Robert Koehler

A textbook example of a movie that betrays its audience, Entrance begins as a mildly interesting slice-of-life look at a struggling Los Angeles cafe worker, then impulsively devolves into a manipulative slasher picture.

Little more than an overworked exercise in jostling red herrings, and not particularly fresh herrings at that.

A weekend romp for four middle-aged buddies devolves into a drug-fueled, suicidal hell in Mark Pellington's ill-conceived and executed I Melt With You, a work of extreme self-indulgence.

As hard as metal and just as dumb, Paul W.S. Anderson's Death Race couldn't be further from producer Roger Corman and director Paul Bartel's goofy, bloody 1975 original, "Death Race 2000."

This is the kind of movie that was doomed on the page, both by an inherently problematic premise and ill-conceived character motivations.

Broadway musical purists will shudder in horror, but parents will be whistling a happy tune that there's at least one acceptable pic out there for their kids.

Chaos may not quite be "the most brutal, horrifying film ever made," as its garish ads promote. But it does contain moments as thoroughly sickening as any in Herschell Gordon Lewis' or Lucio Fulvi's bloody exploiters.

Partially biographical story of a rich kid's unplanned encounter with the Marines and his even more random romance with a schizophrenic movie starlet is contrived and emotionally incomplete, and strained further by self-consciously cockeyed dialogue.

Utterly drab and desperate for laughs.

Lacking the kind of fire and energy that the best youth movies demand, leads Ash and Russell display skills better tuned to the small screen.

To be sure, Kelley's Emmy-winning brand of off-kilter humor and cockeyed affection for rural folk is on display, but his attempt here to blend the citified angst of "Ally McBeal" (co-star Bridget Fonda was Kelley's first choice as that series' lead) with the countrified absurdisms of "Picket Fences," plus bits out of the Peter Benchley playbook, doesn't hold water.

There seems to be no bottom to Going Down, a lame also-ran in the rapidly declining teen gross-out comedy genre.

Voice work is weirdly awful and funny at the same time.

Sloppy and dull in equal measures.

As generic as its title.

Little more than a slipshod, trashy, sometimes exploitative thriller.

Nonsense, hysterics and many cuppas spill in Caffeine, an ensembler that serves up a menu's worth of forced and trite situations.

A quasi-metaphysical revenge Western that remains as elusive as a distant mirage on a long, dusty trail.

Suffers greatly from both a visibly constrained budget and an extraordinarily dated feeling.

Murphy's story lacks even the basic form that held most of "The Nutty Professor" together.

This tale of mismatched lovebirds begins with considerable charm but eventually loses its winning ways with an excess of ridiculous elements.

Writer-editor-director Paul F. Ryan makes the mistake of focusing on an ungainly and, finally, unplayable verbal match between two high schoolers.

A romantic-comedy melodrama that’s too gentle by half.

A dumbed-down remake of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's disturbingly abstract Japanese horror film.

Commits any number of comedic violations during an aimless pursuit of laughs.

Rude, crude and, uh, cosmopolitan, Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo waves the flag for R-rated politically incorrect studio comedy but doesn't top the laugh ratio of the first Deuce misadventure.

At the most basic level, Boricua's Bond is at war with itself.

Tries to salvage its dopey premise with frantic final-reel plot contortions.