Marc Savlov

For one thing, Seven Days in Utopia feels an awful lot like Victor Salva's 2006 New Age uplifter "Peaceful Warrior." That film at least had the appeal of watching Nick Nolte play Yoda, whereas here Duvall simply seems to be playing Duvall.

"Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice" meets a considerably tamed Van Wilder for a mediocre romp in the Hamptons.

Colombiana is one long megayawn; I'd have garnered more titillating thrills rewatching freckle-faced Russkie sexbomb Natalya Rudakova strut her leggy, sassy stuff in Megaton and Besson's "Transporter 3."

The result is a somewhat functional blood feast for the exploitation crowd, but it's hardly a bead of sweat on the original's battered backside. Oh, and the score? Basil Poledouris' bombastic brass is still No. 1.

The fact that Troy Nixey's debut feature is one creepyass frightmare is what matters, and boy, does he put the nail in that metaphorical coffin the first time out. It's not perfect, but it's awfully close.

An unpredictably bizarre and tonally askew Hong Kong freak show.

Far more coherent than its immediate predecessor, Spy Kids: All the Time in the World in 4D benefits greatly from its two likable young leads and some of the series' wittiest, pun-filled writing.

Fans of the irritatingly limp and relatively toothless Twilight series may actually find their tormented inner selves fondled to exquisite, precoital perfection with this slick and gleeful adaptation of the classic Eighties vampire-next-door flick.

Can this be the end of Death? If only.

The result is a film that looks like no other in recent memory.

Hell, even Heston's performance elicited cheers back in the day. Franco, in a totally, tonally different role, but still the prime human here, is a pale shadow of the ruined future to come.

A slight, facile, and ultimately yawn worthy romantic comedy, and one of the most obvious if unexpected missteps in Hanks' career.

Pass the popcorn, dude; this shit rocks.

Meehl's documentary features plenty of interviews with cowboys and ranch hands who've had their lives – and their horses' lives – changed by Brannaman, but it lacks the literary or cinematic magic of either version of "The Horse Whisperer."

It's a helluva comic book, to be sure, but it's a godawful mess of a movie.

Plays like the Brothers Grimm meets "Cloverfield" with a hint of Monty Python-esque ridiculousness. For a small indie film from Norway, Trollhunter rocks it gargantuan style and then some.

Submarine pulls off the difficult trick of being bittersweet without being saccharine and does so with a quietly riotous aplomb.

The abyss between the boy and the man he may become is cold, black, and unforgiving. Adapted from Jan Terlouw's 1972 novel, this is an often emotionally harrowing depiction of a young idealist running smack into the brutal reality of occupied life.

This Hangover is a doozy, not quite as much fun (or well-written) as the original, but neither does it lack for lunatic plot complications that could only spring from the minds of writers Phillips, Craig Mazin, and Scot Armstrong.

Burns has done such a thorough job of perfectly re-creating the moment that even the non-events (family dinners, procrastinated college-enrollment applications, the banal yet life-or-death routines of being a teen on the cusp) are lovingly rendered.

It's a Herculean task to steal the thunder from a Johnny Depp performance, but Richard Griffiths (best known these days as Harry Potter's tubby Muggle uncle, Vernon Dursley) does exactly that.

Frankly, Mr. Shankly, I've seen Morrissey videos that are more life-changing than this well-intentioned but ultimately yawn-inducing barrage of factoids.

Isn't a comedy, but it's not entirely a tragedy, either, and it straddles this razor's edge with a deeply nuanced aplomb.

Director Munroe (TMNT) is clearly a fan and attempted his best on an admittedly limited budget, but some things just don't translate that well. Throw this dog a bone? No need, he's already got a closetful.

Fascinating, no? Of course, that's just one (obvious) reading of Fast Five. You could also say it's a kickass demolition derby – pure dumb summer fun – and often easy on the (hetero) eyes thanks to the inclusion of Brewster and Mendes.

All told, though, Thor suffers from "Iron Man 2" syndrome: too much backstory, too many subplots and character introductions, and not nearly enough full-frontal nudity from Natalie Portman, who frankly is given very little to work with here.

The actors, particularly the icy Bassett and the fiery Devine, excel in their roles and drive home the film's multifaceted messages.

It's an ode, of sorts, to Seventies grindhouse cinema, curdled and gooey and tailor-made for midnight showings (preferably with a crowd, preferably intoxicated).

Rumley has assembled a fine cast; there's not a false step in the film, and while obviously this isn't a film for everyone, these are characters that we come to know, respect, and fall hard for, doomed or not.

It's also a deeply moral antiwar film, if one chooses to view it that way.

