Nathan Rabin

Takes too long to get going to qualify unequivocally as a good movie, but when Jovovich finally starts kicking zombified ass, it becomes good enough.

Longtime Steven Spielberg collaborator Frank Marshall is smart enough to know his core audience of kiddies came to see the dogs, who take center stage in many of the film's best sequences, especially a jolting leopard-seal attack that's as terrifying as anything in "Jurassic Park."

The film's only real bright spot is Seth Green, who, as Culkin's sidekick, brings Party Monster a droll wit it otherwise lacks. It's such a dreary mess that when Culkin insists that life in prison isn't too different from being a club kid, it's all too easy to believe him.

Ron Perlman returns as the film's loveable title character, a demon gone good who's tough on the outside but tender underneath, with a soft spot for kittens, candy, and babies.

An unusually perceptive look at subjects seldom explored in American film—the emotional lives of working-class extended families and middle-aged sexuality—Twice In A Lifetime is especially poignant when documenting the collateral damage the central affair causes to Hackman's wife (a touching Ellen Burstyn) and bitter adult daughter (Amy Madigan).

The early, explosively funny skits and a loose, engagingly adventurous spirit are enough to ensure this uneven but often delightful project the cult fame that accompanies pretty much everything associated with Stella mainstay Wain.

Voices is visually impressive, and it sustains a mood of downbeat romanticism throughout, but because it lacks an essential core of humanity, it's never as haunting or resonant as it should be.

An auspicious debut for writer-director Michael Burke, the film makes a superb actor's showcase for Hirsch as well as Guiry.

Unsurprisingly, the unimaginatively filmed but high-intensity gospel performances prove a highlight, radiating an energy and urgency that the film's stilted dialogue, awkward romance, and clunky plotting can only aspire to.

The film's absolute conviction keeps it from feeling formulaic.

Skips right past depressing on its way to apocalyptic.

An overblown science-fiction epic in which ostensibly unthinking, unfeeling stem-cell-like entities not only think and feel, but look and act like glamorous movie stars.

It'd take more than potentially lethal amounts of alcohol to make this derivative trash endurable.

A supremely unhurried filmmaker, Duvall lets the story meander sleepily en route to a conclusion as ho-hum as everything preceding it.

Quirky, unsatisfying portrait.

In its own subdued, mellow way, Once is just about perfect.

Sneaks in the occasional child-molestation or bestiality joke, but otherwise seems content to cannibalize the broad slapstick of Zucker's halcyon days with Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams.

Regrettably, Bate uses many of the tools of tabloid television in making his case, including heavy-handed reenactments, an ominous, sinister score, and overly dramatic narration delivered in a voice shaking with outrage.

Director Sam Weisman's pushy, subtlety-free direction certainly doesn't help. Martin is still capable of making a decent film, but The Out-Of-Towners isn't it.

A sweet, raucously funny, comic Western that corrects a glaring historical injustice by finally surveying the Old West through the eyes of cows rather than cowboys.

Given the duo’s withering take on capitalism, it’s ironic that their stumbling second feature feels throughout like an infomercial for a shtick whose expiration date is rapidly approaching.

A repellent orgy of gratuitous violence and hackneyed melodrama, Deuces Wild marks a grim nadir for everyone involved, including late cinematographer John A. Alonzo (Chinatown, Harold & Maude), who deserved a much better swan song.

Wolf Creek is the kind of well-executed sleazefest that makes audiences feel not just creeped-out but downright dirty, as if it would take a three-hour-long shower just to wash all the grit and grease away.

Nothing about Hey Arnold! The Movie cries out for the big-screen treatment, but it at least makes the transition from television to film with its charm intact.

West is heavy on Vaughn, at least initially, but woefully short on comedy.

Savagely funny black comedy.

In a squandered lead performance, the adorable, winning Schwartzman plays the non-adorable, non-winning title character.

Though it never really taps into the whole JFK-as-alien-sex-fiend plot as a source of satire, Species 2 is still the superior piece of trash its predecessor should have been.

Crazy Heart could use more rough edges, but while it’s a little too sentimental and tidy, Bridges’ humane, deeply empathetic lead performance makes it easy to root for one man’s redemption.

Moore hasn't tackled a lead role since the turn of the century, and judging by her eminently forgettable work here, she hasn't spent that time painstakingly honing her chops.

A corny yet unexpectedly moving scene in which Morgan is moved to tears by Loretta Devine's simple kindness helps make the film's shift into inspirational drama far more palatable than it really has any right to be.

In the midst of this comic black hole, only Snoop Dogg and Method Man emerge unscathed, as even material this bad can't mask their languid, long-limbed charisma.

Too grim and humorless to even qualify as trashy fun.

Buck Howard has a nice feel for its tacky, second-rate show-business milieu--a rinky-dink world of telethons, small towns starved for entertainment, and entertainers whose careers have been in freefall since Hollywood Squares went off the air.

