Luke Y. Thompson

The “mystery” elements simply aren’t mysterious. Yet without them, the sparse moments of gore and icky bugs aren’t quite enough to pad things out.

The only benefit the soul is likely to get from watching this is the comforting knowledge that you, the viewer, are not any of the people onscreen. Which doesn’t mean you can’t have fun watching them be bad, of course. But it’s a detached kind of fun.

Momoa’s clearly abetting a passion project here, but unfortunately, Camargo hasn’t managed to capture a similar passion from his main cast.

Though the recipe of a feudal setting with fantasy and myth-making elements ought to be strong, the mixture is off, like a handsomely plated sandwich where the ingredients are more bland than anticipated.

Hundreds Of Beavers is one of the most distinctive movies you’ll see all year, and one made for midnight viewings if ever anything was.

If you can get through a rough first act, you’ll see both absurd military superheroics and the greatest grocery run ever.

Writer-director Daniel Taplitz seems to be trying to invoke classic screwball with this convoluted setup, but it plays like mediocre sitcom.

The animation looks good, especially when CG-enhanced, but the Rugrats babies' constant snot jokes, bug-eating and "cute" mispronunciations grate after a while.

Don't go to this movie looking to be actually scared, but as a gothic romp it's surprisingly effective.

All of the plot developments seem half-hearted -- which is a shame, because the star has the charm to succeed if given a better movie.

Crowe is quite capable of being compelling even when doing banal stuff—the highlight here is a variation on the “falling off the wagon” trope, as he captures the sheer delight of a guy who has literally forgotten how much he loves whiskey. The end point, like the movie’s, feels inevitable, but the journey there contains small joys.

If it weren't for Murray, there'd be nothing at all to the film, which forgets all conventional notions of story or characterization.

50 Cent sounds articulate in his raps, but as a lead actor, he talks like his mouth is filled with food.

Kusama offers moments of inspiration, but it frustrates like hell that she couldn't nail it completely.

The whole thing is best enjoyed while really drunk.

Only Kerry Condon, as Freeman's geeky adopted daughter, plays anything approaching a realistic character.

Where are our Tracy/Hepburn screwball combos? Part of the appeal of "Wedding Crashers" was that Isla Fisher truly did have the comedic chops to match Vince Vaughn, and Just Friends suggests that Reynolds and Faris have potential greatness together too. Just not so much in this film.

The film generally looks like a TV special, with low production values and lots of closeups.

Kennedy is funny, but too cartoonish to ever identify with -- Diggs and Anderson are the real stars of the show, and need more screen time.

The Broken Lizard types bring the best out of Paxton, only to abandon him in the second half and focus on themselves. A bit more humility might have served them in better stead.

Feels like two films that aren't closely related enough, either tonally or narratively, to warrant their intertwining.

The film is a somewhat disjointed affair that, like the man himself (Green), is occasionally brilliant, frequently repetitive and sometimes merely annoying.

The world of football riots seems rife with potential for the big screen, but Green Street Hooligans only periodically rises to it.

Against all odds, the American Pie movies have actually gotten a little better each time out, though that's certainly not to say that they're, uhhh, "masterpieces."

Jeffrey Greeley's loving photography of the wintry landscapes is beautiful, but lead actor Jacob Lee Hedman is nowhere near as charismatic as he needs to be for a film with this few characters.

Director Rob Connolly may well think he's upping the stakes by plunging his film into borderline horror territory, but in fact he's minimizing them.

It seems like a slam-dunk pitch -- "Pretty Woman" with the genders reversed -- but there's one major problem: The whole hooker-fantasy bit is much more of a guy thing.

It's a skillfully made film, but not especially fun to watch, and the apparent thesis that poverty justifies such acts doesn't quite wash.

Rare is the star vehicle that is as poorly matched to its star as Drillbit Taylor, which casts Owen Wilson as a homeless Army deserter and con man, able to fool people into believing he's both a substitute teacher and a master of hand-to-hand combat.

Where Bowling for Columbine is at its most valuable is in its examination of America's culture of fear as a root cause of gun violence.

If you've never seen a Sandler movie, however, this isn't the one to start with. Proceed only if you're sure you like the guy.

