On paper the story may seem hopelessly contrived -- another nostalgia piece for art-house liberals -- but on-screen it's presented in purely emotional terms, which allows Duigan and his excellent leads to inhabit and ultimately transcend the period.

Just follows the numbers, plodding from one unimaginative set piece to the next. Even the tony cast of villains—Christopher Walken, Patrick Bauchau, and Grace Jones—can't add any flavor to the grindingly predictable proceedings.

Comes to life only when it reprises elements from the original movie.

Funny, suspenseful, and well paced, this is definitely the summer's best time waster.

Leth moves lightly and briskly, streamlining the weird material into something elemental and true; he's also assembled a knockout supporting cast.

Intelligent supernatural drama.

Michael Tolkin and Bruce Joel Rubin's straightforward script and Mimi Leder's toneless direction make this attempt so boring that the titles counting down the months, weeks, and finally hours to impact are best used to gauge how soon the movie will be over.

It's as if Russ Meyer had made "Death Wish III" with an adenoidal cast, though it isn't that good.

An entertainingly offbeat blend of 19th-century science fiction and Hope and Crosby Road comedies.

The opening stretch, when the visitor arrives on earth and blithely dresses down mankind, is great fun. But screenwriter David Scarpi has drained away much of the sentiment.

Almost no plot here and even less character--just a lot of pretexts for S-M imagery, Catholic decor, gobs of gore, and the usual designer schizophrenia.

Slight but savory.

This has its moments, but most of these are engulfed by the overall murk.

Watchable exercise in Zen hokum.

Loosely adapted from Alex Flinn's young-adult novel, this "Beauty and the Beast" update is a pallid, formulaic teen romance that might have benefited from a little snark.

The result is a deadly disappointment, despite Ryan Reynolds's cocky, muscle-flexing charisma as the daredevil test pilot turned intergalactic peacekeeper and Peter Sargaard's movie-stealing turn as a nerdy scientist turned psycho monster.

The sincerity of their performances (Lopez and Caviezel) overrides the intermittent implausibilities of Gerald Dipego's script.

This friendly, briefly exciting story (1998), inspired by John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany, achieves a nice balance between caricature and nuanced characterization and even manages not to be cloying.

Boorman deserves credit for trying out some new ideas, even if most of them backfire. Visually, it's fascinating—sort of a blend of Minnellian baroque and Buñuelian absurdity—but the dialogue is childish, the story is incomprehensible, and the metaphysics are ridiculous. Still, an audacious failure is preferable to a chickenhearted success. More than worth a look, if only out of curiosity.

The real summit meeting here may be between the two leads. They're good at their specialties - Reynolds's casual jock studliness and Bateman's nervous white-collar introversion - and they're even better at switching into the other guy's shtick and mannerisms.

A corny but sincere weeper written by Jonathan Marc Feldman, directed by Thomas Carter, and shot mainly in Prague.

Inevitably, however, this oh-so-cosmopolitan setup gradually devolves into resentment, messy romance, and marital strife.

Danny Glover and Mel Gibson make a gently contrasted (and nicely self-reflexive) odd couple in this action-comedy sequel.

There aren't any flesh-and-blood characters here, only superimposed attitudes: it's almost like reading a rape-crisis textbook, with every lesson italicized.

The high school is so sanitized that there are no drugs, cutthroat competition, or--inconceivably for a theatrical milieu--no gay students.

The movie's mix of erotic Latin dance and vaguely liberal politics should have young girls swooning in the aisles.

This remake is interesting mainly for the chance to see top-flight acting talent labor over dialogue so leaden you could cast bullets from it.

With its sappy musical vignettes and encounter-session dialogue, the movie consistently overplays its insights, though all three leads contribute thoughtful and genuine performances.

The movie lopes along from one half-baked scene to the next, interrupted on occasion by car-porn sequences.

Muddled attempt at edgy comedy.

This comedy-thriller that has no particular motive for changing tones.

Eugene Levy is the only actor who emerges relatively unscathed in such a fetid climate; as for Joan Plowright, I hope she took home a healthy check.

Someone had another Hospital in mind, and they even hired Arthur Hiller to direct it, but the attempt to merge black humor and strident social commentary seems even more uncertain this time.

This romantic stinker is one of those films in which every plot development becomes a life lesson and every gesture is weighted with significance.

