Feast isn't the least bit artful, but it is gleefully gruesome, which may be all one can ask of a no-budget monster movie.

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

Cherot (who also co-wrote the script with Charles E. Drew Jr.) has made that rare hip-hop movie that doesn't fetishize lurid ghetto clichés.

Director Ernest -- doesn't skimp on style in a film that bluntly exploits social conscience to pump up its taste for gore.

In the new film, it's personal tragedy that provokes the journey, not social upheaval or even scientific curiosity -- which, predictably, makes for a story that's at once more familiar and less interesting.

Has the airiness of a well-made souffle, springing delicate small surprises at calibrated intervals.

Nothing in this craven exercise... will register in the memory for longer than the walk back to the car.

Like, you know, genius. But, like, you know, why?

It's Wilson who's the score here. Quick, scruffy and completely at ease, he takes on Jack's let-it-ride charms and foibles as if he were tossing a Frisbee with friends, and it's impossible to watch him without wanting in on the game.

Sweetly mocking comedy about the perils of reaching 30 with little to show for one's avant-gardeness except crazy hair and an ossifying attitude.

Consistently undermined by a script that swings between the duller side of quirky and facile sentiment.

It all misses the mark emotionally, hindered by one-dimensional characters and telegraphed developments.

Double-stuffed with kill squads, killer ’80s couture and mood-killing howlers, Fernando Leon de Aranoa’s Loving Pablo is more a greatest hits than a story, the kind of radically compressed life-of-a-legend movie where everything happens in a giddy, ridiculous gush — except for when it slows down to dwell on horrors.

Ultimately, the plot-point overload dilutes any palpable sense of dread, excitement or empathy, and it doesn't help that all the dialogue acts in service to either patronizing exposition or turgid interpersonal drama.

Long-shelved 2001 clunker.

Johnson clearly digs the idea of Daredevil as an agonized hero, slathering the screen with gloomy lighting and Catholic imagery, yet the movie has far less emotional weight than, say, "Spider-Man" (whose building-hopping pyrotechnics it often appears to be copying).

Cerda's striking creep-show atmospherics, desaturated palette and off-kilter editing rhythms are a style in search of a movie: The muddled "Twilight Zone" payoff here is hardly enough to justify a sluggish two-character round-robin of "Don't look in the basement!" The last thing a filmmaker named Nacho needs is more cheese.

A smooth little comedy deserving of more studio support than it got.

The Intended is unintentionally risible from frame one to last. But don't just blame Levring: The script was co-authored by none other than McTeer herself, and the result suggests the sort of self-flagellating, anti-vanity project that can occur when perfectly capable actors start taking themselves way too seriously.

It isn't so easy to laugh at Mary Katherine Gallagher and her disgusting antics when she actually has feelings.

What's most disturbing about this ineptly scripted, utterly implausible (and at the same time curiously likable) comedy of sin and redemption in TV's home-shopping universe is how close a committed cast and a talented director (Stephen Herek, late of Mr. Holland's Opus) come to pulling it off, to making us feel good about the 110 minutes or so we've just pissed away.

For the most part it delivers the goods.

Ultimately, Psycho...can't overcome the redundancy of parodying a genre that long ago sank into its own satiric muck.

It's not a horrible film -- and it's a fuckload better than some other oops-we-fell-in-love comedies in recent years (e.g., J. Lo's doggy "The Wedding Planner"). It's just not very smart. Deeply rentable.

In lieu of developing a plot, the brothers opt to cram their cache of forced quirks and hit-or-miss sketches into a framework of predictabilities.

The Jackass boys achieve true genius, however, when they take their penance public. Before stunned, inert onlookers, these skate-punk Situationists transform official zones of work and leisure -- office parks, golf courses, bowling alleys -- into arenas of dangerous stupidity to remind us that, in the end, we’re all just meat.

More of the same -- only less so.

Celebrity is one of Woody Allen’s finest. This is a minority opinion….But I prefer Allen when he works in a minor key – “Broadway Danny Rose,” “Radio Days” --precisely because he’s not trying to be profound, only true to firsthand observation.

Jeanne is no fun at all. This is no fault of Swank, who's caught in the overall confusion of a movie crippled by its ambitions to be both caper and heartfelt melodrama, to say nothing of a cautionary tale about the politics of celebrity in our own culture.