Rosner works for famed Democratic strategist James Carville, who stops just short of dry-humping the camera lens in his hunger for the spotlight here. Our Brand Is Crisis is full of strangely resonant parallels to American politics.

Bound to wind up as one of 1999's worst films.

Aspires to the sublime, but it stalls at the merely ridiculous.

A mess, but for the most part it's a fascinating mess. It helps that it boasts great acting all around--not just from Cusack, Thornton, and Jolie, but also from Cate Blanchett

A low-key, tough little thriller punctuated by casual bursts of brutality and deadpan humor, Charley Varrick is informed by a quiet professionalism that suits a movie about feds and criminals doing their jobs, whether that means laundering money, making fake passports, or robbing banks.

For much of its duration, December is poignantly bittersweet, but the closing sugar rush washes its pleasing ambiguities away.

Seed Of Chucky goes even further toward comedy over horror, but the Chucky-as-comic-antihero gag has grown stale.

For a film about shimmering surfaces and the glittering allure of the superficial, G boasts a depressingly flat, undistinguished visual style, and whenever Bill Conti's score reaches for rarified, elegant romance, it instead suggests the dewy earnestness of a feminine hygiene commercial.

The definition of a vanity film, Weber's latest opus lacks the focus even to qualify as dilettantish. Offering plenty for the eye and little for the brain, the film suffers from a dearth of ideas as it glides pleasantly but emptily from one gorgeous surface to another.

Barney's Great Adventure will bore adults to tears.

It's a testament to Michael Keaton's fine lead performance that White Noise doesn't come off as laughably preposterous.

Simultaneously a contrived piece of hokum and an absorbing, old-fashioned mystery.

It's amusing but facile, reasonably clever but hopelessly glib.

Feels stitched together from bits and pieces of lame '80s buddy-cop movies.

For all its gender-bending, La Mujer De Mi Hermano's primary appeal is Mori's stunning beauty.

As the conceptually similar documentary "Spellbound" proved, spelling bees are innately dramatic. But that doesn't keep Atchison from constantly pushing the film toward theatrical moments instead of letting the drama arise organically from the story.

Stop-Loss is a human story first and foremost, and Peirce and her stellar young cast ensure that the message never gets in the way of the storytelling.

The result rises to the level of mediocrity thanks largely to the magnetic presence of The Rock, who's made a smooth transition from professional wrestling to leading-man status with this and "The Scorpion King."

With its mixture of whimsy and special-effects-driven humor, My Favorite Martian aims to blend E.T. and Men In Black, but in its sad, mercenary shamelessness, it ends up recalling Mac And Me instead.

Maines' big mouth and winning candor got her into trouble, but Shut Up & Sing suffers from filmmakers who are intent on playing it safe.

Secret Window is almost worth seeing for his characteristically assured performance alone, but Koepp sabotages Depp and his surroundings with an ending so atrocious, it callously betrays everything that came before it.

Though steeped in both subgenres, Never Die Alone subverts that vicarious enjoyment by showing violence and abuse so unrelentingly ugly that only a sadist could derive the least bit of pleasure from it.

Enduring Love's plot inevitably drifts into “Fatal Attraction” territory, but its wholesale immersion in Craig's deteriorating condition render it a wrenching, uncompromising study of the human mind in freefall.

At its best, Lost Embrace conveys, with real warmth, the hopelessly intertwined pasts and shared futures of a community of outsiders and immigrants. At worst, it's a sitcom without a laugh track.

The heroic struggle of its subject is clearly meant to inspire, but it also seems destined to shame weak-willed viewers who'd crumble under much less formidable obstacles.

The rare popcorn movie that delivers. High-spirited and kinetic, it's the most endearingly goofy low comedy since "How High."

Likely to appeal only to undiscriminating nudity-- and gore -- starved adolescents.

Schnack's sprightly, engaging documentary Gigantic takes a leisurely stroll through TMBG's career, mixing energetic live performances with smartly chosen clips, a few quirky detours, and compelling interviews with the likes of Dave Eggers, Sarah Vowell, and Ira Glass.

Not since "Battlefield Earth" pitted overacting, nine-foot-tall Psychlos against puny man-animals has there been an interspecies match-up this perversely uninteresting.

A film divided against itself. It’s really two movies, one silly and one serious. Too bad neither is particularly compelling.

Twohy and co-screenwriters Darren Aronofsky and Lucas Sussman don't show their hand until late in the film, but by that time, Below has grown slack and silly.

So audaciously bad it's good, which is about as close to quality as Seagal is likely to get these days.

Explorers was rushed into theaters before Dante could work out the kinks or create a third act he was satisfied with, and the result is a strange, wounded beast, filled with wonderful sequences and homemade charm, but also confused and anticlimactic.

