Far better than advance word had it, Coneheads makes last year's Wayne's World film seem tame by comparison. And yes, Garrett Morris is in it, too.

There's absolutely nothing here you haven't seen before, and while some kids might be mildly entertained, they would probably be even happier just staying home for the daily Power Rangers re-run.

Of course, if you loathed the first film, this one probably won't do much to change your mind. But fans, and I count myself among them, of the Weitz brothers' unexpectedly enjoyable original will find themselves in a familiar and perhaps comforting place … filthy language, risqué situations, die-hard friendships, and all.

Dougherty appears determined to work his way through the underbelly of our most cherished seasonal festivities. Plus, it’s an extremely welcome change of pace from the “found footage” barrage of the past 10 years.

Always an intriguing (though sometimes unpolished) actress, Basinger has softened the rough edges over the years to become an extremely watchable performer who deserves better roles than those in which she appears onscreen.

Short to short, it’s a Russian roulette.

There's a lot in common here with "Sequence Break," Graham Skipper's shameless love letter to David Cronenberg's Videodrome - but that has so much more heart, and such better source material on which to riff. Instead, Porno is kind of a schlocky homage to Lamberto Bava's "Demons," the ultimate and original story of a bunch of schmoes locked in a cinema with a malevolent print.

For all its emotional and familial kerfuffles, People Like Us is an honorable misfire – good intentions and all.

You have to feel a certain sympathy for a project as cursed as this one, but there’s no denying that Jane’s gun barely grazes its target.

For the most part, this is strictly kiss kiss, bang bang, yawn yawn.

Hughes creates a white-knuckle scene from a mayoral debate about zoning policy. You could've heard a Skittle drop in the packed house screening I attended. That, and Broken City's terrifyingly realistic car chase – another throwback to vintage Hughes – are alone worth the price of admission.

Alongside Kathy Bates and Laura Linney, Smith is one of three grande dames of acting headlining The Miracle Club. Disappointingly, director Thaddeus O’Sullivan doesn’t put any of them to good enough use in this featherweight Irish dramedy set in 1967.

One glance at the cast should be enough of a recommendation for any film lover -- it's Winger's first time on the screen in seven years, and Howard deserves a nod or two if only for getting his wife back in front of the camera where she so clearly belongs.

It’s ingratiating in that nice doggie way, but the dogs, who have had their lips enhanced via CGI to aid in the illusion of speech, don’t have much more on their minds than where the next stick is going to sail in from.

All the players deliver performances that kill.

It’s not a disaster by any stretch, but purists will ache to show newcomers the horrific genius of "Ju-on" over The Grudge as soon as they exit the theatre.

The sentiment is saccharin; the plot is … well, let's be generous and say unambitious.

Overall, PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie has enjoyable moments children and adults will enjoy, but also poses big questions and complicated ideas about personal growth and achievement.

Terrifically dull, full of ear-searing sound design and much yakkity-yakking about the fate of humanity but entirely lacking any sort of soul or sense of good old summer matinee fun.

Make no mistake -- this Mummy is an effects film all the way.

It's a fascinating story told by the rote conventions of the musical biopic.

Amusing but never rousing, this fourth installment in the Ice Age cartoon franchise comes fretted with freezer burn.

A godforsaken (possibly literally) mess.

As a filmed drama, Mary Shelley is sorely in need of a jolt of electricity similar to the one that reanimated Frankenstein’s monster in the author’s novel.

Highwaymen is an also-ran. It lacks the sprawling, Westernized mythos of The Hitcher and feels, in the end, like a previously owned nightmare sorely in need of a new universal hell joint.

The film might have been redeemed by Ardant's performance as Callas. But for a rare glimpse of the diva's ferocious appetite for life, however, this French actress seems all wrong for the part.

Possibly the best argument against couples therapy ever, Antichrist is a tour-de-force trip inside the mind of a dangerously depressed man. That man is Danish filmmaker von Trier, and he has gone on record as having conceived and executed Antichrist in the wake of a deep depression.

You’d think this chapter in Danish history would inspire passion in a native filmmaker, but the movie lacks fervency.

It takes a special kind of smart to be really, really dumb. And make no mistake, Bullet Train is a really, really dumb movie. Like, every gunshot echoes around its gloriously vacant skull. Because there's also a particular kind of smart-dumb film that is endlessly, idiotically fun, and that's what Bullet Train is.

This is the kind of scrappy Seventies-throwback B-movie that fits the bill when you desperately need to see regular-seeming, occasionally inept people rise up against our corrupt criminal oppressors and cudgel them with pool cues and bits of blasted-off brick.

It takes something really special to bring together a Nobel Prize-winning writer, a director renowned for his Shakespeare adaptations, a two-time Oscar-winning actor who also happens to be a knight of the British realm, and the reigning No. 1 British screen heartthrob and still come up with nonsense.