Feels dated in the post-9/11 world. But it would have felt passé and unnecessary regardless; it's the sort of film Michael Dudikoff, Chuck Norris and their ilk cranked out on a near-monthly basis when Reagan was president.

If the Star Wars movies have taught us anything, it's that waiting 20 years for a new sequel by a guy named George can lead to disappointment.

For folks who like a genuinely tense suspense film with heavy doses of black humor, however, this ought to do it.

Ferrell and Warner, however, are distractions--the obligatory dose of "eccentricity" thrown in as seasoning to make the real story more digestible. But they serve instead as irritants; too much spice, if you will.

A top-notch cast compensates for dubious credibility.

Isn't a bad movie by conventional standards, just a boring one.

The movie is therefore better than it ought to be, but without Douglas, it ought not to be at all

It’d be nice to think that the forgettable nature of Memory was a deliberate irony. Then we could grant it bonus points for cleverness, rather than an average grade for just being bland.

The Drop isn’t really about dropping a baby. But it’s not about much else, either.

Hamill, however, is the MVP, continuing to deliver some of his best work as an older man. When he leaves the action for a spell, the energy leaves the movie.

It's a visually poetic style, and likely to find hardcore devotees, especially among the ranks of Terence Malick and Marc Forster fans. Others will just find it painfully slow.

As by-the-numbers as VCR instructions. And, inexplicably, it's also a blast.

Initially artsy, then campy, then tense, it would have worked better if writer-directors Peter and Michael Spierig had kept everything serious and let the inherent absurdism of zombie attacks speak for itself without additional ironic comment.

It’s a set-up too contrived to feel real, yet not quite over-the-top enough to be hilarious.

No one in a McCulloch movie is ever normal -- most of the humor comes from characters saying or doing the weirdest thing you could possibly come up with in any given circumstance, and if that kind of humor's your bag, there's frequently a lot to enjoy in the bizarre antics of Green and Jason Lee,

If you can roll with these moments, the rest of the film pays off, but even with a relatively happy ending (one that, given the characters in question, may not last), it's a heck of a downer for date night.

It's arguably more "artful" to move at a snail's pace, but at the risk of tedium?

It's not a movie one feels like hating, but the Hindi musical numbers aren't enough to elevate this over, say, "Pretty Woman."

The film has a gritty, grainy look that matches the book's raw texture, and keeps the violence and drug abuse from ever looking slick or appealing.

It’s not just that more timely humor would do better; it’s that most comedy fans would probably rather be watching MacGruber again. Instead of sitting down for Me Time, do that, and hope that Hart and Wahlberg figure out a proper story next time that gives their chemistry somewhere to go.

This reboot smartly doesn't try to escalate the material to bigger and better status, keeping things small and scrappy and relying on the fighters to be the best special effects.

Lee's new racial satire starts out strong but loses its way.

If Chicken Little were in 3-D, shown in a theme park as you sit in motion simulators, the lame gags might not be so much of a problem.

Even if the characters on screen didn’t become better artists during the pandemic, then Apatow at least should have. With The Bubble, he seems to have mistaken jokes about moviemaking for moviemaking that shouldn’t be taken seriously.

Fortunately for the brothers, when your protagonist is personified as Jack Black, you can get away with a lot.

What we're left with is half a movie about a cocky up-and-comer, and half a movie that could be one of those MTV Diary of... specials on Jerry Seinfeld.

Mifune's radical stylings belie its clichéd core.

A scattershot "urban" take on "Airplane!," Soul Plane misfires with its jokes at least as often as it hits (and less often than Snoop Dogg hits a joint), but when it works, laughs are generated.

Yes, there are more cheap shocks this time around, and they're fun to watch, but you'll have forgotten most of them by the time you make it out to your car.

Director Ali Abbasi excels at atmosphere, understanding that any beautiful landscape can be made terrifying with the right sound design and that a cut to a silent interior can be as jarring as any jump scare. His script, unfortunately, is not as interesting.

Their (Tunney and Nelson) interplay is what saves the movie, and possibly should have been expanded upon to the exclusion of the other plot points.

Unfortunately, the movie fails to fully make sense, which may be because it's based on a French novel (If Only It Were True by Marc Levy).