It's easily the most painful comedy of the year; in the sadomasochistic world of Knoxville and friends, that isn't criticism so much as high praise.

Though The Eclipse travels a sleepy route to a shrug of anticlimax, it’s refreshing to see a film acknowledge that life and love don’t end at 50, even in the outsized shadow of a soulmate’s death.

Rock acquits himself nicely as the responsible brother and resident straight man, but everyone else in the cast has apparently been advised to mug shamelessly and yell their lines as loudly as possible.

Palindromes becomes a strangely compelling fractured fable, a grim cinematic fairy tale heightened by Nathan Larson's delicate, bittersweet score.

A fine cast and breezy tone elevate it to exactly the type of adequate time-waster made for intercontinental airplane flights.

Schwartzman steals Slackers without much effort, but it's not worth the theft.

Jann Turner's shiny, happy crowd-pleaser gleans a tiny shred of substance and social relevance from its exploration of racial and class politics in a post-apartheid South Africa that's still very much split across race lines.

For neophyte cinephiles, A Decade Under The Influence should serve as a lively primer on a seminal film era, but its reverent tone is antithetical to the rule-breaking spirit it celebrates.

Squad joins The Lost Boys, Fright Night, Gremlins, and Poltergeist in a winning '80s subgenre dedicated to ghoulies invading the suburbs.

Project provides an unmistakably one-sided view of rap as God's gift to the poor, angry, black, and young, but given the beating rap has taken in the press lately (please Oprah, don't hurt 'em!), the film's pro-rap cheerleading couldn't be more timely or necessary.

It's good to have Seinfeld back, even in this watered-down form.

Surprisingly successful blend of goofy political farce and sober family drama.

A pleasant piece of commercial filmmaking, but as a satirical comedy, it's devoid of laughs and insight.

It's a black-and-white shocker, a crazed psycho-melodrama, a pitch-black show-biz satire, a warped meditation on the traumatizing effects of child stardom, and a gothic tale of familial dysfunction as its dysfunctioniest.

I wish the film had made its points a little more artfully and implicitly, rather than simply sticking them in McDonald and McKinney’s mouths, but Brain Candy has an overarching satirical vision that makes it much more than just an assemblage of mostly funny running gags and stand-alone bits.

What's perhaps most surprising about European Gigolo is its reactionary streak, exemplified by knee-jerk attacks on Europe's equally knee-jerk anti-Americanism. Then again, that seems fitting. The sequel functions as the ultimate Ugly American, good for a few cheap, vulgar laughs and nothing else.

Pearce is usually dependable, but here, he's utterly unconvincing as a slick phony, and the film peddles a bogus bill of goods in kind.

A slick new meta-romantic comedy selling a transparent yet strangely irresistible fantasy of upscale romance among the beautiful but guarded.

The glacially beautiful new documentary March Of The Penguins confirms that no computer-animated or hand-drawn penguin could ever match the curious majesty of the genuine article.

Thankfully, it boasts a story that doesn't require a surplus of style to be compelling.

A giant Rorschach blot of a film, Patton can be read any number of ways, from a sly satire of gung-ho militarism to an epic glorification of Patton's old-school mentality.

Alternately hypnotic and headache-inducing.

Beauty Shop's shtick gets old and tired pretty quickly, but a breezy tone and air of easygoing likeability carry it a long way.

The story told by e-dreams is inherently compelling, full of dark humor drawn from a deep well of hubris and historical irony, but the film would be a lot sharper had the filmmakers not fallen under Park's charismatic cyber-spell.

A funny, boozy, ramshackle party.

As slick and attractive as its cast. But the movie gets away from Shafer.

Initially, the film comes off as a poor man's "Memento," but it gradually becomes apparent that it's only really interested in its protagonist's Alzheimer's as a cheap plot point to be manipulated or discarded as the filmmakers see fit.

Despite a novel premise and an appealing, energetic cast, Full Of It seldom finds magic in its supernatural whimsy.

Isn't as sharp or consistent as Murphy's "The Nutty Professor," but it's an amusing, lightweight diversion.

At its best, Caramel boasts a quietly engaging slice-of-slice casualness.

With their third film, the Polish brothers find their authorial voice, resulting in a lyrical work whose free-floating Lynchian weirdness coalesces into an unexpectedly touching movie.

Limply, tardily trying to cash in on the success of the Indiana Jones movies.

Revenge movies often end with the message that vengeance is empty and futile, but it's never encouraging when revenge seems pointless from the start.

While there are moments throughout when the film looks primed to break out of the indie arthouse ghetto, it never quite pulls it off.

A painfully earnest drama about post-traumatic stress disorder that sticks so closely to the soldiers-coming-home template, writer-director Ryan Piers Williams seems to be diligently working through a checklist of returning-warrior-movie clichés.

