Megan Lehmann

The cheap-looking special effects, embarrassingly clunky attempts at humor and one-dimensional characters are bad enough, but the PG-rated movie's most offensive crime is its uncomfortably lewd interactions between adults and kids.

Spun is quickly exposed as being all flash, no substance.

A hit-and-miss affair.

Lurches so wildly and meaninglessly between genres and time frames that all it creates is motion sickness.

They resort too often to infantile flatulence jokes and fairly obvious gags about errant G-strings, with the anorexic plot culminating in the brothers having - yawn - learned to respect women's feelings.

The plot is thin as consomme, and the thudding score is distracting, but the heartfelt storytelling and Michael Bertl's disarming cinematography make this a food film to savor.

It wouldn't matter so much that this arrogant Richard Pryor wannabe's routine is offensive, puerile and unimaginatively foul-mouthed if it was at least funny.

One of the silliest, most sieve-like screenplays of the year.

Without Branagh's pitch-perfect comedic skills the entire movie could have been crushed under the avalanche of quips and wisecracks tumbling from Kalesniko's too-clever-by-half pen.

An overlong melodrama-by-numbers.

The biggest problem with the corny horror film Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid is that its titular reptiles are about as scary as jellied eels.

One of those all-too-rare cases in which a riveting premise is expertly executed.

The only feeling the character seems capable of is lust -- and when he hits on the male nurse looking after his newborn baby in the hospital, this hollow, unfunny "comedy" moves from merely tedious to nasty.

Stevens has a keen sense of the absurd, but the whole thing is too forced - and his use of "rotomation" (last used in Richard Linklater's "Waking Life") to give a Timothy Leary-swirl to key dramatic moments winds up looking incongruous.

Only really little tykes will find the surplus of pratfalls and poo and fart jokes a hoot.

Smarter than your average serial-killer movie, thanks to unusually fleshed-out characters inhabited by a high- pedigree cast.

Riddick-ulous.

What the filmmakers do to the splendid Moore is simply criminal.

A throwback to the kind of '80s action flicks that had titles like "Adrenaline Force," is enlivened by a raft of celebrity cameos, including a blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance by Gibson.

Harmless, if slightly hyperactive, fun.

Despite oblique references to "Psycho" and "Children of the Corn," Freddy vs. Jason lacks the knowing wit needed to keep it afloat in an age when even the horror spoofs have been spoofed.

A cinematic petit four.

Falls far short of capturing the hedonistic spirit of this ephemeral art community. It's more like a routine home video with arty pretensions.

Too unfocused to make any point worth taking with us into the 2004 presidential campaign.

It's just another discordant note in this tone-deaf movie -- a trashy, exploitative, thoroughly unpleasant experience.

The jaw-droppingly nasty second act is intriguing, but it veers into territory so dark that it sucks the air out of the bouncy chick flick that surrounds it, making for one confused -- and confusing -- comedy.

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.

A confusing mishmash.