Nothing deeper than a stale retread, it seems. And this is coming from a critic who listed the original "Charlie's Angels" movie as one of the top five films of 2000.

Director Brad Anderson (Session 9) is usually really good at humanizing ambiguous characters, and he ultimately succeeds, but he has to fight against Scott Kosar's script.

A unique and striking film for at least the first two-thirds of its running time, after which it turns, all too sadly, predictable and mundane

The latest entry in the "next 'Full Monty'" sweepstakes.

Much of Steamboy is actually reminiscent of "Wild Wild West," with a giant moving tower substituting for the giant spider, and the personalities of Will Smith and Kevin Kline being replaced by . . . no personality at all, really.

Fortunately the film's humor kicks in with McKenzie Brothers Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas stealing the show as a dopey pair of moose. Could've done without Phil Collins's generic, annoying tunes.

Like its predecessor, this cartoon adaptation is a bit too all over the place for its own good, never entirely clear on whether to play as parody or homage.

If you're one of those people who complained that "Memento" could just as well have been told in chronological order, The Memory of a Killer may be your cup of tea.

Everyone seems more relaxed this time around, including director Harold Ramis, who was presumably less intimidated now that he knows De Niro can be really funny and draw a large audience to a comedy.

Part of the problem is that this First Daughter is modeled on good-girl Chelsea Clinton; a movie based on our current two party-girls-in-chief trying to embarrass their reformed alcoholic dad would be far more fun.

Even Hartnett, designated Next Big Thing last year, seems like he's barely trying.

Highbrow self-appointed guardians of culture need not apply, but those who loved "Cool as Ice" have at last found a worthy follow-up.

At its best, Jurassic Park III is eerily similar to some of the more recent dinosaur-themed video games on the market.

The scenes involving just him (Carrey) are funny and full of life. All the other scenes are not.

The score sucks and the acting is weak, but there are times when certain moviegoers just feel the need to stare far-fetched, blood-drenched death in the eye and laugh. It's here, so have at it.

The movie ultimately cops out by culminating in a fistfight between two humans, with nary a cyborg missile-throwing devil in sight.

Björk appears to have been a good influence on Barney: The soundtrack, which she supervised and participates in, is well worth the time for fans of experimental music. As to what the whole thing means, you're on your own.

When it comes to World War II movies, you may never have seen one like this before -- if only because it's like three different movies at the same time.

It's fun stuff, but nowhere near as cool as it should be.

If you're a little girl in the Lisa Simpson mold, for whom the greatest wish-fulfillment in the world would be to have your own pony, then Dreamer just might be for you. Otherwise, no.

In the hands of lesser mortals, this would add up to perhaps the worst movie of the year. In the hands of Denzel Washington, it manages to work magic on some who might not tolerate such shenanigans from, say, Chris Columbus.

It's all a bit silly and predictable, but maybe that's the point.

Unlike the original, there's no R-rated grit and no familial executions -- gotta get the young-skewing WWE fan base in there.

Director Rob Marshall, as he did in "Chicago," plays the movie as though it's all an embellished memory inside the head of geisha Sayuri (Ziyi Zhang), but why would she remember everyone speaking in choppy English?

Once you notice Ejiofor, you won't stop noticing--and Kinky Boots ensures that you will notice, thanks not only to the nature of his role, but also because there isn't much else here to get excited about.

There are times when one suspects that this film potentially could be the raunchiest sitcom pilot ever.

To say that Winnie-The-Pooh: Blood And Honey delivers everything a slasher movie should is higher praise than it used to be. Marketing alone would have guaranteed this movie a certain percentage of curious eyeballs, but Frake-Waterfield made sure that what genre fans see is everything they expected.

It’s silly, sitcom-y, and impossible to call “good,” but Falling For Christmas is the kind of bad that feels almost appealing.

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

It’s impossible to take any of this remotely seriously, or find it particularly frightening. But it is its own sort of fun, at least for a while.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

The goal of a movie like Dig ought to be simple: keep ratcheting up the tension to the point that when our main character(s) finally turn the tables, it’s hugely cathartic. Unfortunately, the “ratcheting” part is where Dig fails to hit paydirt.

