All it lacks are the crucial things an inspired director could have provided: spark, soul and magic.

In their formidable quest for junk food, Harold and Kumar end up redefining what the all-American protagonists of Hollywood movies should look like - and prove this comedy is not quite as brain-dead as it originally appeared.

If you like hard bodies and hot engines, if you want to feel like you're inside a cockpit or a video game with someone else working the joystick, you'll find decent escape from the summer doldrums in Stealth.

The trouble with The Ref is that it keeps running out of steam, so it seems to develop a new plot wrinkle every seven minutes. Typically, it'll run through the new idea until it runs out of steam again, then invents yet another one. One feels it continually re-imagining itself, and as the minutes flee by, the re-imaginings become thinner and thinner.

Its mood of ennui and dread will haunt long after its title character's beaming grin has faded.

Von Trier has assembled a fearless troupe of gifted actors - especially Jorgensen - to explore the outer reaches of human cruelty and vulnerability.

Akin to being force-fed sugary confections from a bottomless bowl. At first the idea seems just grand, but after a while, all you want to do is scream, "Enough!"

The biggest problem with Jersey Girl may not be exactly its fault; what is up there on the screen is cute and funny and heartfelt, even if it is unflinchingly formulaic.

Derived from a novel by former Miami Herald reporter John Katzenbach, it might be described as an inversion of the treasured '50s genre known as the Crusading Liberal Movie, as pioneered by, say, Stanley Kramer. But Just Cause doesn't just invert it, it turns it inside out, on its head, upside down and backward, then kicks it in the tail. [17 Feb 1995]

Has an unerring capacity for going soft whenever a hard edge is called for.

Soul Men isn't much of a movie, but it bubbles along and reaches its percolating high point at the very end.

It's got a smattering of hearty laughs and a career-high performance from Sandler.

I'm Not Scared presents an interesting picture of youthful innocence challenged, but not a truthful one

In the Valley of Elah is too inept and diffuse to be a howl against the war in Iraq. At best, it is a manly whimper.

If only De Niro or screenwriter Eric Roth had the instinct to play some of this for laughs or even outrageous burlesque. Despite their conviction and intelligence and their game, amazing cast, all they do is eke out a series of straight-faced dramatic reversals and personal betrayals that leave the dramatis personae, and the audience, numb.

As a narrative, it has serious problems -- holes so gaping that they're all but unavoidable.

A visual feast of colorful stop-motion animation, offers many bite-size delights. Ultimately, though, it isn't nearly as flavorful as Roald Dahl's deliciously perverse children's book, upon which the movie is based.

A Mighty Heart has the surface tension of a first-rate docudrama but neither the passion nor the vision to encompass its powerhouse subject.

If you haven't had enough of Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan weepies like "Sleepless in Seattle" (1993) and "You've Got Mail" (1998), The Lake House gives us Mopey in Chicago and You've Got Snail Mail.

Doesn't match the impact of its predecessor, which both revived and reimagined the zombie-film genre.

Terrence Howard has stolen 50 Cent's thunder - and his lightning, and his storm clouds, too - twice in one year.

See it with people who take it for the trash it is, and you can cheer the baroque killings and laugh fondly with Forest Whitaker as he tries too hard to create a domestic sociopath to match his role as "Idi Amin."

Anderson sees her subject as little more than a game-show contestant. One suspects the real Evelyn Ryan deserved far better.

In Stay, the director, Marc Forster, fresh from "Finding Neverland," turns Manhattan into a nightmarish dreamscape and his characters into self-destructive ghosts.

As a tasteful take on a minor novel, Metroland is genteel enough, but it lacks the urgency and scope of a must-see movie. [07 May 1999]

The movie mostly proves that cutting-edge humiliations are best absorbed in 25-minute segments on HBO.

A somewhat simple-minded, overwrought mock epic. [22 May 1992]

Scores some serious points for its dance moves but does a lousy job of remembering there's a lot more to this big old world than moving your feet.