Comes close to overdosing on bone-pulverizing kickassery at the expense of a plot that ricochets from the nationalistically fatuous to the lovestruck, farcical before shutting down completely in favor of punch-drunk loveliness.

So does Rio measure up to the insanely great standard set by Pixar? Visually, yes.

Too self-referential for its own good by half.

Your Highness is awfully vulgar fun when it works, which is much of the time (although it could've benefited from a few judicious cuts here and there).

Comes across as a particularly unspecial "Very Special Episode" of a television series that never made it past the pilot stage.

It's a strange and electrifying brew of Hollywood genre tropes recalibrated for a globalized sensibility.

It is, in effect, a movie-house meta mirror, warped and weird, strange but true (except when it isn't). It's whatever you want it to be, which doesn't necessarily make it a great movie (although it contains moments of greatness), but it IS – by virtue of its premise alone – boldly unique.

It's not nearly as complex and eerily existential as the director's debut, "Moon," but in its own way it's an even more satisfying time slice of identity-scrambled sci-fi.

The only remotely entertaining aspects of Insidious come from Whannell and Sampson as a comic pair of hypercompetitive hipster ghost hunters, and even that schtick is repeated ad nauseam.

It's something of a Tiananmen Square face-off, minus the overt politics, which makes it all the more spellbinding.

It is an utterly unique and highly ambitious project that isn't afraid to veer wildly from witty, risqué comedy to heavy emotional melodrama, often in the same sequence.

Limitless is a writer's movie by a writer, and it explores the dark side of the muse.

Viewed as a war film, it's strictly standard run 'n' gun fare.

Hudgens' dimples threaten at times to overtake the narrative, but in the end, they're no match for Olsen's creepy-ass smirk, which, frankly, appears ready-made for Tim Burton's next outing.

"When you race with the devil, you'd better be fast as hell." (And you, angry driver, are not that fast.)

The Adjustment Bureau is, above all, a romance of chance and chaos theory of the heart. (In this respect, some viewers will recognize it as kin to the early Gwyneth Paltrow fantasy "Sliding Doors.")

Ultimately, Lemmy is a lesson in artistic stoicism and the possibility of growing old gracefully within the confines of an art form that almost always rewards youth and punishes (or, worse, forgets) anyone over 30.

The comic, his career now apparently in total free fall, tackles the (dual) role(s) so broadly (no pun intended) that it's just plain annoying.

This is smart, quirky, frequently laugh-out-loud comedy, in all seriousness.

Absolutely mandatory viewing for aspiring animators and filmmakers. (In terms of pacing, scoring, editing, and narrative, it's a film school unto itself.) For the rest of us, however, it's simply magic.

While this is no "Clueless," to be sure, it's also, thankfully, no "Born in East L.A."

Those audiences who have complained about the clunky exposition and mawkish emotional dialogue in Cameron's films will discover the "King of the World"'s own dramatic talents to be on par with the Bard in comparison to the shouty, over-emoted hokum on display here.

If you're searching for pure, unadulterated fisticuffs joy, you could do far worse than Ip Man 2.

West (Con Air) saturates his imagery in a sickly, sulphurous stew of rotten-egg yellows and oranges, making a mediocre picture downright repellent at times.

Ultimately, however, The Way Back fails to connect on the all-important visceral, emotional level.

Oh, the ennui. In Somewhere, it's so thick you could cut it with Stephen Dorff's chiseled cheekbones.

Howard surprises with this decidedly honest comedy-melodrama.

Gondry's update of vigilante crime fighter The Green Hornet's escapades is above all an exercise in frustration.

Things do not end well, least of all for the audience.

Summer Wars is a magnificently manufactured piece of film entertainment that goes beyond the obvious and manages to comment, often obliquely, on everything from Facebook to virtual war and/or terrorism without ever seeming heavy-handed or strident.

It's a "keep calm, carry on" wartime melodrama of the first order, and stiff though it may be, it is never less than brilliantly done.

It's confused and confusing, by turns hilarious and off-putting. In short, it's awfully hard to love I Love You Philip Morris.

There's absolutely no shortage of stunning eye candy in this spiffy, sexy, and frequently thrilling sequel to Disney's 1982 game-changer Tron. There is, however, a certain lack of connectivity between the digitally enhanced characters onscreen and the user – excuse me, "audience" – in the flesh.

It takes great skill to make something so ponderously stultifying as this third film entry in the ongoing adaptation of C.S. Lewis' series of splendidly imagined children's books.

And while the blond, youthful, and entirely sane-seeming Lomborg was initially pilloried for his calm, rational views by the global environmental movement, his ideas and solutions arrive as a refreshing tonic in the face of global warming's more vocal fearmongers.