The movie relies on the notion that postponing sex heightens arousal, but its lovers aren't any better matched post-coitus than they were before.

Glitz with no mind and lots of fancy visuals, edited with a pounding beat.

No one breaks into song, but this fact-based legal drama about a battered Anglo-Indian wife on trial for murdering her husband is infected with a fatal strain of heaving Bollywood melodrama.

Live-action stars take a backseat to CGI chipmunks in this uneven family comedy.

Mainly it's a shambles, though for once Williams gets to do what he's best at (his stand-up shtick), and the absurd story, no matter how carelessly assembled, keeps moving.

A visually arresting period piece.

Howard, as usual, seems bent on mixing genres to make several movies at once--monster movie, crime movie, coming-of-age movie, and action-adventure movie (among others)--yielding an overall narrative that's not boring but not especially suspenseful or focused either.

Jeff Wadlow directed this exploitation flick, which seems designed for students on spring break.

Though the special effects are resourceful and the action scenes shot with surprising vigor, Albert Pyun's 1982 film is a little too self-important to provide a true B-movie pleasure.

Its trickery might seem cute or clever to viewers who don't take either movies or people very seriously, but to me it recalled cynical "puzzle" films like "Memento" and "Irreversible," with no reason to exist apart from its gimmick.

To call this Kevin James comedy fatuous might be misinterpreted as an attack on the star's girth--so how about inane, tepid, lazy, puerile, phony, and unfunny?

Under the direction of last-minute replacement Richard Benjamin, the results are insufferable—grotesque, chaotic, demoralized.

Most of the humor is of the kick-daddy-in-the-shins variety, though Anjelica Huston has a few choice moments as "Ms. Harridan."

Slapdash plot, paper-thin characters, misogynist undertones, and mechanical crosscutting are all soft-core standbys.

Crudup takes a riskier path: his architect isn't very nice and is possibly irredeemable. His performance is subtle, complicated, and fresh, and it's a shame the movie doesn't live up to it.

A second helping of horror tales inspired by an old 50s comic-book series. Original Creepshow director George Romero contributes the screenplay this time, basing it on some tastefully selected Stephen King morsels.

The wrestling scenes are the best part of this drama.

Disturbing--if less sophisticated than the best SF (science fiction)-horror TV.

Maybe writers Josann McGibbon and Sara Parriott were thinking of Tracy and Hepburn--assuming they were thinking of anything--but not even Roberts's smile can put this one over.

Two generic ideas amount to nothing in this theatrical dark comedy about violence and information overload.

The real drama is the city itself, steeped in history yet undergoing a Western face-lift.

As a ditz who's just smart enough to know something isn't right, Lyonne blends hyperbole and sincerity in perfect proportions.

As with many R-rated studio comedies, the transgressive humor isn't nearly as offensive as the phony sentiment that's supposed to redeem it, supplied here in stale scenes of the sitter bonding with his little charges.

This bloated 2006 historical epic flatlines early and never regains a pulse.

This semianimated adventure is enjoyable and imaginative despite its formulaic qualities.

"B.S. I Love You" would be a more accurate title.

The movie offers an insulting "let them eat cake" gesture toward the 1982 audience, but the pacing is so ragged and the characters so lifeless that few will be able to stay awake long enough to feel offended

Weak comedy.

This video sequel to the gay comedy "Eating Out" (2004) is funnier, lighter, and faster paced.

An odd cross between "Mad Max" and "Dragonheart," this movie is all borrowed ideas, but it's still trashy fun.

The script lacks wit, and the in-joke references to cinematic sci-fi classics will soar over little kids' heads without pleasing many adults.

There's no formal stylization to speak of, but this is, after all, a film about performances, and Medak simply points his camera at the actors and lets them chew away. Some of the chewers are better than others, and Harvey Keitel and Frank Langella especially, coming from opposite poles of intensity and languor, deliver the honest emotional goods.

I was seduced part of the time, thanks largely to Bonham Carter's sensuality, but the whole is unsatisfying, and it's tempting to see the imposed recutting as a major source of the problem.

As long as Efron's shirt comes off, he could play an accountant and no one in the target audience would care.

It's silly adolescent stuff, but director Brett Ratner and screenwriters Paul Zbyszewski and Craig Rosenberg serve it up gracefully.