The boys similarly deserve very minor props for choosing a satirical target that lends itself to satire: the glum, self-important Twilight novels and movies. Sadly, that's where the filmmakers' mild accomplishments end and the groaningly predictable hackwork begins.

A harrowing, unblinking look at the crimes committed by the Khmer Rouge, the genocidal regime that by some accounts killed off more than a quarter of Cambodia's population between 1975 and 1979.

Somehow, music-video veteran David Meyers fails to hurtle this project into the pantheon of great horror movies.

The film begins like a Frank Capra movie--pure-hearted idealist takes on corporate fat cats against impossible odds and triumphs--but ends like a Shakespearean tragedy.

All too effectively conveys the claustrophobic horror of being shackled in a small space with two whiny, hateful children.

Angio captures the outlandish twists and turns of Van Peebles' life with humor, color, and a welcome lightness of touch.

For all its florid pretensions and epic length, the film's overwrought take on its subject's not-so-rosy life leaves behind no lasting insight.

While “Final Destination” was gimmicky enough, its sequel begins with the same flawed premise, then piles on layers of contrivances until it reaches a level of implausibility rarely seen outside of films pitting giant radioactive monsters against each other.

Filled with shadows both literal and figurative, Night Moves elegantly combines the hard-edged pessimism, crackling banter, and all-consuming darkness of classic noir with the paranoia and bitterness that characterizes so much '70s cinema.

Sadly, there's a thin line between goofing irreverently on the maddeningly convoluted nature of spy thrillers and actually being a muddled mess, and Fay Grim crosses it constantly during its deadly second hour.

When the film ends after a mere eighty-one minutes it feels like Toback and company simply gave up and decided to let the audience go home twenty minutes early as a covert apology for the film they just endured, a glum little trifle that fails as both a James Toback movie and a Molly Ringwald vehicle.

Brown sounds guarded throughout, and as a result, Jim Brown: All-American provides a curiously remote portrait that's often compelling, but seems to conceal as much as it reveals.

Calling Schrader's masterpiece a mere biopic doesn't do it justice. It's more a dreamy, hypnotic meditation on the tragic intersection of Mishima's oeuvre and existence that takes place as much in its subject's fevered imagination as the outside world.

Ledger is a charismatic, conflicted hero who internalizes his character's shame and anguish to powerful effect. Wes Bentley is similarly strong as Ledger's best friend turned romantic rival, and Kapur makes the most of Africa's breathtaking desert, crafting a gorgeous spectacle that's at once stately and hyper-real.

Schneider and director/co-writer/Animal vet Tom Brady continue to subscribe to the notion that any joke worth making is worth beating to death, but there's still something strangely endearing about Schneider's willingness to do anything for a laugh.

Favors unforgettable images over in-depth storytelling, and prioritizing electrifying moments over narrative arcs.

Capote begins as a sprawling, vivacious comedy-drama in which Hoffman's Capote is only one of a number of fascinating characters, including Chris Cooper's upstanding, ramrod-straight lawman and Keener's tough, blunt assistant/sidekick/foil/author.

Bratz's strong anti-clique sermonizing would be slightly more convincing if it weren't tethered to a movie romanticizing the most awesome clique ever.

A skillfully acted and psychologically well-crafted but ultimately disappointing thriller.

There’s an element of self-deprecation to Hogan’s performance—a winking, grinning acknowledgment of the character’s absurdity that nicely undercuts the macho fantasy.

The film's subjects are almost uniformly likable, self-deprecating, funny, and hyper-verbal, and their peculiar passion for crosswords and the sense of genial camaraderie among buffs proves surprisingly infectious.

While its look at interclass romance among African-Americans and the struggles of a working-class single father is fresh and vital, the heavy-handed execution isn't.

Proyas is a veteran music-video director, and for its first half the film feels like one long video, albeit in a good way. He initially lets music and images tell his story rather than words, but in its second half, Garage Days succumbs to its overreaching, convoluted plot.

Dark Water devolves into something resembling genre schlock, albeit the kind featuring zesty supporting performances from the classy, Oscar-nominated likes of John C. Reilly, Tim Roth, and Pete Postlethwaite.

Carnahan alternates gritty neo-realism with bursts of extreme stylization -- most notably in a breathless opening chase filmed with handheld cameras -- but thankfully, his stylistic flourishes are in the service of the film's story, not the other way around.

Doesn't aspire to do much more than disseminate Chomsky's ideas. On that level, it's a success, but on every other level, it's downright snooze-inducing.

I went into Big Trouble with exceedingly low expectations and was pleasantly surprised...Much of what makes the film so unexpectedly endearing is that Falk's incorrigible drifter seems motivated less by greed than by a boyish spirit of adventure gone horribly awry.

Snake Eyes can't sustain its masterful first hour, but it's better than just about any action movie this year.

Ultimately feel so empty and forgettable.