It's manic and wearyingly predictable, and as soon as it begins, you know exactly how it's going to end: with a hard, fast crash (and the requisite yakkety epilogue).

Fans of the series, if there are any left and I'm not too certain that there are, will enjoy the usual smorgasbord of lower intestines spilling out from the screen and onto their laps (via the profoundly crappy 3-D) as well as an above-average opening slaughter involving two men, one woman, several buzz saws, and a crowd of gawking onlookers.

This is meat-and-potatoes (and bullets) action filmmaking, although, really, that title's got to go.

Much of Rare Exports is seen through the eyes of its preteen protagonist, which explains some of the story's minor omissions (who, exactly, hired this nefarious multinational mining outfit and why exactly?).

Drained of much of its presumed power by a distinct "been there, seen that" vibe.

Amid the increasingly horrific images of daily ghetto life are moments of utterly unexpected, haunting beauty, including a reel of color film that does more to humanize an inhuman situation than anything I've ever seen.

Danny Boyle's 127 Hours is the calm, cool, and tear-your-hair-out exciting mirror image of Tony Scott's bland and formulaic "Unstoppable."

If Red Hill isn't quite a classic, it surely is a work of genuine passion for a genre that's unmistakable, and unkillable.

Still, this is recent and public history, and Fair Game, which both fascinates and infuriates, comes across as little more than a footnote in an ever-lengthening list (thanks, Wikileaks!) of the Bush White House's sordid, potentially treasonous actions leading up to and beyond the invasion of Iraq.

Try as they might, the Jackass gang can't quite snatch the year's ultimate 3D gross-out from the pricking jaws of "Pirahna 3-D."

The hippies, the ravers, the bumbling bobbies and nonplussed locals, the mud, the rush of being in the crush, up against the barricades, torn between the need for a restroom and the need for more room, to dance, to sing, to carry on like a stark loony regardless of your faraway day job – all of this is captured by Temple's unblinking, seemingly everywhere-at-once eye.

Simply put, it’s too much of a good thing, this unreined tumult of chaos.

This is a Disney film, so there's never any real question regarding Bolt and his friends' ultimate success or failure, but the writing team of Dan Fogelman (Cars) and co-director Williams (Mulan) have concocted one of the most witty and often hilarious Disney outings in years.

"Dr. Goodlove," or "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Proletariat" might have been a better title for this ingratiatingly loopy origin story about prerevolutionary icon Ernesto "Che" Guevara.

But the best way to enjoy Ong Bak is on its own gritty, low-budget level, skins, brains, and guts galore, a viscerally entertaining slice of Thai filmmaking that will leave you grinning ear to ear.

It's hard to give a damn one way or the other about Street Fighter -- it's so thin that an errant sneeze might topple this glossy house of cards.

Such gorgeous explosions, such a terrible vision, such an amazing work of art. Go. Now.

I think it's a mess, but - and this is a major caveat - an endearing, beautiful, hopelessly honest mess that's supported by a pair of performances so unnaturally natural that they draw you in and clutch you, struggling, to their flipping, flopping hearts.

I'd rather have a testicular nail-gun mishap than sit through this migraine-inducing train wreck of a film one more time.

Rifkin has fashioned a crawly little movie that underscores the Faustian price of fame in a way that few recent films have managed.

Audacious, thrilling, erotic (and in three languages, no less), I Am Cuba is a lost masterpiece of filmmaking finally seeing the light of day 30 years after its production.

It may not be art, but it's vastly more entertaining than anything Coppola senior has done in far too long.

Fails to kick start anything other than the urge to giggle.

If you're not already smitten with all things Gaiman, you may well find yourself, like Helena, a stranger in a strange land.

Best never to have left dry dock with this one.

Bird's grim, picture-perfect direction -- the Sierras are more character than backdrop, and everything else looks like it's already been digested and expelled -- augments what is frankly a small, albeit lusterless, gem of a horror show, for once with as many smarts as body parts.

Apparently fit and reasonably trim, Deal's honesty touches a nerve that the band's music only gnawed on back in the day.

Delgo is a dud.

With plot holes so large you could drive a HumVee through them, this debut film from director Shapiro is little more than a lousy hybrid, one part Fatal Attraction to two parts Lolita, only this time Humbert Humbert writes for trendy Pique! magazine and lives in Seattle (but doesn't everybody these days?).

There are a number of cheeky winks from the filmmakers specifically aimed at Harryhausen fans; in the end, though, Leterrier's Clash of the Titans is nearly as messy an assemblage of mythic odds and ends as the original.

Ford, as usual, is a delight to watch; his portrayals of both Henry the Ruthless Lawyer and Henry the Reborn are dead-on, unerring in their accuracy. Bening is likewise excellent.

