Teresa Wiltz

For all its charm, we can't quite figure out for whom the film is intended: Talking maggots and decaying bodies do not a kiddie movie make.

Comedy, of course, is a complicated dance between rhythm and timing, but Talladega Nights drags where it should be crackling and popping.

This is pure, escapist fun -- skepticism and naysaying are best left at home.

Though Cedric, for all his nimble portliness, is no Gleason, there's plenty of talent to be found here. Too bad it's left to fend for itself against a raging mechanical bull of a script.

If you saw "21 Jump Street" back in the '80s, or any of a number of shows featuring cute and cuddly cops, you pretty much know where this flick is heading.

A portrait of a mild-mannered zealot, one that seeps under the skin and unsettles the nerves.

Notwithstanding the melodrama and the often ham-handed directing, ATL somehow works. A large part of this is thanks to Robinson's skill in evoking the hickory-smoked flavor of the ATL.

The Cave isn't just a bad movie, it's a very, very, very bad movie, so bad that it can't even redeem itself by turning into high camp.

Though we were wooed by Diesel -- notwithstanding that rug -- we were less enamored with the film's scraggly script. Find Me Guilty is a courtroom drama (much of the dialogue is culled from court transcripts) without a whole lot of drama going on.

A marvelously moody meditation, beautiful to look at and beautiful to ponder as the camera slowly pans from one scene to the next, framing life as still life.

Sure, Balzac meanders at too leisurely a pace. But the actors are charming; the story sweet

For all its art-house posturing, for all its exploration of the taboo topic, Birth is anything but good.

Slither purports to be a "horror comedy" but in embracing the hybrid, it falls flat, never committing full-out to mining for giggles or gasps.

The film can't get its rhythms right, fluctuating wildly between comedy and pathos.

Ultimately, The Hip Hop Project is all raggedy rhythm and long-winded discourse, a tuneless song in search of a hook.

This is a movie for a grade-schooler's -- a female grade-schooler's -- sensibility. It's earnest, silly and sweet, with just enough food fights and musical numbers to keep everyone else from gagging on the goo.

There's a reason why one goes to see cinematic gorefests like Hostel: to partake vicariously of the bloodfest, to get hopped up on the sickness of it all, the utter degradation, the fall of Western Civilization, yadda yadda yadda, and oh yeah, to hoot at the flying fingers, the guts, the blood, the bare breasts.

A masterpiece of mediocrity,

For all its shortcomings, Idlewild also has something that few films can pull off: Moments of such pure cinematic fabulousness, breathtaking dance sequences and idiosyncratic 3-D animation flourishes that we are more than willing to forgive it for all its sins.

Nothing much happens here, and even less is resolved. You could make an argument that that's how life is, unresolved, but as a film, it makes for frustrating viewing, particularly when plot threads with the potential to bust open the story are left hanging.