Robert Koehler

This South Los Angeles-set dramedy flirts with terminal stereotypes and high-school movie cliches right and left.

Unlike the disturbingly mysterious original, Saw III is a neatly wrapped-up package that explains everything -- including Jigsaw's evil contraptions and the background of his crazed female assistant.

The film is never quite as startling or mysterious as it seems to want to be, leaving it in an uncertain cinematic limbo.

Superior sequel, which is the very model of the limber, transnational Hollywood action comedy.

Morrow displays keen attention to physical detail, but starring both behind and in front of the camera looks to have been a mistake here.

Judd now is top-billed, but her performance is so resolutely humorless and businesslike that Freeman's gruffly affectionate warmth becomes doubly valuable, though not nearly enough to lend this generic project any special character.

Taking control of what would otherwise be a trite and preachy fable about the need for African American families to accept their gay brethren, Devine builds a jolly and touching character from the stock figure of a Georgia mom coming to terms with her disaffected gay son.

This overlong march will bore all but the most nobly patriotic.

Good-natured but only memorable as a platform for the amusingly feisty Peter Falk, The Thing About My Folks plies a light approach to the problems grown children face when their parents appear on the verge of divorce.

There's no cork inside Hardball, but there's more than enough corn. Everything about the movie is geared for maximum uplifting and tear-jerking effect, and seems designed, in the end, to question the old saw that there's no crying in baseball.

A brawny commercial attraction strategically tapping into the auds for extreme sports, spy pix, thrill rides, popcorn actioners and anyone looking to see Diesel kick butt, blow stuff up and/or take his shirt off.

Mexican-born helmer Alejandro Monteverde's debut will be remembered as a curious case of a mediocre film that wows crowds.

Increasingly complicated comic maneuvers turn what should have been a hip look at sexuality into an antsy pic too busy to settle down.

No movie like this about friendship between two young lesbians and their various adventures, punctuated with laissez-faire jump-cutting, should be this boring.

Shows both how far Hollywood's tech departments have advanced in 40 years and how shallow the pool of solid action thesps has become.

Seems to be playing the author's music, but like a string quartet that plays a half-beat off.

Contains most of the elements of a "Get Shorty"-type romp without the character depth and wit.

An unusually intelligent adventure film scaled for younger viewers, which never leaves adults behind.

Proceeds like a stultifying history pageant rather than a movie with a pulse of its own.

Picturesque pic, however, lacks even a penalty kick's worth of tension and is paradoxically inert for a movie about guys running up and down the pitch for the glory of the U.S.

Stirring up a humid Gothic mood and amassing a gifted roster of actors, The Skeleton Key is unable to ward off the nasty spirits of formula screenwriting.

The court action contains only a fraction of the hoops energy one would expect from a pic co-produced by NBA Entertainment -- and film suffers from the conspicuous absence of the title's Michael Jordan.

Apparently needing to release some private thoughts, musings and images to the world, Anthony Hopkins takes a leap into stunning self-indulgence with his directorial debut, Slipstream.

Couldn't be less involving and more sentimentalized.

Sometimes veering close to being a promotional film for the Special Olympics, pic will be applauded by the disability community and its advocates but quickly ignored by longtime fans of the Farrellys and Knoxville.

Never entirely convincing yet always watchable.

A creaky melodrama that wants to be a musical.

Perfs are either absurdly stiff or over-the-top, and effects and makeup look like they were made in someone's garage.

There's remarkably little done with a premise snatched from high-concept heaven, adding yet another file to the growing cabinet of under-realized comedies.

The 2003 edition written by Nat Mauldin and Ed Solomon and helmed by Andrew Fleming places the Douglas-Brooks combo inside a much more complicated if not quite as funny world.

A virtual template of every imaginable cliche of the musical biopic, picture suffers from a lack of narrative and character focus

Unfortunately knows no tone between schmaltzy/gooey and slapstick/gross-out. Pic is as far from the original pic and its autobiographical memoir source as it can be while retaining the same title.

A dull afterthought and a sorry vehicle for the comic expression of Martin Lawrence.

Film struggles to balance its past-present memory drama and a rather standard take on an American immigrant family. Although accented by fine cinematic flourishes, pic is harmed by an abrupt conclusion and technical glitches.

As insistent as its heroine to get its point across, She's the Man gathers up enough energy and likeable goodwill that it almost skirts past some extremely strained passages in which Bynes plays out being a boy.

The wild, unhinged life of Andy Warhol's favorite "superstar," Edie Sedgwick, is refashioned in Factory Girl as a tame biopic with little feel for the 1960s New York Underground.

Unconvincingly attempts to update the futurist dystopian traditions of Orwell, Huxley and William Gibson.

Story's spurts of violence are designed to tear Seymour's world apart , but Rosenfeld's scripting and directing choices tend to lessen impact of a potentially gut-wrenching urban tale.

Director Phil Alden Robinson -- has done just about everything he can do to build a sleek, involving and -- for a few minutes -- terrifying movie that can get viewers past the young Ryan factor.

Gets into trouble when it reaches for laughs.

A family melodrama that becomes less authentic as it progressively takes itself more seriously.

Combining a gallery of targets including President Bush, "American Idol," the Iraq War and the overarching theme of a nation of citizens held in the thrall of phony dreams, pic and its ambitions are undermined by insistent cartoonishness and comic ineptitude.

Smokin' Aces blows some cool smoke rings until it makes the very un-cool mistake of overstaying its welcome.

Coming in the wake of the physically astonishing "Bad Boys 2," S.W.A.T. seems square.

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

Both extremely familiar and, despite frequent references to Stanley Kubrick and Orson Welles, cinematically and dramatically dull.

Picture seemed certain to either fly high on outrageous humor or crash under the weight of tastelessness. Instead, the movie just sits there and never comes alive.

