It smarts, and shocks, and just for a moment blows your mind.

The eye candy can't quite compensate for the murky mess of a plot.

The jokes just aren't there, which makes it very hard for the stars -- who are trying very, very hard -- to really make a dent.

Somehow the film doesn't quite cohere; it's hobbled by its awkward exposition, with salient facts about the characters' lives.

Some of The Anniversary Party's titillation factor rests on the awareness that these are actors playing actors, in roles written specifically for them that at times appear awfully close to home.

Depends on the two actors who all but carry it.

The action is constant, often pointless, definitely gratuitous, and breathlessly fun.

This a deeply humane and affecting movie, surprisingly gentle in spite of its black-comic tinge, and without the slightest hint of schmaltz.

The actors do a fine, if unsoulful, job, but the real problem with A Love Divided is its unwillingness to unromanticize its heroes.

Yet as wonderful as it is to see a breezy, earnest romantic comedy that is so matter-of-factly gay-themed, Big Eden suffers somewhat, unsurprisingly, from some of the usual perils of a breezy, earnest romantic comedy.

It's pornography of the most depressing sort.

Hardly a comic masterpiece -- the jokes are awfully broad and obvious -- but I couldn't help feeling relieved at the film's absence of malice.

This frothy little crime comedy isn't half bad, bubbling with caper-farce energy supplied by a game ensemble cast and a source novel by prolific pulp writer Donald E. Westlake.

It's the tortoise and the hare, Nepalese-style, and it's surprisingly dramatic.

A thing of beauty. But then so is a cloud and I wouldn't want to stare at one of those for an hour and half.

Abundant arthouse crowd appeal.

A crowd-pleasing blockbuster if ever there was one, features as its centerpiece a jaw-droppingly vivid re-creation of the Japanese attack on the U.S.'s fabled (and extremely vulnerable, as it turned out) Pacific fleet.

While the dour pacing and tone rank right up there with watching water freeze in terms of gutpunching suspense, by the time the final, grisly revelation is at hand you're hard-pressed not to sweat.

It's too bad the language prevents this independent film from being rated PG-13 because this is the kind of movie that might be capable of realistically reflecting teens' lives to other teens.

It's not wrong to wish these actors were working in the service of a better script or more assured direction, but it's probably also possible to simply take pleasure in their performances.

Viewers with a low tolerance for schmaltz may suffer; one heartfelt speech even drew nervous titters from the otherwise indulgent preview crowd.

A crazed, lovestruck, wholly original (and yet amazingly referential) beast, part pop-culture wasteland, part glowing tribute, and part wild-eyed roller coaster (of love).

Charmingly subversive animation like this is a rare thing indeed, and the fact that you don't have to be under 10 years of age to thoroughly enjoy Mr. Shrek's wild ride is an added bonus.

The filmmakers no doubt had a hell of a time whittling the material down; unfortunately, what they came up with was something long on the mundaneness of GovWorks.com and short on the personalities behind it.

Either you like your movies to be, well, movie-like: imitations of life, with musical accompaniment and artificial lighting and tracking shots and looped dialogue; or you like them to be re-creations of life, sans the artifice. The King Is Alive clearly falls into the latter camp.

It would be easy to pigeonhole this as "Norma Rae" en L.A., and Padilla is at least as ingratiating and as much of a guy magnet as Sally Field was in that movie.

Smirking at the audacity of it all is part of the fun, and if nothing else, A Knight's Tale is a hell of a lot of fun.

Manages the most delicate of hat tricks: It gives definition to uncertainty.

This single film beats every other Hollywood action film of the past five years, hands down. It's not even close. Welcome back, Mr. Tsui.

So gleefully abandons any semblance of sanity that it's virtually impossible not to enjoy the sheer breadth of nonsensical fun taking place on screen.

Would have been smart to fold before it let its hand go this far.

Apart from the fang-restraint of the nosferatu, however, there's precious little that's altogether new or for that matter shocking about this by-the-numbers thriller.

Never fully rises to the occasion, maintaining a goofily even keel throughout but rarely tipping over into all-out froth and nuttiness.

It's not quite as bad as "Cutthroat Island," I'll grant you, but it's woefully close.

If it's not perfect, it still gives pleasure to the eye.

The script's tone veers chaotically -- and ambitiously -- at once aiming for a Noel Coward kind of elegant sparring, then for the lightly raunchy, rompy absurdism of "What's New, Pussycat?"

It's one of those period dramas about upper-crust Europeans in vacation resorts, which at first we think we've seen a million times before.

There's something good-natured, even sweet about this well-meaning affair.

Appropriately belongs to Lopez. His mannequin glaze and never-wavering smile provide more creepy-crawlies than a thousand quivering violins or perfectly timed thunderclaps.

Green, who looks like a chinless, hollow-eyed pederast at the best of times, is simply out of his league here, and the fact that the film drags interminably when it's actually a very average 90 minutes long betrays its essential emptiness.

Adults may discover, however, that when they get to the center of this particular world, they find no real there there.

There's no denying it's a tragic film from start to finish, but equally undeniable is the endless stoicism displayed by the women, and Panahi's crisp, meandering direction.

As much romantic fantasy as it is social satire, but more to the point -- it is gloriously and tear-wellingly funny.

It's a silly, goofball romp, sure, but this newfangled Josie rocks far harder than her predecessor.

