Robert Koehler

Lacks the comic style or abandon to make its cynical turn on male-female relationships anything more than a short-lived stunt.

Has the stench less of rotting flesh than the whiff of a thoughtless quickie.

Makes little impression and is sure to leave few memories for a teen.

Undone by an idea capable of hanging together for 30 minutes at best.

Technically and comedically strained by the demands of its special effects-filled haunted house setting. Worse, the need to top the first pic's outlandish stunts is ghoulishly unfulfilled and terribly ironic.

Both an inspirational sports movie and an unexpected multi-level urban drama that plays by its own clock.

The rags-to-near-riches saga of "Goal!" has turned into a risible riches-are-awful tale in Goal II: Living the Dream.

Fascinating assemblage combines strike footage first shot in 1979 by Perry when he was working for the Texas Farm Workers Union with film and video lensed over the ensuing 20-plus years.

The forthcoming line of high-octane summer entertainments will be hard-pressed to top this one for both thrills and wit.

In recent years, Steven Seagal has been steadily losing any firm standing as even a B-grade actioner icon, and by the genre's most basic standards, he now displays a visible fatigue and lack of interest that proves deadlier than any of his hero's skills.

Lacks the consistent tone, pace and point of view for either a science fiction thriller or medieval war adventure.

A warm embrace of broadly but humanely sketched characters plus some scrappy casting of rising young stars led by an incandescent Kate Bosworth help overcome the half-realized comedic situations.

Sweet if slight Israeli comedy.

No cuddly, funky "Pokemon" pocket monsters populate this pic; this game is for the big kids, rife with a ruthless tone, heightened violence and cold calculation. However, fans will put up with a dull tale to finally see their obsession on the bigscreen.

Gruff and downright smelly, especially when star David Arquette is forced at one point to flop around in a pile of doggy doo.

Suffers from the same rancid dialogue and acting problems as the original but with a much funnier pulse. The real progenitor here is less the previous pic than the sick-funny horror cinema of George Romero.

Darts back and forth from being a psychological thriller to a vaguely metaphysical drama to a fate-driven romance -- it all becomes a blur.

A triumph of indie casting of unknowns, Good Housekeeping is knee-deep in delicious thesping.

Though Muniz and Bynes make a somewhat likable team, their funniest skills are dampened by the material's insistent stupidity.

With an accountant's eye for precision and a political scientist's grasp of the machinations that move national policy, Charles Ferguson's No End in Sight itemizes the errors, misjudgments and follies that have defined the Bush Administration's invasion of Iraq.

Imposter is a penny-pinched "Blade Runner," a stubbornly unexciting ride into the near future.

Brimming with cinematic confidence, cynicism, chutzpah plus dramatic bungles, Andrew Niccol's ambitious Lord of War views today's international arms trade through its anti-hero.

Imax 3-D process has lost its original novelty, and little is done in Deep Sea to find new and exciting ways of using the medium.

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.

Renee Zellweger, in another Blighty role, struggles to make Beatrix credible.

Plainly disappointing as a well-sustained kick-butt thriller, and politically toxic.

Diesel makes a violent bid to align himself with the Clint Eastwood-Charles Bronson-Steve McQueen tradition, but he lacks the charisma, emotional strength and humor to do so.

The Francises are aces behind the camera, displaying an elegant sense of composition that makes their subject visually ravishing. Andreas Kapsalis' gorgeous score lends doc a grand quality.

The strain needed to extend The Whole Ten Yards a yard -- and to feature length -- is so painfully evident it breaks new pic's comedy spirit, making it a particularly dubious member of the Sequel Hall of Shame.

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.

Deeply influential, even to his enemies, Atwater's career is viewed here with fascination and some sympathy.

Building his dry comedy out of a basic confusion of names, an Army recruitment slip and one man's curiosity, Jacobs creates a droll, meandering and defiantly uncommercial film.

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.

Pity the children for whom this is their intro to the world of Grimm, for while pic stays to basic outline of the original story in opening and closing sections, the large middle is stuffed with badly staged slapstick and painful stabs at hip dialogue in an arch attempt to cater to modern kids.

Sharp wit but shaky storytelling.

A vital if less than objective slice of film journalism on the U.S.'s troubled history in the Third World.

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.

Respecting Mother Earth should never be as dull as watching Sacred Planet, a repetitive, globe-hopping Imax project that dresses up well-known ecological truisms with pretty nature photography.

Ridiculous would-be thriller.

Overshadowed by vastly superior sports movies like Invincible and hardly disguising its low-budget sources, pic isn't in any kind of shape for the theatrical leagues.

Alternately seduced and repelled by its subject, the garish and power-hungry Harlem gangster and '70s cocaine kingpin Nicky Barnes, Mr. Untouchable is one seriously confused documentary.

For a guerrilla-style, no-budget Yank indie to even tackle issues of jihad terror and naive Western thinking is noteworthy in itself, but Gamazon and Dela Llana inflame the issues with a gutsy, athletic filmmaking package that shows what can be done with a minimum of tools.

