It’s as deadly dull as the blunt end of a rifle.

Thanks to the superior performances by all four leads (including incredibly expressive Karoline Eckertz, who appears as the teenage Regina midway through), Nowhere in Africa is a meditation on everything from race and class and cultural impermanence to the inexhaustible malleability of youth.

Authenticity is strangely lacking in Laurel Canyon, although Cholodenko’s exquisite eye for framing remains uncorrupted. Laurel Canyon is often visually captivating.

Some fine comedy performances bolster this thinly plotted film.

Viewers should be warned that Irréversible means what it says: Your experience of this movie can not be forgotten once the die is cast.

Tom Arnold and Anthony Anderson become an official comedy duo as they deliver an extraneous (and questionably funny) comedy riff, as they did in "Exit Wounds" over the film’s closing credits.

A documentary whose content might possibly have further reach than the book.

The Dogme pedigree rarely distracts; there is too much emotional investment to care much about dogmatic fidelity.

Ultimately, Dark Blue feels roughly a decade too late with its back story of the Los Angeles riots. Gates’ department had its share of dirty blues, to be sure, but that hasn’t been notable since the smoke cleared back in 1992.

What if the filmmaker had found a way to reconcile his two storylines into a cohesive whole? Wouldn’t that have made a wonderfully affecting film? Why yes, it would have.

Phillips and co-writer Scot Armstrong waste too much time on a silly love-interest subplot for Wilson; that time is much better served by the frat-boy idiocies, like Frank beer-bonging himself into streaking.

It comes off like so much poppycock -– to use the vernacular of the day.

Finds a way to impart this sad history while raising our spirits at the same time.

It’s a movie made of moments, the antithesis of "plot-driven," but the sum of these moments is magnificent, the culmination of so many elements: acting, scripting, score (by locals Michael Linnen and David Wingo), and cinematography.

Like the man to whom this film is dedicated, Ken Kesey, Gerry just wants to go "further."

In short, the actors deserve a big round of applause -– especially Affleck, for finally wiping the smug look off of his face (OK, 80% smug-free); Garner, for her dead sexy mix of attitude and adrenaline; and the grunting, googly-eyed Farrell, for … well, for being "fookin’" nuts, I guess.

Poses a problem for reviewers. The entire story hinges on a plot device that occurs roughly midway through the film and alters everything that has come before. To give away this massive, unavoidable spoiler would be disastrous and unforgivable.

If you’re the type of moviegoer who finds the idea of 19th-century characters using phrases such as "Be cool" and "You must work out" in their conversations, this is the film for you.

The film’s major drawback is the broad strokes with which the henpecked trio of males is presented -- they’re not quite caricatures, but their individual quirks feel as though they were cribbed from other, better films.

Writer-director McKee’s arch comic dialogue (i.e., "We’ll hang out and eat some melons or something") is out of synch with the creepy horror he wields.

In the end, we know Andie and Ben will kiss and make up -– how could too alliteratively aligned pretty people not? -– but first we must wade through the protracted and wholly unwarranted period in which both huffs about the other’s deceptions.

There’s not a whole lot of heft to von Scherler Mayer’s romantic comedy with ethnic Indian entanglements; it’s like overdone naan, too flaky and ephemeral for its own good, but still somehow appetizing.

Throughout, the documentary is fun and engaging, even whimsical when using (to good effect) illustrations and Gilliam’s own storyboards.

Neither the riveting boy band documentary nor the riveted gay porn its title seems to suggest, Biker Boyz is instead a late-model knockoff of 2001’s outlaw auto racing epic The Fast and the Furious, reconfigured with a predominantly black cast and a whole lotta two-wheeled saké.

The pleasure of watching two alpha males -– Al Pacino and Colin Farrell -– circling each other mano a mano substantially beefs up this otherwise routine spy thriller.

It’s most definitely not for the squeamish nor the easily offended -- the death scenes in Final Destination 2, of which there are many, are immensely bloody and imaginative affairs, full of exploding limbs, squashed bodies, and graphic, gory ultra-violence.

Most important, Blind Spot: Hitler’s Secretary makes us wonder, in a very human sense, about the various blinders we all adopt to make our peace with life.

Too bloodless to satisfy except as a political exercise.