Lee's new racial satire starts out strong but loses its way.

As another exposé of stubbornness, petty opportunism, and greed, there's some residual value in the story of two unappealing characters.

Using humor to make a serious point, Arau suggests that without the millions of Hispanics...life in the Golden State would screech to a halt.

In Your Friends and Neighbors, LeBute is having a high old time giving himself the creeps. For the rest of us it's all kind of...well...nasty.

If Chicken Little were in 3-D, shown in a theme park as you sit in motion simulators, the lame gags might not be so much of a problem.

Again, Lohman's lack of power--and passion--saps the story of its life. It's a shame, because a bold performance would have given Firth and Bacon even more to work with, and the relationships between and among the members of that ménage à trois could have really begun to zing.

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

A bucket of crap, but at well under 90 minutes it's a small bucket, and half the crap is amusing.

Linklater, whose intimate "Before Sunset" was an art-house wonder last year, proved he could make mainstream money with "School of Rock." With Bad News Bears, he proves he can waste it, too.

What we're left with is half a movie about a cocky up-and-comer, and half a movie that could be one of those MTV Diary of... specials on Jerry Seinfeld.

Not scary enough for its own good, Beck's Ghost Ship ends up stuck, enjoyably enough, between the Scylla of schlock and the Charybdis of camp.

Mifune's radical stylings belie its clichéd core.

A scattershot "urban" take on "Airplane!," Soul Plane misfires with its jokes at least as often as it hits (and less often than Snoop Dogg hits a joint), but when it works, laughs are generated.

The Interpreter dashes the suspense by talking the audience to death.

If you love the excitement of watching golf, this Damon-Smith bore is right up your fairway.

Yes, there are more cheap shocks this time around, and they're fun to watch, but you'll have forgotten most of them by the time you make it out to your car.

Sometimes the 2D and 3D animation doesn't blend, and the heinous pop songs would embarrass Peter Cetera, but there's plenty to like, including a fascinating mechanical contraption and musical score both shamelessly and lovingly stolen from "The Dark Crystal."

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

It reminds one of "The Constant Gardener," another globetrotting thriller bereft of thrills that looks more important in retrospect than on the screen. Certainly, one man's trash is another man's masterpiece, and more power to the viewer who can stick with this deadpan travelogue and make it to the ending that actually satisfies.

Unfortunately, the movie fails to fully make sense, which may be because it's based on a French novel (If Only It Were True by Marc Levy).

Although DeSalvo performs the miracle of making these characters seem like people we actually know, occasionally her delivery definitely makes us wish we didn't.

As an actress, she (July) is annoying as hell, with a quirkiness so labored, she seems to be begging for our affection. As a director she is much better.

Nothing deeper than a stale retread, it seems. And this is coming from a critic who listed the original "Charlie's Angels" movie as one of the top five films of 2000.

Director Brad Anderson (Session 9) is usually really good at humanizing ambiguous characters, and he ultimately succeeds, but he has to fight against Scott Kosar's script.

Ultimately, though, it is Angelina Jolie who ends up stealing the show. As Mary, she lets her eyelids droop and her lower lip swell as if she were just so full of sex that she's almost drunk.

The latest entry in the "next 'Full Monty'" sweepstakes.

Much like a cat, the movie is a superfluous gob of fluff with an attitude ranging from idiotic to nasty.

Much of Steamboy is actually reminiscent of "Wild Wild West," with a giant moving tower substituting for the giant spider, and the personalities of Will Smith and Kevin Kline being replaced by . . . no personality at all, really.

The dumbed-down movie version of Frances Mayes' best-selling travel memoir Under the Tuscan Sun is a virtual case study of Hollywood's irrepressible urge to lower the bar in the hopes of upping the take.

Fortunately the film's humor kicks in with McKenzie Brothers Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas stealing the show as a dopey pair of moose. Could've done without Phil Collins's generic, annoying tunes.

Like its predecessor, this cartoon adaptation is a bit too all over the place for its own good, never entirely clear on whether to play as parody or homage.