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

The cop genre receives a shot of adrenaline in helmer Chris Fisher's Dirty, a no-nonsense dramatic response to the LAPD Rampart scandals of the '90s.

Archival material -- especially rare B&W Soviet footage -- is a knockout, though the assembly of talking heads, nearly all Reagan loyalists, is predictable and uninspired.

Lame and inoffensive.

Ghost throws its most powerful punch in its second half, reporting on contempo events as a direct repeat of the ghastly Leopold era.

This wobbly docu-drama ends up being caught in between the impulse to make theatrical a true story and the usual Imax mission of imparting information about the natural world in an entertaining way for families.

A remarkably boring comedy.

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

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.

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.

Though it isn't the entirely original creation "Metropolis" was, Bebop is more satisfying.

Even dumb farce has to be built on logic, but that crumbles in the face of a set of tired routines playing off of stock types.

An especially dramatic, if needlessly frantic, work of polemical reportage on racism in America.

Except for Eisenberg's superb comic timing and his ability to make the familiar seem interesting, the high school scenes play like "Scream" outtakes.

Fires nothing but blanks.

Stuffed with attitude but just as hackneyed as the original, Love Don't Cost a Thing brings a year of exceptionally lame youth comedies to a fitting conclusion.

With Iraqis pointing cameras at each other, the result is cheerier than might be expected.

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

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

Little more than a mall movie designed to kill time.

Gets into trouble when it reaches for laughs.

There's nothing in genredom quite so unhinged as the badly made psycho-thriller, and long before it's over, The Glass House collapses from wretched design and execution.

Despite a reliable cast led by Scott, Patricia Clarkson and Peter Sarsgaard, the human impact is ultimately lost in a too calculated scenario.

As weak and banal as its thoroughly uninvolving central character.

Though it can't hide occasionally crude dramatics, pic is an undeniably bold and daring tragedy.

No trendsetter or breakthrough, this is more than anything else a welcome chance for the fine actor Melissa Leo to finally dominate a film in a terrific and affecting lead role.

While lacking originality, pic is a case of cogent moviemaking that really knows its business. Traces of early Steven Soderbergh and recent Larry David enhance one of the most satisfying comedies in a fallow season.

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.

Besides proving to be a faithful mimic of Craven's filmmaking, Aja pours on the gore. But where Aja's version really leaps beyond Craven's both atmospherically and on the violence scale is in the second hour.

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

First-time feature director's disciplined objectivity is coupled with humanism in this collaboration with a gifted cast and cinematographer. The artistic success, though, may be a bit too cool.

Without Smith's graceful presence, which more than once resembles Zach Braff's slightly older but observant New Jerseyite in "Garden State," Nearing Grace would be pure video fodder.

Even by the standards of the recent "Saws," which have enjoyed considerably larger budgets than the first pic, the new edition is more frenetically cut (by editors Kevin Greutert and Brett Sullivan), more dimly lit (by lenser David A. Armstrong), sweatier in terms of perfs by the grimly serious cast, more madly packed with micro-incidents and action, and more brazen in requiring suspension of disbelief.

A disappointingly mild re-creation of true events.

Lame stuntwork and subdued thrills indicate not just a low-budgeter, but a blindness to what target aud demands.

Writer-director Montiel creates a movie of many parts that don't always congeal. Mix this with the many meaty scenes and a roster of often exceptional actors and the effect is one of a fabulous acting showcase more than a wholly finished work.

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

Couldn't be less involving and more sentimentalized.

The question isn't where is the love but where are the laughs?

A work that continually seems on the verge of genuine excitement but sabotages itself at every turn...results will intrigue only those interested in the nooks and crannies of Mamet's career.

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.

It will serve as a fine entry point for younger auds interested in learning about the price paid by moviemakers and their families swept up in the 1950s anti-Communist net.

Conceit often stretches -- and breaks -- the limits of what the tales can handle, though the implication of viewers as voyeurs gives pic a subversive edge.

Messy admixtures of drama and mockery crucially undermine pic's serious message.

Jacobson produces a remarkably creepy piece of cinema that disturbs by suggestion, nuance and ambiguity.

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.

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

Few recent movies have conceived their central female character more contemptuously -- a fanatic for a lifestyle that appears to have come from the bestselling "The Rules."

Gleefully upends expectations and delivers an energetic comedy tracing two guys'all-night search for the perfect White Castle burger.

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

Exudes a pre-fab quality.

The moments of inspired originality are all too infrequent. There's enough eye candy and marvels on screen, however.

Christian Bauer's engaging The Ritchie Boys captures the excitement, ironies and "good war" feel of World War II.

Director David Zucker, a master of whacked-out visual comedy during his “Airplane!” era, drops the ball here.

Interplay between a jaunty Freeman as an unemployed movie star and the magnetic Paz Vega as a no-nonsense grocery store checker gives pic humanity and lift.

Though animated sequels of popular kids' fare tend to perform lower than their progenitors, this one should buck the trend.