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 sequel to the 2008 hit “Twilight” makes no effort to satisfy outsiders. It's strictly for devotees who won't balk at plot absurdities, clunky dialogue and patchy characterizations.

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

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

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

Excruciatingly flat comedy.

The writer-producer-director of American Dreamz makes nearly every mistake in the satirical book. His targets are either too easy or too dated. He's inconsistent in his attitudes toward them. His stereotypes are stale.

Just Will Ferrell doing the same man-boy shtick he usually does.

A feel-nothing movie – a series of disconnected, implausible incidents that end as arbitrarily as they began, in an effort to inspire emotions the picture never justifies.

Despite the fun dancing, sidestep Center Stage.

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

Unimaginative.

Lee sleepwalks through his part, even in romantic scenes with equally bland Cameron Richardson.

Plotting has never been writer-director Allen’s strong point, and the story falls apart. It depends on coincidences that are unlikely individually and ridiculous together.

It's a terrible muddle unless you take it as a satire on the Age of Ellis, the Jacqueline Susann for that Flock of Seagulls era. That way, the unintentional laughs seem almost ironic.

It's not only an ultraviolent, ludicrously inconsistent rip-off of Bradbury's idea, but it poisons the well for future efforts.

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

There's a potentially good story rattling around somewhere inside this broken, self-contradictory and finally meaningless film.

Ghost Ship, which can best be described by altering one consonant in the second word, sustains the stylishness of its opening for exactly three minutes.

A brazen title card declares this " true story." (Wow, not even "based on.") However many facts may be accurate, the movie feels contrived, with climax piled upon climax.

When the film stumbles to its last and silliest conclusion, you realize much of the plot line was unnecessary -- or couldn't have happened at all!

It's yet another warm, fuzzy, New-Age tale that cozies us into believing the grave doesn't mean oblivion.

Reviewers sometimes insult actors by saying they don't vary their expressions across an entire movie. But until Knowing, I never thought that could literally be true. Nicolas Cage does widen his eyes with about 15 minutes left in the film.

The problem isn't that Tarantino's in love with death; it's that he's deadly dull. Even "Natural Born Killers" made a stab at social commentary and satire of America?s celebrity-mad media. Kill Bill merely giggles through gore and asks you to smile at its style.

Where "Wedding" introduced us to a Greek family most of us had never seen before, "Connie" plays out like a clumsy episode of "Laverne and Shirley:" familiar, phony and forgettable.

Writers John Brancato and Michael Ferris must figure the blinking lights on Angela's screen will cloud our brains. They ask us to ignore plotholes the size of craters... Nor does director Irwin Winkler shoot scenes suspensefully. [28 July 1995, p.9F]

It's a drab jumble of meaningless action, dull characters and animation as flat and superficial as its story.

I've just seen The Core, and I have a piece of advice for Hilary Swank: Don't quit your night job.