Before things have even begun we know how they will end; this is pure Hollywood product, slicker than the insides of an oilcan.

The entire film takes its cue from Cage's spritzes and jags; it's a delirious performance in a delirious landscape.

What results ultimately plays like a feature-length episode of an HBO comedy series like Sex and the City -- gratuitous nudity and all.

It's dull enough to make a Mormon fidget.

It's easily the ugliest film Gilliam's ever made, a movie shot with a lens someone forgot to wipe. It's also his loudest: Every scene is amped up to 11, and every line of dialogue is delivered as though it's a cry for help from the bottom of the well.

Doesn't come close to matching the emotional depth and power of Frank Perry's 1962 "David and Lisa," the most involving and affecting film I've ever seen about teenagers and mental illness.

A lack of fire is ultimately the problem of the entire film. Six Days tries hard to recall Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn riding the rapids in "The African Queen," but the film falls short even of Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner in "Romancing the Stone."

The best you can say of Asylum is that it plays like a topless "Twilight Zone."

At its best (which isn't much), Le Divorce blusters along with the tolerable tedium of had-to-be-there home movies; at its worst (which is about 90 percent), it illustrates why the French went and invented the word merde.

That's what separates good films from bad. And that's what makes Km. 0 stand out.

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.

Uou may choose to read My Date with Drew several different ways -- as endearing or frightening, as bleak or expectant, as the optimistic daydream of the naïve Everyman or the beginning of a problem that could only lead to a restraining order.

What isn't hard to say is that Noé really isn't a very talented filmmaker.

Little Ralph comes off like "Billy Elliot" on steroids. Still, this an energetic movie that can be truly hilarious in spots, and it captures perfectly the oppressive atmosphere of a Catholic boys' school in the ’50s.

What the movie mostly sends up is its star and screenwriter, Michael Myers. That's not all bad.

Obnoxiously dull.

We do glimpse the dynamic interplay between rising comedian Eddie Griffin's hilarious obsessions and the loving, screwed-up people who made him what he is.

What Lies Beneath is my head on the movie theater floor, snoozing through this film.

Wild Things reaches such dizzying heights of wretched dialogue, creaky contrivances, and panting performances, you're forced to wonder if the filmmakers realized how bad their script was and switched gears into pure camp at some point during the shoot.

The screenplay does enough sabotage on its own; the nose, perhaps, is there to give us something to focus on lest our minds wander and wonder just how we chose to kill an hour and 48 minutes giving this crime caper access to our pocketbooks. (Might be good on video, though. Or cable.)

The movie is more a loose collection of skits than a coherent whole. But then, it's never coherence we're looking for when Atkinson's exhausting imagination is cut loose from its fetters. The weird bonus here is John Malkovich's over-the-top performance.

This ain't no movie. It's a very long, very tedious infomercial for Phantom Menace action figures, on sale now at a Target or Toys "R" Us near you.

What's most disappointing is the almost utter lack of humor -- In the mindless action sweepstakes, however, there's still enough here to place The Transporter above big-bang gibberish like XXX.

Assassination Tango is Duvall's fourth, yet it still feels like a first film; worse yet, it feels like a waste of an undeniably great actor.

Does not measure up to its predecessor, but it's child-friendly and lasts only 45 minutes.

Plays like a greatest-hits remix; like "Die Another Day," it's bent on resurrecting a moribund franchise by recalling all the things you used to love about it till you grew into big-boy pants.

You're almost tempted to laugh at Birth by the end, but by then you're too busy cursing it to bother.

Its substance and high ambitions, salted with humor, make for a rewarding two hours in the dark.