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.

In the end, under-realized direction and characters deliver less than a full deck.

Mere recitation of homilies for better living -- which is what Nick Nolte's gas station guru imparts to a struggling young gymnast -- and a half-baked account of the athlete's comeback are no substitutes for a complete movie.

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

Unable to blend artfilm with psychological thriller, writer-director Hamlet Sarkissian makes something opaque indeed out of Camera Obscura.

Campbell's performance is attuned to the extremes of unnerving calm and intensely erotic; unlike the pic, she pulls it off.

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.

Haplessly blends live-action and visually repellent computer-animated work.

Sequel is no more than a cheapo campy goof, but this edition does contain a higher quota of laugh lines and an unsubtle message that efforts to make gay youth "go straight" is destined to fail.

After a long, glum slide, pic becomes an unconvincing story of redemption.

The joys of farce are fumbled in April's Shower, star-director-writer Trish Doolan's arch and undernourished comedy about a bridal shower turned on its head by the bride's lesbian past.

Nocturnal settings and musical interludes create their own kind of allure, but picture feels like an art film imitation, not an authentic art film itself.

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

Limp comedy-drama.

"Inspired by a true story" it may be, but inspired it's not.

Although this "Sopranos" writing vet delivers several flashes of that show's dark humor and irony, the pic leaves a hollow feeling at the end.

Pic's not-so-hidden agenda is to promote the fusion of science and New Age religion, making it a close cousin to ventures as Bernt and Fritjof Capra's "Mindwalk."

Mannion's script goes a bit too far in terms of twists, capping the third-act suspense with a plot U-turn, and then another, that leaves audiences feeling played. Worse, the final development loses credibility in retrospect, reducing the film to the level of an exercise in paranoia, effects and one actor's ability to hold attention for nearly 90 minutes.

Sandler turns the joke around on his detractors and manages to lead a devilishly energetic vehicle that contains about as many laughs as his previous features combined.

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.

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.

This is son-of-John-Waters with most of the grossness but none of the essential anarchism -- silly pop trash set for vid-classic status in gay households.

The live event was hopefully more engaging than this dull adaptation.

The star in this case is Martin Lawrence, who is not only thoroughly upstaged by nemesis Danny DeVito but is completely boxed out of his comfort zone for broad physical comedy.

You'd half expect the Xbox logo to pop up on the credit roll for XXX: State of the Union, since what's on view is closer to a videogame than a movie. While that will be music to the ears of young gamers, it's noise to anyone hoping for a coherent action movie.

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.

If anything, this Canadian production misses a great opportunity to dig into its setting and examine the dark side of seemingly pristine Toronto, even as the script by Elan Mastai and director David Weaver labors over a mostly boilerplate storyline.

While there's the sense that this old guy/young guy spy angle has been done better by films like "Spy Game" a decade ago, Gere, never looking tougher or handsomer, and Grace, adding some action skills to his relatively cerebral persona, invigorate the proceedings in roles that would seem to benefit the actors' career arcs.

Unusually slick, mini-budgeted and broad piece of slapstick that liberally borrows from Neil Simon and "The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight'' with the twist that gay hit men are the romantic heroes.

A valiant but seriously flawed attempt to belie the notion that if you remember what you did in the '60s, you weren't there.

Never really busts out of second gear.

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.

Falling short of being truly memorable but sharper than the general slagheap of comedies.

All-encompassing drama.

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

Fires nothing but blanks.

Comes too late, far surpassed by similar and more visually stunning devices in "The Matrix," and even by the mind-bending realities of "eXistenZ."

The street action is vivid, but the dramatics are distinctly not, lending the film an unintended sense of fakery.

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.

Aiming to join the Jerry Bruckheimer/Michael Bay school of American movie war games, Stealth is just too dumb to make the grade.

Impressive as the combination may seem on paper, having Sheridan direct this sort of genre fare reps a clear miscasting of helmer and subject, as he displays no particular feel for the material and is unable to overcome the story's generic approach, lack of striking psychological ideas, and literal-minded denouement.

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."

An odd case of filmmaking with a crystal-clear subject but no guiding dramatic premise.

This deliberately pre-'90s slice of rock 'n' roll-tinged sci-fi horror, decorated with anything but the latest in special effects, seems particularly grungy and marginal.

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.

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

Surely one of the most frantic, virulent and foul-natured Christmas season pic ever delivered by a Hollywood studio.

Though the superhero's fans have long awaited his close-up, the Devil's bounty hunter -- complete with a burning skull for a head and a killer motorcycle in flames --materializes in a movie that never measures up to his infernal potential.

Girls -- a big part of the Pokemon crowd and what makes it such a humongous commercial success -- will feel left out in the cold.

