Robert Koehler

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.