Newcomer Short has charisma, charm and athleticism to burn, but it's mostly for naught in a movie that spends two tedious hours pulling out every stop in the gold-hearted-kid-from-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks- meets-gold-hearted-girl-who-values-true-love-above-privilege playbook.

While the filmmakers are not above corset-drama bed-hopping and back-stabbing, it's delicious when the beds and backs belong to Uma Thurman, Tim Roth and Julian Sands.

It's a refreshing change from the self-interest and paranoia that shape most American representations of Castro. At the same time, Bravo anticipates that such a view will drive some nuts.

Though the subdued performances every so often find a poignantly understated moment, on the whole Two Weeks feels too detached and well-mannered for its own good.

The movie isn't particularly tasteful or finely crafted -- but it grabs you by the jugular, and only during an overcooked climax does it finally relax its grip.

It tries too hard for sincerity, when it's actually more sincere when cynical. Filmed in 17 days with hand-held cameras that give it a home-movie feel, the movie takes blue-collar pride in its own hopelessness.

Though the story is often silly to the point of ridiculous, its goofy tone and charming characters, especially Frazier's Johnny, create a lovely idealization of a long-gone era.

Johnny Knoxville has a few inspired bits as Vaughn's recovering-addict chum, and The Rock carries an effortlessly soft side in the nonviolent scenes, but Bray doesn't linger too long on anything that doesn't end in a thud or wallop.

Clichéd though it may be, this movie was clearly made with love.

The archetypal names are pure Walter Hill, the single-minded grudge mission borrowed from Donald Westlake's Hunter books - fine antecedents, though director George Tillman Jr.'s style is anything but terse, indulging rote slo-mo swagger set to secondhand musical cues.

We should be thankful for the courage of Wang and his cast in standing against a culture that nervously treats sex as either a prurient joke or a puritan crime.

Ends up a flabby vehicle for the most banal of road-movie messages: The journey's the thing; the goal inevitably disappoints.

Lewd, crude and occasionally too brutal to take, it's also gorgeous, heartfelt.

The question is not how bad this excuse for a domestic comedy is (medium cringe), but how the gifted Fred Schepisi got suckered into directing a vanity project.

(Duffy's) assembled a fine cast -- it's hard to take your eyes off the two young leads -- but he's given them little to do but squeeze triggers and mouth platitudes.

It's abundantly clear that Lozano and company have been re-watching "Pulp Fiction" for the last decade, pausing long enough to pick up the fluid rhythms of "Y Tu Mamá También" and "Amores Perros" while completely missing those films' social and political edges.

First-time feature director Carter Smith, working with resourceful cinematographer Darius Khondji, pulls off the neat trick of using the wide screen to claustrophobic effect. And the actors give such a convincing display of starvation-fueled fear that they deserve their own private craft-service table.

There's not a single surprise or moment of dramatic tension in Uncle Nino, which has already proved itself a hit as a self-distributed film in the Midwest.

Mincing around like a bored old glam rocker and hissing threats from behind electric neon eyes, Nighy seems to be the only person on set who found a glint of amusement in his part. He fares better than poor Sheen, a scraggly Wolverine who made a more credible vampire-slayer opposite Frank Langella’s Nixon.

Pandering, stiffly acted and brimming with awkward (if progressive) political posturing, Rock's films attempt to filter old Hollywood formula through a hip-hop sensibility.

Johnson’s a good actor, but it would take the ghost of Laurence Olivier to convince us that a grown man could legitimately fall for this brat.

The film is sporadically amusing, especially early on. But as the gross-outs dwindle, one is left to contemplate if Stiller has always been this neckless and to wonder just why Aniston wastes her summer vacation on junk such as this.

Might have something interesting to say about cultural ambivalence by and toward the maternal impulse if only it had a spark of originality or verve.

Especially disappointing that Lemmons, who in "Eve's Bayou" gave us insightful glimpses into the emotional world of black adults, has lost her balance, elevating formula over revelation.

The best I can say for Smiling Fish is that it's capable and pleasant, which ought to sound a warning note louder than if I'd said it was awful.

What a letdown that Vincent Ward, who gave us a fabulous gift with Map of the Hu-man Heart, has made this big old tub of schmaltz.

Director Simon Brand channels both "Saw" and "Reservoir Dogs" (good influences, both) to propel his main story forward, and even gets nicely twisty when the climax comes, but it's hard to escape the feeling that the B-story was added in to pad the film's running time.

There are funny moments -- a cameo from Debbie Reynolds, an Evita sing-along -- but the film grows progressively more dispirited.

This undeniably talented writer-director has been repeating himself with steadily decreasing potency ever since the wonderful "The Sixth Sense," and his latest excursion does nothing to buck the trend.

