Running Scared is decently acted and divertingly brutal, but it's also a giant step backward for its maker.

Amping up the "Beverly Hills Chihuahua" formula with a whole A-team of adorable, talking furballs who converse in one-liners and pop culture references (Apocalypse Now and Scarface, really?), the mega-producer’s stamp is on every fight sequence, explosion and ugly stereotype.

Whatever ghost-story intrigue the film musters gives way to a tedious cycle of fighting, screwing, shouting and storytelling stuck together by two hours worth of hard-boiled dialogue gone gummy.

Iguana runs hot and cold, being engaging and dull by turns depending on the plausibility of the character before the camera.

Shrill, smug would-be satire.

Only Williams makes any real emotional connection: I'm not sure I'd call his performance good, but there's something fascinating about seeing the man once heralded as "the black Clark Gable" three decades removed from heartthrob status, heavy and sullen-looking, weighed down by the burdens of time and age.

Wisely, the filmmakers don't try to reform the real rich-bitch divas -- some cultural icons are beyond redemption.

Boring.

We’re too bored to have fun.

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.

Just avoid this ghastly, insulting farrago at all costs.

It's all such a spectacular show.

This superficial nonsense is easily ignored; that the movie runs out of gas at the midpoint isn't.

If Kaena's alternate universe isn't nearly as fully realized as "antastic Planet'," the 3-D imagery is often gloriously turbocharged.

Any resemblance to Cassavetes, intentional or not, only makes the film's flaws all the more apparent.

Something there is about the '60s that undoes the most intelligent of filmmakers.

Amiably goofy, but it isn't especially funny.

The titular precipitation in Lana’s Rain is a manifestation of the badness in the world -- but here, badness is pure Lifetime Channel.

It's a mildly enjoyable romp.

Apart from an extended scene-setting flashback that takes the form of a lavish Farah Khan song-and-dance montage, most of the running time is devoted to wearying flop-sweat farce.

The movie gives every cheerful appearance of having been shot with no time and less money, and it doesn't have much on its mind, unless you count the moral integrity supplied by local Apaches more by way of Mel Brooks than Howard Hawks.

The film, executive-produced by Guillermo del Toro, hinges on a first-rate performance by Basinger, who imbues Della with a fire that makes the film's basic thesis -- both the domestic sphere and the larger world are dangerous places for women -- seem something more than boilerplate.

So bad it's scary.

Directed by Swedish filmmaker Mikael Håfström, who's clearly new at the genre, this aptly named movie is riddled with obvious parallels, crude moral talking points, a script so awful it's practically avant-garde, and a vain attempt at comic relief by RZA.

The main drawback is Claudio Chea's vertiginous camera work -- and the print's continual alternations between black-and-white and color add nothing but a distracting ornamentation.

The film's snazzy new automated animation style falls short: The supposedly human face of our metal-plated robocop's partner -- the inevitable curvy female in a leather jump suit -- is an inexpressive, glossy doll mask, untouched by human hands.

It's Lawrence who throws Runteldat (as in "run and tell that") off key, repeating an admonition about "the trials and tribulations of life" that sounds suspiciously insincere coming, as it does, from a guy smothered in diamonds.

Its overall view of 12-year-old life is essentially one of high-spirited fun.

What could have been a fascinating exploration of geographical mayhem becomes instead an exercise in tedium.

If Tass had found a way to include more playfulness, her film would be more endearing. Instead, she accents the easy bathos of David Parker's script, from the problems of the shrill, cliched neighbors to a finale that plays like a movie of the week.

Watching the passionless Phantom, with its geriatric story-framing device, gooey dimestore romanticism and tawdry pop ballads about unrequited yearning, feels akin to dying and waking up in your parents’ easy-listening-radio hell.

The gags themselves only marginally work when they stick to silly non sequitur; the random movie references are forced and flat, and the takeoffs of "Dreamgirls" and "Fame" songs would make "Weird Al" groan.

Like so many movies that depend on effects for effect, plot comes in a poor second to spectacle. That leaves the Fraser, funny and sexy as hell, left with little chance to prove it.

Even the easily weepy may grow impatient with the snail’s pace of this melancholy romance.

