Garry Marshall is at it again. He disguises an insidious worship of wealth and privilege as a "feel-good" comedy about a wacky girl whose transition from ugly duckling to swan is supposed to inspire feelings of empowerment. In three words: It's a crock.

A satisfyingly eerie thriller.

It's a plot more worn out than the tinsel boxed up in the attic. In the end, they've given us a Christmas gift barely worth returning.

Actually quite agreeable, but only because of a group of actors who are able to salvage the paper-thin material.

The low-wattage thrills, lukewarm jokes and unconvincing caricatures we encounter in The Big Bounce simply don't generate that kind of excitement.

A shame Johnson couldn't give the movie over to Bullseye, since Farrell displays more danger with a cocked brow and sharpened pencil than Affleck with pages of melodramatic mush he can't force out without sounding like a high-school drama student with a sore throat.

In Mary Katherine Gallagher's dogged perseverance, it's easy to find not only cheap laughs but real soul. In her way, she's a saint.

Viewers looking for extremely light, romantic entertainment with a guaranteed happy ending could do worse.

Here Branagh and his writer-director have managed something more haunting than town-square self-flagellation: they've created a man whose appetites will always be greater than his abilities. And for an artist like Woody Allen, who possesses plenty of both, there can be no scarier fate on the planet.

It's not really a kids' film, nor it is particularly funny, by either design or execution. It is, rather, Columbus' latest attempt at a comically tinged tearjerker.

Lured to the project with John Cusack as her original co-star (cruelly replaced by Matthew Broderick), Nicole Kidman phones it in.

Scary or not, there's energy in the way Carpenter frames and cuts his movies, and there's energy to spare in Woods' performance.

When it's all over, you can't remember if you've been watching a movie or just a jumbo-sized coming attraction.

Visually it's wild fun, since fledgling feature director Len Wiseman started off in production design, and creature designer Patrick Tatopoulos's diverse credits span from "Godzilla" to "Stuart Little." Yet with Underworld's guilty pleasures come copious clinkers, from its nuts-and-bolts narrative foundation to Wiseman's inability to direct actors beyond cartoonish interaction.

Succeeds in scaring you and boring you at the same time; unlike Moore's movie, it's agitprop bereft of artistry, porn for Republicans.

High Tension often feels like a ’70s exploitation movie in the best sense; unfortunately, the ending is so bad that it mars everything that comes before.

It's a hilarious, dumb comedy that's smart enough to be something more. And all it does is make Sandler the most soulful -- and the funniest -- comic in the business.

An adaptation that can rightfully be called brilliant.

Fuqua has done an admirable job staging the action scenes, but the script is little more than a thin framework to justify those scenes.

All the new plot stuff is way old hat, as though straight from a textbook chapter called "Conflict Drives Your Narrative!" And at times the motivations are either unclear or senseless.

Very sketchily based upon "The Reluctant Debutante" (minus the charm, plot, and characterization).

If any further indication were needed of the fact that gay has gone mainstream, this flaccid farce provides definitive proof, for it's as forced and unfunny as subpar Sandra Dee.

Although the press notes liken the movie to "Easy Rider" (why not "Lawrence of Arabia" while you're at it?), the obvious comparison is to the "Fast and Furious" franchise, which shares the same producer. Actually, the closest spiritual cousin may be "Pee-wee's Big Adventure."

Consistently fails to deliver the charm it presumes to have.

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

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

It's left to Barbra Streisand and Dustin Hoffman as Greg's parents to warm up the picture, and they light it on fire. Indeed, they're having such a swell time as Roz and Bernie Focker that they seem to be in an entirely different movie--a funnier one, a sexier one and a smarter one.

Akerlund and crew use their full arsenal of lenses and editing techniques in service of leaving you spun, but it's undeniable that this movie was produced by steady hands and thoughtful minds.

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.

A tenth of a movie masquerading as a full feature.

A stunning piece of work--stunningly inept, stunningly incoherent, stunningly awful in every single way imaginable.

Adequately breezy and sleazy -- a movie about the horniest man in the universe looking for a little one-night stand.

This circumcised "Shaft" plays half-awesome, half-aw-shit; it exists almost as if to prove you can cram every Jewish joke in the Old Testament into a single movie.

A solo "Thelma and Louise" crossed with a gender-reversed "The Fugitive" with a dry twist of "Fletch."

Either a bit more humor or a bit more heart could exponentially improve things.

Instead of satire, we're treated to diarrhea jokes, dogs dangled from the windows of speeding SUVs and tasteless sobriquets bestowed upon anyone who looks vaguely ethnic.

Manages to be gruesome and grisly, but not particularly creepy or frightening.

The supposedly funny quips and shrugs that fill Jakob the Liar are tepid at best and embarrassingly shticky at worst. Some are simply in bad taste.

Jones seems to have trouble keeping up with the large amount of action he's required to participate in. And Del Toro seems ill-cast and ill-used.

Kaena resembles the Jim Henson fantasy in many ways, from its visual imagination and creature design to the hideousness of its more humanoid characters (except Kaena, who's a babe) and the general mediocrity of the voice acting.

This modest project is all about atmosphere and reflection, and, as such, it is successful.

Villain? Great. Verdict? Average.

Runs two hours and 20 minutes and plays like 10 days in the county jail.

Like a half-remembered dream, the movie's often so overwhelming that even its dull, dead moments (of which there are many, unfortunately) leave you wondering what you're missing and what you've just forgotten.

Get out your hankies and weep for the heart-tugging disaster Message in a Bottle.

If Alfred Hitchcock were retarded, lobotomized, and freshly dug up, he might possibly c--- out a movie like this one.