The more technically proficient Anderson gets as a filmmaker, the more emotionally barren his movies become, till at last The Life Aquatic drowns in a sea of self-indulgent touches that delight the filmmaker but distance the filmgoer who wants to love the director and his characters but just can't, not anymore.

Buried somewhere in here, about 6 feet deep, is an intriguing premise.

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.

If you're one of those people who complained that "Memento" could just as well have been told in chronological order, The Memory of a Killer may be your cup of tea.

This is inelegant storytelling, and it almost entirely cancels out what's good about the film: Max Minghella, for one thing. The son of director Anthony, he gives a very fresh performance, popping with energy that the other characters seem to drain.

The movie's not great, but Mom might like it.

A movie designed to wow winds up feeling cold, not, ya know, cool; the charm of the 2001 original has been decimated, its heart replaced with a microprocessor.

This plodding mediocrity displays none of the flair or the compelling trickery that enlivened its 2002 prototype.

This romantic tragedy has the measured gentility of the M.I. classics, but its sheen of crass melodrama is startling, and its many metaphors run amok in a tangle.

Even with so much in its favor, The Mummy seems to fall all too easily. If only generating a soul for the film itself were so easy.

Everyone seems more relaxed this time around, including director Harold Ramis, who was presumably less intimidated now that he knows De Niro can be really funny and draw a large audience to a comedy.

Part of the problem is that this First Daughter is modeled on good-girl Chelsea Clinton; a movie based on our current two party-girls-in-chief trying to embarrass their reformed alcoholic dad would be far more fun.

The result is creepy and unpleasant.

Director Thomas Carter (no relation to Ken) relies on processed emotion and stock characters, and not even the inevitable Big Game excites us very much.

As a result, the film doesn't seem to know what sort of comedy it wants to be -- it comes across as more confused than funny.

If this movie is a pedestal, it is far too tall and wide for a performer of Kaufman's stature.

It's a workmanlike adventure yarn, intermittently reverent to the canon but not very inspired, and it must be said that Banderas is starting to show signs of wear.

A tight, rockin' popcorn flick packed with nasty kicks, the year's first major sequel is a rare beast, matching and in some ways superseding the original movie.

Ultimately only Moore, with her eyes always half-damp and voice half-cracked and body language half-mad, keeps the movie on the ground, when it too often threatens to fly into the thin air, where the audience would laugh it off the screen.

However you slice it, Bleep remains a work of naive invention and wannabe spirituality.

The heroes are villains, the villains are heroes, and in between are the innocents who become casualties in their wars waged in the names of morality and righteousness.

Merhige is too talented to be dismissed as a wannabe, but here his gifts for clever angles and oogy feelings are tethered to blasé genre redundancies and clunky storytelling. Looks great, less thrilling. I blame the screenwriters.

Cuaron is a special talent, and, as botched as Great Expectations often is, it's the kind of failure that deserves an audience--if only to experience Cuaron's way of seeing, which is at its best in the early parts of this film.

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

Berri's film lacks both suspense and a heroine who actually breaks a sweat while hurling herself in the path of one of the 20th century's most merciless juggernauts.

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

In the end, Stevie is a relentlessly messy, sometimes trying picture of family dysfunction, official neglect and personal tragedy, a disturbing redneck soap opera about real people and real consequences in which the protagonist--like the filmmaker--often proves to be as unlikable as he is sympathetic.

Competent if unremarkable tragedy.

The film provides solid entertainment for kids but lacks any real sense of wonder and magic.

There's a modicum of charm to Timeline, since its eager, earnest tone harks back to Donner's work from the '80s, particularly "The Goonies" and "Ladyhawke."

The result is nothing but allusive and memorial. And boring. This film is boring, at least partly because it is trying desperately to be big.

The scenes involving just him (Carrey) are funny and full of life. All the other scenes are not.

An affecting film, but it just may not be everyone's cup of cyanide.

It should be said that Travolta delivers a wonderful performance that's lost in a mediocre -- and, at times, rather misogynistic and homophobic -- film.

