Megan Lehmann

Apart from some irritating and redundant camera tricks early on in the film, director Blair Treu plays it white-bread straight, delivering an uncommonly inoffensive, after-school-special-style teen flick.

Despite his innate appeal and nimble line readings, Grace can't surmount the deficiencies of the underdog character screenwriter Victor Levin ("Mad About You") has saddled him with.

What is astonishing is that husband-and-wife writers Wally Wolodarsky (who also directed) and Maya Forbes, with combined credits that include "The Simpsons" and "The Larry Sanders Show," could churn out something this nasty and ludicrous.

There are more misses than hits among the myriad plot strands that make up the sweaty Spanish sex comedy KM.0.

Some of the plot points are confusingly vague, the tone lurches wildly between genres, and the film's epilogue pushes the bounds of believability - but The Hard Word could never be accused of being predictable.

It's a chaste "Austin Powers," a less ridiculous "Casino Royale," a more subtle "Spy Hard" — in other words, yet another James Bond parody.

Another big, dumb action movie in the vein of "XXX," The Transporter is riddled with plot holes big enough for its titular hero to drive his sleek black BMW through.

A visual treat diminished by lifeless dialogue and self-conscious acting.

Kidman gives an other stunning performance in Birth, but it is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma that ultimately reveals . . . not much.

Follows a narrative arc as choppy as a messy windswell, and the result is a dog's dinner of profiles, repetitive narration, safety tips and banal "insights" into the joys and dangers of cresting waves that sometimes reach 70 feet.

"Schindler's List" it ain't, and the whole is rendered occasionally surreal by Janusz Stoklosa's laughably heavy-handed score.

Possibly the most unintentionally hilarious film since Ed Wood's "Plan 9 from Outer Space," Steve Irwin's big-screen debut is destined to become an instant cult classic.

The central narrative is ultimately too one-dimensional to sustain interest.

This Alfie has been castrated.

A cheaply made, occasionally repetitive, but passionately argued documentary.

Apart from the slightly sanitized look of Reagan-era Harlem, this raw ghetto drama rings true, from the smooth dialogue to the unaffected performances of the central actors.

So serious-minded it occasionally teeters on the brink of absurdity.

A well-intentioned, semi-autobiographical pastiche, is trapped in a straitjacket of political correctness, self-conscious acting and spurts of try-hard dialogue that come off as precious.

The movie is saved by its well-trained four-legged stars and the likable Liam Aiken ("Road to Perdition"), who plays 12-year-old loner Owen Baker.

Director Timothy Linh employs a delicate - but never sentimental - touch which, combined with strong performances from the principals and Kramer Morgenthau's vivid cinematography, makes for a transporting experience.

The trouble with authenticity in a punk rock film is that it comes off as amateurish, and while "Dolls" has a feverish energy -- and some good songs -- it suffers from crude performances and a trite rise-and-fall plot.

This is an egotistical endeavor from the daughter of horror director Dario Argento (a producer here), but her raw performance and utter fearlessness make it strangely magnetic.

There's obviously some philosophical comment on the alienating effects of ho-hum toil buried somewhere in this weird mess, which features an irritating, theremin-heavy score. But can you be bothered stifling a yawn and searching for meaning? I would prefer not to.

Many of Kampmeier's characters are either ill-defined or clichéd.

Not as bad as rumor would have it. It's worse.

Incoherent, laugh-free comedy.

Khouri seems never to have met a "chick flick" cliché she didn't like, from the ubiquity of emotional telephone conversations to the lachrymose (but entirely predictable and dramatically flabby) reconciliation at the end.

It's all entertaining enough, but don't look for any hefty anti-establishment message in what is essentially a whip-crack of a buddy movie that ends with a whimper.

It's so gosh-darned darling it almost turns your stomach.

Tedious and obnoxiously manipulative.

Disaster movies, from "The Poseidon Adventure" to "Towering Inferno," are impossible to take seriously and "Day" is no exception - it's simply a fast-moving pageant of end-of-the-world eye candy.

Much of the action is strident and cartoonish -- but the romance at the core remains tender and true.