If you liked "Love, Actually," you'll love this too, another small jewel in the crown of unabashedly commercial, cheerfully middlebrow, eminently exportable British fluff.

Formulaic but refreshingly low-key weepie.

The picture is an enormous disappointment... The result is one of the most self-consciously grimy movies on record - it looks as if the negative were developed in a mud bath.

Southland Tales pilfers large chunks of its plot and visual style from Alex Cox’s "Repo Man," Kathryn Bigelow’s "Strange Days" and Shane Carruth’s Sundance-winning "Primer," and unlike the makers of those films, Kelly hasn’t digested his influences and made them his own -- he’s more like the slacker college kid who’s just enough of an intellectual poseur to bluff his way to an A. That said, Southland Tales isn’t entirely without its pleasures, chiefly The Rock.

Devil is a Night Gallery reject worth experiencing only to gape at a "spirituality" that falls somewhere between Dostoyevsky and Jack Chick, and to laugh that such daring feats of narrative illogic were undertaken with a straight face.

The effect is so riveting, and the cameras so psychologically penetrating, you may be left breathless -- but satisfied.

By the time we get to the big finish, it feels as if we've merely been poked repeatedly in the ribs with a really good-looking stick.

The narrative chronology is so heavily hacked about, its tenses so addled and the material so thinly spread across so many characters, one can scarcely keep it straight in one's head without going cross-eyed.

The film isn't just banal, it's aggressively, arrogantly banal.

This whole movie is fun, and smart too, a fitting tribute to Jay Ward's original cartoons.

For a movie aiming to play like some 1970s throwback, both in sound and spirit, the most depressing thing about The Wendell Baker Story is how messy and impersonal it feels.

Not quite disturbingly forlorn, but forlorn (and overly literal) just the same, this latest entry in the doggy-acrobat subgenre of canine comedies has but one joke, and it comes early: In the Idol age, celebrity culture has gone to the dogs -- literally.

Its tone is as disjointed as if this were a first effort.

Overproduced, psychologically muddled, and burdened with an enchantingly overheated screenplay.

Amiable but not especially funny film.

Director Volker Schlöndorff is ponderously out of his depth with comic pulp, and fatally heavy-handed with his actors.

Sweet, innocuous and about as fresh as yesterday's lettuce.

From tepid start to laughable middle to thudding finish (and the final two minutes smack of a reshoot), it's nothing but a herky-jerky clusterfuck of noise and nonsense.

The result is like "American Idol" meets C.A.R.E. infomercial.

If not for the race sequences and the intriguing presence of Caviezel, who made this film before "The Passion of the Christ" and who one hopes will take on even more roles befitting his peculiar sad-eyed charisma, the film would amount to a well-intentioned snooze.

Garner is no more than serviceable as the tightly wound Gray.

The actors sleepwalk through their roles (save for Rosemary herself, Mia Farrow, chewing the scenery with termitelike gusto as the boy's satanic protector), while Moore, who previously directed "Behind Enemy Lines" and the "Flight of the Phoenix" remake, seems completely at a loss without any planes to crash.

Half a notch above a vanity project, this chipper little number by French director Steve Suissa offers a deadly combination of shamelessness, narcissism and schoolboy comedy.

The Animal is tailor-made for last-resort Friday-night rentals.

Undisciplined and overstuffed with enough surplus plot twists to make your neck ache, The Mexican affects the tousled look of a self-conscious indie.

Both stars are atrocious -- but the real blame for this cosmically self-indulgent disaster lies with Kevin Smith, who directs like a proud father who can't stop showing you pictures of his kids. And here's the thing: The brats are ugly.

Everything has been watered down: the intensity of the hero, the sense of sexual danger, the violence.

This rancidly exploitative movie is redeemed only by canny performances by both leads, as well as Sandra Oh in a supporting role as Phoebe’s friend.

In this serviceable remake of the fondly remembered 1959 Disney comedy (which starred Fred MacMurray), an impressively dexterous Tim Allen plays Dave Douglas.

Little more than a movie of the week with slick visuals and an amped soundtrack.

There's no real story and that would be fine, if Rogers and screenwriter Adam Herz could keep from pretending otherwise.

An intermittently gripping, good-looking movie.

Meant as a return to the form and substance of Allen's far superior early work satirizing the equivocations and betrayals with which we ruin our lives. In fact, the movie only comes alive as a hostile critique of psychoanalysis.

The film is confidently polished, and thankfully more sweet-tempered than preachy, given that every narrative thread has an underlying theme of social injustice.

Lurie manages, despite these obstacles, to inspire Redford to give one of the most layered and interesting performances of his career.