Doesn't even play fairly by its own rules. What emerges isn't a romantic comedy at all, but rather--very much like "The War of the Roses" a few years back--a cleverly disguised monster movie.

Beloved tries to be an anthem of the spirit, and that's just about the most difficult--and unfilmable--thing you can attempt in the movies. Demme stretches things out to epic length, but what was really needed here was an epic imagination.

The score sucks and the acting is weak, but there are times when certain moviegoers just feel the need to stare far-fetched, blood-drenched death in the eye and laugh. It's here, so have at it.

The movie ultimately cops out by culminating in a fistfight between two humans, with nary a cyborg missile-throwing devil in sight.

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.

When it comes to World War II movies, you may never have seen one like this before -- if only because it's like three different movies at the same time.

It's fun stuff, but nowhere near as cool as it should be.

If the first movie played like a midseason TV pilot, its successor comes off like an extended episode of a generic sitcom.

Nelson has directed his actors--including David Arquette, Steve Buscemi and Daniel Benzali (no, this isn't a joke)--to speak in David Mamet-like cadence, all short, choppy sentences and staccato rhythms. It's a terrible mistake.

All Sinbad has going for it is Pfeiffer's Eris.

The efficiency of his (Donaldson) direction renders the movie somewhat characterless, like a top-rank made-for-TV production.

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

The Jackal isn't much--it certainly isn't up to the 1973 Fred Zinnemann Day of the Jackal it loosely adapts and updates--but it does offer the fascination of watching big-ticket actors attempt to spin their images.

If you're a little girl in the Lisa Simpson mold, for whom the greatest wish-fulfillment in the world would be to have your own pony, then Dreamer just might be for you. Otherwise, no.

In the hands of lesser mortals, this would add up to perhaps the worst movie of the year. In the hands of Denzel Washington, it manages to work magic on some who might not tolerate such shenanigans from, say, Chris Columbus.

Although far superior to recent American fare such as "Alex and Emma," the film takes actors with quirky charms and places them in a homogenized, studiolike picture. What a waste.

Unlike the original, there's no R-rated grit and no familial executions -- gotta get the young-skewing WWE fan base in there.

Once Connell finds his feet, he just may stride forth with his Important American Movie. Until then, The Opportunists is simply a whiff of great unwashedness yet to come.

Director Rob Marshall, as he did in "Chicago," plays the movie as though it's all an embellished memory inside the head of geisha Sayuri (Ziyi Zhang), but why would she remember everyone speaking in choppy English?

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.

Brosnan proved his worth last time around; but, sad to say, the rest of Tomorrow Never Dies lacks the wit and inventiveness of GoldenEye, let alone of Goldfinger.

There are times when one suspects that this film potentially could be the raunchiest sitcom pilot ever.

Knockout's heart is in the right place, but it drags because of tedious earnestness and shallow "You go, girl!" feminism.

Younger, for whatever reason, simply can't abide their happiness, and so he destructs the relationship from time to time for no reason, using plot devices that wouldn't have been out of place in episodes of "Three's Company."

Proves only intermittently engaging as its twisted plot loses energy and becomes confusing in the latter half.

This movie's just so-so, but at its heart lies a true leading lady.

More bonkers Jackson-at-work moments would’ve helped, but mostly we just see the kid from Gary, Indiana, dispensing hugs and God-bless-you's to an awed cast and crew. Watching various dancers and guitarists grin irrepressibly during their one-on-one run-throughs with the man is one of This Is It’s few pleasures.

The actors are capable, but the direction feels stilted, the pacing sluggish, and the story obvious. The film plays like an ABC after-school special.

Part of the reason that it doesn't quite succeed is that these messages are so tried and true.

Carrey and the Farrellys are equal-opportunity offenders.

Essentially the movie's an excuse to show off cool gadgets and co-star Angie Harmon's cleavage.

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.

Funnier when high -- what isn't? -- Harold and Kumar may also serve as the first infomercial for weed and burgers.