It's blah. Worse than blah, actually, because it's so stupid.

This isn't a cheerful movie. But director Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu and writer Guillermo Arriaga tell these stories with authority and verve, making 2½ hours zip by.

The film's full of in-jokes, from the Spanish-language billboards to the name of Banderas' character.

Someone Like You is from Hollywood's bottomless box of cliches.

If you're going to serve up a half-baked idea, you might as well have Sigourney Weaver do the cooking.

Pearce, who's in every scene except the Sammy flashbacks, dominates the picture through his feral performance.

If you like films short, sweet and soothing, this may be exactly your "Dish."

It's the poster child for bad taste, not to mention bad construction.

The most catastrophic misfire in a dreadful movie season.

The details of the story, crucial in a picture that's at least partly a mystery, remain a tangled blur.

Gandolfini's fans expect something quirky whenever he shows up, and they'll get what they've bargained for.

Like the Big E himself. It starts out fast, dangerous, sexy, confident, funny with an edge. It ends up confused, bloated, unable to leave the stage when it should.

Just when the story reaches its idiotic nadir, Neil (Diamond) shows up to save the day with a song and a smile.

The film goes from stylish to ghoulish to foolish.

It's well-shot and well-edited by Hollywood standards, though special effects don't reach the top Hollywood level. The stars have their hearts in their work: Cameron and Johnson don't have great depth but give their all. Currie makes a subtle villain.

Writers Pamela Falk and Michael Ellis aim for the soufflé-style comedy audiences ate up greedily 40 years ago, but the film falls flat.

Why on earth didn't Warner Bros. release this movie in time for Oscar consideration? Sure, it's bleak, depressing, sometimes painful to watch. But it would have been one of the best pictures of the year, and Nicholson (who hasn't done work of this caliber since "The Crossing Guard") might have been on the podium again.

Another whirling crime caper that leaves you shocked and chuckling at the same time.

Better than you might expect, if you didn't expect it to be any good.

He's (Soderbergh) among the few directors working today who makes me wonder what he'll do next - and draws me into the movie house, whatever it may be.

Greenwood, whose range has carried him from the lonely widower of "The Sweet Hereafter" to the creepy husband of "Double Jeopardy," gives a star-making performance.

Remains as flat as the Texas plains.

The middle 90 minutes, which put Hanks alone on an island without voice-over narration or even a musical background, is as risky as anything Hollywood did this year.

Whenever the music subsides and the characters speak the Coens' lines, the film turns back into mush.

A holiday fable that's not destined for immortality but goes down more easily than most of the pap Hollywood tries to feed us every Christmas.

As lame as a three-legged mule.

If it were 10 minutes shorter, it would've been just the right length and almost wholly honest.

Without Gibson, this soufflé would fall pancake-flat.

Why is The Emperor's New Groove Disney's funniest animated movie in years? Because it's the least like a Disney animated movie.

Certainly satisfies our hunger for a light, bright dessert, yet it may leave you hungry for more.

Vertical Limit is like riding a roller coaster for two hours. First it's frighteningly exciting. Then it's mind-numbing

Whatever he (Shyamalan) did, he shouldn't have tried to send the same lightning bolt down to Earth in the same place.

For the first time since "Chasing Amy," I realized why people like Ben Affleck.

Offers high-speed helicopter chases, fireballing explosions, deadly laser guns, futuristic technology gone amok, multiple car crashes, two Arnold Schwarzeneggers for the price of one - almost everything except a plot that makes sense.

It's a mass of interchangeable moving images, none much more significant than the others, linked to a plot looser than a 2-year-old's shoelaces.

Bad actors, bad music and bad plot make it a hellish bummer.

Your reaction will depend on your response to the title character, who's meant to be God or one of God's messengers.

The dialogue includes double entendres that are rather clever, if you're mentally at the age of 11.

He (writer/director David Gordon Green) fired his arrow straight at a worthwhile target, but it fell a little short.

Watchable family films are so rare these days that we shouldn't put a stake through one with so much heart.

The assault is against our ears, as the soundtrack pours forth a stream of thrash and Goth music.

The opposite of memorable.

Goes down easily enough.

Won't startle or surprise you but will satisfy your need to see good actors at work.

Best of all, Billy (Jamie Bell) is that rarity in a film distributed by Hollywood: a real boy, confused at 11 about almost everything.

Supplies the three key elements of the best political thrillers: suspense, credibility and the feeling that you're really sitting in the Oval Office.