Few actresses exude restless intelligence as effortlessly as Stiles, which is fortunate, since Martha Coolidge's film relies on that forceful charisma to make it past awful dialogue, contrived situations, and hokey use of Disney-style butterflies.

Undertow may prove the least immediately satisfying of Green's films, but it remains an achievement, emotionally rich and rife with biblical and mythic undertones.

Love looks and sounds great, but in depicting N’Dour as a lofty symbol for music’s power to bridge worlds and inspire, it sometimes loses sight of the man.

It may be a dishonest, xenophobic, exploitative act of historical revisionism, but it's effective, and Jack Cardiff's cinematography lends Rambo's comic-book adventures an epic sweep.

Explores love in all its myriad forms, from the sickeningly sappy to the cornball to the groaningly precious and obnoxiously cute.

Coach Carter eventually curdles into a grim love letter to discipline and accountability, which makes it the perfect sports film for W.'s second term, but not a whole lot of fun.

The only bright spot--beyond McConaughey's boyish Southern charm and a pleasant soundtrack--is Zooey Deschanel as Parker's acid-tongued roommate, whose quirks include alcoholism and nihilism. Someone really should tell Deschanel that she's already too big and too good for thankless Eve Arden roles.

By this point, the rhythms of Smith's dialogue are as predictable and mannered as haikus, and like sitcoms, Clerks II is mostly appealing in its familiarity, from the rat-a-tat cussing to the cameos from Smith's repertory company to the extended riffing on "Star Wars" and geek culture.

Sometimes feels like an all-time classic short film stretched to feature length, but it’s blissfully short, and it peaks at the end with a groovy cartoon during the closing credits.

Don't Look Back is a spellbinding portrayal of a gifted artist at the peak of his creative brilliance.

Feels like a half-hearted shrug of a sequel, an attempt to put a lucrative franchise on life support.

A horrible, horrible film that wears out its welcome before its opening credits.

There's something disconcerting and strained about plastic smiles and speed-fueled peppiness of dancers in old musicals, a forced bonhomie that's borderline creepy. Pennies brilliantly exploits that blatantly artificial pep in queasy, disquieting ways.

New In Town grinds its plucky protagonist through a predictable arc from dispassionate big-city ice queen to redeemed small-town tenderheart.

A very pleasant surprise, Next Day Air is the rare crime comedy that does justice to both sides of the equation.

Not surprisingly, Boys works much better as an Owen vehicle than a movie--it’s a great, meaty part in a decidedly less-than-great film.

It takes more than just the ominous tread of Nazi boots to infuse gravitas into this well-intentioned but dreary look at the female mind and body during wartime.

Young Frankenstein (1974) and High Anxiety are as much loving homage as irreverent spoof.

Spears is filmed and costumed in such a harsh, unflattering manner that it looks like Christina Aguilera bribed the crew to make her rival look as hideous as possible. Spears' ubiquity has spawned an inevitable backlash, but the awful Crossroads ought to do more harm to her career than even the most powerful Britney-basher.

So with two great, ideally cast actors and such potentially fascinating subject matter, why does Love Ranch feel like a clumsy TV movie?

It's a relentlessly downbeat, well-acted melodrama that's easy to admire, but intentionally impossible to enjoy.

Undiscriminating comedy fans hungering for the High School High of superhero parodies need look no further.

Paint Your Wagon divided audiences and critics. With its central three-way marriage, debauchery, polygamy, Paddy Chayevsky script, and unconventional stars, it was too damn weird and adult for family audiences and too corny, old-fashioned, and bloated for the druggies and stoners.

Vardalos has brought back the tourist comedy and delivered the dumbed-down "If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium" no one wanted.

The most perversely unnecessary sequel in recent memory.

Kinnear's mesmerizing performance comes close to redeeming Auto Focus, suggesting depths the film never gets around to exposing, but Schrader's alternately flat and histrionic storytelling sends the film hurtling beyond redemption.

Powered by a soundtrack featuring many of classic-rock radio's most comically overplayed songs, The Hollywood Knights has almost nothing going for it aside from a surplus of enthusiastic vulgarity.

Offers a smattering of big laughs and an overall tone of ramshackle likability, but considering Rock's talent and the film's potential for smart satire, Head Of State registers as a somewhat wasted opportunity.

In a pressure-cooker environment, Pennebaker and Hegedus' moderately engaging but ultimately unsatisfying documentary feels disappointingly lukewarm.

It wants to humanize the plight of the disabled, but it undermines its worthy aims by presenting its leads as martyrs and saints.

Foulkrod's film covers little new ground, but some painful truths are worth repeating.

Has enough atmosphere for three films, enough colorful grotesques for several more, and not enough of a script for one.

An unspeakable nadir in the career of its writer-director-star.

Bittersweet and beautifully realized, harsh but humane, Greenberg is a self-consciously small film that nevertheless leaves an indelible mark.

