Defies logic, the laws of physics and almost anyone's willingness to believe in it. But darned if it doesn't also keep us riveted to our seats.

What makes Blade 2 marginally better than "Blade," especially if you thought the first was a hollow spectacle? It has a plot.

Turn a potentially unforgettable movie into a broad crowd-pleaser that sustains itself on three acting performances.

By refusing to take anything seriously (including himself), Shatner lifts the movie to a truly funny level of absurdity. Soon, though, it goes back to being the type of buddy picture Hollywood stamps out like stale cookies.

MacDowell gives an uneven performance, as she often does, but Strathairn is ideally cast as the conflicted husband.

How odd that some of the most appealing elements of this new animation should be action sequences as old as cinema itself.

The last 40 minutes descend further and further into nonsense, until we're in an underground grotto where Jeremy Irons plays a furry, cannibalistic albino with psychic powers and super-strength.

Some scenes achieve dramatic greatness and emotions that reach to the heart's core. Almost as many have the tinny ring of a badly counterfeited coin.

Abbott, Petroni and director Michael Rymer do exploit the visual and aural cliches of vampire movies from the last 20 years: The creatures wear tattoos, shave their heads, listen to blistering rock and dress in black leather. For a band of societal outsiders, they're pathetically conformist.

Eventually, though, the movie turns into a "Touched By An Angel" knockoff that dares us not to reach for a hankie while we succumb to its comforting message.

The lack of attacks lets us concentrate on emotions rather than explosions.

Adults will wish the movie were less simplistic, obvious, clumsily plotted and shallowly characterized. But what are adults doing in the theater at all?

A mind-numbing carnival of violence.

What starts as a cute premise crashes faster than a skateboard with an oak branch shoved between its wheels.

The movie runs out of steam before its finish, but she (Kidman) doesn't.

The Son's Room refers to every room this family will inhabit for a long time -- he's an unseen, ubiquitous presence -- but they may learn to lead ordinary, even joyful lives again.

It pays homage to the genre's most glorious days.

By the end, an end that has a little too much melodrama to it, we can only shake our heads in wonder.

Self-respecting filmgoers will find this a "Walk" to dismember.

Cuba Gooding Jr. lands on his behind more often than a one-legged figure skater, and the preschooler next to me giggled every time.

Flat as a Moravian cookie, flat as a sailor's wallet after a month in port, flat as the average European's impression of the Earth in A.D. 800.

The picture shatters all genre conventions.

As in most cheap futuristic movies, everything is dark or illuminated by a drab bluish glow. The buildings look grubbily similar to each other, so every location has to be identified onscreen. Of course, that saves the audience the trouble of paying attention.

The cancer of dishonesty begins to grow half an hour into the film, and it riddles the picture by the end.

Qualifies as a solid double, maybe a triple.

Overlong, entertaining, sense-assaulting drama.

Has the sex appeal of a Road Runner cartoon, one-tenth the laughs and equal plausibility.

The Observer won't let me get stoned before a review, so I'll never know what How High would be like after a big fat blunt. Without one, it's sloppy, broadly funny in spots and chaotic.

Howard has never been so grown-up in his handling of tough themes or so inventive in depicting states of mind. Goldsman has never been so down-to-earth or created so touching a character.

Darabont and Sloane stumble consistently and fall into the abyss.

For all the story's bland familiarity, it has winning moments. Allen's no actor, but he projects a likeable personality.

Jackson surpasses the expectations anyone might have had for him with The Fellowship of the Ring, the first installment of his trilogy devoted to J.R.R. Tolkien's masterwork.

Over the course of 108 minutes, The Royal Tenenbaums drops downward on the humor scale from hilarious to funny to quirky to pretentiously bizarre to chaotic.

Kandahar found itself in real-life controversy last December, when one of its actors was accused of murder.

I admire Cameron Crowe for daring to write and direct a movie as strange as Vanilla Sky. I lament the casting of Tom Cruise and Penelope Cruz in the leads.

The director lingers over images, watching builders at work or Baran at her chores; the camera often seems to daydream, like Lateef. No grand climax caps the film, but the small incidents have a cumulative effect.

Begins and ends quietly, like stirrings of thunder from a distant storm. In between comes a tragedy that rolls over us like a compact hurricane.

Soderbergh and writer Ted Griffin added plot twists that will catch you off-guard, dumped the clever ending and worked in a love story that's as superfluous as elevator shoes on Shaquille O'Neal.

A mediocrity at any time, because of its implausible script and bland characters.

Field does what most American directors don't: He shows people at work, in the day-to-day activity unmarked by excitement.

Though the writing doesn't work, you have to give Burns credit for shrewd direction. He gets the best performances I've seen from Graham and Murphy.

Shows the fate of Sicilians who moved to the Italian industrial city of Turin 40-plus years ago, and it suggests that the experience of relocation is universal.

Gripping, improbable plot marked by exciting sequences of action.

It relies on short bursts of Lawrence's zaniness, punctuated by an occasional joke about stinking feet or vile breath. For his admirers, that will be plenty.

Can there be higher praise for a motion picture designed to capture a beloved book with fidelity, thoroughness and affection? Only this: They made it better.

Who else in Hollywood would've met a non-actor with spina bifida (Rene Kirby), created a role for him, then shot him dancing and skiing on his hands to show how easily he fit into society?

A typical shallow caper film. Just assume the truth is the exact opposite of what's happening.

