Backed by a soundtrack of hip-hop and edited to within an inch of its life, Kennedy’s film has sleek gutter charm to spare.

There are flashes of wit and flair here, including two stylish sequences detailing the French obsession with food and scarves, but they are but brief respites from the film’s near-pathological drear.

The Princess Blade opens with one of the most note-perfect action sequences ever committed to film.

Absolutely unlike any documentary you’ve ever seen, Step Into Liquid nearly qualifies as a religious experience.

Surely something more original than this could have been mined from the history of North America’s largest and most professional police force. As it is, though, Johnson’s film is just firing blanks.

There’s enough intelligence and wit here to sustain your interest, especially when Curtis and Lohan are in peak form. They put the freak in this Freaky Friday.

All told, it’s two-plus hours of trinkets and baubles and clever repartée beneath a perfect summer sun and beside the whitewashed walls of Fez, not inconsequential but as ephemeral as the sky above.

It all adds up to a portrait in decency, which isn’t nearly as sexy as the title would suggest.

While it’s perhaps not the best date film of the year, it is a grim and unmistakable masterpiece of bleak, black sorrow.

Suffers from a lack of good gags. That’s not to say there aren’t scads of chuckles scattered throughout – Dylan and his cast are nothing if not gluttons for the fast and cheap yuk (not to mention yuck) – but the howls of laughter that arose from Paul and Chris Weitz’s original slice of Pie just aren’t there.

Wretched. And while the dirtiest, low-rottenest part of me wouldn’t mind watching the institution of Ben/Jen get reamed, the heft of the blame should be shouldered by Hollywood vet Martin Brest, who wrote an incoherent, incompetent script and further mangled it with his direction.

Bombastic it may be, but it’s rarely boring, as was the first Tomb Raider. Keep your expectations in line with the source material and you may be pleasantly surprised.

Bardem injects a shaggy, compassionate humor throughout, aided by a wry and moving ensemble cast and co-writer/director Fernando León de Aranda's eye for the offbeat.

You’ve heard of guerrilla warfare? Buffalo Soldiers is all about guerilla capitalism.

Taking a cue from the horse in question, Ross’ film takes its time getting into the race, but once it gets going, the going gets good.

Serrano's frequently mystifying device of having Lucía's cardboard psyche mess with the audience's minds is ultimately a confusing bore that detracts from what might have been a more eloquent (and interesting) take on middle-class midlife crises, telenovela-style.

The climax, like the film itself, is big, loud, and looks cool enough, which is what we’ve come to expect from summer movies … but not from Robert Rodriguez.

Camp has also been compared to Alan Parker’s "Fame," which operates with a similar love of behind-the-scenes melodrama and youthful idealism, but different in that it doesn’t induce brain-swelling revulsion in the viewer.

Bob Dylan might have been wrong when he sang that "there’s no success like failure, and failure’s no success at all." His new movie, although a complete narrative mess, is a thoroughly Dylanesque escapade.

This is strictly dull chuckles from dull wits, and while there are a few genuine laughs to be found amidst the dross, they’re as rare as Francophiles in Crawford, Texas.

It’s just too much drama for one modest film to service adequately. In an effort to cram it all in, scenes abruptly jump from one to the next with nary a smooth transition in sight, relationships evolve far too quickly, and certain subplots drop out of the mix only to resurface, jarringly, much later.

A fascinating sight to behold.

The movie’s length forces our suspension of disbelief for at least an hour more than is comfortable and pushes mindlessness to a dangerous longevity.

As a whole, September 11 never reaches any conclusions or ready insights. But as a collection of moments, the film often soars.

The movie treats all its characters kindly -– especially in moments where it would be easy to go for the cheap shot -– but there’s either not enough froth or meat on its bones to sate the appetite.

Gets under your skin with its graceful edits and poetic elisions, lovely performances, and faded imagery.

A pleasant, often beautiful, and surprisingly light-hearted film that affirms the human traits of resilience and intelligence while clearly denouncing the bellicose tendencies of nations and factions.

Falling in love with the wrong person makes for a far more toothsome melodrama, a fact this small, satisfying picture rightly recognizes.