Robert Horton

Spacey and company deserve better.

Eventually fizzles out badly.

A pleasant surprise that The Crew offers up the charms it does.

The story of Groove... provides an ingratiating road map to a cultural phenomenon. Just make sure you drink lots of water while you're there.

The result is fantasy that wafts away.

Sometimes star power alone can keep you from walking out of a movie, and this is one of those times.

This mild but amusing comedy wasn't written by Levinson, and the accents may be different, but the feel is similar.

There's very little here that rises above the level of a competent straight-to-video picture, except that whenever Paul Newman and Linda Fiorentino are onscreen together they create something special.

It all coalesces in a TV-level pleasantness, which isn't quite enough to fill a big screen.

A Mexican film that reaches for a very weird and risky tone, and, I think, fails.

These film-making provocateurs are divided between sweet and sour, between the romance of classic screwball comedy and Mad magazine on acid.

Enough pep in this picture to make it rise above teen-movie expectations.

Does a lot of little stuff right, and it sparkles at times.

Not a crowd-pleasing, or even audience-oriented, movie; it's a two-hour-plus mood piece.

Destined to be remembered not for its laugh-per-minute ratio, but for breaking a barrier of crudeness in mainstream movies.

It may be possible that people who never go to the movies will stumble across Blow Dry and find it a charming way to spend an hour and a half, but the rest of us will have the ending written in our heads by the end of the first five minutes.

Until it backs itself into a narrative corner, Lisa Krueger's Committed is a delightfully unpredictable experience.

What keeps Stardom watchable is Arcand's droll humor.

The brainchild of English director Ben Hopkins, who takes his time getting going. Too much time, really, as the first hour passes rather antsily, without quite achieving forward motion.

Mostly this film skims by on the surface, its conflict and climax visible from the opening five minutes.

As flat as the brim of a Mountie hat.

This impeccable ghost story is utterly old-fashioned, a straightforward suspenser with no twists.

A weirdly stillborn experience.

Everything about the movie is fine and dandy and dull.

Beautiful is a mess, but not without interest.

This film, a remake of a hapless 1974 cheapie of the same title, can't even get the big chase right.

Serves up the usual homilies, but it lacks the quirky density and cinematic snap.

Exemplifies the subpar state of movies today.

So wound up in its own bungee cords, it leaves itself hopelessly tied in knots.

This fantasy-tinged romance leaves a distinctly bitter aftertaste.

Edward Norton, who created a buzz of excitement in his first year in movies, stubs his toe with Worm... It's the same guy we've seen in countless mean streets pictures, but Norton doesn't find anything new to do with him. He's Ratso Rizzo defanged.

There's something about The Woman Chaser that isn't quite thought through, in a basic way.

She (Lopez) wipes away the unpleasant memories of "The Cell," and serves notice to Julia and Sandra that there's another girl out there who can do romantic comedy-even of the half-baked variety.

I'll be damned if I can figure out how its various ingredients are supposed to blend together.

In this case, I have to say, the sense of boredom.

Not terribly enjoyable to watch.

The plot is convoluted.

Has its dull spots, and is unintentionally laugh-out-loud funny at times -- but isn't that what we expect?

Moss -- in her first big role since "The Matrix" -- is the main reason to see Red Planet, a badly written and visually scenic space opus.

Does have its share of bona fide chuckles, but it falls shy of its possibilities.

This is basically a movie about one neurotic woman and her neurotic L.A. life. .

It's a notch above average, but Whatever It Takes can't get too far above that notch.

The scene doesn't amount to much more than a logical extension of its lightweight premise.

The opening reels here promise something big, but the movie settles for a sour, predetermined funk -- "Lord of the Flies" as imagined by a Nintendo junkie.

I haven't got the slightest idea whether these characters are meant as satirical targets or as a reasonably fair cross-section of Today's Youth.

It's only when you see the movie that you discover how completely the film misses opportunities to develop these ideas into anything like movie comedy.

It's like one of the baker's cakes, handsomely rendered on the outside but lacking flavor.

Even on its own terms, it stays sluggish.

A skim-milk version of a yuppie romance.

The fact that isolated bits are amusing shouldn't keep us from strongly noting that this movie really is pretty awful -- not at all worthy of guilty pleasure status.

Nasty, regularly amusing black comedy.

Oddly enough, I'm enjoying the memory of these jokes more than I actually enjoyed watching the film.

The movie is a mess.

A big disappointment.

Half vulgar and funny, half tedious and cloying; despite the shameless laughs, it's still a disappointment.

There is no obvious reason for the film's meandering existence: it's a series of beautifully photographed postcards of Africa.

Computer technology may be the actual phantom menace, after all.

A standard morality tale, and looks especially weak in the shadow of "Eyes Wide Shut" and "Fight Club," which it resembles.

Floating this material slightly above the assembly-line level is the energetic cast and the efforts of writer-director Kris Isacsson.

A gyno-phobic fantasy about the date who won't go away.

There is something especially irritating about whimsy done badly.

This overdone project dissipates its energy in strange ways (sudden shifts to black-and-white, as though hailing the spirit of Oliver Stone and that other Costner JFK movie), and makes you wish its makers had shown the same restraint the government did during the crisis.

Little entertainment value.

It may have a good liberal conscience, and genuine sympathy for the rare perspective of a homeless person, but this movie is a fundamentally sentimental exercise.

Charlize Theron has charm and skill, but no actress could survive this role, which has the gravity and verisimilitude of a sketch from a late-sixties Nancy Sinatra TV special.

This movie is a business decision, and about as diverting to watch as someone reading the Universal fiscal report.

Spending an autumn in New York is the simple part, but the rest of the year gets more complicated. Let's see a movie about that.

A lot of it works for two reasons: the situation allows for plenty of business with small-town eccentrics, and Jamie Foxx has been given a loose rein in the central role.

Dumb and irritating.

A clumsy and tone-deaf comedy.

So very general in its characters and story that it actively keeps you from enjoying the simple pleasures of a movie like this.

It probably helps to be loaded while you're watching this movie.

One of the least endurable films of 1999.

Slouches in as a weightless, instantly forgettable picture.

It does... apply Kitano's black-comic style to a different setting, and individual scenes sparkle with unexpected jokes, twists, and occasional cruelties.

The film looks horrendous, poorly composed and staged, and the rhythm staggers.

These are good people, yet the director has them carrying on like community theater actors playing to the balcony. It isn't fair to them, and it isn't fitting for Shakespeare.

One wonders if the only original directors left are the obsessives and the freaks. This guy qualifies on both counts.

A dismal new serial-killer thing.

This movie has straight-to-video written all over it.

Do not bring children to this movie unless you want them to have nightmares for weeks.

Has even less directorial initiative than it has romantic spark.

An amazing compendium of dumb behavior, bad dialogue, and incoherent direction.

It's just another bad horror film with inadequate young actors chased around a big house by something.

The film is Travolta's baby, but indifference and boredom is everywhere.

A dismal film, a flop as both 21st-century romantic comedy and gay "Kramer vs. Kramer."

There isn't a moment of wonder or poetry in its very long 69 minutes.