Mark Holcomb

There's something refreshing about a pulp drama that turns on the notion that redemption is a sucker's fantasy. That knowledge may not have saved Goines, but it informs Dickerson's adaptation and results in stellar neo-noir.

Director Goyer, who wrote all three Blade films, deserves credit for sticking with the character, but aside from the effectively staged action sequences Trinity is cheap-looking and laughably inept.

About as threadbare as a favorite childhood plushy. What's more, trying to keep the story line of strained meta-sequel Freddy Vs. Jason straight requires too much of a cogitative investment.

Danny Provenzano's mafioso melodrama is the immoral vanity project to end immoral vanity projects.

Thematic muddle aside, the film's appeal lies in Burke's ranting charisma, Julie Christie's thankless turn as a sympathetic doctor, and Michael Spiller's radiant cinematography, which frequently captures the mythic grandeur that eludes Hartley's narrative grasp.

It's the summer's most disingenuous movie -- a real achievement in a waning season that included Tim Burton's "Banana Splits" remake.

The results are predictably lachrymose, especially with the reinstated "unhappy" ending from the original French version.

It all becomes little more than feel-good-about-feeling-bad window dressing, like an issue of "Utne Reader" in Dolby Surround Sound.

Suited only for unwitting under-twelvers (though even they may not outlast the midpoint evaporation of Lawrence's shtick).

John Schultz's wan, unfunny The Honeymooners is unlikely to tickle devotees of Jackie Gleason's archetypal yuk-fest.

Burt Reynolds turns up as scruffy mountain man, sparking unfulfilled expectations of some primo Deliverance jokes.

Despite a couple of inventive CGI effects (one involving mass evisceration), the results are more predictable and less frightening than a Con Ed bill in mid August.

Griffin and Solvang's obliviousness, and the filmmakers' habit of mugging condescendingly while conducting interviews doesn't help either.

Levant and his screenwriting posse attempt to wring maximum hilarity from this setup, but it's just too schizoid.

Like the action movies of yore (you know, the 1980s), Catwoman is simultaneously overstuffed and undernourished.

The pivotal plot twist isn't hard to predict, and Brit theater vet Hamm and screenwriter Mark Bomback rely on jolts that date back to the silent era.

With its lukewarm gender politicking and clumsy performances, Make a Wish achieves only one real distinction: It has to be the dullest lesbian campout movie ever made.

At its heart is a deep, unresolved ambivalence about child rearing.

A callous piece of work that exploits images of children in pain or jeopardy.

McTiernan's Rollerball is a movie masochist's delight.

Avoiding this lump of low-camp lion poo couldn't be easier, what with MGM dumping it into a lone Manhattan venue, but if you're in the mood for some unscripted belly laughs or a catnap, Fascination should do the trick.

The most that can be said for Slackers -- aside from the unqualified pleasure of Schwartzman's unfaked, puppyish weirdness -- is that it doesn't abandon its putrid ideals for the sake of a neat finish.

A kind of "Sex and the City" for L.A. bottom-feeders awash in clichéd, self-loathing misogyny that would make Howard Stern flinch.

Sure to appear in everyone's worst-of lists at year's end, to say nothing of a few bad dreams, Bryan Johnson's Vulgar is an unclassifiably awful study in self- and audience-abuse.

What finally makes Town Bloody Hall so compelling -- and unsettling -- is the impression that such serious, spirited debate is a thing of the past.