The transgression that dogs much faith-based art - and leaves its stain on The Last Sin Eater - is the inability to divorce art from agenda; that is, you can feel the filmmaker forcing the round peg of evangelism into the square hole of creative excellence.

It's possible that a smart, insightful, sharp-edged comedy could have been written around these characters, but Trust The Man isn't it.

But by the end, you're only watching to see how far Wilmot's pustules will spread, or whether his various diseases will really make his nose fall off.

If only La Mujer de mi Hermano had a dollop of humor and at least one character worth rooting for.

Painfully earnest, The Astronaut Farmer is, sad to say, a bunch of hooey. It's Frank Capra without the genuine heart, certainly without any sense of perspective.

An overly gimmicky and fatally repetitive terrorist thriller that quickly wears out its welcome.

But even those who succumb to his primitive, survivalist vision may resent the way he presents every kind of atrocity at least twice without illuminating any of the exotic details once.

The best you can say about Owen is that no actor has looked better in thigh-high boots and puffed-out britches.

If you expect anything more substantive from a movie - characters of more than one dimension, storylines that at the least play new riffs on old themes, plot developments that flow from the narrative - you'd best look elsewhere.

Swing Kids really doesn't go anywhere. [05 Mar 1993]

There hasn't been so much pea soup spit onscreen since "The Exorcist."

Newcomers to the Mike Myers experience will leave this love train early.

The Wicker Man is too loony to be a drama, too earnest to be a comedy, too predictable to be a horror film.

Anderson and Day-Lewis strip themselves of their natural talents for invention and poetry, as if any hint of romance, nobility or fun would soften the film.

Flags of Our Fathers fails as fact or legend. It's woefully incompetent as narrative moviemaking.

This movie is a case of arthouse bait and switch. Its true subject is one decent Yank's desire to believe that Everyman and Everywoman - Everywhere! - are as warm and amiable as your average American Joe: him, Morgan Spurlock, the regular guy as fearless globetrotter.

Sex and the City, as a film, is a testament to bad faith. It wants its characters to eat their wedding cake and have it, too.

It's like an Indiana Jones movie without rhythm, wit or personality, just a desperate, headlong pace.

For the most part, it's uninspired, not much to look at and laugh-free.

The mystery is, how the filmmakers still managed to come up with a movie that will satisfy almost no one.

As a romance, Spanglish is like a wholesome flirt who drags things out and becomes a tiresome tease. As a satire of upper-middle-class Los Angeles, it's a disaster.

Look, I love dogs. But this film tried my patience almost beyond endurance.

The movie plays like a dunk-the-clown game at a carnival. Through intent or ineptitude, he sets up the Bush family and administrations as caricatures.

Despite these flaws, people sick of gross-out films and teen-sex comedy may be so hungry for farce that they laugh.

S.W.A.T. may be an acronym for Special Weapons and Tactics, but by the end of this routine melodrama, it might as well stand for Standard Whacking and Trashing.

Without Duvall, this movie would be as wet as Waterworld.

Blessed with some outstanding performances, among them Ribisi's.