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.

If it were less prone to soap-opera histrionics, this screechy saga of an upscale family collapsing under the weight of its members' self-absorption might have something worth saying about domestic politics in post-fascist, post-communist, post-socialist Italy.

So many romantic cliches it's laughable.

What at times feels like a maniacal romp becomes just another sporadically funny, but mostly lame, piece of disposable product.

Although its lushness and penchant for melodrama are the cinematic equivalent of Billy Sherrill's syrupy string arrangements for George Jones, Tammy Wynette and Charlie Rich circa 1973, the movie deftly manages to remain sweet without becoming saccharine.

Plotwise, the movie's groove is more like a well-worn rut. Visually, too, the movie looks half-recycled.

It's a wit-free homage to Hitchcock and M. Night Shyamalan that, for all its slick presentation, never comes close to hitting the mark of its forebears.

Unless your child has a close working knowledge of the role of homing pigeons in World War II British espionage, he or she is likely to be bamboozled for the duration.

Another drearily sadistic and pointless crime thriller.

Yep, it’s Keyser Soze time.

Maher's filmmaking is competent -- the sets are inventive, and all the camera angles match up -- but someone should have warned her that neither she nor her young cast is experienced enough to pull off the line “The only people buying it are the faggots.”

Seems stuck in fad mode, a showcase in search of a movie.

The question for skittish distributors is not whether Looking for Comedy will play in Peshawar, but how long the movie will take to put Peoria to sleep.

A threadbare plot peeks through the shameless run of shopworn jokes about Viagra, stashed-away dildos, eager old dames delivering unsolicited casseroles to freshly widowed men.

The method to the madness of the traps turns out to be quite clever, but the rewriting of Saw mythology is the slasher equivalent of revising Star Wars so that Greedo fires at Han Solo first.

But while some may leave the theater tapping their toes and whistling the lyrics to such inimitable original ballads as "Hard for a Pimp" and "Whoop That Trick," they should hang their heads low and mourn the sorry state of the contemporary African-American movie.

Director Black is competent with the camera, but he seems to have instructed the entire cast to deliver their lines in hushed tones and pauses pregnant with hoped-for meaning -- except for Kwanten, whose overenthusiastic impersonation of a red-state rube is as grating as horseshoes on a blackboard.

The film is distancing and off-putting, more a feat of look-at-me-ma derring-do than something resonant, meaningful and just the slightest bit moving.

Although (Reeves) acting inclines toward the wooden, it's always been his weird genius (if that's the term) to exude a charmed aura, an uncanny sense of being the chosen one -- remember, he's been the Buddha. I'm not sure any other actor could play Neo nearly so well, for the others would all be working to seem like The One (as he's known), while Reeves conveys that quality just by showing up.

Life goes far past the boiling point for most of the characters in this hilariously overwrought ghetto soap opera from cult writer-director Buddy Giovinazzo.

Screenwriter John Pogue and director Rob Cohen expose only the dullness of their own imaginations.

All the fine cinematography -- lots of beating wings and impossibly large dust motes floating through slanting beams of sunlight -- can't hide the sad fact that the second half of the film delivers none of the shocks and starts required of atmospheric horror.

Assante, restrained and thoughtful, reveals Vinnie's midlife bewilderment as much as his bred-in machismo. His performance is too delicate, though, to stand up to the rigidly formulaic schemes

This look at the assorted struggles of modern hetero coupledom gives off a distinctly moldy aroma.

This perfectly distracting, ultimately unsatisfying film feels like a James Bond flick in which the stand-in got the lead.

It’s amusing, but it also eventually becomes tedious, like a comedy sketch that milks a good joke just a little too long.

Despite the claw-baring premise, this comes off as a tame, lame female cousin of "Barbershop," due to a maddening absence of storytelling momentum, editing continuity, fresh humor and even a modicum of detail about such a rich cultural topic as urban hair trends.

A taut mess -- beautiful, gory, tedious and puzzling.

The film's power lies in the fact that the façade is crumbling on the actress even as she clings to it. That this is not a pathetic sight is due to the grit that we glimpse through the cracks. It's Barbie, becoming human.

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.

Doesn't live up to its genre-crossing, parodic ambitions.

Has its moments.

The convoluted plot unfolds mechanically and with little atmosphere as if sex and death in the Oval Office would provide enough gravity on its own. That it doesn't is a sign of mediocre filmmaking as well as a measure of just how cynical the times have become.

Overlong, hard look at the perils of tampering with Creation.