It comes from Pixar, the animation studio that scored with the "Toy Story" series and "A Bug's Life," and it has more zip and a tad less soul than those predecessors.

The juice in "Man" comes from supporting characters.

The sense of loneliness and disaffection makes its effect. Guédiguian offers no answers, and the hope he supplies is almost surreal.

I heard a moviegoer calls this drama "a feel-good `American Beauty,'" which is like saying "a hot bowl of gazpacho" -- the point has completely been missed.

Even if they're on the side of the angels, 106 minutes is a long time to keep this sermon going.

Depp gives yet another introspective, slightly mopey performance -- Graham never begins to act (and never has begun, as far as I know). But they're surrounded by an authentic, first-rate English cast.

Long before this interminable film reaches its bogus finale, you'll realize that the people in it aren't real.

This superficial plot, almost devoid of characterization or weighty emotions, is an excuse for ferocious, fast and frequent combat.

Lynch does "explain" what's happening via a plot twist two-thirds of the way through "Drive," which will satisfy you (as it did me) or leave you asking, "Is that all there is?"

Characters in Breillat's movies often make sex their god, lose faith in it, then find their lives hollow and grim. Bergman wouldn't have been so concerned with bodily woes, but he'd have understood.

A horror film that doesn't wear out a moment of its welcome.

He presides over the picture with such assurance that even longtime Denzel-watchers gape.

A miler trying to run a marathon, a fair middleweight idea trying to deliver heavyweight thrills.

Anyhow, I believe you would probably like this movie if you let your mind drift during the slow parts. That is easier for some of us than others, and I was thinking about my next runway project about half of the time.

The kids provide all the vitality, but even they've been muffled by the director.

Its familiar story has pleasing quirks.

The filmmakers have a vision of the way Shakespeare can be made vibrant and vital to modern viewers, with or without the lofty original dialogue.

Salva's view of the universe is bleak, but he communicates it with scary sincerity.

It starts as enjoyable B-movie pulp, degenerates to camp, then turns into laughable lunacy.

I don't know if the new movie is Smith's weakest. It's certainly his most disposable, a warmed-over hash of jokes that will have Mewes fans rolling with laughter and the rest of us rolling our eyes in disbelief.

It's no surprise, and it's trite, but sometimes fun -- and not magic -- is more than enough.

Like an impressionist painting. Scrutinize it closely, and the details don't make sense individually. Step back from it to study the big picture, and it will make a sweeping effect.

The characters, irritating as they can be at first, grow on you as they grow up.

Partly a travelogue for the Greek islands, partly a simplistic love story, and generally a rehash of the Oscar-winning "Mediterraneo," as if we needed even the first one.

The best work comes from Timothy Dalton as the grizzled, Scots-accented head of the Pinkertons.

Delivers more of what the original promised, with the crudity index up one notch and the humor index down quite a few.

When we're outside Frank's body, Osmosis Jones drags. When we're inside him, it zooms.

The most sophisticated and satisfying ghost story on film since "The Sixth Sense."

How bad, really, could it be? I couldn't have guessed.

Looks as if it were thrown together as carelessly as slum housing.

A mixed bag with a huge amount of heart.

A spruced-up version has been re-released after 22 years, and the addition of 43 minutes means the story really has room to breathe.

Stuff yourself with popcorn, let the gray matter rest and enjoy what may be the best two hours of nonsense you'll see this year.

Auteuil does an excellent job. He's like Marcello Mastroianni, whose naturalness also deluded people into thinking for a while that he wasn't a versatile actor.

I realize fantasy-based action movies aren't supposed to be as complex as William Gibson's novels. But do they have to be this simple-minded?

About 45 minutes into Swordfish, the picture degenerates permanently from drivel to sleaze (only a short drop).

Director Ivan Reitman used to know how to tell a silly story, back around the time of "Stripes" and "Ghostbusters."

A frantic, heartless hodgepodge of pieces from James Bond movies, Indiana Jones adventures, "Star Wars" and half a dozen legends.

The filmmakers would have been better advised to stick with the Zeroes and spend less time making up heroes.

Hints heavily at its One Big Secret from the get-go, then waits for you to figure it out miles ahead of the not-too-bright characters.

It's possible to groan, chuckle, wince and be moist-eyed, sometimes in a span of seven or eight minutes.

The picture brims over with ideas - good ones, silly ones, maudlin ones, witty ones, absurd ones - and they bump up against each other like ingredients in a vast stewpot that never comes to a continuous boil.

The coolest film in town offers industrial espionage, power struggles, thwarted romance, betrayal and suspense - and best of all, it's true.

Forget the bug-eating, cow-spearing and one-upsmanship of TV's "Survivor." The real results of isolation and deprivation unfold in The King is Alive: madness, suicide and murder.

This might all have been silly fun -- as it was in the 1999 version -- except for the carelessness of the whole picture.

Goodman exudes doltish kindness, Dillon a hapless gentleness, Reiser a vulgar buoyancy. Douglas turns in the best performance.

Henry James' tangled, turgid prose always seems to me like a thicket of thorn trees -- so I should be grateful when somebody does the job for me on film. But I'm not - at least, in the case of The Golden Bowl.

Whenever the tires stop screeching and the fenders slamming, the story lands in a brutal pile-up of cliches.

95 breezy minutes that typify cotton-candy filmmaking.

A Kafkaesque series of interwoven stories that depict the hopeless lives half the populace there (Iran) must lead.

Spade, who almost invariably plays smug or smarmy characters, proves he really can act.