The acting is too eccentric and the narrative drive too weak to satisfy fans of the genre, but Herzog's admirers will find much in the film's animistic landscapes and clusters of visionary imagery.

So much has been written about the show's emotional importance to single women that I can't possibly add anything, except to say that, in both its TV and movie incarnations, the empty materialism and sincere longing for love always manage to cancel each other out, leaving behind nothing but what this started out as--a sitcom.

Proof positive that comedy is hard, this debut feature by Hue Rhodes offers a wealth of skilled players and admirably offbeat gags yet seldom manages to generate any laughs.

At the time, its way of wringing thrills from genre conventions at the same time it mocked them seemed imaginative and original; but in the light of Carrie (1976), Obsession (1976), and The Fury (1978), it seems more like a dead end—the mark of a superficial stylist unable to take anything seriously, including his own work.

One reason why it disappoints is that it comes across as more the work of screenwriter Laura Jones ("An Angel at My Table," "The Portrait of a Lady," "A Thousand Acres"), who's lately been specializing in high-minded literary adaptations, than of Armstrong, who tends to do better and more nuanced work with more intimate and domestic material (e.g., "The Last Days of Chez Nous," "Little Women").

By no means a bad film, just a disappointingly bland and superficial one.

Stallone directs a bloodbath that borrows liberally from such male-bonding classics as Robert Aldrich's "The Dirty Dozen" and Sam Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch," but offers not a whiff of the tragic fatalism and astute critique of machismo that inform those superior dramas.

Like Scott's last picture, "American Gangster," this is a little too slick and commanding for its own good; despite Crowe and DiCaprio's best efforts, their characters keep getting flattened by the steamroller narrative.

The new version has its share of disturbing moments, but writer James Gunn and director Zack Snyder have stripped away the social satire of the original and put little in its place.

Run-of-the mill drama.

As the smirking title might suggest, the movie is least prepared to process the feminist backlash against porn movies that followed their early-70s crossover -- in a way the most interesting part of the story.

This 1996 cartoon feature, based on Hugo's 1831 Notre Dame de Paris, is surely one of Disney's ugliest and least imaginative efforts. It's especially unattractive in its fast editing and zooms.

Gorski's script is full of catty gay banter, especially hilarious when delivered by Jay Brannan (Shortbus) as the hero's promiscuous best friend.

Slower, more earnest, and not as gory.

This agreeable French comedy wears its class consciousness on its sleeve but functions primarily as bourgeois light entertainment.

Not so much ill conceived and misdirected as unconceived and undirected, this is folly on a grand scale.

The characters have a fullness and vitality rare in American films of that period, but Towne has so much trouble establishing information visually that the film emerges as choppy, confused, ill-proportioned.

Freeman's God is a mix of Old and New Testament, with a dash of both sexism and sitcom; Carell's Noah is a political fool, but that only proves he's honest and sincere. This is idiotic, but it's so good-natured I didn't mind.

I'd have preferred less personality stuff and more hard information about the current technical and commercial challenges, but if polishing these guys' egos is the only way to make them do the right thing, then so be it.

The stylistic discontinuities and pile-driver excesses can be off-putting for an outsider like me, but for fans this may well be part of the appeal.

The ingenious if erratic slickness is disorienting and makes the movie more like drama than journalism.

Wade lampoons our tendency to rigidly define sexual preference, but eventually the high jinks start to resemble an episode from the old TV series "Love, American Style."

The ostensible humor here is of the macho one-liner variety, and much of it falls flat. There is just too much Ratso and Cowboy for us to believe in Butch and Sundance.

The punky energy of the earlier films has given way to a self-conscious striving for significance, obscuring Miller's considerable kinetic talents in favor of a lumpy didacticism.

While it's loaded with visceral thrills, it never rises above the level of an extended video game or an advertisement for the military.

Despite their assorted vulgarities and lack of polish, the films of Adam Sandler are remarkably consistent in their own particular way. This one's no different.

Alternately mawkish and strident, with lots of fades to white and dog reaction shots, this can be recommended only for its good intentions.

In spirit, if not in letter, it often resembles a gritty Warners crime movie of the 30s, and it held my interest in spite of its excesses.