The jokes in Extract play almost like afterthoughts, the last-second add-ons of a former animator who, until now, has always treated his flesh-and-blood characters a bit like cartoon caricatures and vice versa.

Heigl and Butler have genuine chemistry, and the writers have given the duo some bitchy, snappy dialogue. They probably had in mind such workplace comedies as "Desk Set," starring Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, but in this day and age, witty banter and stars with chemistry aren't enough to catch an audience's attention.

Biblically classical, tastefully vintage with aerial shots of wet umbrellas and Homburg hats and not a little staid considering its sensational source material, Changeling isn't so much dull as it is an open book.

Mostly dumb, no matter how desperately and even valiantly it aims for "thinky."

Rare is the star vehicle that is as poorly matched to its star as Drillbit Taylor, which casts Owen Wilson as a homeless Army deserter and con man, able to fool people into believing he's both a substitute teacher and a master of hand-to-hand combat.

The Kingdom is essentially "C.S.I.: Riyadh," starring Jamie Foxx in yet another movie his Oscar statue will watch with shame.

Overstuffed (three villains), overlong (at more than two hours and 20 minutes) and undercooked (plot points include amnesia and alien goo).

Whatever goodwill one harbored toward the first Pirates film is quickly dashed by its sneering successor, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, which is less a film than a two-and-a-half-hour trailer for the final installment in this accidental trilogy.

More "Pretty Woman" than "Working Girl," The Devil Wears Prada really lives to give its angel a high-class makeover.

Here, jokes are just as likely to end not in punch lines, but in uncomfortable silence, impenetrable irony or stomach flips.

There's a fascinating movie buried inside this story, but it's not the one the filmmakers decided to make. This Omen is simply too big for its britches.

By all accounts, Marsh has absorbed classic crazy-killer thrillers like "Psycho," "The Night of the Hunter" and "Badlands," but The King isn't likely to join such esteemed company.

The trouble with 12 and Holding, which pits four young protagonists in intertwining battles for spiritual (and, well, literal) survival, is that it's just too much.

Aside from a single jazzy image of Hunt taking a nosedive off a Shanghai skyscraper, Abrams' movie is too oppressive, too enamored of its brutality to deliver anything like real thrills; its deeply unpleasant tone nearly makes you long even for Woo's cartoon absurdities.

It works for a good while--probably half of the movie.

Your individual tolerance for Jimmy Buffett music will determine how well all the scenes set to his music go down.

Conversation is as meaningless as anything else in this barbarist take on "The Searchers."

Once you notice Ejiofor, you won't stop noticing--and Kinky Boots ensures that you will notice, thanks not only to the nature of his role, but also because there isn't much else here to get excited about.

Björk appears to have been a good influence on Barney: The soundtrack, which she supervised and participates in, is well worth the time for fans of experimental music. As to what the whole thing means, you're on your own.

Inside Man is irrelevant, another semi-high-tech mega-heist movie, the rhythms and tropes of which we are all as familiar with as we are with the wallpaper facing our toilets.

Farrell's performance possesses a touch too many mannerisms on loan from Tyrone Power and Clark Gable; you can almost hear the gears turning in his brain each time he cocks his head or raises an eyebrow in homage.

Aquamarine will likely please its undemanding tween audience--especially if today's kids are as unsavvy a crew as 20th Century Fox seems to think.

Ferrell and Warner, however, are distractions--the obligatory dose of "eccentricity" thrown in as seasoning to make the real story more digestible. But they serve instead as irritants; too much spice, if you will.

The movie is therefore better than it ought to be, but without Douglas, it ought not to be at all

Wacky, hodgepodge and decidedly homemade, CSA nevertheless is worth seeing. Sure, it veers off into nonsense, and there are times when the film loses its center. But the premise, the passion and the scathing political commentary ultimately keep CSA afloat.

Though it does cheapen itself with some dreadful moments of product placement, it doesn't instantly date itself with cheap pop-culture gags; it will play to our kids' kids tomorrow just as it does today, like something made for children who don't know to expect more from their cartoons than just pleasant, nostalgic mediocrities.

An occasionally amusing but wrongheaded remake that arrives more than four decades after the original blazed across the screen.

The real fault with this movie lies less with the clunky screenplay from Himelstein than with the acting, of which there is very little of note.