James does a decent job with what he’s been given, but it’s never clear exactly what the movie hopes to do with his character. Is this just another crime and punishment retread? Or is it meant to serve as a metaphor for dealing with grief while disabled? It’s too broad to work as the latter, and too unhurried for the former.

The movie at times feels like an eternal cycle of the nine-minute ride, which loses its luster after 123 of those minutes. It offers you this chilling challenge—find a way out! Better yet, refrain from being the mortal foolish enough to enter in the first place.

From the cast to its odd, intriguing locations, Sigal was successful in assembling many of the right ingredients. Unfortunately, they lack a chef who knows how to properly combine them, whether that’s to create a meaningful sense of cohesion or to truly create the kind of beautiful chaos that makes Lynch such a mesmerizing source of inspiration.

For a solid portion of its running time, Gigi & Nate at least delivers what it promises: a young man and his monkey—to be more specific, a young, newly quadriplegic man and his service monkey.

Far be it from us to actively reveal what scuttles Zemeckis’ film, but let’s just say that it seems like the people who made its biggest creative choices have more wood for brains than the character they brought to life.

As intriguing as the combination of Binoche and Grillo might sound, it would be much more impactful if they shared the screen for more than a handful of scenes. As such, the movie begins with a bang, but it ends with a whimper.

In the wrestling ring, Cena used to wear a shirt which read “Rise Above Hate,” and indeed, he does so here. It would be better if he found a project where he didn’t have to.

Generally speaking, the best kinds of story surprises illuminate the material; the worst simply laugh at you for falling for red herrings. Much of what happens in The Twin bounces back and forth between those ends of the spectrum.

For the first half-hour, Netflix has a high-concept hit on its hands. Pause it there, and imagine the rest—you won’t do any worse than Barris and Hill’s script at conceiving an ending.

The movie's not without moments of genuine humor--no comedy starring Steve Martin could be--but sad to say, his Oscar-hosting gig two years ago was funnier.

Film falls into the same trap as the book: a moderately interesting setup ultimately undone by an ending that makes the audience feel like fools for investing any sympathy with the characters.

It's not a terrible premise -- It is, however, terribly executed.

It isn't until Joe starts getting confident and cocky that Allen starts to feel a little more natural in the role, and by then the movie's plot has all but evaporated into a series of wispy gags that barely register.

Rebound isn't funny.

Some fairly standard shenanigans ensue, and when the clichéd high school culture clash stuff stops, there's clichéd cop movie stuff going on.

No less amusing than an average sitcom, but that's certainly not reason enough to buy a ticket.

Stallone's script is well structured, though the jaw-droppingly banal dialogue gives us little reason to care.

High Tension often feels like a ’70s exploitation movie in the best sense; unfortunately, the ending is so bad that it mars everything that comes before.

Nothing worse than a silly movie that takes itself seriously, that bores us to death while we wait for the finale that comes too late.

It's hard to see why her audience seems so much more rabid than that of other, funnier comics. The secret seems to be in her appeal to the gay community.

Too bad it isn't quite funny enough to be mistaken for "Jackass."

It's not a bad film, exactly, just a confused one, too violent to be a straight romance and too focused on aid relief to be an ass-kicking action flick.

Isn't quite as offensive as it sounds, nor is it in any way rousing; Spacey and Bridges are watchable, but nothing more.

The next time Irwin wants to make a feature, however, he should find a director who knows how.

"Center of the World" portrays a much more believable example of what happens when a computer nerd realizes that his erotic fantasies aren't the same thing as love.

The prettiest Dogme film to date may be the one that has the least to say.

Since we know most of this cast is capable of acting, one must assume they received little instruction. Even if they did, who could blame them for not listening? After all, they are dealing with a script that tries to play scenes featuring drunken ghosts with silly accents for tragedy.

Spends most of its 114 minutes on the making of a demo tape. People in a studio, rapping and recording. If you're going to watch that, wouldn't you prefer it to be Dr. Dre, or Lil Jon, or whoever, rather than actors pretending to be their kind?

Where "Twin Falls" was slow, brooding and haunting in a manner that fit the subject matter -- the imminent death of one of the principal characters -- Jackpot is just slow and uneventful, like a cross-country Greyhound bus trip that never stops.

