The very best thing about A Dirty Shame, a giddy sex farce from John Waters, is the credits.

Instead of a gripping, conscience-bending thriller, Paradise plods along, determined to be some sort of master chess game ruminating on personal and cultural value systems and the complex and often contradicting facets of loyalty, honesty, friendship, love, responsibility, self-preservation, and exploitation.

The computer-enhanced vehicle chases look fake, but the hand-to-hand combat scenes are the best of the year.

Mimic is static, highhanded, and confused, wasting most of its 105-minute running time simply spelling out the premise.

As ridiculous, as mawkish and schizophrenic as The Family Stone is, it's also surprisingly endearing.

Hypochondriacs and germ freaks may dig it.

It's dank, moody and sorrowful (all pros for this critic), but also tediously vague, thematically plodding and often eye-rollingly absurd in its grimness. Some may swoon; I yawned a lot.

Did nobody involved in this project notice that it was retreading a very deep groove?

After trying to prove himself a serious actor in deadly dull movies, Ledger lightens up and brightens up a movie that attempts the trick of bringing a new spin to an old story but can't pull off the stunt.

It doesn't have enough power in the first place to make a strong claim on our attentions.

Don't expect to be wowed by a vast spectrum of delicacies, as the buffet here is composed of entirely obvious ingredients.

God bless Johnny Depp. For the second time this year, the man has almost single-handedly redeemed an action movie that would otherwise be indistinguishable from the pack.

This is phony, absolutely, but the good feeling it leaves behind is plenty real.

In Eastwood's hands, Berendt's characters--ranging from a narcissistic merry widow to a bon vivant who entertains in vacant mansions--register with all the subtlety of the orangutan in "Any Which Way You Can."

Grand entertainment in the old-fashioned sense.

As a film it's mostly top-notch work. Kiwi director Christine Jeffs has taken the poignant, thoughtful screenplay of erstwhile documentarian John Brownlow and rendered it a moving mood-piece of subtlety and ever-encroaching sorrow.

A breezy romantic comedy, boasting a shameless silly streak.

Writer-director Greg McLean, who has many shorts and commercials under his belt, makes a significant feature debut here, with unapologetic horror that doesn't compromise.

This is the kind of documentary that, though not particularly accomplished by way of direction, writing, or editing, has such a compelling subject that there's no question about its worth.

The title pretty much says it all: syrupy romantic comedy dripping with unearned sentiment.

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

Doesn't show us much of anything we haven't seen better already.

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

The movie's so hung up (pardon) on its gimmick it never transcends it; might have been better had Kiefer called Moviefone.

The Ladykillers fits snugly among the Coens' lighter and breezier movies--the ones you forget after you see them once and begin to appreciate and finally adore the more often you revisit them.

Homer would be hard-pressed to find any remaining shred of "The Iliad" in this over-the-top entertainment. It has a lot of loud passion but not much poetry, and that's appropriate for a movie that could well be subtitled My Big Fat Greek Bloodletting.

If you don't view it too analytically, Men of Honor provides almost more uplift than a body can handle.

May find it hard to sit without embarrassment through this bizarre mixture of paleontology, preposterous anthropomorphism, and fuzzy-headed New Age myth-making in which the only thing missing is the show tunes. Thank God for small favors.