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.

Overloaded with oddities but a bit short on horse sense, this is one of those stubbornly defiant, attitude-driven movies that's so busy scrambling genres, breaking rules, and dashing expectations on the road to becoming art that it slips off into the ditch.

Spends most of its 114 minutes on the making of a demo tape. People in a studio, rapping and recording. If you're going to watch that, wouldn't you prefer it to be Dr. Dre, or Lil Jon, or whoever, rather than actors pretending to be their kind?

This trifle is better approached as a suburban haunted-house attraction thrown by enthusiastically confused teenagers. It's a little bit eerie, completely disjointed and sporadically amusing--kind of like "Lost in Translation," but with wanton slaughter. Do not expect more.

This elegant vision of sexual roles is certain to make a lasting impression and is likely to provoke explosive dialogues in Denny's and sidewalk cafés from here to Monaco.

A tenth of a movie masquerading as a full feature.

Everything that happens proves just as predictable as before.

The bottom line, however, is that cheap and unoriginal as The Gift may be, it sucks you in.

With Besson, it's all eye candy; despite all of his mythic posturing, his loop-the-loop camera moves and in-your-face fandangos are the true substance of his films. And that's not much substance. He's a dry-hump orgiast.

At first, Ma Mère is shocking and even alluring, but it doesn't take long for the conceit to wear thin, especially since the characters so rarely act as recognizable humans.

A film that aspires to join the company of its predecessors--smart, funny satires that skewered the hypocrisy and cruelty of high school life. But it won't. For starters, Pretty Persuasion commits a fatal error: It forgets to side with the students.

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

(Washington's) performance is halfhearted, soft.

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.

Cox, bespectacled and deglamorized here, shows some acting ability, but by the time you get through this 78-minute bag of tricks, you could be suffering from a case of perceptual overload.

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

It's dull enough to make a Mormon fidget.

If Campion has a message in all this -- something about the eternal battle of the sexes -- it is far from clear.

Vertical Limit represents another kind of propaganda--namely the current Hollywood notion that the bigger and louder and longer a movie is, the more people will want to see it, even if that means getting numbed before your popcorn's cold.

It's too turgid and redundant to have any real impact. As a thriller, it barely thrills; as a lecture, it has nothing new to say.

Salva directs cheap thrills effectively, but his own apparent desires come off more frightening than any winged demon.

Mangold never ventures beyond the obvious. We're set up with righteous anger against the liberal establishment and then fobbed off with goombah melodramatics. The film should be called Cop Out.

The result is by no means the embarrassment that many such offerings from unjustifiably vain actor-auteurs have been, but nor does it present much of anything new or compelling to demand one's attention.

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.

The movie is perhaps most successful as a preview of greater things to come from both Hughley and Union.

Hellboy is as much a wreck as "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" or "The Punisher," coming and going in two weeks, and as much a bore as "The Hulk."

It's a slow and laborious persona piece.

The material turns out to be far soggier in the execution.