It's precisely the lineup of familiar past work that makes I Spy pretty dull goods, invigorated mainly by the sharp interplay between Murphy and Wilson, both of whom shine best when they have a sidekick to work with.

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.

Lame and inoffensive.

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

Mansion's drab comic strokes and narrative render the movie almost superfluous.

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.

Standard-issue directorial approach is perfectly in keeping with a script whose natural berth is on the tube.

Boilerplate crime comedy.

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

Admirably jostles and upends the fatigued killer-for-hire genre.

Utterly lacking the drive and roller-coaster energy expected of top action pics, this latest try at repackaging "Speed" is a Kmart version of a Jerry Bruckheimer production.

Although Erica Beeney's script beat out more than 7,000 entries, the screen version dulls her potentially distinctive voice with deadly doses of sentimentality.

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

Ridiculous would-be thriller.

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

Functional if thoroughly uninspired movie. Because it clings to the comedy-action template of "48 Hrs.," pic feels like it could have been made 15 years ago.

Interesting structure provides pic with plenty of opportunities for social satire, human comedy and chance encounters, but few setups are ever dramatically fulfilled.

The more Marc Fusco and co-writer Michael Garrity's script aims for cleverness, the more it unravels.

Michele Maher's Garmento appears more shocked at the fashion industry's cynical side than moviegoers are likely to be, making its drama of corruption a preordained snooze.

A comedy that starts the date in a frisky mood but sours before it's time to kiss goodnight.

A woefully under-realized story of small-time boxers enjoying perhaps their last moment in the spotlight.

The proper mix is never found. Ill-conceived and expensive project that winds up looking like a bunch of talented thesps slumming it.

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

The politics of homophobia and child molestation receive a badly misjudged tweaking in Peter Paige's writing-directing debut, Say Uncle.

Thesping and production values are solid and sometimes even attractive, but pic's overall American-style gloss becomes extremely odd and discomforting given the setting.

A pleasantly tuned vehicle for R&B star and budding actor Usher.

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

Snowed under by misjudgment on every level, The Big White is DOA. Despite a cast that generally reads like an indie production's wish list, pic's tendency to liberally borrow from the Coen Brothers playbook of comic mayhem is exceeded only by its lack of sense of what's actually funny.

Can't decide whether to be an eccentric black comedy or a middle-of-the-road diversion.

The filmmakers seem split between doing it straight and gleefully ripping up the genre, and never make up their minds.

There are stiff politicians and there are stiff political movies, but the rigidity of the White House-based fairy tale that is First Daughter is in a category even pollsters may have a hard time assessing.

Perhaps thinking he had a farce to play with, Flender encourages tons of mugging; by overplaying what should be underplayed, helmer and cast deliver a fatal stab to the intended comedy-horror.

Darkly amusing idea delivers an early salvo that fades as the film swings across a range of styles and tones director Sergio Arau gamely tries to corral. Even at its half-realized level, pic will anger some as it amuses others.

Refreshing strokes of science-fact in the early sections give way to action strictly from the Ridley Scott-James Cameron playbook, but without a powerful helmer behind the camera or a memorable cast in front.

A strenuously solemn film that wants to create some kind of American pastoral tragedy out of the nation's current angst with the war.

Gods and Generals is American history transformed into a museum movie, consistently making the flawed human characters at the heart of the Civil War into flawless figures Olympian in their statuesque remoteness.

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

A sign that the Sandler comedy empire is expanding and reaching new depths of pure gross-out stupidity.

A string of scenes in search of a movie.

This bad idea is then underlined by pallid direction from tyro helmer and TV ad vet Kevin Donovan, a virtually incomprehensible plot line and a less-than-satisfying co-starring turn from Jennifer Love Hewitt.

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.

Most discomforting of all is the sight of world-class actors stuck in such threadbare material.

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

As a cautionary drama on the price of fame, Undiscovered could not tread on more exhaustively discovered territory, and the result is a reel-by-reel trail of cliches.

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

As generic as its title.

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.

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.

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

An especially insipid example of the Hollywood message movie.

Launched with a few surprising touches and a disturbingly bloody prelude, horror pic collapses under the weight of its own dull conception and weak direction, dialogue and character portraits.

The filmmakers themselves betray a lack of knowledge about the Old World, while unfailingly repeating physical hijinks one time too many.

A much more intense action vehicle for hero Ash Ketchum and his band of pocket monster trainers than its leaden, sometimes claustrophobic predecessor.

Demonstrates no improvement or enhancement. But the action this time is even less inspired than past battles

The latest and most calculated re-do on the formulaic fantasy of an innocent conquering Gotham.

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

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

Flubs nearly every opportunity to be the comedy it wanted to be.