Thematically, this has a lot to do with the sexiness of class difference and the hypocrisy of marriage and double standards, although, as often happens in porn, the “dream sequences” by the end make it hard to know what's actually happening in terms of plot. But customers looking for photogenic flesh and passion, with a passing plug for safe sex thrown in, won't have much cause for complaint.

Pretentious and dull, this Uruguayan exercise in magical realism takes place during the annual carnival in Montevideo.

The talented director Bill Duke (A Rage in Harlem, Deep Cover), who brought distinction even to The Cemetery Club, his previous outing, goes to sleep here, and it's hard to blame him; why stay awake for insulting hackwork like this? James Orr and Jim Cruickshank wrote this malarkey.

Considering the 32 writers (including Tom S. Parker, Jim Jennewein, and Steven E. de Souza) who worked on this live-action adaptation of the 60s Hanna-Barbera cartoon series about a Stone Age family, one might have expected a few funny lines here and there, but this is mirthless (and worthless) from top to bottom.

Big laughs are few and far between in this 1998 movie, which is more successful as motivational anecdote than as comedy.

Directed by George Bamber from a witty screenplay by David Vernon, it veers between screwball farce and feel-good sitcom.

The families' hopes for a tasteful, upscale wedding are sabotaged by warring egos and low-rent, walking-stereotype relatives.

Offers the same crudely effective variation on the hatred and fear of hillbillies in "Deliverance."

On the plus side, it isn't boring, and Jolie and Ethan Hawke, who plays an art dealer and key witness, generate a certain amount of edgy chemistry. But eventually the filmmakers' desire to shock and tease overtakes any feeling for character or common sense.

The story is mechanical, but Twohy paces it well enough to showcase the spectacular costumes (by Ellen Mirojnick and Michael Dennison) and production design (by Holger Gross).

Before this turns to total mush, it's a quirky, fitfully effective fantasy periodically enlivened by the cast.

With the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy completed and the next "Chronicles of Narnia" movie two years away, fantasy aficionados needing a Yuletide fix may have to settle for this dull sword-and-sorcery epic.

This comedy-drama was written by Simon Beaufoy, who brought us "The Full Monty," and it has some of the same gamy mix of alternative sexuality and working-class heart.

Watching John Leguizamo labor to keep this leaky vessel afloat, I was reminded of all those Hell's Kitchen melodramas James Cagney rescued in the early 30s.

Watching this quick-buck sequel was about as pleasant as having my wisdom teeth pulled.

This putrid action flick crawls along for two and a half hours before expiring in a septic field of bad one-liners, halfhearted catchphrases, obliterated cars, vicious slow-motion bullet penetration, graphic corpse mutilations played for laughs, and shamefully hollow bonding scenes between its two dyspeptic megastars.

I'm guessing Donald Sutherland agreed to do this tedious horror flick because he heard Sissy Spacek was on board, and Spacek agreed to do it because she heard Sutherland was on board.

The tear-jerking is so determined and persistent that your ducts feel as if they'd been worked over with a catheter. But despite its great length, the film never makes sense of its central relationship, between Jon Voight's washed-up prizefighter and Faye Dunaway's chichi fashion designer.

This is pretty thin soup, but the players are spirited and the jokes generally offbeat.

I haven't seen the original, and this mishmash -- doesn't make me want to.

Bloody gangsta crap.

Perelman never overcomes the disjuncture of having two familiar actresses play the same grown character, and despite the endless crosscutting, the two halves settle respectively into ghoulish foreboding and murky psychological drama.

Half the film passes while Pierson fumbles with the exposition—setting up an intricate internecine war for control of a Gypsy clan—and then he fumbles the action. Pointless, messy, rambling; no atmosphere and no energy.

This is loads of fun in the early stretch, as the characters are being introduced, but the story never really goes anywhere.

Put this one back on the shelf, and walk away.

Horror fans may be disappointed by this handsome exorcism drama, which aspires to the serious religious feeling of William Friedkin's "The Exorcist" but delivers little of its shock or gore.

Wastes most of its 110 minutes making impotent jokes about male sexual behavior and the repugnance of old women.

Suffers from suspense-killing righteousness.

You may find it pleasantly diverting, especially if you like the leads, but mostly it made me want to see "Adam's Rib" again.