It's unlike anything else out now, and Williams, to his credit and our immense relief, has for the moment foresworn his usual giddiness in favor of a muted, hunched acting style that befits both the character of Noone and the overall tone of the film.

Deadly dull tripe.

This single film beats every other Hollywood action film of the past five years, hands down. It's not even close. Welcome back, Mr. Tsui.

These scenes of debauchery and lust that make up the film's centerpiece are among some of the most powerful and disturbing ever put to film.

It's a thrilling, powerful movie, and one that certain people in certain quarters may have at one time called dangerous. Some of them may yet still.

Ultimately, it's undone by the overfamiliar nature of Doon and Lina's quest, the outcome of which, while breathlessly paced, is never really in question.

Ultimately, it's a very boring ride.

There's even a Simon and Garfunkel tune on the soundtrack, which makes Braff's character seem like the only living boy in New Jersey, which, of course, he may well be. L'chaim!

It's a 24-hour-party-people travelogue, entertaining enough to grab your eyes... but less memorable than it may at first appear.

From its marketing-impaired title on down, Event Horizon is a steadily churning debacle that promises much more than it can deliver and ends up drowning in a crimson sea of gore and maddeningly out-of-place steals from other, better genre shockers.

Breathtakingly gorgeous but ultimately thematically unsatisfying.

It's all a bit of overkill.

A spare and perfectly droll kinda-sorta comedy from Norwegian director Hamer.

A predictable affair that nonetheless ingratiates itself into your good fortunes by sheer virtue of its amiable nuttiness. It's mindless fun while it lasts.

It's nail-biting good fun, sporting some très haute couture nails.

A top-notch example of uninsulting kid humor at its goofiest.

To its credit, the film rockets toward its conclusion with scant downtime. It's come and gone before you even know it, and, like death, that's a good thing.

For all its stentorian performances, though, Shadow of the Vampire is a bit much, from the detailed period sets to the final, bloody scene.

An intelligent, viscerally kinetic throw-down, a jolt of pure adrenalized Spike that holds more than a few touches of genius in its overripe storyline.

It's a loud, obnoxious, and pleasant-enough entertainment, but hardly the soaring tale of one man's struggle that it was so clearly envisioned to be.

A classic sophomore slump, all bark and very little bite.

For masochists only, and hardcore ones at that.

At almost three hours, it's a masterwork of brilliant editing and design; not a frame is unwarranted, not a scene excessive, and it holds together over its lengthy running time in a way few films half its length can manage.

Arguably better than the last five Eddie Murphy films taken together, The Nutty Professor still seems to be playing down to its audience much of the time, though you'd never know it to hear the gales of laughter erupting at the screening I attended.

Bad sets, bad acting, bad direction, shadows of boom-mikes, inexplicable plot holes, generic effects, fake-looking gore, death by pogo stick (!?), off-kilter Irish brogues... I just can't say enough about this, can I? My head hurts just trying to remember this complete and utter waste of perfectly good Kodak film stock.

As far as pronoun horrors go, They can't hold a candle to Them or It, but as an anti-tourism ad for Seattle, it's right up there with The Ring in terms of overcast, glistening panache.

The heist itself is a charm with the kids zipping about in go-karts and eluding klutzy security guards, but the film seems trapped in a strange Twilight Zone somewhere between comedy and drama.

Deep Impact takes the high road and offers up more tearful reunions than actual fireballs and more egregious, sappy dialogue than you can shake a tsunami at.

Isn't for everyone, obviously; it might not be for anyone, come to think of it.

Despite a great 15-second, computer-generated effects scene, Corn II manages to be 90-odd minutes of unrelenting cheese. Like runny Brie with blood all over it, it just makes you want to gag.

Would have made a hell of a short -- but falls flat on its hyperstylized face as a feature.

Surely something more original than this could have been mined from the history of North America’s largest and most professional police force. As it is, though, Johnson’s film is just firing blanks.

Fernandez is excellent as the maladjusted daughter, but the film's heart and soul is embodied in Galina's noble, understated performance.

Works best when it works its mournful magic alone, without fanfare, using only the flickering fear in Cole's gaze as it meets the compassion in Crowe's.

Falling somewhere between the horrors of Three … Extremes and the beauties of Eros, this triptych of short films set in and underscored by the titular megalopolis is a gorgeous, sprawling mess.

As an updated version of the old western TV show, it does a pleasant enough job.

Szpilman takes to performing sonatas in thin air, eyes closed, those jittery fingers stroking nothing but air. It's a wonderful moment in a wonderful, ghastly film, and one of the most moving arguments for the redemptive powers of art ever made.