Strangely drab.

With this desperately eager-to-please fable based on a short story and novel by Isaac Asimov, director Chris Columbus clinches his berth as the master of shiny-happy message movies.

As reasoning, this is manipulative -- as filmmaking, it’s dull.

Contrary to recent rumors that it was a dud, the new Stepford Wives, with its chocolate-box visual style, archly heavy-handed foreshadowing and its scene-for-scene parody of the original's fright strategies (Walken's waxy menace is once again played for laughs), is a gas.

There's a surprising amount to relish about this gleefully self-conscious, disposable romp through horror's sexiest subgenre, mainly the film's grasp of its own terms.

A truly dreadful sequel.

The movie is ridiculous, but since the special effects are really quite impressive, that seems a small point.

It's basically the stuff of a Bill Maher monologue, knocked down a few reading levels and spun into a low-budg gonzo smorgasbord of brashly tacky styles.

Director Rob Reiner’s atrocious cancer “comedy” marks a new low in Hollywood’s self-flagellating “things to be thankful for” tradition.

Deftly blending disrespect and good nature, Fred Claus is a gas.

Mandoki's a pro, but a juiceless one, with only enough energy to reach the finish line, which becomes the viewer's goal as well.

Beautiful in its dark, contrasting blues and blacks, Underworld is nonetheless a remarkably humorless movie, and not even the adroitly hammy Bill Nighy, as the vampire king, can leaven the overwrought seriousness of it all.

Barely dramatizing off-the-field struggles like visa problems and the boys' first taste of good ol' American racism, the film does a disservice to the community it depicts by rendering an inspiring cultural story entirely uninspired.

The result is at once a woefully overfamiliar bashing of Hollywood superficiality and a seemingly unwitting paean to the self-absorbed enlightenment that passes among industry folk for personal growth.

Railsback and Snodgrass struggle against caricature in their own fine performances.

By the time it hits you, you're worn out by all the dead ends and false trails the movie has put you through.

Cheap, shoddy, crass and depressing fun for the whole family -- by which I mean 8-year-old boys.

While your personal estimation of this conservative counterprogrammer will depend largely on your politics, Chetwynd and company at least attempt to score their points honestly.

Directed by Lee Tamahori with his customary flash and glitter, Next lives from one brilliantly executed chase sequence to the next, which is more than enough reason to stay the course.

While the acting is fine and the direction accomplished, the real stars of the film are editor Baxter and cinematographer Maxime Alexandre. Forfeiting a gold star is whoever haphazardly dubbed the film, simply giving up about halfway through.

Woodley’s film mostly floats along on its melancholy drift, so well-attuned to the low-key rhythms of its beaten-down characters that it never quite summons up enough energy for the rest of us, who are along for the ride.

Sander has turned mediocrity into the triumph of the smug.

It's great unruly fun.

Pure junk.

Even an advanced case of critter fatigue shouldn't stop you from rushing out to see this delightfully cheeky animated tale.

It's ostensibly an action movie, and the action is so poorly shot as to be embarrassing.

Playfully quirky film takes equal-time potshots at its many easy targets -- fundamentalism, intolerance, ethnic stereotypes.

And this may be the only film in history to have someone learn about egalitarianism at a British boarding school (!). Hawaii's dismal onscreen track record continues; bring back James Michener.

What would a Christian Apocalypse movie look like with a big budget, a talented director, and star power of higher wattage than a discount Baldwin brother? Here comes the answer: like a glum hybrid of the "Final Destination" movies, an Irwin Allen disaster bash, and the kitschiest parts of Darren Aronofsky's "The Fountain."

This being Disney, wholesome character-building messages abound, but for once they're freshly spun as cautions against stereotyping both ethnic and canine.

More predictable than its makers seem aware, its emotional hooks much too dull to pull us in.

The performers are a bright bunch, especially Snow (even if she's no sane person’s idea of a wallflower), Metcalfe, who has the cocksure swagger of a young Travolta, and McCarthy, who infuses her few scenes with a haggard dignity masquerading as optimism.

There are surprising grace notes in all the performances, and familiar, friendly faces pop up in supporting roles.

