Megan Lehmann

A likable trio of actors struggles valiantly but ultimately fails to keep this dopey buddy comedy afloat.

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

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.

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.

A promising film that is dragged down by the weight of its gray morbidity.

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.

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.

Paints a vivid portrait of a compelling young man but, perhaps inevitably, goes overboard on the deification.

A hit-and-miss affair.

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.

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

Screenwriter Tom Schulman, who won an Oscar for "Dead Poets Society," gives us a narrative reminiscent of a pup chasing its tail, as characters struggle to catch up with inexplicably chopping and changing motives.

Seem to have spliced together two different concepts which, on paper, may have seemed complementary but wind up giving the film a schizophrenic feel.

Basinger appears to be literally phoning in from another movie in the highly improbable, maniacally action-packed thriller-cum-comedy Cellular.

A worthy addition to the cinematic canon, which, at last count, numbered 52 different versions.

Makes its biggest misstep in failing to persuade the viewer the five family members are charming eccentrics rather than irritating weirdos.

This modest little film out of Africa suffers from largely rudderless direction, relying for any sense of profundity on the breathtaking beauty of Abraham Haile Biru's cinematography.

Ultimately, though, the lively whirl of debauched, drug-fueled parties and toffee-nosed exchanges between heiresses and aristocrats fails to mask the essential hollowness of the narrative.

The two leads have strong singing voices, but they're not helped by songs with titles like "It's Time to Disco."

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.

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."

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.

Purists will probably have a conniption at the mere idea of messing with the form, but the worst thing about Jacquot's post-modern treatment is that its incongruity wrenches you out of the story.

Chases its tail for so long, it morphs from a whodunit into a who-cares.

An earnest undertaking that unfortunately plays like a trite Lifetime movie.

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.

An overlong melodrama-by-numbers.

A sporadically amusing curiosity that falls short of effectively satirizing the public's fixation with the minutiae of celebrity lives.