The latest picture to feature one of the movies’ oddest crime-fighting tandems nevertheless stays true to the franchise formula of East-West fusion action, broad cultural comedy and international intrigue, this time largely in Paris.

Picture's tendency to lecture on the power of faith and religion and on the demerits of science seems to assume an almost childlike audience that needs to be spoon-fed Pablum.

Picture veers unsteadily between melodrama and light comedy, with no confidence in either.

What sends this initially tense thriller over the precipice is a plot scheme that never knows when enough is enough.

As a showcase for rising young star Michael Angarano and Christopher Plummer, pic offers the pleasures of connecting Hollywood traditions and generations in the spirit of Peter Bogdanovich's films about and inspired by the movies.

A perfect example of the sad trend in contempo Latin American filmmaking to imitate old Tarantino with only a fraction of the stylistic cojones, frantic comedy dealing with two pairs of confused guys and one pair of kidnap victims is an empty exercise that loses its juice before first reel's end.

Uneasily pivots between comedy and drama, with its best parts strongly reminiscent of Schepisi's previous, British-made drama about aging and dying buddies, "Last Orders."

More interested in finding fresh ways to stage execution scenes than in finding meaning behind the human urge for self-appointed righting of wrongs, (the film) is stuffed with effects that have no lasting impact.

Writer-director John Hamburg does everything he can to pair up Ben Stiller's stiff, safety-first corporate man with Jennifer Aniston's free spirit in Along Came Polly, but the two are so fundamentally incompatible that story loses credibility long before the gags stop coming.

Plays closer to an after-school special (with HBO-standard dialogue) than a satisfying feature film.

Begins as a smartly promising, gently farcical comedy of manners and ends as sourly and haphazardly as the lives it is poking fun at.

The screenplay by Daniel Tendler, Fernando Bonassi and Lula biographer Parana succumbs to many of the most unfortunate narrative tendencies of biopics, including a proclivity for piling on incident after incident as a substitute for real character insight.

The picture's first 35 minutes sizzle until a Byzantine plot nudges the story toward near-parody in the final act.

A collection of sentimental and emotional moments in search of a movie.

Ultimately implodes, letting down the 'hood, hip-hoppers and Jamie Kennedy fans looking forward to his first major starring role.

A sweethearted trifle.

Penn looks bewildered in a role that simply doesn't track, but Kechiche rises to the occasion. Stanzler's helming, shot blandly in digital vid, amounts to point-and-shoot.

Never quite catches fire in its too-deliberate attempt to appeal to all ages and all tastes.

A remarkably boring comedy.

The result under Penny Marshall's direction is a film with genuinely serious intentions that falls considerably short of its intentions.

Uninspired star turns from Ben Affleck and Uma Thurman suggest something less than full belief in this quickly forgettable thriller.

Picture's leaps into the fantastic and rampantly farcical tend to be overextended, but finally don't detract from what is a well-judged, light entertainment.

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

A lark gone utterly awry.

Costner is as uneven as the storytelling itself, stone cold at moments, shimmeringly real in others.

The funny stuff continues for a quite satisfying conclusion during the wedding prep and ceremonies, which Stifler single-handedly transforms into his own personal gross-out comedy masterpiece.

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."

Too self-serious to work as a straight-ahead whodunit and too lacking in imagination to realize its art-film aspirations.

Stumbling its way down the comedy runway, Miss Congeniality is yet another miscalculated vehicle for the ever-feisty Sandra Bullock.

Sloppy and dull in equal measures.

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

A textbook case in which the parts are greater than the whole.

Weaves a humdrum plot that's never ahead of the audience until three-quarters through.

A disappointingly mild re-creation of true events.

Preaches purely to the converted.

While the loyal male-teen aud core will not be disappointed with the spate of gags just for them, story contains solid date-movie material.

Writer-director Craig Ross Jr. offers both rigorously effective dramatic sections and terribly pedantic and melodramatic strokes of overkill.

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.

With intermittently amusing glee, writer-director Ryan Shiraki's tyro film, Freshman Orientation, frolics through the political minefields of a typical college campus.

Saddled with more industry/celebrity baggage than a high-class safari voyage, Sahara is a rousing and only occasionally ridiculous adventure yarn.

This extremely plot-thickened tale finally offers little more than the usual genre elements pushed to the kind of extremes that recall the acrid "The Way of the Gun."

Despite fine casting...familiarity sets in and lack of surprises directly lessen what could have been emotionally gripping.

Exceptionally strong cast is pictures beating heart.

The film toys with audience expectations and perceptions by playing fast and loose with circumstances and clues, while leading to an almost unavoidable and dismayingly obvious conclusion.

Sloppy but unconcerned about it, pic offers a trip back in time to a pre-PC and feminist era when men were sexist Neanderthals, women supported them from the sidelines and the guy with the biggest mouth scored.

It ends up a grinding, ludicrous depiction of a thuggish Bosnian's abuse of his sister.

A mechanically efficient yet soulless dramatization of the U.S. Navy SEALs in action, Act of Valor ultimately misses its target: The hearts and minds of American audiences.

Not surprisingly based on a comic book series by Brett Lewis and R.A. Jones (whom pic fails to credit), pic hurtles along at a pace designed by vet music vid and ad helmer Paul Hunter to engage short attention spans.

A blandly conceived youth adventure lacking zing or style.

Fortunately bypassing a re-run of "Days of Wine and Roses" but finding little inspiration to freshen an old concept, this tragedy about a lover and a friend helplessly watching the writer's fade-out comes up short of its potential impact.

New pic lets the air out by divulging the startling mystery that concluded the original. Add this to problematic juggling of police procedural and group-in-distress storylines, and Lions Gate has what looks like a sequel rushed for Halloween.