If anything, Daniela Forever feels overly familiar. Calling to mind other life-of-the-mind films, it suffers by comparison, falling short of the wowee-zowee visuals of Waking Life, the satisfyingly intricate mechanics of Inception, the soulfulness of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Tilt your head and you can catch the ghost of combustive screen trios past: Design for Living, Band of Outsiders, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. But Amsterdam’s three leads – individually charismatic performers all – collectively can’t sell the film’s sentimental, facile idea that love beats all, even those pesky fascists. And that breaks my heart a little.

Told from younger brother Doug's point of view, Phoenix's voiceover spans the length of the film and winds up making the images that unfold practically redundant.

It's staged like something straight out of King Kong with the look of an old 1930s Universal horror movie where the lightning flashes strobe across the undulating coils of tubing in the mad scientist's laboratory. There's a lot of really ugly violence in Ricochet, the kind of images and thoughts that just make you feel scummy to be involved with, no matter how passively.

The how-it-was-made demonstration may have been the most captivating part of Mars Needs Moms.

The best thing this film has going for it are the outstanding performances of Pitt and Lewis as a sort of white trash Romeo and Juliet cum Henry Lee and Becky. Pitt is especially believable, so much so that he eerily captures the sociopathic persona of a real-life killer from a true-crime book: the thin, easy-going veneer that masks an evil sense of an absent conscience.

To its credit, Downhill strives to remain character-driven rather than devolve into a jokey take on a delicate premise.

Doesn't say much of anything at all about the Balkan conflict -- it's more concerned with MacDowell's shattered face and Brody's passionate, paranoid whinny, which, come to think of it, is just good enough.

Hardly lives up to its name -- bedeviled is more like it.

The story is rather creaky, but who cares when the actors Clive Owen and Juliette Binoche are so sublime together? Even though the film creates an artificial construct that rings hollow, the two central characters generate great heat and interest. Their presence is enough to keep the film’s nattering foolishness at bay.

Writers Steph Lady and Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption) retain much of the source's action and all of its spirit, but still make the work speak to our age.

A good, psychological thriller that, I suspect, packs more of a wallop if you have not seen the original.

Despite the star power pushing this thing along, the plot is seemingly held together with duct tape, but the more problematic aspects involve sloppy editing.

Screenwriter Dean Georgaris gets a hell of a pass here – the story is canon, and, in terms of emotional wallop, does all the heavy lifting for him – but he still manages to gunk up the works with dialogue that is dull-witted at best and outright howling at its worst.

V/H/S/2 is for gore hounds exclusively.

Unfortunately, the formulaic Spirit Untamed never seems to know which trail it's taking.

Overall, the quality of the film has that made in America feel -- sturdy enough to last through the initial warranty period but not designed as a long-term durable good.

By turns entertaining, incomprehensible, goofy, and even on occasion unnerving.

Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of … V8? That’s what you get when you cross VeggieTales characters with a pirate yarn.

The movie becomes a weak rethinking of a quality film.

While "The Chronicles of Riddick" was an overstuffed melange of CGI and unnecessary subplots, Riddick is a far more streamlined affair, and all the better for it.

It’s fun, but it’s no "Class of Nuke ’Em High."

There's no getting away from the cloyingly cute, well-intentioned little monster at the heart of this story. The movie is also notably, and unnecessarily, unkind to doll-playing little girls and grown women who work outside the home. A movie that makes you leave the theatre with thoughts of having yourself, and your neighbors, spayed is not a good thing.

The Monkey's Mask is filmed with an eye toward an arthouse sheen, although Lang's dramatic pacing is sluggish and dull.

It's a welcome and nicely goofy bit of sci-fi froth with the occasional hint of genuine comic smarts.

Only a devotee of the original film or a hardcore sourpuss could find serious fault with this world romp.

In Cold Light is far better constructed and executed than its generic, straight-to-video title might imply, but it’s too monotonous – in the literal meaning of the word – to reach its aspirations or to really use its cast.

Despite wonderful performances from all the actors, Wyler’s attempt to retell the story in a more forthright manner still seems to pussyfoot timidly around the issues.

Forty-five minutes in, I was already glancing at my watch and wondering why the only lively actress in this film was playing the dead girl. Go figure.

The story, based on the novel by motivational speaker Jim Stovall, throws every emotional stimulus into the pot, and the result is a deep desire for those Hollywood execs to remember that Christian doesn't have to equal brain-dead.

What else can I say about a movie in which even a brilliant artist like H.R. Giger repeats himself… except that besides a few random moments, Species just doesn't make the grade and also manages to waste a fine cast along the way.

