Robert Wilonsky

Even if there were a great movie here, it would have been undermined by two lead actors who are barely even there, asked to deliver lines they can't handle: Bale, playing the Batman with clipped wings, and Katie Holmes as an assistant district attorney who doesn't have the gravitas to pass as an intern. Come back, Alicia Silverstone; all is forgiven.

The movie's a bust in myriad ways, especially because almost every scene possesses the oily feel of manipulation and condescension.

It may feel familiar, but it's a bleak and profound piece of work.

Signs blessedly displays a sense of giddy dark humor absent from Shyamalan's previous outings. It appears for much of the film he's merely having fun with the genre, goofing on its paranoid roots.

Evolution is merely stale, sterile and, worst of all, safe.

It reminds one of "The Constant Gardener," another globetrotting thriller bereft of thrills that looks more important in retrospect than on the screen. Certainly, one man's trash is another man's masterpiece, and more power to the viewer who can stick with this deadpan travelogue and make it to the ending that actually satisfies.

Paycheck is a terribly muddled mess, a Hitchcock homage (with generous, obvious nods to The Birds, Strangers on a Train and North by Northwest) by a great filmmaker trying to say a great deal with so very little.

If his first two films were about emotional mutes, then Before Sunrise is the tale of two kids who won't shut the hell up.

Aims to be loud, dumb fun, only it takes itself too seriously to offer anything approaching a good time.

Disappointing only because its best moments are transcendent; its worst moments, sadly, are just so ordinary.

So convoluted and half-assed it's tempting to dismiss it as unfinished; it feels like six different movies cut together by a blind editor.

It punishes rather than entertains; it condescends, it offends, it loathes its audience.

A whole lot of something about nothing.