In the end it doesn't lead to much beyond weepy melodrama. Still, McGuigan draws committed performances from a talented cast.

Directing seems an unduly elegant term for what Hollywood hack du jour Tim Story (Barbershop, Taxi) does here -- the action scenes are so choppily constructed that their excitement disappears faster than the Invisible Woman.

What Stone has delivered instead is no folie de grandeur, but rather the last thing one would have expected from him: an honorable failure.

A movie with a lot on its plate, but nothing interesting on its mind.

It’s a testament to Chow's star power that, even with an accent more than casually reminiscent of Elmer Fudd's, he comes off charming, handsome and cool in a movie as ridiculous as Bulletproof Monk.

Intermittently fun, but mostly just efficiently passable.

The sort of movie you like in spite of yourself, Scary Movie 4 is obvious and dumb, but it possesses such a giddy, good-hearted spirit that even its terrible jokes (and there are tons) get by on something resembling charm.

Can't match an ounce of the suspense generated by contestants frantically buying airline tickets on Bruckheimer's own TV money quest, "The Amazing Race." This movie is a fortune wasted.

Every gag is smothered by the prevailing tone of labored zaniness and generic, plucky "mischief music" alerting discerning viewers to abandon all hope of laughter.

Painfully bereft of wit or cogent insight.

The Sisters may be worth a look, however, for the work of the magnificent Bello and Tony Goldwyn, who's never been better than as the married man with whom Marcia has an affair. Their final clench is pure, guilty-pleasure melodrama, which means it's not the least bit Chekhovian.

Could it get any worse?

(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.

LaPaglia is a fine actor, but not even he can redeem such bathos.

Saw II repels, morally and aesthetically, and while some -- including the filmmakers, perhaps -- may take this as a compliment, it isn't intended as one. Let the game stop. Please.

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

A star ensemble is preposterously miscast.

The flashes of warm, human talent that pulse periodically from the ensemble -- Byrne and Foxx, particularly -- only make their presence in this terrifically bad movie all the more baffling.

What they don't do often enough is battle anacondas. It's all tease and no payoff.

A kind of declawed, inside-out "Final Destination" -- with none of the sense of showmanship, and all the looming malice of a mawkish condolence card.

Mimi Leder shows none of the vigor she exhibited when directing for E.R., and screenwriters Michael Tolkin and Bruce Joel Rubin betray a real aptitude for hack work.

The film's gadgetry is pricier, but the leering is strictly the Playboy joke page circa 1967.

Jennifer Lopez's butt? Alas, the moment is over all too soon; the movie, sadly, is not.

Never quite gets up to speed, lurching its way through a glossing, superficial take on street life and teenage sexuality.

Why the devotion to such dull material?

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.

It's all a treacly, shoddily assembled, underwritten mess.

You'd have to be either an avid New Ager or willing to see Nick Nolte in absolutely anything to get fully onboard for this visually overexcited tale of salvation-by-gas-station-guru.

A sappy love story wherein nary a gun or action sequence is seen after the first 10 minutes.

Surprisingly unsexy, uninvolving affair.

A movie bloated with character cliches and a bullying score that bludgeons us into whatever emotion composer Marc Shaiman thinks we should be experiencing.

The old hands still seem to be having a good time, so why the hell shouldnít we?

The dance sequences might have saved it, were it not for the fact that director Guy Ferland seems to have learned everything he knows about (over) shooting and (blindly) cutting such scenes from watching "Moulin Rouge" and "Chicago."

A stripling of 24, Tierney has a very young man's immature passion for unrelieved misery, which borders at times on the tedious, at others on the downright comical.

"Transporter" director Louis Leterrier is sure-footed when battling Gorgons and giant scorpions, but he muddles the comic-grotesque opportunity of the Stygian Witches.

Moments of genuine insight alternate freely with those of banal psychologizing, but even then there can be no denying that the filmmaker has an ear for a certain brand of self-absorbed discourse often overheard in restaurants and bars in the shadow of the Hollywood sign. And given the choice, I’ll take Henry’s home movies over Jonathan Demme’s any day of the week.

The few real laughs -- all two minutes’ worth -- come courtesy of Russ Meyer veteran Charles Napier as Dick Lewiston, the angriest macho male anachronism of the year.