Antiwar, anti-Bush, anti-corporate, yet neither as progressive nor half as funny as the "Harold and Kumar" sequel, War, Inc. squanders some top-tier talent (Marisa Tomei, Sir Ben Kingsley) as well as our patience.

And whenever the film shifts from spunky "let's put on a show" fun to overly earnest drama, it slows to a crawl, with mawkish performances that fail to rise above the soggy material.

The movie is crudely jokey and, finally, a wimpy betrayal of its source.

Chabria lacks the effervescent touch, in both his clichéd, logic-challenged writing and his leaden direction, to make you care. Though the film is crammed with music -- the soundtrack is stellar -- the production numbers fall completely flat, leaving you to pine for the over-caffeinated touch of Baz Luhrmann.

Struggles to achieve a giddy eccentricity that never fully emerges.

The opening moments of -- are some of the funniest --the rest of the movie beats you over the head with jokes, and though funny in parts, it's never this smart again.

This thoroughly unhip, unfunny political comedy is the kind of movie TV actors like Ray Romano make on hiatus from their successful series, and movie actors like Gene Hackman and Marcia Gay Harden make on hiatus from taking their careers seriously.

The lack of cohesion and conviction is disconcerting, and it allows the movie to veer dangerously close to exploitation. Its subjects -- and its viewers -- deserve more.

The sentimental novelty of watching two childhood antiheroes have at it dissipates once you realize the lugubrious lengths to which the screenplay must go in order to make that happen.

Schaeffer fails to develop the relationship beyond clichéd signpost events.

But while the film's tasty London settings add a whiff of elegance, Parker's confection collapses because we never believe Rachel and Luce as destined soul mates. The blame rests entirely with Perabo's meager performance.

If you crave a lively and funny trek through the farcical possibilities of unchecked dimwit power, Judge is still your guy. Just go rent "Beavis and Butt-Head Do America" instead.

The results are far from perfect: For one thing, Lipsky is so far from being a fluid visual storyteller that the garishly lit, appallingly composed Flannel Pajamas makes another two-hander talkfest Lipsky famously distributed -- "My Dinner With Andre" -- seem like "Lawrence of Arabia" by comparison.

The rather sad performances boast more clams than a Pismo beach party.

But the corker-to-groaner ratio heavily favors the latter as the bagel-and-dreidel jokes begin to lose their spark, as does the story

Flesh-eating fish notwithstanding, Peter and Michael Spierig's low-budget schlock-horror parody brings precious little new to the undead genre.

It's all cliffhangers, with no downtime in between.

It's a sad state of affairs when the best news about Righteous Kill is that it isn't awful.

A little of this goes a long way.

Undiscovered is beaten on all counts by TV’s "Entourage" and "Unscripted" in its portrayal of the aspirational lifestyle and its end-of-the-rainbow spoils.

It's typical poor-schnook-in-over-his-head stuff, spiked with some nervy, Pi-esque montages of eyes, horses and racing forms that illustrate Michael's fraying nerves (and distract us from the flatness of the other scenes).

Could have used two rangier lead players than Stiller (doing his patented aggrieved-yuppie shtick) and Barrymore (who's so perky you want to slap her); the 81-year-old Essell, however, is a wicked pleasure throughout.

The movie charts a journey from belief to despair with occasional touches of humor, but by the end I was so deadened by its minimalist style and method, I could barely summon the energy to ask why.

Harris tries his best to make something more out of his one-dimensional white-knight character, while Gooding plays his vaudeville Rainman routine to the rafters.

Enough gunfights, vicious beatings, and pissing matches for five films.

Jolie hogs the spotlight as usual, leaving romantic interest Ed Burns struggling to register and only Shaloub -- fetid, dirty, soulful -- with his dignity intact.

Despite the considerable imagination that has gone into realizing period scenes on a modest budget, all the episodes (past and present) feel hurried and clipped, like they've been passed through too many impatient editing-room hands, and the picture never fully absorbs you.

There may not be two equal sides to every argument, but in giving such little credence to those who might oppose him, Jarecki makes us wonder what exactly it is he’s so afraid of.

The whole seems disjointed, incoherent and lacking in the startling originality of the other two Edwards (Scissorhands and Wood) who, half a career back, poured from Burton's distended outsider imagination.

Thunderbirds is devoted to the principle that character and story are but rude interruptions to the real order of business, an endless display of profound vehicle fetish.

Bardem, given the only fully fleshed-out character to play, is a marvel to behold...If only he had found a more soulful, less didactic movie to be plunked down into.

Stuart Gordon adapted the story more conventionally in 2001's "Dagon," and it remains the better bet for Lovecraft lovers.