Certainly it's not for everyone, but fans of Euro-sleaze will groove on Argento's obvious charms and the film's dystopian thrill ride, while the rest will probably doze off dreaming Fassbinder dreams.

Love, death, hope, and hatred: Spider-Man 2 has ’em all, in spades.

After a string of disappointments culminating in this silly waste of time, it's hard to care if horror's golden boy carries on or not. Forget The Mangler. Go do your laundry instead.

How much better this would have been had someone like Brian De Palma stepped behind the camera.

Unfortunately, the film rests heavily on the shoulders of Murphy, who seems to wander aimlessly from scene to scene, searching for a laugh. The joke's on him, though: There are none.

Depp is perfectly cast as Gilbert, by turns sullen, quiet, and caring. Depp's expressive face has long been the focal point of his talent, and he uses it to excellent effect here. It's DiCaprio as Gilbert's retarded brother Arnie who may well get the Oscar statuette. He's utterly, tragically convincing as the boy who wasn't expected to make it to ten, much less eighteen years old.

The fight scenes are splendidly choreographed...but they're shot in that grating, thoroughly American flashcut style that leaves you wondering just who the hell is hitting who.

De Palma's film is a mess from its anxious start all the way through to its new-agey end, relying heavily on cribs from Kubrick and Cameron and even the recent "Apollo 13."

Suffers from a surplus of interviews and information that imbue it with a vague sense of overkill.

Even though we're aware of the tragic trajectory of the singer's life, for a while it almost seems as if reality got it wrong and Curtis might just squeak past the reaper's scythe with no more than a shave and a haircut.

Teacher’s Pet feels more like Ren & Stimpy's John Kricfalusi on a mild dose of Prozac, and I mean that in the very best way.

Electrifying and decidedly downbeat slice of life and death in Ajami.

Remarkable debut feature by New Yorker Ben Younger.

It’s a message movie, as are all kids films these days, but these environmentally-aware messages are sweet and unforced, and well worth hearing.

Who knew reincarnation could be such a lovely snooze?

A solid, intermittently excellent, and extremely exsanguinatory take on what Stephen King famously referred to as the "Spam in a cabin" genre.

Ozon's take on this marriage in particular is notable – apart from Freiss and Bruni-Tedeschi's bracing performances – for his unwillingness to let things spiral out of complete control.

You get the feeling the filmmakers didn't want to make anyone think too hard about what's going on here behind the scenes of the main storyline, and that's more than a little insulting.

It's also and most interestingly about the writing process itself, a difficult feat to pull off on film, which Wagner and co-screenwriter Fred Parnes manage to display with unvarnished realism.

Widen gets an “A” for ambition here, but by the end of the whole shebang, you really couldn't care less.

We all know how it ends, and that foreknowledge dooms Singer's hotly anticipated and much troubled account of the attempt on Adolf Hitler's life.

Deliciously bleak, black political satire from British director Armando Iannucci.

Devil's Advocate is such a bloated, gargantuan, and ultimately tasteless juggernaut of a film that it manages to achieve a righteously cheesy splendor.

Well-intentioned but hardly well-executed.

Gleefully, goofily over-the-top.

One of Jordan's best films, and almost certainly in Nolte's top two percentile.

The Last Legion offers guilty-pleasure fun in a cheesy, very De Laurentiis way (much like 1976's Mandingo rip-off Drum), but, in the end, it's just not a very inspired or well-conceived film, despite Kingsley's strangely endearing turn as the proto-Merlin.

Although this version of Beowulf (the script, ricocheting between thrilling, heroic, and hilarious, is by Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary) does take some liberties with certain heretofore undreamed of aspects of parentage, it's as faithful to the extant version as it needs to be.

This is strictly dull chuckles from dull wits, and while there are a few genuine laughs to be found amidst the dross, they’re as rare as Francophiles in Crawford, Texas.

Anderson has neutered the original film's outrageously transgressive macadam mayhem and completely stripped the story of its pointedly political social satire, making this Death Race one of the most boring drags of all time.

No matter where your political gullibilities lie, Green Zone is a riveting piece of actioneering.

The Runaways nails both the glammy, SoCal temper of the mid-Seventies and the metallurgic tempering of the first all-girl rock band in America.

A Perfect World is a gorgeous, sprawling road movie, full of unique characters (more or less -- Laura Dern's criminologist seems like some sort of PC afterthought, and Eastwood's grizzled Ranger borders on cliché) and arresting cinematography that reminds us why we live here in the first place.

An unexpected classic.

More a meditation on the nature of life itself than anything else, and a welcome respite from Robin Williams, the emotion sponge.