A twisted black comedy -- The accomplished ensemble meshes nicely, but the actors all look pale and exhausted, an effect that may be a byproduct of the film’s photography, which is terrible.

Though the film overall is as disposable as a hot dog, it is just as enjoyable.

Even the director's flat-footed moves can't quell Martin and Latifah, whose combined energy is fearsome and sometimes most amusing.

Director John Maybury showed a defter hand with the artist biopic in his 1998 Francis Bacon film, "Love Is the Devil." Here he repeatedly falls into the genre’s traps, creating an inert, claustrophobic movie.

Unfortunately, syrupy music, reductive characterizations and bland cinematography turn her case into an earnest feminist fable that plays like an afterschool special for grown-ups.

Lee, acting through gritted teeth, barely musters the energy to yell “Alvin!,” but the chipmunks themselves -- voiced by Justin Long, Matthew Gray Gubler and Jesse McCartney -- are surprisingly appealing, though their newly R&B-tinged rendition of “Witch Doctor” is god-awful.

No doubt, Levinson thought he was making this generation's "Dr. Strangelove." What he's actually made is a desperate, ponderous sop to progressives that caters to all of the left's worst fears about voter fraud, corporate malfeasance and the impossibility of effecting real change.

Director Mel Smith (Bean) struggles to make up for the lack, clumsily juggling screwball dames and criminal elements, and trying to disguise the film's marked lack of vitality with split-screen tricks, jokey camera angles and a limp musical montage.

Sarkissian's script is both overwrought and undercooked, crammed with floridly senseless speeches.

Parkhill's heart seems to belong to 1940s film noir, where a lonely man could be driven half-mad by the sight of a mystery woman performing a hot flamenco dance, a scene Parkhill stages here to unintentional titter-inducing effect.

Done as an all-out battle to the death, this could have been an entertaining mix of "Die Hard" and "The A-Team."

Feels like a movie cribbed together from outtakes of other hapless Hollywood comedies -- rejected scenes where the line readings fell flat, the chemistry expired or the adult actors couldn't wipe the "get this brat away from me" scowl from their faces.

Far from a complete success: It takes too long to get to its central premise and, once there, too often meanders away from it. But Campbell is close to astonishing whenever she's onscreen.

The gorgeous Crudup is talented, but this charming asshole (more asshole than charming) is old hat for him, little more than another of the blank-eyed-loser-on-a-spiritual-quest roles in which he's been trafficking lately.

Fails because it takes itself both too seriously and not seriously enough.

Director David Kerr engineers Atkinson’s intricate routines with clockwork precision. That said, his first feature film has little to offer anyone not already attuned to modestly absurdist British comedy.

In "Pretty Woman" Roberts played a tough whore with a soft heart. Here, she's a business owner whose sense of self is so tenuous she doesn't even know how she likes her eggs done.

This is a dream cast who practically sing screenwriter Keith Reddin's funny, literate dialogue.

Writer and director Gilfillan has an estimable biography, having studied at the Beijing Film Academy and worked as an assistant to John Woo, but there's nothing in her prosaic feature debut that suggests this means a thing.

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.

When Plympton isn't indulging his manias, the film just sort of nods off, and nothing much happens -- either visually or storywise -- for what seems like ages.

The filmmaking is actually quite polished, and Ribisi is fascinating to watch -- his fluttery weirdness has never seemed more grounded and resonant, turning Gray's self-destructive egoism into near tragedy.

Predictable and overly busy, this sci-fi adventure should nonetheless appeal to computer-game-savvy tots, especially those familiar with the source material, while boring their parents silly.

A spirited re-creation of the series that once ruled Saturday mornings.

Silver, manages the deft balance of making Seagal seem both genuinely courageous and charmingly blockheaded.

Bowman and production designer Wolf Kroeger do an excellent job of evoking a twice-baked England, while writers Gregg Chabot, Kevin Peterka and Matt Greenberg keep the script devilishly pitched just shy of preposterous (it's McConaughey who stumbles beyond).

Cry Wolf is one of those movies that's rated PG-13 not because the producers wanted to get the broadest audience possible, but because no one 17 or older would be sucker enough to fall for it.