A roaring snooze that should by all rights be edge-of-your-seat, compelling cinema, Mark Felt lives and dies by Landesman’s laborious script, which revels in the minutiae of the scandal without ever managing an iota of passion.

Thoroughly predictable from start to finish.

Like its bloodline kin, it’s a perfectly scathing glance at power, money, and how the love of both can curdle the soul.

Has its charms, but for a movie about loving radically, it sure plays it safe.

Unfortunately, like so many movies that celebrate a historical hero, Children is plagued by an overblown sense of its own importance.

Contradictions abound in this messy and unfocused drama that purports to believe that family is everything, when all else fails.

Little more than paint-by-numbers filmmaking, and it fails in the most important charge of any children's movie: to transport its young and impressionable audience to a world where anything is possible, rather than to one where everything’s been thought of already.

What's translated to film feels like a rough draft, with bullet points at beginning and end, demarcating Lola lost, Lola found. And in the middle? A vast, vague maw.

The Promise may not be the greatest movie of its type since "Hotel Rwanda," but purchasing a ticket to this solid if predictable movie is a sure way to thumb one’s nose at deniers of the Armenian Genocide.

Has those proverbial big laffs in spades.

It just may be a movie that has difficulty transcending national borders.

A confused, unfunny film with a few guns and some decent tunes. As CB4 (the CB stands for Cell Block), Saturday Night Live's Chris Rock and company are the hottest rap group in the world, an NWA gangsta rap rip-off oozing the prerequisite amounts of street tough sass, misogyny, and devil-may-care, screw-the-police attitude.

The third time is definitely not the charm.

No chaperones are necessary to watch this genteel movie. Although the terrific cast manages to deliver some small, lovely moments, The Chaperone keeps its corset fully laced and its narrative intentions in check.

Though there is plenty of razzle-dazzle onscreen, Nine is unlikely to ignite many sparks among viewers.

This new chronicle of the adventures of the king's musketeers, as directed by Braveheart scribe Randall Wallace, suffers from a severe case of over-earnestness and star-power overkill.

The dual bromances at the heart of his new film, however, are as unconvincing as the life-and-death action plot that propels the film.

The film is drab and epileptic.

Venom: Let There be Crazy, Stupid Love isn’t a great movie, but it doesn’t matter because it’s just big, dumb, romantic fun.

Like the repertoire of most bar bands, this all plays out like a cover – competently performed, but the original was better.

Whenever Soul Men is in need of a jolt of energy, these two poets of profanity are always ready with rapid-fire, mean-spirited rants that would make the writers of "Deadwood" blush.

Its most remarkable featis sustaining the level of forebodeingly atmospheric suspense.

It's a mess, and one that even the pickled cowboys behind me found yawningly tedious, and that's not something I ever thought I'd be saying about a Sam Raimi movie with the word “dead” in the title.

Leads Henson (barely recognizable under a mountain of Tyler Perry-esque practical makeup) and Rockwell turn in top-notch, emotion-laden performances, buoyed by a supporting cast of equally fine character actors.

It’s hard to ask for juicier, or more timely, subject matter than high-pressure academic ambition turning violent, but to map the descent of a genius into madness isn’t a task to be taken lightly.

Inoffensive and sporadically engrossing.

At its best, Dr. Dolittle 2 is an inoffensive mish-mash of cute talking animals and their somewhat less-than-cute human buddies.

Would be a much better film had it not relied so heavily on a bombastic soundtrack (by James Newton Howard) for its emotional impact and spared itself some of the more overdone images of campus life.

While nowhere near as mawkish at the abysmal "Pay It Forward," K-PAX nevertheless seems somehow unfocused and meandering; it's Spacey-light.

If "The Others" is this year's paean to “quiet” horror, then Jeepers Creepers is its down 'n' dirty, punk rock, rip-your-throat-out-and-feed-it-to-you bastard child.

West (Con Air) saturates his imagery in a sickly, sulphurous stew of rotten-egg yellows and oranges, making a mediocre picture downright repellent at times.

Often seen in his crummy underwear, and almost always with a cigarette and drink in hand, McConaughey brings a knowing fleshiness to the character. Yet the film’s uneven tone leaves us with lasting uncertainty about his character and the events we have witnessed.

The Tomorrow Man is totally dependent on Lithgow and Danner to imbue the characters with warmth and humanity, and elevate them to figures worthy of our interest. Good supporting work from the other actors also keeps us attuned to the story. But otherwise, The Tomorrow Man gives off a feeling of having seen it all before.

What makes The Front Room universal is that it’s ultimately about power, about who runs the house.

All the action in Souvenir happens in such a dreamlike haze, that it’s my personal pet theory that none of it is actually real and Liliane has been sitting in front of the TV the whole time.