Things pick up a bit toward the end, abetted by a string of relatively energetic musical numbers, but they can only partially redeem a film that's as pointless as it is perfunctory.

A slightly above-average slasher film that's only partially redeemed by small but endearingly loopy shreds of black humor.

Zoom suffers from following three "X-Men" movies and "Sky High," but even if it preceded them, it'd still qualify as little more than a cheap, ugly, forgettable footnote to the seemingly endless superhero boom.

There's a wealth of great material here, especially a shattering performance of Coldplay's "Fix You" by a soulful mountain of a man named Fred Knittle.

Too bad he's caught in a movie that all too accurately captures the tenor of its time with its slick, superficial, coked-up, money-drunk emptiness.

The Razor's Edge never quite reaches its destination but there are all manner of minor pleasures to be gleaned along the way.

It's not even bad enough to be any fun.

Gets off to a bumpy start and runs into trouble along the way, but once it gets going, it's surprisingly warm and engaging.

At two and a half hours, it's a bit too long, but it's probably the most emotionally authentic film noir since The Grifters.

Compassion and sociological acuity can only take a film so far, however, and clunky dialogue, comically broad supporting characters, and often-amateurish acting sabotage much of Suburbia's plot-and-dialogue-heavy second half. But it still shows enormous empathy and sensitivity in capturing the angst and alienation of American youth, making it seem both rooted in a specific time and place and strangely timeless.

With Dad and his last writer-director effort, "Sleeping Dogs Lie," Goldthwait has accomplished the formidable feat of making wry, tender, fundamentally sweet comedies about the human condition that just happen to center on acts of autoerotic asphyxiation and bestiality, respectively. That isn't easy.

Out-and-out dud, underlining how far the mighty have fallen.

Voight and Young play the kind of old friends who know each other’s many faults well enough for their bond to be characterized more by richly merited resentment than affection. After spending two plodding hours with these jerks, audiences will know that feeling all too well.

Kinky Boots doesn't seem to realize that its time came and went long, long ago.

Uncovered could easily come off as dull or strident, but the administration's arrogance and disregard for the safeguards and transparency necessary for democracy give the documentary an outraged charge that overshadows its staid execution.

In Amandla!, history doesn't just come alive--it sings, dances, and issues a passionate plea for justice and equality. The film joyously celebrates music as both a means to an end and an end unto itself.

Tony Scott’s bracingly awful remake/desecration of the classic ‘70s thriller.

Superfly is in many ways classic pulp, but O'Neal and Mayfield push it toward a sort of epic grandeur.

In the wonderful new rockumentary The Fearless Freaks, Flaming Lips fans describe the band's live performances in almost spiritual terms, and for once, their fervor seems wholly justified.

Zwigoff has a rich comic gallery of pretentious boobs to lampoon. But his satirical target just seems too easy this time around: It's hard to spoof institutions that already veer so close to self-parody.

As a comedy, it's painfully unfunny, and as a drama, it's both silly and overcrowded with unnecessary characters and subplots. Still, Best Men has its moments.

A manipulative attempt to swindle money out of the generation that came of age during the Harding Administration, Out To Sea has the wit and sophistication of your average Fox TV pilot.

The least necessary sequel since "Agent Cody Banks" embarked on a London mission a few weeks ago.

A hysterically over-the-top backstage melodrama whose temperature seldom falls below overheated.

At its best, A Series Of Unfortunate Events is the stuff nightmares are made of, a sick joke of a film that realizes the best children's entertainment doesn't hide from the bleaker side of life, but plunges into the void and respects kids enough to assume they can handle it.

Forever Mine explores many of Schrader's pet themes—obsession, revenge, jealousy, betrayal, guilt—but they've seldom felt as empty, shallow, or ridiculous.

Muddled, painfully earnest documentary.

Ice Cube serves as the film's solid moral center, with a dizzying variety of supporting characters in his orbit. A refreshingly class-conscious comedy-drama that refuses to talk down to its audience, Barbershop tackles serious issues.

Coasts heavily on Chan and Wilson's charm, which would be a big problem if those prodigiously gifted stars weren't taking on roles that fit like two pairs of comfortable slippers.

So much fun that its considerable worth as history and sociology seems almost incidental.

The female lead in Duplicity calls for the kind of atomic, glow-in-the-dark, Rita Hayworth-in-Gilda sexuality that is most assuredly out of Roberts' range. Angelina Jolie effortlessly conjures up that kind of fire-breathing sexiness. Roberts? Not so much.

Once Milk And Honey stops lurching after huge, actorly moments of near-psychotic intensity, it loosens up and actually gets around to telling a reasonably compelling human story.

Thief is giddy with eye candy, but the scenery is always secondary to the screenplay, which well serves the blinding star-power on display.