Roberto Schaefer's cinematography keeps things visually interesting, but spending an hour and a half with a gloomy, static lunatic hardly makes for a scintillating evening out, no matter how pretty she may be.

The bottom line, however, is that cheap and unoriginal as The Gift may be, it sucks you in.

It's dull enough to make a Mormon fidget.

Salva directs cheap thrills effectively, but his own apparent desires come off more frightening than any winged demon.

The movie is perhaps most successful as a preview of greater things to come from both Hughley and Union.

It's technically a well-made film: Chandrasekhar, who directed, gives it the look of a studio feature on a sizably smaller budget. It's just the script that betrays its cast.

This mean-spirited little comedy actually isn't bad.

Joe Morton, Linda Hunt and Kathy Bates show up in supporting roles, only to have Costner's flagging energy drag them down, too.

Eternal promises kink and delivers next to nothing.

Director Dwight Little, who has made many mediocre films as well as the gleefully gory Robert Englund version of "The Phantom of the Opera," gets at least one thing right -- he really does take time to establish the characters.

So long as they're only stupidly endangering themselves along the way, it's easy to watch this with a sort of libertarian detachment. It's also annoyingly predictable this time around, though the leads at first maintain their strong chemistry and essential likability.

The sappy trappings that director Raymond De Felitta piles onto the burgeoning romance story line kills any spark that remains, despite the best efforts of the cast to keep it real.

A key problem here is that the film is adapting a short story, and, as such, has to pad it out to feature length -- it still comes in at a scant 82 minutes, about 52 minutes too long.

Full of fits and starts, it never really gets going, stalling at every turn without even giving us enough of what we paid to see -- Snoop Dogg and gore.

The heist itself is quite nicely filmed herein, but unfortunately, getting to it requires sitting through a bunch of noisy, fussy crap, from the overly busy soundtrack to the irritating narration of stoned guy Leonardo Nam.

Imagine a feature-length version of the "Large Marge" sequence from "Pee-wee's Big Adventure" and you won't be too far off, only that was scarier.

Taylor and Pearce just aren't believable.

A film you can dump your kids off at the mall to see in order to get peace and quiet for an hour and a half.

Hilarity should ensue, but it doesn't.

This is fun for a while, but the ending is so ridiculous, and obvious, as to sully all the small joys that come before it.

Unless you count "Lilo & Stitch," this is the first of several surfer-girl movies out of the gate, and it seems clear that in the rush to put it out there, a script was the last thing on Universal's mind.

What this Reagan movie really needed was . . . more Reagan. None of his admirers have his charisma, and none of the footage here is surprising. Fox News could easily produce a better film.

For better or worse -- plenty of both, in fact --it's a movie that has a coherent vision. It's a shame that vision just doesn't happen to be very interesting.

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.

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 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.

At least the jump scares are effective, especially in IMAX theaters where the headrests rumble every time Valak makes a sudden move. That, and a couple of decent makeup tricks are pretty much all The Nun II has. The character deserves better, and so do you really.

Watching it feels like attending a Halloween party and never striking up a conversation with anyone; you can only look at the decorations for so long before getting bored.

There’s a funny notion in Chris Evans effectively playing a damsel in distress, but like everything else in Ghosted, the filmmakers have no idea how to play it.

Cut God Is A Bullet down to a tight 90 minutes, and it might at least consistently deliver the cheap thrills and nihilistic kick it only occasionally achieves.

If Alfred Hitchcock were retarded, lobotomized, and freshly dug up, he might possibly c--- out a movie like this one.

Of all the various low-budget documentaries chronicling the Star Wars phenomenon, Tariq Jalil's is certainly the most recent. There's not a whole lot else to say about it.

If you were ever in marching band, you'll love this; if not, stay far away.

You probably saw this film the last time around, when it was called "Sleeping With the Enemy." This one merely adds a better car chase and more ass-kicking.

What saves the film from utter forgettability are the strong supporting performances, especially from Peter Caffrey as the town atheist, and Tony Doyle.

If you really want to live life to the fullest, step one is to avoid wasting an hour and a half of your life in a theater showing Last Holiday.

It's a bad sign when you're rooting for the film to hurry up and get to its subjects' deaths just so the documentary will be over, but it's indicative of how uncompelling the movie is unless it happens to cover your particular area of interest.