Smith is excellent as the potty Grace, with both Atkinson and Thomas equally fine in their roles. But the fact is plainly seen: The Ealing of yore is gone.

It's hit-or-miss comedy of the very broadest sort, but those who groove on deciphering obscure film-geek in-jokes will find their work more than cut out for them.

I'm beginning to suspect there's some sort of ancient, or at least post-Pearl Harbor, curse in play that stops genre-oriented Asian filmmakers from creating anything of all but the most negligible merit once they hit the California shore.

Sick, twisted, and very funny, Parker and Stone have arrived. Again.

It's nobody’s idea of a classic comedy, but in its own inoffensive and eager-to-please way it's a pleasant enough way to spend 90 minutes ogling the lustrous Ms. Union and Mr. Foxx's equally and endlessly fascinating volcanic coif.

It's thrilling and lovely and sad and explosive in all the right ways, and it needs to be seen – on the big screen, in 3-D – to be believed.

Unlike former porn auteur Gregory Dark's semenal 1985 cumshot opus "New Wave Hookers", this rote exercise in slasher-film tedium holds zero surprises and is about as arousing as Tracy Lords' singing career.

Honestly, at this point in time there's no legitimate reason to confuse “bad ass” filmmaking with just plain bad. Nice GTO, though.

They've become deadly dull, these two once-keen buckers of bureaucratic BS, and watching them interact on screen is akin to having your pleasure centers removed by knobby little aliens whose only knowledge of mankind comes from Jack Webb's stoically unvarying television incarnations.

Where else are you going to get a chance to see the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy drift down the side of a mile-high tsunami and take out the White House? Big. Dumb. Fun.

A smart albeit uneven jab at everything from the clubbing life to the male inclination toward Peter Pan.

Audition's take on the war between the sexes is bleak and almost entirely devoid of hope. --It's enough to make you give up dating altogether.

While 28 Weeks Later ultimately falls shy of classic status (it's no Panic in Year Zero!), there are several hard-to-shake scenes -- nightmare visions, really -- that reveal the infected populace to be far less dangerous to the fabric of a civilized society than, perhaps, the very notion of civilization itself.

Where the hell are those Hollywood Ninja Assassins when you really need 'em?

On the whole, there are precious few life lessons in Is Anybody There? that haven't been noted before.

By far the freakiest and most unnerving shocker in theatres this season.

Darby and co-screenwriter Michael Cristofer ("Breaking Up") telegraph every available bit of plot seemingly hours before it's necessary, resulting in a tawdry, boring mish-mash of genre clichés and arched eyebrows.

Step Brothers has comic fuel to burn, some of it unashamedly non sequitur and stupid-brilliant, but it still feels like a post-"Talladega" flameout.

Let’s be honest: With a cast like this, it doesn't matter too much what the characters are doing onscreen, or if it makes about as much sense as a monochrome rainbow.

Consistently entertaining, athletically brutal, and, more often than not, well-acted.

It's a hilarious, scathing look at one man's attempt to get a film made, whatever it takes, and it may be the most realistic depiction of that struggle so far.

Mystic River asks plenty of questions but rarely if ever offers any answers, and certainly no easy ones. If this fine and sorrowful film is what can be expected from our aging cinema icons, here’s to the golden years, dark though they may be.

It's not perfect King, but it is jarringly close, which these days remains pretty much all one could hope for.

Like the inky void of space, there's really not much here, but what there is, is certainly entertaining.

Much has been made about the film's "humanizing" of Hitler, but he's only human here in the most prosaic of terms.

Gory, spastic fun, Love & a .45 is a broken roller-coaster ride of Texas trouble. It's not anything you haven't seen before, but it might remind you why you liked those other movies in the first place.

Leary, Demme, and screenwriter Mike Armstrong have come up with a brilliant, harrowing portrait of misplaced loyalties and savage valor that may be one of the best character-driven ensemble pieces to come around in some time.

It remains head and shoulders above what little competition there is by virtue of its stellar casting, editing, and above all, Frankenheimer's fluid, explosive direction.

The only people who should be peeved enough to raise hell about Year One are the viewers who had to pay to sit through it.

A dull, plodding remake.

Needful Things is hardly a cinema milestone -- it's a bit too episodic in chronicling the downfall of the town, and some of King's best bits are glossed over in favor of some of King's worst bits, but all things considered, it's still a hell of a good ride.

Stone still dazzles the eye, but this wholly unwarranted sequel is so outrageously preposterous (and so very chockablock with quotable examples of the fine art of bad dialogue) that the end result achieves a basement grandeur of near-epic proportions.

It's even worse than you thought it might be.

Split Second turns out to be one of those dreaded “so-bad-it's-good” debacles, and a marginal one at that. Ed Wood, where are you when we need you?