For a while, Vaughn's slobbo guy charm and Stiller's creepy Flash Gordon aesthetic are amusing, but it isn't long before Vaughn looks like a Bill Murray disciple trapped among circus freaks, and Stiller runs out of weirdo tricks.

Heartfelt but insipid drama, the naiveté quickly becomes exasperating.

Reiner, in very broad strokes, works in issues of poverty, thwarted dreams and family obligation, and almost pulls it off, thanks to Anthony Edwards, Aidan Quinn, Rebecca De Mornay, Penelope Ann Miller and John Mahoney, who impart humor and humanity to thinly sketched characters.

The viewer is meant to chuckle at the escalating violence-ringed absurdities (the kidnapping of a bafflingly passive drug dealer who winds up becoming a road-trip buddy, for example) and at Ray's brutish philosophies, but the chuckles are few. Though the film starts out modestly amusing, it very, very quickly lists into tedium.

A thriller that, at its best, has the gooney absurdity of an old Saturday-afternoon movie serial.

Jackson and Levy strike only damp sparks off each other, and they seem to have been introduced to each other --without benefit of rehearsal -- mere moments before the director cried "Action!"

Bounces through the bush in search of good will and comes up with recycled charm as it reintroduces most of the original's major characters.

The Kornbluths don't offer much visual style -- the film is as flat and sterile as its corporate environs -- but they build an excruciating tension from Kornbluth's confounding inability to lick a few stamps.

As [Roberts'] gay best friend, Rupert Everett is the only one with any backbone, any sense of humor or any decent lines.

A step backward for Hathaway, Bride Wars is one more step into the quicksand for Hudson, who's spent the nine years since ""Almost Famous wandering the rom-com wasteland in search of an exit strategy; this movie, which she exec produced, ain't it.

Slovenly writing by Shondra Rimes doesn't help, and the movie bows out with an omigod-we-forgot-the-feminism twist — too little, too late to redeem this lumpish excuse for a contemporary fairy tale.

The “surprise” ending, when it comes, is more of a hoot than a holler.

It's hard to buy the movie as an underdog success story, since even the actors barely seem to exert themselves.

Nightmare Man is all impenetrably dark nighttime shots, politely telegraphed shocks and limp, transparent misogyny masquerading as genre-savvy hijinks.

Admirably unsentimental about the ravages of poverty and mental illness on the foundations of family. But soon the endless succession of heartaches that visit Gaita's brood -- including multiple suicide attempts and romantic betrayals -- becomes monotonous and unbearable, the cinematic equivalent of someone slowly pressing his thumb into your forehead.

There’s nothing postmodern about this "family," unless postmodern means never having to grow up.

Begins so well that it's painful to watch it degenerate into tried-and-true frat-boy humor.

Duff, who became a teen-set role model portraying Lizzie McGuire for Disney, has sold over four million records and toured to packed houses, yet screenwriter Sam Schreiber and director Sean McNamara, both making feature debuts, set her up to sing just one song through to completion.

(Leder's) camera won't sit still long enough to complete a scene and tell a coherent story, skittering all over the map until you're dizzy from all the degrees of separation and spurious connection.

A satirist such as Shearer should need a license to go hunting on terrain so rich with easy targets; he tries to bag them all, and it leaves the film to founder in aimlessness.

Unfunny, charmless and hopelessly ordinary.

Remarkably, it took four writers to concoct this tin-eared, slighter-than-slight farce.

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.

This is satire made from the inside of the ivory tower, and when, late in the third act, Fun With Dick and Jane decides to come on strong with platitudes about how the petit bourgeois really can stick it to the haute bourgeois, it goes from bad to worse.

The film taps the same spiritual thirst and anxiety that has made cultural phenomena of "The Da Vinci Code" and the "Left Behind" series. And it’s just as cheesy.

This is high school fantasy straight outta Compton. As such, it has a certain compelling enthusiasm.

Instantly forgettable caper comedy.

If it registers at all, it'll likely be more because of the fuckability of Morris Chestnut -- a star waiting for a worthy film -- than any insights or memorable moments from the movie itself.

Still and all, the makeup special effects are as over the top as anything in Hooper and L.M. Kit Carson's 1986 Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, and -- for those of us without the sense to steer clear of this sort of thing -- that's saying something.

There's nothing like a feature-length video game to make you feel you're being played.

For a movie whose bad guy bamboozles unsuspecting Latinos with false promises, Ladrón could be cited for precisely the same offense.

Of course it's dumb, but every 10 minutes or so, it's also pretty funny.