, relentless strobe lights, digital hallucinations and mutilated corpses make you jump, and you feel that nothing more is required for a good time at the movies, welcome to Feardotcom.

The fights are mostly cool, save the final one with too many quick cuts, and the morphing graffiti and tattoos are nifty. If only the rest of it weren't so stupid.

What it lacks in story, it makes up for with sharp dialogue and an amusing Walter Mitty-esque style.

As Bundy, Michael Reilly Burke (Octopus 2: River of Fear) has just the right amount of charisma and menace. It's his performance that makes the movie, giving a relatively shallow script more depth and character nuances than likely existed on the page.

Though the film came out a year ago in the U.K., the timing here is unfortunate, and one has to wish that, like so many bigger productions, Liam could have migrated to a more-distant release date.

Unfortunately, it's also pretty banal -- translating the songs into English reveals just how dull their lyrics and sentiments really are. The colors are pretty though.

Your individual tolerance for Jimmy Buffett music will determine how well all the scenes set to his music go down.

Soderbergh seems to have found his vision again. It'll be a great day when he returns to writing his own material, but until then, this is none too shabby.

Saw II, despite the swift turnaround time, improves on all of the first film's problem areas, while leaving intact everything that was good about the concept.

As far from crowd-pleasing as you're going to get these days.

If you're not in the mood for explicit discussions (and occasional depictions) of the sex life of French adolescents, close your eyes.

The budget is low and the acting grade C at best, but director Lorena David stages one or two genuinely impressive stunts, and the script, by newbies Scott Duncan and Ned Kerwin, manages to skillfully maintain the plot's central mystery all the way to the end.

Director David Zucker has fallen a long way since the days of “Airplane” -- here, he seems to think endless hilarity can be milked from an animatronic owl and a running gag about urination that even the French would reject.