It's not "Sixteen Candles," but it's not "Road Trip," either. Instead, this comedic car-trip riff on the teen-male libido and the lengths to which it will go to satisfy itself falls somewhere in between part endearing emo love story, part gross-out semen gag-fest, and, very occasionally, a smart, inspired, non-sequitur-laden hoot.

It is, however, a very satisfying film, and surely the first in a long franchise (it does, after all, bear the subtitle The Vampire Chronicles).

Wan does manage to infuse his film with some of the subtle unsubtleties of classic Euro-horror outings, chief among them the palpable, dreamlike sense of dislocation and the abiding severance from reality that tends to make nongenre fans wonder if someone spiked their popcorn with LSD.

Both apocalyptic and suitably vague, The Signal's only serious weakness comes from some borderline histrionic performances; then again, it's tough to call hysteria anything other than a sane response to a world gone mad. Crazy, man.

The film is a mess, going all over the graveyard but never finding the grave. It's the work of a fan with too much time (and money) on his hands, eagerly awaited but best forgotten.

It's not the most flattering depiction of Jews I've seen. Still, The Passion of the Christ is something of a masterpiece, terrible to behold, unfit for children, certainly, but very much the work of a director in the throes of his own distinct passion.

Relentless and mercurial, this new outing by "Swingers" director Liman takes off somewhere around Mach 3 and never lets up, leaving you with either a pounding headache or a wicked grin, or perhaps both.

Flawed at its core but stunning nonetheless.

An equally tired and wearisome buddy-cop movie that might as well be a forgotten leftover from the era of "Turner and Hooch." Now there's a film with classic Kevin Smith scrawled all over it.

It's less cheesecake than angel-food: frothy, light, and delicious, sure, but two hours later you're ready for something slightly more substantive.

The real crime here is that Let's Go to Prison made a daring escape from direct-to-video stir into the relative freedom of your neighborhood multiplex. Consider this one disarmed and extremely pointless.

Truth is, once again, stranger and far more interesting than fiction, but Stewart, whose youthful idealism makes for passionate but uneven filmmaking, should scuttle further oceanic pedantry and focus his lens on Watson's "good pirate" efforts to sabotage the "bad pirates" and save the sea.

Cloverfield is the most intense and original creature feature I've seen in my adult moviegoing life, and that's coming from a guy who knows his Gojira from his Gamera and his Harryhausen from his Honda. Cloverfield isn't a horror film – it's a pure-blood, grade A, exultantly exhilarating monster movie.

Absurdism taken to a new extreme.

This is horror with a wink and a nod to drive-in theatres and sweaty back seats. This is how it's done.

It's nonstop chaos, and the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink style of comedy is taxing despite the frequent moments of pure comic genius.

Even Amtrak hasn't seen a derailment this godawful in some time.

Besson loves his violence almost as much as he loves his leading lady.

The dead have more fun than the living, again, in Tim Burton’s new stop-motion animated feature, a gift to gothlings everywhere and as exquisitely crafted as one of Federico’s post-mortem still lifes on "Six Feet Under," and just as melodramatically melancholic.

Above all, it's a satisfying, almost restful work, as welcome in this less-than-thrilling cinematic summer as a cool soak on a hot summer's day.

It's always odd to see Robbins, a political activist in his own right, playing at villainy, but here he descends into the role so thoroughly that the lopsided smile becomes less a notation of cockeyed boyishness than a treacherous Cheshire smirk.

Not as yummy as it sounds, true, but nowhere near as godawful as "Van Helsing," a small mercy but very much appreciated.

The cast is uniformly excellent in their roles, and Eyre's persistent use of long, trailing shots reinforces the story's elegiac tone.

Envy feels like a comedy in search of a drama in search of some sort of lugubrious existential meaning; it never quite seems to know where it's going to head next, and neither will the audience.

Ponyo is another conceptually and thrilingly original masterstroke from an animator who long ago left Walt Disney in the dust.

The delectably atmospheric Asylum remains gothic to its morally maggoty core.

Piglet, your time has arrived. Sooth us.

Serrano's frequently mystifying device of having Lucía's cardboard psyche mess with the audience's minds is ultimately a confusing bore that detracts from what might have been a more eloquent (and interesting) take on middle-class midlife crises, telenovela-style.

Fathers and families and the impossibility of ever fully understanding either are at the heart of My Architect, and like Nathaniel Kahn, we come away from the film with a renewed appreciation of both.

My advice? Grab Mr. Peabody’s Wayback Machine and recast with Jimmy Dean.

Gray's direction is a languid thing, moving at roughly the speed of a maimed snail, and the cast never really gels.