Roberts blunders amiably and cluelessly through his amateurish eyesore of a documentary on society's obsession with beauty, perpetually searching for a thesis that will transform a shambling mess of half-baked thoughts and pointless digressions into a real documentary.

Snow Dogs never comes close to transcending its own inherent silliness, but Coburn, Gooding, and a genial tone help make the movie harmless tomfoolery the whole family can tolerate.

Civil Brand's aesthetic is pure mid-'70s blaxploitation, and not in an ironic or reverent sense. Even the heavy-handed political rhetoric is in keeping with the neo-blaxploitation vibe, since even bad blaxploitation movies often had revolutionary undercurrents.

"Potter" periodically brings Zellweger's charming drawings to life in elegantly animated sequences that are as delightful and lyrical as the rest of the film is stilted and clumsy.

Intermittently funny, and at times even affecting, but its drama veers into soap-opera territory, and its comedy too often reeks of sitcom laziness.

Tyson can be brutal with himself, but Toback's fawning documentary lets him off easy.

Follows a dispiritingly predictable arc.

Reno 911's anti-heroes are doomed, deluded losers, but they engender a strange sympathy all the same.

Anyone older than eight is likely to find it a ridiculously extravagant exercise in stupidity.

Throughout its first two acts, Bandslam is charming, sweet, and funny enough to merit inclusion in the upper echelon of teen comedies. Then comes a third act weighed down with arbitrary romantic conflicts, leaden melodrama, and a tiresome subplot.

At once inspirational and deeply depressing, With All Deliberate Speed, directed by "Hoop Dreams" producer Peter Gilbert, is too candid and forthright about the current state of race relations to allow for the sort of cheery, unambiguous uplift favored by civil-rights documentaries.

Dash directs with a certain visual flare and a sense of humor, but as the film lumbers toward its climax, keeping track of the innumerable allegiances and double-crosses becomes an exercise in futility.

Murray and Jarmusch, two modern masters of minimalism, triumphantly join forces in Broken Flowers, a bittersweet tour de force about a wealthy, deeply depressed lothario.

A lumbering, disappointingly bland war movie.

Dragnet has its share of sharp gags and memorable lines, but for the most part, it’s entertaining but forgettable, a fun romp that assuredly hits all the expected mismatched buddy-cop-movie beats and serves up the subgenre’s clichés straight, rather than subverting or lampooning them.

If Barnes ultimately emerges as a heartless, duplicitous villain, he's nevertheless got the devil's slippery, seductive charm.

Boogie Man doesn't delve too deep into its subject's private life, beyond some cheap psychology positing his brother's horrible early death as the root of his winner-takes-all philosophy. But then, Atwater's work was his life.

The film boasts compelling performances--from Bruckner, and especially from Stephen Dillane as a wildly pragmatic money-man who radiates well-deserved cynicism. But Bloom is the giant void at the center of the film, and his laughable histrionics pull Haven firmly into camp territory.

Not As A Stranger taps into the raging fury and animal sexuality lurking underneath Mitchum’s quiet-storm demeanor; the film’s redemptive arc requires him to realize what he has in a good, wholesome woman like de Havilland, but Mitchum’s bedroom eyes and leering swagger suggest that he really belongs to a femme fatale like Grahame, who undoubtedly tumbled out of the womb clutching a cigarette in one hand and a glass of scotch in the other.

As bloated and ponderous as its predecessor was lean and focused, Chronicles ups the stakes along with the budget while jettisoning just about everything that made "Pitch Black" stand out from other thrillers about weary humans battling nefarious space beasties.

It's a good movie infused with moments of greatness.

Only when it wraps up all its loose ends with a feel-good sitcom conclusion does it finally reveal itself: It's an interesting failure rendered all the more disappointing for veering so close to success.

Big Fat Liar's screenplay, co-written by Robbins and fellow Head Of The Class alumnus Dan Schneider, is a model of comic inefficiency. Like a Rube Goldberg contraption, it goes to excruciating, wildly implausible lengths for the flimsiest of payoffs.

Isn't a particularly well-assembled documentary, but the queasy, hypnotic power of its story and subjects makes its technical shortcomings forgivable.

Myers combines his love of references, silly names, and mindless repetition by having his guru use "Mariska Hargitay" as a greeting/mantra. The first time it's employed, it's merely unfunny; by the 13th or 40th time, it's almost hypnotic in its awfulness.

A sprint when it should be a marathon, Yossi & Jagger crackles with promise, but much of it goes unrealized. Without the time or resources to develop its characters and overstuffed plot, the result feels like the Cliffs Notes for a longer, more satisfying film.

Audience reaction to Outrage will depend heavily on how people feel about outing. Dick’s film probably won’t persuade anyone who finds the practice to be a loathsome and intrusive invasion of privacy, but after a relatively dry beginning, the film builds in passion and intensity until attaining a stirring cumulative power.