Shrouded by memories of better times and better movies, Frank Gorshin and Rodney Dangerfield's final screen appearances are unfortunately in the thoroughly hapless and embarrassing comedy, Angels With Angles.

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.

Fails to stir the emotions despite its heavily melodramatic drive.

Young teen girls will flock to pic in droves, dragging their boyfriends or other girlfriends.

The combo of cheesy effects and martial arts choreographer Cory Yuen's unimaginative staging results in something that's martial artless.

Sadly symbolizes the decline of the Western. The 36th bigscreen version of the exploits of the James-Younger Gang is one of the least convincing.

Supposedly, Pokemon can't be killed, but Pokemon 4Ever practically assures that the pocket monster movie franchise is nearly ready to keel over.

The latest model in the recent spate of underwhelming female star vehicles, Enough, a thriller detailing how a good wife gets back at an evil, possessive husband, is never provocative enough to generate strong emotional response.

Overall aroma of movie junk food.

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.

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

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

Pic's future as a cult item is a sure bet.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Misbegotten, unimaginative buddy pic.

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.

A shoddy vehicle for Jamie Foxx to ride into the summer season on.

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

Feels entirely a part of an already faded go-go era. Pic is too late by a mile and rightly dumped in a few theaters by Fox, which will doubtless send it to video bins faster than you can say gigabyte.

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

A horror movie without horror, a spook pic without spookiness and a metaphysical drama without the slightest spiritual tug, Soul Survivors virtually dwindles away on the screen.

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

So absurdly contrived that it begs to be taken as comedy.

Remote, non-involving and finally incomprehensible.

Pic is hermetically sealed in a synthetic wrapping that's so total -- Sony's top-flight high-def cameras, visibly low-budget CG work, exceptionally hackneyed and imitative action and dialogue --that it arrives a nearly lifeless film.

Little more than a mall movie designed to kill time.

Patently absurd in both the details and larger aspects, the ultraserious pic is undermined by poor casting.

More boring than stomach-churning, the film nevertheless contains scattered scenes and sequences so far beyond the tolerance of the squeamish that it can't be overstated.

Combines the most rudimentary of Catholic-inspired good vs. evil plots with visual effects that would barely pass muster in episodic TV.

A poorer film than the paltry original even as it strikes a self-consciously clever pose.

In its overwhelmingly artificial depiction of the street gangs that ruled Brooklyn's mean streets in the 1950s, Deuces Wild draws from a phony deck.

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

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.

Sheer chaos on wheels, a hysterically edited jumble that defies belief at nearly every juncture.

Glitter deserves yet another title: "A Star Is Dull." As phony a vehicle as one could possibly concoct for a wannabe movie star, pic carries Mariah Carey into a swamp of gloppy melodrama.

One of the most brutally awful comedies ever to emerge from a major studio.

Awful and subversively spunky at the same time.

Amateurish, undramatic and bereft of any sense of pacing.

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.

Though it lacks the sheer, depraved intensity of similarly themed pics like "The Gambler," Ride shares much of the sunlit sadness of "Save the Tiger," also populated by desperate, middle-aged men plying their trade in Los Angeles' garment district.

Even with ties to the true story of high school hoops coach Jim Keith and his unlikely triumph with a 1960s Oklahoma high school girls' squad, the hackneyed, overlong Believe in Me is much too similar to a recent flood of inspirational basketball pics to distinguish it.

Utterly drab and desperate for laughs.

A pathetically conceived drama that wastes the serious theme of how emotionally and sexually inadequate men abuse others.

As weak and banal as its thoroughly uninvolving central character.

Ensemble proves improvisationally capable, but film overall is rather conventional, a Hollywood idea of an experimental film presented with a heavy serving of showbiz-type cynicism.

Midnight moviegoers aren't so desperate that they will opt for such trailer trash.

Hobbled by uninspired stabs at cleverness and surreal narrative curlicues, The Big Empty goes nowhere, replete with a question mark of an ending that isn't worth answering.

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

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.

This cautionary melodrama about a Korean-American teen girl's slide into depravity is too inconsequential and too earnest to belong in the So Bad It's Good category; rather, it's merely bad.

Every stab at comedy in this mirthless slog is botched.

The unlikely success story of superstar Brazilian country music duo Zeze di Camargo and Luciano receives a polished if highly manipulative treatment in Two Sons of Francisco.

Writer-director Jack Piandaryan appears as tone-deaf to his miscalculated dialogue as he is unable to eke out convincing perfs from his cast.

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

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.

Leiser flexes his animation muscles with a bewitching stop-motion technique, but it proves a poor fit with a scattershot storyline that includes quasi-interview and improv segments that never coalesce into a coherent whole.

[Mock] has made a movie that vitally captures an extraordinary character in extraordinary circumstances.