Some of this stuff should give you some good laughs. Unfortunately, the film's not a comedy, and once the conservative-bashing wears off, the alleged thriller elements kick in. Too bad that for you, the viewer, there's still another hour to go.

King's decision to co-write the script and turn it into a CliffsNotes version of The Stand only makes things worse.

This sort of thing is the problem with making stuff up as you go along.

History buffs will find this film lacking, and it isn't really deep enough to educate the rest of us as thoroughly as it should.

Like the recent "Baise-moi," Bully is a whole lot of shock and titillation trying to pretend it's saying something. Unlike the French import, however, there's no awareness of its own absurdity, nor anything for the audience to care about in the slightest.

The co-director/co-writer team of Fabio Guaglione and Fabio Resinaro are none too subtle, and their reliance on hallucination sequences suggests a (misguided) lack of faith in Hammer to pull this off by himself.

Director Marcus Raboy hasn't made a bad movie, exactly -- just one that seems to have forgotten its own jokes, much as those who watch it will forget everything about it a week later, stoned or not.

It's unfortunate that, nudity and all, this is one of Toback's absolute worst efforts.

The best way to watch it is with a loaded bong, the volume turned down and the Orb cranked up on your stereo.

Not just another disposable romantic comedy, but an ambitious, overreaching mess.

So desperate are the filmmakers to create a "hip" western that they try to cram it with action sequences that aren't very exciting.

There's no reason to see this film in a theater -- you'll hate yourself for paying full price. Plus, you'll need beer, and lots of it, to appreciate the movie properly.

The final showdown between sole survivor and killer is sufficiently well done that you wonder why the rest didn't measure up.

Not that there aren't funny moments in the film, but they're cobbled together so awkwardly that you'd never suspect the director had made a film before.

It's a lame Heather Locklear romantic comedy and a lame Hilary Duff romantic comedy all in one!

While not entirely successful, at least deserves points for creativity.

Ultimately, the film amounts to being lectured to by tech-geeks, if you're up for that sort of thing.

So how bad, in the final analysis, is Gigli? The best that can be said is that it doesn't beat out "The Ladies Man" as the most abrasively awful film of the past five years, nor does it top "Battlefield Earth" for sheer misguided lunacy.

That some of the super-visions manage to disturb regardless is arguably a testament to writer-director Stanley Jacobs, but he’d have been better off keeping this as his demo reel and showing whatever he does next to the public at large.

It plays like a parody of suspense movies, then occasionally becomes serious, then boring, then makes a jarring 180, then frustrates, then gets vaguely interesting again.

Less fun than "Cry_Wolf" and "Venom," if that's possible.

No doubt Fox wants to tap into those Latina dollars, but you've got to spend money to make money, and this shoddily cheap-looking product ain't gonna do it.

Hackman, playing it gleefully amoral, walks away with the film, for what that's worth...which is a video rental for fans of the actors involved. Yes, that's video, not DVD -- four bucks at Blockbuster is more than you ought to be paying.

Plays like a knockoff of Michael Bay's already derivative and much more fun "Bad Boys," only with even less plot. It also recalls the worst qualities of John Singleton's mean-spirited "Shaft."

If it had anything that even approached the vaguest vicinity of a plot, The Wash might be a cool diversion for a Saturday afternoon at the mall.

Mandel Holland's direction is uninspired, and his scripting unsurprising, but the performances by Phifer and Black are ultimately winning.

The movie is not without some appeal, mainly due to the fact that the whaling town of Taiji is beautiful to look at, and principals from the original The Cove, Louie Psihoyos and Ric O'Barry, gamely give interviews to explain that of course they want to hear both sides.

It would take the ghost of Stanley Kubrick to get great performances out of Jimmy Fallon, Queen Latifah, and supermodel Gisele Bündchen, and Tim, you're no Stanley.

This was a better movie back when it was called "Gossip" . . . oh, wait, no -- that one sucked too.

Assassination Tango is Duvall's fourth, yet it still feels like a first film; worse yet, it feels like a waste of an undeniably great actor.

Well, Sanaa Lathan's in there somewhere as the smart and sexy ass-kickin' chick, but it's really all about the monster disembowelments, which happen often.