Well-intentioned to a fault, the film packs a strange, ultimately unsuccessful combination of prurience and clumsy identity politics.

Rising Sun boasts shiny, shiny production values befitting a big-budgeted Sean Connery vehicle adapted from a bestselling novel, but scratch the glossy surface and Rising Sun reveals itself to be a Cinemax-ready B-movie, complete with a rogue’s gallery of villains, each tackier and more ridiculous than the last.

Dorian Blues covers extremely familiar territory, but does so with low-key wit and ingratiating charm.

The Bonfire Of The Vanities gets a lot of things right but they're largely negated by the colossal things it gets wrong.

The Matador is brilliantly cast right down to the secondary supporting roles, played by the formidable likes of Dylan Baker and Philip Baker Hall, but it's the leads who really deliver.

As in the more successful "Land Of The Dead," Romero makes an admirable attempt to update his beloved franchise for contemporary audiences. But this time out, his heavy-handed intellectual concerns get in the way of a perfectly good fright flick.

Midnight Madness' comedic tone can accurately be described as a sort of cross between Eight Is Enough and early-period Troma, a blend best epitomized by a scene involving conflicting interpretations of the phrase, "between a large pair of melons." And, in case you're wondering, yes, at one point fat snobs do get thrown in the pool. What is not to love?

Missouri Breaks begins as a ramshackle comedy and ends as a dour tragedy about the death of the old west with Brando serving as its singularly warped Angel of Death.

Though a painless time-passer, Joyeux Noël ultimately contributes little to the venerable anti-war genre beyond its curious message that to some degree, war is hell because it prevents soldiers from making really neat friends and pen-pals from different counties.

It's not quite as charming as Top Hat or Shall We Dance, and the plotting drags heavily in spots, but whenever it gets free from the demands of farce, it's a dizzy delight.

Not nearly as bad as it should be. For the most part, it's a well-made, enjoyably pulpy little genre film, albeit one that never quite overcomes the flimsiness of its source material.

If nothing else, Last Chance Harvey proves that you're never too old to be the subject of a zany trying-on-dresses montage, but considering the prestige of its leads, that's a minor victory at best.

Cohen no longer has freshness and novelty on his side, but he’s retained the power to shock, offend, provoke, unsettle, and most importantly, entertain a jaded, desensitized public.

Perhaps television will prove a better medium to explore Weir’s idiosyncrasies than this engaging yet superficial documentary.

Cheap and ugly in every sense--morally, cinematically, creatively--Nowhere Man accomplishes the seemingly impossible by dragging the seedy revenge genre to a horrific new nadir.

Pure loses a bit of its nerve in the home stretch, but Eden's unforgettable performance alone makes it a compelling portrait of a smart young boy forced to grow up way too fast.

Like the best independent films, The Motel realizes that life is made up of minor pleasures and tiny epiphanies, not sweeping character arcs or big dramatic moments.

An extraordinarily faithful—though schmaltzy and ultimately pointless— 1983 remake of Ernst Lubitsch's 1942 farce.

Not even a young Eddie Murphy is capable of generating hilarity out of thin air and Best Defense gives him nothing to work with. Even with Murphy inside the tank the film sorely lacks urgency and momentum.

Tightly plotted and well-acted, the film litters its brisk run time with darkly funny and haunting setpieces.

Though the film seldom strays from formula, there's something strangely moving about Swank's conviction that, in spite of everything, people are really good at heart.

Even at its best, film noir dialogue teeters on the verge of self-parody and City Heat all too often crosses the thin line separating crackling from cornball.

In the frustrating, underachieving documentary Raging Dove, the filmmakers seem to get shut down every time the film threatens to become interesting.

The middling new Milwaukee, Minnesota, on the other hand, qualifies as 100 percent faux-noir. It recycles much from classic thrillers but has little to add.

Throw out the presence of Dennis Quaid, and the new science-fiction/horror snoozer Pandorum could easily pass for a Roger Corman cheapie.

The result is largely a giddy, goofy delight.

Grandma's Boy aspires to nothing more than the frathouse goofiness and juvenile high spirits of early Sandler vehicles, but it possesses the energy of a funeral dirge played at half-speed.

Sharply drawn and well-acted.

Lost In America is equally potent as a satire of the road movie and of the American dream of endless mobility and escape.

Weirdly earnest and earnestly weird.

There's a terrific short film somewhere inside Mark Moskowitz's feature-length documentary Stone Reader. Unfortunately, it's buried within a flabby 128-minute slog that feels like a rough draft nobody had the heart to edit down.

Shockingly misconceived, poorly executed effort.

Dowdle manages a few nice shocks and some neat moments of pitch-black gallows humor, but Quarantine nevertheless feels awfully familiar, and it grows less convincing with each passing moment. At its worst, it abandons realism entirely and flirts with gory kitsch.

Paris flits from story to story and character to character without doing justice to any of them.