"Friday" had moments of stoned charm and telling neighborhood detail; this second sequel never gets beyond the angry, cruel, and misogynist.

The story doesn't arc so much as unspool like a stretch of desert highway, but the Ghost Rider is such a powerful amalgam of hot-rod iconography that this is still fairly watchable.

The film itself regresses, starting in the present and winding up with a cautionary ending that evokes the hokiest SF movies of the 50s.

This one is overblown, over-dressed, and grandiosely dopey, packed with gargantuan sets and ludicrous action scenes and shot in unusually dark and dingy 3-D.

Buffeted by the usual car crashes and explosions, Wilson and Murphy never develop any comic chemistry.

By the time the fighting between clones and their originals turned to fraternal bonding, I was quite moved, even blissed out.

Nothing quite works as it should: the rhythms are subtly off, the pace is forced, the comedy overextended . . . and the surfeit of hommages—to the Keystone Kops and Laurel and Hardy and Jerry Lewis and all and sundry—threatens to sink it before it gets out of the starting gate. But there's something to be said for Edwards's insatiable overreaching, and at times the orchestration of pratfalls and comic pairings could hardly be more deft.

Ulliel, the meek missing soldier in "A Very Long Engagement," makes such a tedious Lecter that this quickly becomes a chore, though Dominic West ("The Wire") is good as a French detective on the madman's trail.

There are a few pretty good design effects en route, but not enough to compensate for all the embarrassments.

I don't know the actual budget of this adventure yarn, but it feels like a middle-range effort whose heart is with the bargain-basement offerings of yesteryear.

The special effects, for once, are witty rather than overblown, and director Nora Ephron, writing with her sister Delia, handles the material with some grace and confidence.

As romantic comedies go, this is the worst drivel I've seen since Nia Vardalos's "I Hate Valentine's Day."

Shelved for over a year, this incompetent mystery thriller stops periodically so some character or other can deliver an expository speech and pull the plot back on track, but by the end the story has turned into a hair ball.

Earns points for its set and sound design, eerily desaturated color palette, able cast, and one really good special effect. Sadly, the movie just doesn't deliver chills.

Writers Jon Lucas and Scott Moore steal from the best, gleefully cribbing from "A Christmas Carol" to fashion a screenplay with heart and sharp one-liners.

With all her (Bullock) grotesque disguises, this often suggests a sequel to "Mrs. Doubtfire."

A series of stunts with bears and lots of stage fighting involving characters who are unambiguously good or evil.

The consistency with which the plot turns on characterization instead of contrivance makes this movie better than many of its supposedly grown-up competitors.

Mike Reiss's witless, maudlin screenplay is like rancid leachate trickling from a Dumpster full of rotting sitcom scripts, Mary Kay sales manuals, and romance novels.

Wahlberg turns in one of his worst performances ever, but then he's saddled with preposterous scenes.

A few of the one-liners are snappy and clever, but the project sinks under an overelaborated superciliousness.

Whimsical fluff (1967) that weighs in on the far side of 50 tons; it's so clumsy and pounding that taking a child to it might be grounds for a visit from family services.

A first-rate Hollywood entertainment--at least if one can accept the schizophrenia of combining a cop/buddy action thriller with an angry satire about the shamelessness of the media.

Terence Stamp and Wallace Shawn spend a fair amount of time skulking around as ghostly servants, which kept me amused for the movie's 99 minutes.

This fumbling and formulaic semiremake of The Private War of Major Benson (1955) is basically just an excuse to let comic Damon Wayans—functioning here as cowriter and executive producer as well as star—strut his stuff. But he's strutting in a void, and not even two gold teeth will light his way. The initial premise [is] good for a couple of laughs at most.

Generally I don’t mind a little recreational fascism as long as it’s deep-fried in savory violent vengeance, but this overwrought mess gives vigilantism a bad name.

Nearly all the SF premises are accorded the status of Andrew Dice Clay one-liners - which means that they, along with the characters, keep changing from one scene to the next.

It accomplishes what it sets out to do, and if slasher fare is your thing, you've seen far worse.