Midway through, there’s a truly riotous set-piece involving Bruiser’s gay love affair with a Great Dane, but not even a Chihuahua in leather bondage gear can zest up a franchise that has degraded from sleeper to snoozer.

Never makes the leap from a little fantasy about sex with a stranger to a larger story about a woman settling down for life.

A less cohesive action-comedy than its predecessor, Full Throttle is instead a freewheeling collection of random action sequences strung together with little or no discernible rhyme or reason.

There’s gore, all right, although the real terror lies in the tease, and the often dark, herky-jerky DV format ratchets up the tension to an almost unbearable degree.

Although the story and imagery are absorbing to watch, the details of the plot are sometimes hard to follow and fully digest. But enough of it survives to make this extravagant production a delightful experience for Westerners to watch.

Astonishingly dull. The leads have zero chemistry, the supporting actors are even worse, and the script is a lifeless, draggy thing.

No one has ever succeeded with anything approximating the sheer energetic brilliance of what Lee has managed here. For all intents and purposes, this is a comic-book movie in the very truest and most vibrant sense of the phrase.

If you shy away from that sick feeling in the pit of the stomach that comes when watching good people make bad decisions, then best to steer clear of Manito, a low-budget indie that reaches near-Greek proportions of tragedy brought on by lousy decision-making.

Works quite well for what it is: a wooly crime yarn with touches of humor and a satisfying, well-developed relationship between the schemers.

Jet Lag's romantic fluffery is somewhat beneath these old pros, but they make its meet-cute scenario work, mostly -– and most especially when crusty, grumpy, grizzled Jean Reno announces he's "totally in love."

It’s all veddy stiff-upper-lip -– this is romance from a masochist’s point of view -– and the intimacy of the emotions often feels cramped.

Fact is, good looks will go a long way in masking mediocrity, and Hollywood Homicide capitalizes on that fact doubly so: Co-writer/director Ron Shelton’s latest boasts two pretty faces, and all across the country, mothers and daughters sigh alike.

It’s a message movie, as are all kids films these days, but these environmentally-aware messages are sweet and unforced, and well worth hearing.

It’s too didactic to be a spaghetti Western but lacks the moral compass required of a more evolved philosophical statement.

Even with its scant running time, this nightmarish travesty barrels along with all the whipcord speed and nimble comedic grace of a loved one’s funeral.

Although Love the Hard Way is saturated with a doomed romanticism that feels more fictitious than real, the actors lend the movie a potency that it would not have had otherwise.

This moody Hong Kong thriller puts a stylish new spin on the old "Hands of Orlac" horror motif.

It’s all very nice to look at, sure, but pretty colors and molten intercoolers aside, 2 Fast 2 Furious is about as exciting as a Yugo in quicksand.

Castle-Hughes and Paratene are nothing short of remarkable in their roles.

Proves to be a wonderful reality check.

The performances are all terrific, but Together never jells as a compelling narrative.

A zippy, energetic, automotive free-for-all, a caper extravaganza minus the bleak overtones that have come to figure in so many 9mm movies these days.

This was already tired stuff when cult fave "Sleepaway Camp" came out in 1983, and it’s downright comatose by now.

By the end of the movie, it’s no longer possible to know anything with certainty -– so convoluted, contradictory, pathological, and long ago have the events become. It’s a movie that will have you talking and thinking for hours.

Pixar's Finding Nemo may well have the best casting of any animated film of the past 30-odd years.

It seems downright unfair to harp on the remake’s differences from the original when both films are having such a ball.

Will likely test the patience of all but the most devoted fans.

Respiro scores high -– if strange -– marks, but I think it’s more in love with the quirky nature of life on a small island, which, unsurprisingly, echoes life in any small town, be it here or on some faraway Sicilian isle.