Yi Yi is an intimate movie, for all its length and complexity.

A frenzied, cacophonic cartoon.

The film's as chaotic and heavy-handed as "Summer of Sam" without the same sense of harsh reality.

The effect is as potent as a straight right to the solar plexus.

The script's hokiness flattens the performances.

If this new film doesn't quite go to 11, it's a healthy 8½.

Can be unbearably moving or annoyingly mawkish, sometimes in the same scene.

John Hancock must be the best filmmaker working in LaPorte County, Ind.

Crowe gave Kate Hudson one pointer while making Almost Famous: Her character simply had to light up every room as soon as she walked into it.

Betty moves into Coen Brothers territory, a land so unreal that horrific behavior wrings laughter from a disbelieving audience.

Chaotic, sometimes funny.

This picture won't attract white audiences. I doubt that blacks would flock to a Jerry Seinfeld concert film. But we'd all get along better if we realized we had the right to laugh at each other's foibles

The movie is somewhat below average. The plot doesn't always hold together.

Sometimes seems longer than a rainy Super Bowl.

Far too clever for its own good.

Blethyn glides through the proceedings elegantly, a comic swan among ducks.

The part that caters to older fans is funny and satisfying, if unbelievable. The part that plays to action-movie devotees is muddled, unsatisfying and unbelievable. Luckily, the first part is about two-thirds of the movie.

Should appeal to anyone who likes films as mushy and unsurprising as baby food.

A painful bore.

He (Murphy) can't make chicken a la king from the chicken manure supplied by the writers.

A picture sufficiently shallow that you'll discover everything that lies beneath it well before the end.

It is a gimmick, rather than an idea worth exploring.

Balances brains, brawn and heart in ideal proportions. The actors - some first-rate, all enjoyable - never get overshadowed by the special effects, which dazzle us without gory excess.

Chuck and Buck: A fungus among us.

Audrey Wells's script and Turteltaub's presentation ring true just often enough to prevent the comedy from descending forever into Cutesy-Wutesy Hell.

A fairy tale full of fascist, Bible-thumping straights, self-deluded and pathetic gay people who deny their impulses, and two honest lesbians who triumph.

Might have been funnier if it had been put together with more care.

By the end, I felt like a beetle going round and round in a toilet bowl that just wouldn't stop flushing.

The best movie I've seen about the Revolutionary War.

Few actors can match Carrey's ability to change his features and body language.

Visually compelling, relentlessly loud and so shallow you need just a fragment of your brain to follow it.

Designed to appeal to people who thought "She's All That" was too mentally demanding.

The sunshine in Sunshine comes from women around him (Fiennes).

Interesting and idiotic elements almost exactly balance each other.

Lawrence plus latex equals laughs.

This is one of the few recent westerns that requires you to keep your eyes open and memory engaged.

Mostly, you get a pain in the head from the assault on your senses and déjà vu as thick as heartburn after an anchovy pizza.

It offers a grim view of prehistoric life: Carnivores slaughter herbivores, though we're spared most direct shots of this violence.

Grosser than "American Pie"! More penis jokes than "There''s Something About Mary"! Nudity more gratuitous than "Porky''s"!

Despite the fun dancing, sidestep Center Stage.

It's bombastic, chaotic, plodding, visually dreary and patchily written.

Hamlet has audacity, intelligence, a provocative visual and musical style, virtually no poetry, a garbled story line weakened by savage cutting of the play, and a great yawning hole where a Hamlet ought to be.

The characters are so conventional that the movie has nowhere interesting to go, even when a corpse complicates affairs.

Like the star's acting, the movie is bland, full of good intentions and generally as stiff as a fireplace poker.

It's hardly a balanced biography: There's no mention of Jordan's gambling problems or connections with Nike, whose factories overseas were criticized for underpaying workers and treating them badly.

As warm and reassuring as grandma's hugs.

It ends with the corniest convention of all: an absurd mano-a-mano between good and evil.

Writer-director Lisa Krueger bends over backward to make everyone happy.

Isn't quite smart enough to untangle one large, insoluble problem at the end.

There may not be much meat in Hodges' stew, but the sauce was so tasty I felt satisfied after the light meal.

Any critic likes to predict the rise of a star, so let me introduce you to Gina Prince-Bythewood.

Ambiguity can enrich a movie, but artists abdicate their responsibilities if they don't take a stance of any kind.