His [Director Tony Scott's] pornographic lust for bloodletting, gunplay, and out-of-control camerawork far exceeds his abilities to tell a story.

There are really only two kinds of big-budget action movies: stupid, and good and stupid. Surprisingly, XXX: State of the Union is good and stupid, which makes it an immediate improvement over 2002's meatheaded "XXX."

The moments that elevate Wrath above the routine are right in line with Liebesman's "Battle: Los Angeles'' high points: frenetically shot u-r-there combat sequences that feel like the real thing.

The greater embarrassment is that so many millions of dollars have been wasted on an entertainment that feels so smug, so pointless, and so thunderously empty.

Only in the last 30 minutes does Evan Almighty put his gifts to decent use. Epically hairy and biblically robed, Carell suggests at that point what a bolder, more psychologically serious treatment of religious conviction would have been like.

Waist Deep is a cynical excuse for the writer and director (and talented actor) Vondie Curtis-Hall to sock some money away for the kids' college tuition. It's as if he watched "Get Rich or Die Tryin' " and thought, "It needs more palm trees."

The movie is terrible partly because it's badly written, directed, and conceived and partly because it lacks the necessarily thematic coherence to accomplish proselytism of any kind.

It has no pulse, no apparent breath.

However well-intentioned the movie may be, it spills over with flat cutesy humor, making a slog out of an experience that should be filled with wonder.

Though it features a plucky female protagonist, Annabelle still possesses the same medieval attitude toward women as “The Conjuring,” reducing the gender to the extremes of self-sacrificing mother and malevolent toy.

Miracle at St. Anna is not work of outrage or joy. It's something distressingly new for the filmmaker: a work of obligation. It feels like a movie Lee made in order to say he did it.

The major problem with this alleged comic thriller is it is neither funny nor thrilling. Neither the heavies nor the good guys are believable.

Dogged allegiance to blandness.

The movie is so dependant on its source material that it fails to put Carter, Thompson, Penn, and Christy to better use.

Broad and badly made but sporadically inspired, "Chuck and Larry" is still an amazing improvement over "License to Wed," this month's other wedding comedy.

Alba, meanwhile, is again ridiculously shoehorned into a comedy gig, although she does have an amusing opening bit spying while nine months pregnant. If only diaper bomb gags weren't the inevitable follow-up.

I'm not the first observer, or even the second, to liken the star's (Penn) portrayal of fictional Louisiana governor Willie Stark to the late John Belushi's impersonation of Joe Cocker.

The important thing is that the film knows how to make itself likable. It's executed with warmth and affection and a high enough energy level to keep it entertaining. [15 Oct 1993, p.53]

The movie works best when it finds a balance between flatly familiar and over-aggressively unexpected.

Silly little thriller.

All that's missing is coherence. Call it Blunderbuss Satire.

Every time the kid looks at a field of numbers and symbols that start jiggling across a screen to clicky music, but not jiggling as fast as his brain, he's exiling the kind of hero played by Willis to the scrapheap of history. [3 Apr 1998, p.D10]

That this witless, formulaic sequel to the hit comedy Analyze This even dares to spoof ''The Sopranos'' is embarrassing. It's like Freddie Prinze Jr. slamming Gene Hackman as a bad actor.

All over the map in the details it throws at us, and the level of immaturity it aims for.

The film turns that stale old Seder into warmed-up dinner theater.

Though Murray and Curry gamely deliver some chuckle-worthy one-liners along the way, they're mostly leashed to material as moldy and uninspired as the "Jeffersons" theme song.

If Shutter is any indication, the reputation of professional photographers is still on the wane. Not only are photographs creepy, the film suggests, but so are photographers.

Material this banal needs a madman of David Lynch proportions to incinerate it. Hackford leaves it intact, forcing us to regard a car he doesn't have the guts or skill to crash.

You don’t have to be Jewish to love borscht belt humor, or gay to love camp, or French to love farce. But when all three are thrown into a blender with a dollop of generic family dysfunction, as is the case in Let My People Go!, oy vey doesn’t begin to address the result.

Neither hot nor square, it's as simple and earnest as any after-school special and as cameo-laden as any rap video.

The plot doesn’t take clever turns, the visual thrills aren’t all that thrilling, and you’re ultimately left to get your heist-movie kicks elsewhere.

The Duke is not only name-checked in passing, but Eckhart (who's excellent) even bears a squinty resemblance by the final scenes.