In many ways, Marshall and Barrymore are an equal match -- while both have a flair for the small touches that build a good comic scene, each lacks the complex layering of motive and emotion that make a human life believably real.

The main inspiration here seems to be David Lynch, though fans of Fred Walton’s 1979 hair-raiser "When a Stranger Calls" may experience a touch of déjà vu as well.

Paycheck is too smart for a mindless actioneer, and too slick to capture the full moral weight of Dick's dystopia.

Cloying, unoriginal stuff, rescued -- barely -- by the easy affection that courses between Bullock and Connick Jr., and by the lovely cinematography of Caleb Deschanel.

A movie that’s full of sound, fury and unintentional camp -- and is still bafflingly inert.

Director Stephen Hopkins (Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child) and writer Akiva Goldsman (Batman and Robin) layer a ridiculous time-travel tale with the story of a dysfunctional family Robinson, impressive special effects, and IKEA does Star Wars production design.

Ordinarily it's kind of hard to screw up a Richard Price story, but the writer is his own worst enemy here, with a screenplay so filled with bromides and object lessons from God, you can't tell what he's trying to say.

Director James Wong and co-writer Glen Morgan seem, in this film's creaky first third, to be working on automatic pilot, but they gradually cut loose, staging one imaginative and gleefully gruesome death after another.

There are moments of real power here -- mostly courtesy of Phillips ("Dawson's Creek"), who does a remarkable job of turning her caricature into a character -- but even more of astounding naiveté.

Has its moments.

Too bad that by the time the volcano shoots its wad, the movie has already died a thousand deaths, ground to a halt by the interminable waiting for the damn thing to blow.

Meet Dave feels a little too cuddly and familiar to be more than a programmatic summer kids' movie -- better than average, but not worth phoning home about.

Meet Joe Black is a hefty three hours long, and just so you know, it is at least two before Claire Forlani, as the Parrish daughter, Susan, unbuttons Pitt's shirt.

Formulaic but not cynical, The Final Season has some sweet, thoughtful passages in what is otherwise just one more well-meaning inspirational sports movie.

Reiss guides the film with a firm hand, ratcheting up the tension and ably guiding his actors. It's his protagonists that undo the film, making it a chore to sit through.

The film's larger, surprisingly mature emotional rhythms are strong enough to pull it through.

By the time a not terribly surprising tragedy hits and these crazy kids get theirs, the movie doesn't so much end as finally keel over.

This bright farce is spun from interlocking coincidences that only seem far-fetched.

The movie is enormously, convulsively funny, and it never lets up -- it has no shame.

A remake of the 2003 Korean horror film "A Tale of Two Sisters," The Uninvited is a Hand That Rocks the Cradle–type thriller that's been dressed up as a horror movie.

It's not really original stuff, and there are few genuine surprises, but Painter skillfully layers visual details and off-the-cuff dialogue into a smart, condescension-free piece on small towns and the complicated lives they contain. The standout here is the always-wonderful Seymour (Hotel Rwanda, Birth).

Though the story hardly lacks for event as it traces Khayyam's ascension from the peasantry to the royal court, the period costumes and sets look to be on loan from Medieval Times, as do most of the actors, and the boxy, harshly lit compositions make everything feel even more cardboard.

The vaporous Wonderland never moves beyond its grungily romanticized view of the past.

With its inexplicably watchable shotgun-riding bimbos, unconscious homoeroticism and "Shawshank Redemption" ending, The Fast and the Frivolous here is almost so bad it's good. Almost...

These resourceful actors -- to say nothing of the audience -- deserve better.

John Turtletaub directs Gerald DiPego's silly script, pumping it full of sudden shocks and cheap dramatics where there should be steady tension and character development.

Lukewarm melodrama disappoints.

Midway through, the plot pulls itself out of its doldrums with a sudden, heart-twisting turn. Ruben still knows how to cut a sequence for maximum jolt, and, ultimately, he and DiPego manage to summon up some of the B-movie paranoia that fueled "The Stepfather," turning in a pleasantly nonsensical roller-coaster ride.

As the cop who finds himself in way over his head, kickboxer-turned-actor Conrad Pla turns in a performance of such staggering ineptitude that it almost (key word: almost) reaches a so-bad-it's-good, Plan 9 From Outer Space brilliance.

Emerges a weakling comedy of manners.

Actress Amy Smart (Crank) has a knack for bringing a spark to mediocre movies, which she does again in this amiably dull dance drama.

If I were a grief-stricken Sarajevan I'd take offense.

It boasts none of the studio's high-gloss animation. That said, Recess is not without its charms.

With her bulging blue eyes, elaborately braided hair and slinky spandex costumes, she's an indelible icon of action-heroine chic, and, quite frankly, the films don't deserve her.