What's left is the framework for a graphic, brutal, sickening film (1980), without the violent effects that might have made sense (however illegitimate) out of the conception. Like The Exorcist, it alternates five minutes of shock with ten minutes of dull exposition, plenty of time to watch Al Pacino wrestle with his miserably conceived character.

Based on this outing, writer-director Joe Carnahan (Narc) can't tell a story worth a damn--especially not a complicated mishmash like this one.

This interminable contest between two narcissists, stretched out over many miles and years, is supposed to have something to do with romance.

The movie is humorless and monotonous, but watching the talented Sheen (Frost/Nixon, The Queen) give his all to such throwaway material is weirdly diverting.

A ragbag of shopworn ideas nicked from Philip K. Dick, this sci-fi thriller never stops finding new ways to make no sense.

This Farrelly brothers "hommage" replicates the mechanics of their work without echoing its spirit or complex tone, and many of the deliberate offenses fail to transcend mere exploitation.

Equally as offensive as the movie's smorgasbord of smut and violence is the lingering whiff of colonial-era orientalism, a Western predilection for regarding Eastern cultures as innately idle, lascivious, and irrational, and thus ripe for intervention.

It's pretty perverse for William Wheeler, who scripted this feature, to get most of the facts wrong, inflating details that don't need any spin. (As Irving himself remarked, "You could call it a hoax about a hoax.")

As creator and head writer of "The West Wing," Aaron Sorkin had a gift for making policy debate seem sexy, but what worked in the context of that liberal fantasy founders badly amid the realpolitik of this cold war drama.

Almost competent but not quite watchable.

Jules Verne's novel has been flattened into a standardized Jackie Chan vehicle.

Like an idiot, I came to this movie hoping that director Catherine Hardwicke-who made her debut with the bad-girl shocker "Thirteen" (2003)-might engage in a feminist interrogation of the old fairy tale, just as French filmmaker Catherine Breillat has with "Blue Beard" (2009) and "The Sleeping Beauty" (2010). Instead this is a muddle-headed horror flick.

A story that holds little suspense; we know exactly how happily this animated musical will end--and the wait isn't very diverting.

Even Herzog loyalists will have to concede that this fact-based 2009 hostage drama is a serious dud.

It's an utter waste of Watts; there's not a trace here of the talent on display in Mulholland Drive, perhaps because the script doesn't bother to give her a character.

This drama, about the three days leading up to the murder, never overcomes its inherent ghoulishness, largely because Chapman, like so many mentally ill people, is a huge bore.

Apart from Curtis, no one seems to be trying very hard (least of all director James Bridges, whose excellent work in the 70s seems long behind him here), and the film falls apart from a horribly evident lack of interest, conviction, and imagination.

Where "The Full Monty" earned its laughs with rich characterizations and a biting take on economic hardship, Greenfingers is content to trot out predictable stereotypes, adding a romantic subplot as filler.

Payne is just as guilty of using her (Ruth) as a figurehead for his ideas--most of them about the stupidity and futility of politics--as are the targets of his satirical abuse.

The scenes in which Charlie plays catch with the ghost of his Red Sox-happy brother are only the most mawkish in a movie whose every element is calculated to set a 12-year-old girl's heart thumping.

Al Pacino chews up so much scenery it's surprising there's any left by the end of this fetid thriller.

This movie is too pedestrian for camp, and too scattershot for an action comedy.

It's almost always night and almost always raining.

Slack direction from Walt Becker (National Lampoon's Van Wilder) sullies this formula comedy, but the cast is agreeable.

Kline gives an interesting performance playing against type, but with its action plotting and sensationalistic scenes of women being brutalized, the movie often seems to be exploiting as much as illuminating the problem.

This anachronistic tale goes beyond Capracorn to evoke Depression-era fare like "One Hundred Men and a Girl" in which the charm is overtaken by mush. One wants to protect this, but it's hard not to gag on the cuteness.

Of the star-studded cast, only Mark Ruffalo (playing Bruce Banner) and Robert Downey Jr. (as Iron Man) bring any personality to the place-holder dialogue. Overlong, monotonous, violent, and simple-minded, this is like one of those "World's Biggest Gang Bang" videos, except that no one onscreen appears to be enjoying himself.

There's a great "Office Space"-style satire to be made about big-box stores screwing their working-poor employees, but Hollywood studios covet DVD rack space at those same stores, so instead we're supposed to get excited about which of these two idiots earns more gold stars.