The first hour or so is lively, a bit crude, and more fun than it has any right to be. Expect double crosses, switcheroos, serious spoiler-level plot twists. Most are ridiculous, but that’s OK. The excitement starts to feel mechanical, even stale, during the second hour.

The film is a disquieting and often very funny examination of yuppie unease in the country. The problem is, it's disguised as a dopey suspense thriller.

Eckhart, who gets more rugged by the picture, certainly works hard to bring the audience along. But he's a nervous wreck for nothing. This movie isn't talking to us, it's talking to other serial killer movies.

The film was conceived as a youthful tour of all that's wrong with the two-party system, with the likably shambling actor Philip Seymour Hoffman as host, but the breadth of subjects covered precludes any response other than nebulous discontent.

The concept is derivative of about a dozen other movies and their sequels.

Only God Forgives is the kind of remarkable disaster only a very talented director can make after he finds success and is then allowed to do whatever he wants.

The music and the stars aren't enough to save the movie.

As far as rehashed sequels go, “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” could have been worse. That it’s slightly better holds out hope that the inevitable third film will be a major power up in quality.

Conspicuously short on the kind of texture that makes us feel we're watching real people living real lives.

MacDowell offers an engaging portrait of a complex woman who has survived life's slings and arrows. It makes Crush an affecting take on modern women.

Part soap opera and part thriller, and it has the unique characteristic of being both undeveloped and overwritten.

The boldest thing about Cutthroat Island may be the way it maintains a comic tone as it portrays him as her boy toy. Things get pretty waterlogged on the island, though. If there's a fresh way to photograph buried-treasure retrieval, Harlin hasn't discovered it. [22 Dec 1995, p.60]

The movie demands you be a glutton for sensation and then has the nerve to ask why you're not hungrier.

W.E., her second effort after 2008's "Filth and Wisdom,'' tries awfully hard. In the end it tries our patience.

I'd like to make a 911 call myself: Lord, please stop this increasingly fine actor (Smith) from climbing onto another cross.

Trips early and never gets up off the floor.

It's a sunny, funny, fittingly cartoony blend of computer-generated 3-D representations of the flying squirrel and his pal the moose with actors.

An earnest but ultimately scattered effort to put Yippie radical Abbie Hoffman's best foot posthumously forward.

Actually an above-average farce, at least as featherweight chick flicks go.

Rebound is about as unmotivated as Coach Roy, doing nothing to distinguish itself from any other movie ever made about winless teams that learn to stop losing.

Even the valiant mastiff, with his soulful eyes, splayed crocodile teeth and industrial-strength jaws, can't keep "Turner and Hooch" from going to the dogs. Unfortunately, it's the kind of picture any self-respecting dog would toss back. [28 July 1989, p.29]

Although Rush gives the film visual texture, he can't give it credibility or metaphorical dimension. Color of Night is nocturnal, but not much more. [19 Aug 1994, p.49]

For what it’s worth, Tooth Fairy is a somehow dimmer cousin of those Tim Allen “Santa Clause’’ movies.

Aeon Flux is the sophomore picture from Karyn Kusama, who's first movie was a modest boxing film called "Girlfight." Here she's in over her head. The movie's sexual and scientific ideas never come through, and the characters would be fun only if they came with a joystick.

The new remake of Arthur is a thin copy of the 1981 original. But it has a few things going for it.

The movie is only sporadically interesting.

Bird on a Wire is pedal-to-the-metal moviemaking by the numbers. What it's got going for it is that Goldie Hawn is cute and Mel Gibson is cuter as they struggle to mate screwball comedy to a chase thriller. The pleasant surprise is that Gibson has a flair for light comedy and the timing to bring off double-takes. It's a relief, too, because little else in Bird on a Wire is fresh. [18 May 1990, p.77p]

It's too long and self-consciously progressive to be entertaining, but it's too well-intentioned to be dismissed altogether.

Abandon is this CLOSE to being good, juicy, bad-movie fun.

It plays better as exasperating comedy than genuine horror -- although there is something terrifying about being stuck in a movie whose idea of a bogeyman is a scarecrow with an eating disorder.

Directed by F. Gary Gray and written by Christian Gudegast and Paul T. Scheuring, the movie isn't even worthy of former NFL linebacker turned straight-to-video action figure Brian Bosworth.

Shot in a rich palette, the film does provide diversion with some of its funkily detailed sets and supporting actors.... Otherwise, the film distinguishes itself for its miscasting and misuse of its cast.

Fun here is fleeting.

Their movie is watchable - never more gratuitously so than when Alba is filmed showering and slipping into a tank top. But we've been here before, no?