A comic-book movie unashamed of its roots, meaning it's unabashed about being silly, overwrought nonsense, which works to its benefit--so much so that you're almost rooting for it by the end.

The creators of Alexander set out to make an epic, and they can't be faulted for the many elements that succeed on this scale; what's unfortunate is that they don't quite deliver a camp classic.

It's pretty good fun, once it gets going, but still makes some of the same mistakes that have plagued other Hollywood films that interpolate the concepts of Hong Kong action.

Isn't any fun at all, which is ultimately the most damning thing you can say about a Bruckheimer movie.

It's hard to see why her audience seems so much more rabid than that of other, funnier comics. The secret seems to be in her appeal to the gay community.

Heavy-handed, saccharine message somehow goes down good.

The lavish drama spans England, France, and Spain (shot mostly in Montreal), and Duigan elegantly paints a moving romance of errors amid torture, bloodshed, and terrible tragedy.

Saw II, despite the swift turnaround time, improves on all of the first film's problem areas, while leaving intact everything that was good about the concept.

Director Dwight Little, who has made many mediocre films as well as the gleefully gory Robert Englund version of "The Phantom of the Opera," gets at least one thing right -- he really does take time to establish the characters.

The film is often unintentionally silly, and it might have been better if it tried to be.

Disappointing only because its best moments are transcendent; its worst moments, sadly, are just so ordinary.

A highly likable movie.

The film is a feeble shadow of a book that won over even those of us who are no special fans of Irving -- it's probably his funniest, least self-conscious work.

Silly, misguided, formulaic and largely a piece of trash, but it's not quite a disaster. There's the dancing and the music and the sunlight.

So convoluted and half-assed it's tempting to dismiss it as unfinished; it feels like six different movies cut together by a blind editor.

The movie's not without moments of genuine humor--no comedy starring Steve Martin could be--but sad to say, his Oscar-hosting gig two years ago was funnier.

Along with his tedious array of tricks and twists, Parkhill stuffs the film with enough dizzying flashbacks, camera jitters and rock-and-roll editing techniques to drive a 14-year-old MTV addict nuts.

Murphy inhabited Jif like a sweet, innocent child, almost as though he were delighted to shed the cynicism and get down to the sweet, chewy center. Or day-care center, in this case.

It's unfortunate that, nudity and all, this is one of Toback's absolute worst efforts.

What this Reagan movie really needed was . . . more Reagan. None of his admirers have his charisma, and none of the footage here is surprising. Fox News could easily produce a better film.

A waste of a decent premise.

Many of the most absurd things on view in this film are absolutely true.

The film is sweet and often genuinely funny, with lively musical numbers and a cast of entertaining personalities.

This was a better movie back when it was called "Gossip" . . . oh, wait, no -- that one sucked too.

There's a somber tone to Petroni's work here--enhanced by Roger Lanser's shadowy cinematography and handicapped a bit by a schmaltzy Hollywood-type score--and there's also plenty of episodic life stuff.

The witless inanity of After the Sunset is so numbing that the sole reason for any living creature to sit through it--man, woman or household pet--is to marvel at the speed and variety of actress Salma Hayek's costume changes.

Adding R. Lee Ermey to the Leatherface clan was a masterful move.

The film's finale is truly egregious, a laugh-out-loud combination of ludicrousness and sadism that someone somewhere probably found scary, assuming they never saw a thriller before.

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

It's perfectly effective, though only rarely inspired.

In general, Bad Boys II is Bay unleashed. This is a good thing when it comes to action sequences--fans of excessive spectacle will definitely dig the car chases that involve flying cadavers. It's a bit less of a good thing between said moments of spectacle.

The cumulative effect of the movie's many Kodak moments and stretches of greeting-card sentiment is that they kill us with kindness.

The film has a gritty, grainy look that matches the book's raw texture, and keeps the violence and drug abuse from ever looking slick or appealing.

It will linger like a foul odor or the taste of tinfoil between the teeth.

Nothing about Laws of Attraction is remotely original; even its title has the dull ring of the generic, like "Opposites Attract" or "He Said, She Said." See it or don't. You will never notice the difference.

Sitting through Raising Helen is an exercise in frustration, because somewhere inside this big heap of Hollywood nothing is a something (someone, actually) worth saving and savoring. Her name is Joan Cusack.

A surprisingly efficient B-grade revenge pic.

The film is amateurish in places, but fascinating: Bring your eager hypothalamus and your tuned-up frontal lobes with you. They'll get a workout.

This is low-rent summer fun, exuberantly mounted, so leave your IQ in the glove compartment.

Williams is so unique that his presence automatically changes any project he stars in. Surprisingly, in this case, the change isn't particularly welcome.

This really should have gone straight to video--or, better yet, to the nearest landfill.

It's a likable enough smorgasbord, from its trendy Irish locations to Andy Summers turning in a Beatles cover to occasional giggles and gasps.

The animation looks good, especially when CG-enhanced, but the Rugrats babies' constant snot jokes, bug-eating and "cute" mispronunciations grate after a while.

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

Witless, terminally irritating remake.

This Trinity may be the least of the three--sound familiar, Matrix faithful?--but it's the closest in style and attitude to a pulpy comic book, an art form that doesn't need to be lofty, perfect or even sensible to tickle a dork's fancy.

Has its heart in the right place, but its head seems to be lost in a swirling maelstrom of teen movies that have come before.

Little Nicky will redefine the phrase "worst movie ever," because it might actually be the worst movie ever.

You'll get that $8 nap you've been craving.

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.

Delivers genuine scares.

Robert Rodriguez and his kids conjure up a charming 3-D fantasy.