Where Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill: Vol. 2" radiates freshness and vigor, Man on Fire feels vaguely like something left over from the 1980s, when action heroes were one-note tough guys methodically picking off baddies.

A wickedly sexy Daryl Hannah is particularly memorable as the Pilager family's black sheep Maddy.

Unfortunately, the vehicle chosen for the corn-rowed cutie's Hollywood coming-out party is pretty lame.

There's little action in this snail-paced bore, you'll need a high-powered magnifying glass to spot the comedy and the "buddies" have about as much chemistry as a pair of wet socks.

Some solid performances and pretty scenery don't do much to conceal that there's a whole heap of nothing at the core of this slight coming-of-age/coming-out tale.

Ryan spends much of the grubby-looking boxing drama Against the Ropes with her face screwed up in distaste, as if a dirty sock is being waved under her nose. Perhaps it's because the movie she's in stinks.

How do you inject life into a film whose central character is dull, slow, stupid and grim?If you're Arnaud Desplechin, you don't.

The film is ultimately a one-man show -- and when that man is the singularly crafty Depp, it's hard to look away.

Much of the movie's gentle charm comes from Mehta, the director's younger brother, making his acting debut.

The film is too low-key to be the farcical rock-and-roll jape it sometimes seems to strive for, yet too lighthearted to be affecting.

Can be summed up by the fact that Ashton Kutcher, making a glorified cameo as a narcissistic model-slash-actor, is the best thing in it.

Lacking quite the zip and zing of "Run Lola Run," this lively indie tale of a drug deal gone awry could be alternately titled "Walk Fast Bobby Walk Fast."

Light, doggedly formulaic romantic comedy that's almost instantly forgettable despite the sunny presence of teen queen Mandy Moore.

If you can overlook its TV-episode look, occasional lapses in logic and detours into lurid overkill, this old-school psychological thriller, which marries a tracking-the-serial-killer narrative with occult themes, is a creepy diversion.

Hokey, overstuffed plot and a messily hand-stitched, often illogical script.

Overripe dialogue and a fevered score fail to inject any real tension, and the accentless English spoken throughout a film set entirely in France is ludicrous and jarring.

A cheerfully trashy, dead-on spoof of the B-movie genre, boasts the kind of cheese-tastic effects, overcooked dialogue and rigid performances that would make Ed Wood proud.

A sluggish meander through the life of the man considered by many to be a deity of golfing.

S.W.A.T. boasts the kernel of a good idea - but it gets buried in the chaff of half-baked plot threads, partly realized characters and unstructured pandemonium.

First-time director Ed Solomon has corralled a stellar cast for his indie drama Levity -- and then put them through paces as plodding as a draft horse's.

Self-indulgent folly.

Kalem's grasp of dramatic storytelling is no firmer, and the disorderly film merely chases its tail for the second half, going nowhere fast.

An exercise in drudgery... The whole thing is so patently uninteresting it's hard to see it as anything but a Douglas family vanity project.

The cheerfully inane comedy Connie and Carla all but suffocates beneath a high-stepping, show-stopping, ear-splitting deluge of musical theater staples, from "Cats" to "Oklahoma!," "Jesus Christ Superstar" to "Fiddler on the Roof."

Startlingly immature.

The problem is that there's not a sympathetic character among the nasty, brutish males. And the women, except for a flashy cameo by a swimsuit-clad Paris Hilton, are given short shrift.

A skin-deep examination of a shallow lifestyle that draws a conclusion so logical it's almost superfluous.

The worst crime perpetrated in the Swiss-cheese screenplay by Gerald Di Pego ("Angel Eyes") is the cynical use of a mother's love for her child as a plot device for an intelligence-insulting sci-fi dud.

Has just enough fairy dust to charm its target audience.

A good edit would have allowed the film's worthy, obviously heartfelt, message to shine.

Boasts a stellar ensemble cast and some priceless one-liners -- but those pearls of acerbic wit have been strung together on a cheap piece of thread which almost inevitably breaks in the third act.

A tightly drawn, propulsive thriller with some pleasingly unexpected kinks in the tale and a couple of believable performances from Charlize Theron and Kevin Bacon in the leads.