If you peel away the surface of this movie, one is left with not much at all.

LaBeouf's got the beef, and his inevitably bright future may be the only reason anyone will ever look back on The Battle of Shaker Heights.

Duff isn't exactly known for complex fare, but even "The Lizzie McGuire Movie" was way better than this.

The film's finale is truly egregious, a laugh-out-loud combination of ludicrousness and sadism that someone somewhere probably found scary, assuming they never saw a thriller before.

Stripped of every major scary moment and restructured in what feels like a deliberate attempt to remove all suspense, this "horror" movie is now a domestic soap opera.

Standard revenge shenanigans ensue, with more boo-hoo numbers from Vin, who ain't up to it -- he hasn't been this lame since, uh, ever.

It's a mess, but it isn't as bad as you think.

This movie is every bit the mess its title makes it sound.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Dude, where's the script? Just Awful.

There’s no reason a movie with this premise couldn’t be better. Just not in these folks’ hands.

If you’re a fan of Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton, scribes of the later Saw sequels and the Feast trilogy, you know what to expect from them: gore, vomit, red filters, and maybe a half-clever plot twist. If you’re not a fan, it’s best to stay as far away as possible from Unhuman, a cheap-looking, awkwardly calibrated horror-comedy which only the team’s truest devotees could love.

One hopes the entire process made for great couples therapy, because watching it certainly doesn’t.

For a character-driven “mistaken identity” comedy that lives or dies based on the humorous interactions between two A-list leads, its lousy script barely constitutes life support.

After watching, you may well wish that Peter Pan could be re-copyrighted to be kept out of the hands of anyone inclined to make this much of a mess of it.

Its most redeeming quality is that it's so inoffensive parents can feel OK about taking kids.

OK, so you can't afford women who'll bare flesh for what you're paying. Then don't make an exploitation film!

There might have been a decent comedy here if someone had remembered to insert some actual humor.

The film was cut down from an R rating to get a PG-13, but even if it had full-on Eliza Dushku nudity -- and it doesn't have anything close -- Soul Survivors would still suck.

A romantic comedy with neither humor nor sparks between the leads, Marci X attempts to lampoon gangsta rap clichés so obvious they feel ten years old -– “Malibu's Most Wanted” brought more to the table.

Rent a porno instead; it'll be less exploitative. God help us, two more of these things are planned.

May steal from the best, but it does it so badly and obviously that it has to depend upon gratuitous shock-cuts and soundtrack stings to elicit any kind of reflex-action fright from the viewer.

Think "My Best Friend's Wedding," subtract gay best friend, dorky karaoke scene, charm, and any hint of malice or conflict, and you've got it.

If Big Momma's House isn't as bad as you imagined, then you've no imagination at all.

Every bit as pathetic and unfunny as it looks.

What it lacks are solid performances, save Slater's game attempt to take everything seriously.

The lack of profanity or even alcohol (when in Mexico, the gang downs shots of hot sauce, not tequila) makes the film suitable for all ages, except for those old enough to want actual content in their movies.

But there is a saving grace: Seemingly aware of how weak the material was, the filmmakers have filled it with wall-to-wall beautiful naked women in every other scene, complete with a little gratuitous lesbian action. It can't save the film, but it'll keep you from dozing off.

This lame hostage movie doesn't even deliver for Seagal fans.

Prochnow rocks; nothing else does.

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.

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.

Purple Hearts would be a lot more interesting if it interrogated the specific moments of weakness that attract Cassie to Luke, but that’s far too complex an idea to explore in this kiddie pool of sentimentality.

Lansdown has a pretty good score by Atli Orvarsson... Nope, nothing else nice to say.

Hang out at a frat house or sports bar, and you can hear this kind of talk for free.

Shoddy and ridiculous.

The overall film is hideously grating, thanks to an inconsistent look, animated titles all over the place, excessive explanatory commentary and abrasive R&B videos inserted throughout.

Snow Dogs may simply be a stupid waste of your time. But if you know the source, it's an abomination.

Alas, Slackers sucks. It's so bad Schwartzman can't save it, though he tries mightily; a flash of nudity from Pearl Harbor babe and male-named model-turned-actress James King isn't even worth the price of a video rental down the line.