More fun than Peter Hyams' "The Musketeer," and somewhat less so than "The Man in the Iron Mask," this is middling Dumas all the way.

Like the character of Rocky, it's got heart to spare, and is by turns one of the sweetest of the sweet-science pictures as well as one of the most doleful. Fighters fight, it's what they do. And Balboa, god bless him, fights on.

Now it's just another romantic comedy, neither terribly bad nor truly great, buoyed along on currents of hope and post-traumatic good cheer.

It's a kinder, gentler "Tales From the Crypt" that, in the end, is neither kind nor gentle.

As directed by Taymor, it's a competent and nicely designed biopic that for all of the director's attempts to link surrealist film imagery with Hayek's depiction of Kahlo somehow manages to be generally lackluster.

Unfunny and worse, unpleasant, Jingle All the Way is holiday cheer from the warped psyche of a Scrooge. Even the Grinch wouldn't like this one.

In the end, Devil feels like an ingenious short film pumped up for theatrical release. Shyamalan's story is sound, but the execution dragged me to hell and left me there wondering if his much-rumored sequel to "Unbreakable" was ever going to arrive.

It's all noise and flash and chaos, but it lacks virtually everything that made the original television series so memorable.

As a vehicle for Moore's acting abilities (and Mortensen's, for that matter), G.I. Jane is terrific. But as the end-of-summer blockbuster it's doubtless intended to be, it's pretty much a washout.

Lynch, who penned the screenplay with novelist Barry Gifford (Wild at Heart), seems to be attempting to capture not just a sense of place and time (it never works -- Lost Highway is wholly, irrevocably, out of place and without any linear time or time line to speak of), but also a sense of madness.

Apart from its rushed pacing and occasionally stale dialogue, Thinner suffers even more from the fact that it has no redeemable characters.

Carpenter's updating of the classic 1960 chiller is mediocre at best, and at times plummets into unintentional humor. It's arguably the weakest horror film he's ever made.

Forster should be commended for attempting something as daunting as the overreaching Stay, which despite all of its muddled logic and porous reality – or perhaps because of it – forces you to think, a genuine rarity these days.

Like some sort of evil Hollywood hybrid, Encino Man begs, borrows and steals the worst bits from both Iceman and Fast Times at Ridgemont High and ends up being just as vacuous as you think it is.

Most indicative of The Tuxedo's mediocrity, however, is the absence of the always entertaining action outtakes that traditionally roll under the end credits of Chan films; here it's all dialogue flubs barely fit for Dick Clark.

It's a mess, but it's Wenders' mess, and that means that there are any number of salvageable parts to the whole.

A mildly entertaining reworking of the Farrelly Brothers' superior micro-sport parody "Kingpin."

Remarkable, melancholy, and ultimately hopeful documentary.

At its heart the film wants nothing more than to make you giggle, and at that it succeeds admirably.

Ford's Indy, who doesn't quite hang up his fedora at film's end, is still the only cinematic smartass-cum-bullwhipping scholar of antiquities I'd want by my side when push comes to shove comes to Nazis ("I hate these guys"), Russkies, or, for that matter, Al Quaeda. Go get 'em, Indy, and cue the John Williams while you''e at it.

Unsurprisingly, your enjoyment of Shrek 2 will likely be predicated on your enjoyment of Shrek 1.

Jorgen Persson's camerawork is spectacular, illuminating the cobalt blue of the frozen wastes with an almost regal air. As a travelogue, August's film works wonders; as a narrative, it's just not all there.

Despite the movie’s lack of anything resembling a narrative center, Testosterone isn't an entire waste of film stock – Sutcliffe, Sabato Jr., and especially the great Braga all act up a storm.

While the dour pacing and tone rank right up there with watching water freeze in terms of gutpunching suspense, by the time the final, grisly revelation is at hand you're hard-pressed not to sweat.

You couldn't have gotten a more pleasantly bizarre film if Salvador Dali himself had directed, which says a lot for Miller's rabid talents.

Doesn't say much of anything at all about the Balkan conflict -- it's more concerned with MacDowell's shattered face and Brody's passionate, paranoid whinny, which, come to think of it, is just good enough.

Certainly one of the most lovingly crafted, end-of-the-world, cinematic feasts ever made, a spectacle of destruction and survival not even C.B DeMille could have envisioned.

This vehicle for hip-hop star Usher is no blinged-out Beamer rough-riding it over to Jay-Z's joint to wallop some cheeba up off'n the Zeezer's haid; it's more of a Yugo, as in "You go to this wannabe straight-to-video tripe, you deserve what you get."

This is Martin Scorsese, and in the end, it's his town, and his show.