A succession of shrill overacting jobs.

Amibitiously mediocre.

There's an oddball quality to the ensemble that might even be lovable if the movie weren't so glib and perfunctory.

Plot and character development are scarce; the film is more an abstraction than an absorption.

This is a scattershot affair, though fans of Reno should find it engagingly loopy.

The film is dignified rather than dour, full of rich imagery.

An efficient, if overly mechanized, delivery system of thrills 'n' chills.

Do yourself and your kids a favor, parents, and head to "Spy Kids" instead.

The most delightful segments are those which observe new audiences experiencing the motion picture phenomenon.

A movie about life and death; its underpinnings are soaked in the perfume of artistic expression.

We've just been to this party before and we know how it ends, again and again and again.

For those willing to submit to its terrible charms, it may be the single most important debut to come out of the Americas in years.

It's a humorous film, to be sure, but there's also a stringent vein of giddy realism to it.

It's cheap and it's lowdown, and to those responsible for this exercise in devolution: Honestly, I'm not sure I want to know someone like you.

There is a whole lot to be said for fun -- especially fun that can be shared by all -- and in this regard Spy Kids saves the day.

File this one under What Were They Thinking?

It's an admirable, if clunky, attempt, and though it never quite jels in the way that, say, "Waiting to Exhale" did, it's good to know someone's making the effort to portray black urban males as something other than criminals or crime-fighters.

It's an obvious effort through and through, but that doesn't seem to dampen its ridiculous charm one bit.

It's a dull, unremarkable comedy.

In Seagal's movies, the interesting stuff never derives from what happens, but rather from how it happens. Exit Wounds is certainly one of his best efforts, although the distinction is a dubious one at best.

The obvious thing is to say that Keep the River on Your Right has unfortunately bitten off more than it can chew -- but not more than we can digest.

Once you've seen it all once I bet you'll wish you were watching "Groundhog Day" -- again.

Enemy at the Gates is a disappointment primarily because it seems so rich with possibilities.

Utterly charming.

Starts out as a lark, but veers into grittier, more emotionally complex territory -- just like a real relationship -- that the film doesn't have the chops to sustain.

It's the type of film that begs to be called “charming” and by doing so instead ends up grating.

Herzfeld also wrote the screenplay, and so its leaden and obvious tone and the resulting dearth of delicacy rests squarely on him.

Ao relentlessly, gleefully dumb -- without being the slightest bit sardonic -- that you just can't help but guffaw … or groan … but probably both.

A limp and lackluster affair that telegraphs its feel-good smarm miles in advance.

The film probably won't draw in audiences who aren't already fans of the quirky, subtitled pastoral, but it's more than worth a look.

The fictionalization of their journey is simply not that engrossing, nor are their alter egos, with their tightly scripted character arcs.

Christian filmmaking has entered a new phase in which its creators have discovered how to soft-pedal their message under wraps of a conventional story.

The script is simultaneously boring and breathlessly busy, and it really gives Arquette a beating, as scene after scene subjects him to electrocution, dog attack, encasement in bubble wrap, public pantlessness, assault by the hearing-impaired, a fishbowl on the head, and gluteal paralysis caused by poisonous sea urchins.

Plenty of killings abound, nevertheless the film is a masterful -- albeit warped -- love-story-cum-road-movie that revolves around three of the most invigorating performances of the year.

The movie's bright touches belong primarily to Brooke Smith.

Selick is widely and rightly regarded as a master of surreal, dark humor, and wildly inventive animation technique, and Monkeybone is the first tarnish on his otherwise spotless reputation.

The end result is overkill en extremis. There is such a thing as too much. And 3KMTG is much too much.

It's impossible to shake the feeling that these are merely actors -- albeit good ones.

Deadly dull tripe.

Proving once again that no matter how many times you remake a film it's tough to top the original.

Get out your handkerchiefs. No, scratch that -- get out a pair of windshield wipers and staple them to your brow. Perhaps they'll obscure the screen.

The film never gets too far beyond disposable youth fare, best consumed like mouthfuls of sugary cereal.

Misfires on so many levels that we have to wonder if there is more than one meaning to this story's wild boars.

Reaches toward new heights of comic laziness and succeeds beyond anyone's wildest expectations.

The entire cast is marvelous and capable of conveying continents of emotion with a furtive smile or arched brow.

Valentine succeeds only in boring you to death.

Head Over Heels whitewashes the originality and, well, weirdness Waters showed in his first film, although it's impossibe to imagine anything starring young poster-pups Potter and Prinze Jr. could be particularly edgy.

The loosely scripted story is further burdened with clunky dialogue and performances, shoddy continuity.

A stylistic tour de force, one that wordlessly emotes and wears its emotions on its literal silk sleeves.

That rarest of creatures: a coming-of-age dramedy whose (nearly) teenage stars are natural actors, whose direction is unforced, and whose sexual themes are treated with candor and humor.

As far as I'm concerned, the fact that Bergman is finally getting around to asking himself questions he now realizes he should have asked long ago is not sufficient enough premise for a movie. The answers may be news to Bergman, but the rest of us might just want to opt for divorce.

For every zinger, there are two flat jokes around the corner.

The blandness of The Wedding Planner burlap-sacks their appeal in an altogether dowdy outing for two stars who deserve much snazzier threads.

A surprisingly uneven and perhaps even mediocre character drama.