After enduring 30 minutes of awful slapstick, shit jokes, gags revolving around used condoms, cholo caricatures, and women who are all psychos, sluts or Latina fuck-dolls, I walked.

Dumb, fun, out of this world.

The setup and execution of this quietly histrionic tale of the distorting power of thwarted love are so patently ridiculous that the urge to laugh gets in the way.

Manages to be a fun twist-within-a-twist movie.

Strictly for budding young ladies, though it does offer those who've already bloomed the grown-up pleasures of Firth, a great actor who graciously invites you to join him in the slow-burn romantic corner into which he's rapidly painting himself.

More dispiriting than the caricatured Italian families is the sense that, by picture's end, the filmmakers have neutered Angelo, so that his sexual energy is dulled, made non-threatening -- the perfect son after all.

Zippy, stylish fun.

At full length it’s still pretty funny, but only for its natural 30 minutes, after which it grows repetitive and tiresome as only material meant for the short attention span can.

This is wall-to-wall mayhem that dashes from one stylish, splattery, nonsensical set-piece to the next, while the star attacks her silly role with the carnivorous brio of an ocelot clawing a side of ham.

Even when the film does strike some genuinely heart-tugging notes, they’re invariably shattered by such ham-fisted lines as “You really are blind.” At times, it’s enough to make you wish you were deaf.

Danner, the film's sole strength, does what she can with the material, but it's not enough to offset writer-director Daniel Adams' cliché-ridden script and leaden direction, or the excruciating hamfest that is Richard Dreyfuss' lead performance.

In a major miscalculation, writer-director Jeanette L. Buck has underwritten Micki [the protagonist], making her so mysteriously sullen and distant that audiences may feel violently alienated.

The film is naive in its glorification of violence and vengeance.

Has no stylistic flair and little forward momentum, yet nearly every scene contains an amusing bit of business, much of it off to the side of the main action.

The road to moviegoing hell is paved with well-intentioned queer cinema, and Hate Crime is a red stone on that path.

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

Relentlessly positive and optimistic, the film is also likable, in the most chaste way imaginable.

Demands full attention, if only for the pleasure of watching great actors mine Shepard's harsh, beautiful language for all it's worth.

Peet and Poor make strong impressions in smaller roles, but then again, edgy and sexy is easier to make compelling than decent and nice.

Why Crop Circles now, if not to ride the hype of M. Night Shyamalan's "Signs" to some quick cash? The movie’s rambling, slapdash, repetitious nature suggests as much.

Nauseating, tasteless and offensive -- but in all the best ways.

Unfortunately, two separate screenwriting teams...send Cody away from kid-resonant environs and off to exotic locales, culminating in an overproduced mountain-lair finale.

Feels like a big-budget "Dharma & Greg" episode with toilet jokes.

La Mujer lumbers along, trapped in a long-faced score that appears to have been borrowed from a thriller, and without a smidgen of the saving irony that might have made of it a decent screwball comedy.

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

A steaming compost heap of high-art pretense and half-cocked psychoanalysis that almost makes you sorry Nicolas Roeg isn't making pictures anymore.

The freak show of druggy squalor and the wired sexuality of hardcore kink and flaccid cocks float by solely for our carnivalesque amusement.

A little of this goes a long way.

It isn’t particularly funny. Mocking lesbians for bad bongo-beating poetry, for instance, just ain’t fresh, interesting or even especially offensive.

Despite good performances from Gregory, Considine and especially David Morrissey, the movie's true merits are all on the surface: its uncannily authentic period reconstruction and its successful use of stressed and textured film stocks. The filmmakers care more about this than about their characters, and it's hard for us not to feel the same.

While it isn't surprising that improv gods Short and fellow SNL vet Jan Hooks, as Glick's wife, Dixie, are brilliant, who knew that perennial onscreen good girl Elizabeth Perkins, playing here a has-been bitch-diva, could be so brittle and sexy?

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

If Blake Edwards wrote a script and then Abel Ferrara directed it, it might look something like Nowhere Man.

The diminishing returns of shock value are the movie's built-in joke, and it would be a lot funnier without the directors' unforgivably bratty postsexist/postracist/posthuman showboating.

Shandling comes off as a sleazebag -- all that's missing are the gold chains, tufted chest hair and English Leather.

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