Perhaps Employee of the Month, which was typed then directed by Greg Coolidge, is unfolding in the key of satire. But you'd have to be a dog to hear it.

This is a disarming and, in its own way, delightful vehicle for its star and executive producer, the comedian and actress Mo'Nique. Who could hate this movie?

Like ''Showgirls'' and ''Glitter,'' the most entertaining moments here are unintentional.

Offers little in the way of pleasure, even to its target audience -- the easily pleased and undemanding.

Julie Davis, tries desperately to fill (Woody)Allen's Coke-bottle glasses, but it fails. Miserably.

When all is said and done, the movie's a steaming plate of corn -- and, indeed, that's part of the pleasure. Myles, though, delivers a fine comic performance with no strings attached.

McAvoy’s performance is a deep, deep shade of gonzo and by far the most enjoyable aspect of Victor Frankenstein — you don’t often see over-acting this enthusiastic or this flecked with spittle.

Like so many movies with a keypad for a brain, Resident Evil: Apocalypse is another exercise in making us feel the irritation associated with having to stand behind some game hack for our turn to play.

Kevin Costner should stop trying to be so nice. His best performances have been as baddies.

As it is, LaBute has cleverly repurposed his creepy source material. This Wicker Man, which wasn't screened for critics, is a nutty atonement for the gender assaults of his filmmaking and playwriting past, including "In the Company of Men," "Your Friends & Neighbors," and "The Shape of Things."

A slick but dull new shoot- ' em-up from Jamaica, doesn't penetrate the mysteries of high-rolling, high-risk thug life.

Blows to the head are delivered with more subtlety than the message of Diary of a Mad Black Woman.

The movie needs Richard Dreyfuss .

Short, cheap, weird, and passably diverting.

Like Purple Rain, the record/film that made Prince a superstar, Graffiti Bridge is a hodgepodge musical that has a few satisfying bits - and a lot of sharp music - but fails as a narrative. [03 Nov 1990, p.22p]

They're still fighting in this sequel. But this is a more visually inspired, muscularly made movie than its predecessor.

If the director had brought any toughness of perspective - or at least the self-lacerating humor of 2002's "Igby Goes Down,'' still the reigning champ of screwed-up-Manhattan-prepster films - we might be able to digest George's follies without cringing.

This frantic farce about a married couple whose video frolic goes viral would be much less bearable without the topspin Segel imparts to even his silliest dialogue. But he looks hollow-eyed and gaunt, like a man starving himself to prove a point. I want the old, lumpy Jason Segel back. Eat, bubbe, eat.

Hand it to Amanda Seyfried - she seems to have a knack for underplaying unstable characters in a way that lets their nuttiness creep right up on you.

Beneath its glitz, poses, and pub crawlers and club prowlers, it's an old-fashioned morality tale.

This take, like so many Hollywood takes on French comic originals, is diligent, but, with too few exceptions, irredeemably soggy. [09 Aug 1991, p.42]

3 Ninjas is a skilled balancing act, a throwback to Disney's old live-action family films, starring and targeted to pre-teens. [07 Aug 1992, p.30]

Passable adventure that offers the occasional flash of real cleverness.

Parental Guidance is overly generous with regard to the silliness. However, it's not clueless. Crystal seems determined to give as generously as he gets. When a bully whacks him, Crystal covers the bully in vomit. Good for him.

When actors are as great as De Niro and Pacino, watching them in a movie like Righteous Kill is deadly.

Fly Me to the Moon is a crummy movie for kids, yet it still holds out the prospect of past wonders and future marvels. It's one small step for a housefly, one giant leap for 3-D.

Perhaps because Campbell is a purist at heart, My Name Is Bruce is as awful as anything he has done - a broadly silly gore comedy in which no gag is too cartoonish to be indulged in at least once and preferably three times.

This is a ride, a video game, a soundtrack -- unapologetic and clearly labeled as such. It has no middle speed.

The problem with 8 1/2 Women isn't that what you see is what you get; it's that what you see is all you get.

The effect is less video-game-turned-movie than zombie movie minus zombies: stilted, static, s-l-o-o-o-w. The ending couldn’t set up a sequel more clearly if “To be continued” appeared on a title card. Don’t count on it. Game on? Game over.

The Wild Life, while pleasant, is just too flat to meet the challenge.

This sickeningly violent film, starring a bevy of rap stars, marks the feature debut of hot video director Hype Williams, and while there are hints of his trademark trippiness, this is basically an utterly joyless endeavor. [04 Nov 1998, p.E6]