Rodriguez retreats into gruesome violence and flaccid comedy, grasping feebly for topical relevance by referencing the current immigration fracas.

A more accurate title might be "Sub-Bad."

A tiresome 1998 rip-off of The Hustler, with poker (in a New York Russian Mafia milieu) taking the place of pool, Matt Damon taking over for Paul Newman, and John Malkovich's scenery chewing supplanting Jackie Gleason's self-effacement.

It's a failure, less because the odd stylistic mix doesn't take (it does from time to time, and to striking effect) than because Landis hasn't bothered to put his story into any kind of satisfying shape.

Director Philip Kaufman's usual flair for erotic detail largely deserts him here, and this thriller seems most interested in lingering over battered and bloodied male faces.

An exceptionally stupid movie.

The whole movie feels stiff and awkward whenever the actors stop chasing each other long enough to talk.

The effects are just as delirious this time around, but the nightmare poetry has vanished, along with the sense of archetypal purpose and narrative inevitability that held the jack-in-the-box original together.

Even the always radiant Linney can't save this misbegotten film.

De Niro gives a crafty performance, and director John Polson (Swimfan) maintains a pleasantly low-key suspense. But the ending is a disappointment.

The director of "American Pie" has set out to make a merciless satire of American media culture along the lines of "Network," but his ideas are so commonplace that nothing registers except the bile.

Frantic and unfunny.

This ambiguously pitched comedy--its idea of sexy humor is a cheerleader farting--shoots for camp without bothering with satire.

Essentially a one-trick pony.

If misery were inherently interesting, this adaptation starring Emily Watson and Robert Carlyle as a couple plagued by alcoholism and child mortality might be too.

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

The screenplay for this 1985 feature is so riddled with character inconsistencies and unmotivated behavior that it plays like science fiction: the unsuspected presence of body-snatching aliens is the only conceivable explanation for the bizarre twists of psychology the film proposes.

Too dull even to function as camp.

Though it's meant as a droll comedy of manners, what emerges is mincing, crabbed, and petty.

A bewildering mixture of fairly accomplished storytelling (I enjoyed it more than Dead Poets Society, which isn't saying a lot), awkward contrivances in the script, and lies in the overall conception so egregious they undercut any pretensions the film might have to social seriousness.

Director John Landis is so deficient in basic storytelling skills that he must spend hours explicating the most elementary plot points while and Murphy are sidelined.

Bored me for most of its 178 minutes and then infuriated me with its cheap cynicism once it belatedly became interesting--which may be a tribute to writer-director Lars von Trier's gifts as a provocateur.

By the end of this 124-minute drama I'd have settled for ANYONE else, but like most visits with irritating people, the movie lingers, sharpening one's judgment.

There's so little respect for the music that we never see or hear a number from beginning to end, and we rarely hear any of the musicians speak more than a few seconds at a time. Overall the glibness and self-contempt are so thick you can cut them with a knife.

A muddled, talky affair, part soap opera, part undercover police procedural.

This live-action feature actually has less of a pulse than the puppet version.

Breillat's mix of dramatic skill and feminist intimidation has cowed plenty of critics in the past, but no political agenda could redeem this movie's joyless pedantry.

Another virtual-reality SF movie -- and you're not likely to care.