This is as listless, mindless and utterly useless a piece of corporate brain-clog as one is likely to come across for quite some time.

As a work of nonfiction filmmaking it is a sham and as agitprop it is too flimsy to strike any serious blows.

Deception would be laughably bad if it weren't so rotely inert.

The genitally ambiguous as well as transsexuals and gay people deserve more than XXY's good intentions.

The fakeness of it all overwhelms, dampening any real excitement. It's hard to care about characters so stiff and one-dimensional they out-cartoon the cartoon originals, and it's hard to watch them bop around like avatars in a flat, airless, digital world.

Even at its stride, "The X-Files" was a load of malarkey. But it was thoughtful malarkey and compulsively watchable. One could say the same about the first two-thirds of The X-Files: I Want to Believe before it spins out of control and into a delirious plane of awfulness.

In the end, Take is too enamored of its time-shifting gimmick and cheap suspense to ultimately have much impact.

The film gets the scummy patina right, all phony-Leone dusty trails, but while everybody on screen looks to be enjoying themselves, it is no fun to watch.

Though he claims to be a seeker, someone who "has to find out" why believers believe, Maher sets out not after answers but cheap laughs that preach, so to speak, to the converted.

Not even a brief appearance by Quentin Tarantino and a ton of references to other movies enlivens the proceedings much.

One of those fever-pitched computer-generated whizbangs in which every character spits out lines like a caffeinated Catskills comic.

Ultimately, its most unforgivable sin is that it's simply not funny.

Pedestrian and awkward, this film is a disappointment not only in comparison with Lee's earlier epic, the underrated " Malcolm X," but also in comparison with another film with similar aims, Rachid Bouchareb's "Days of Glory."

If the makers were hoping they'd chronicled a metaphor for life's struggle, they probably weren't counting on the struggle being monotony.

Despite its superficial lip-service to self-actualization/realization, there has to be more to life than what Beverly Hills Chihuahua is putting out there, which is fit for neither man nor beast.

What was presumably intended to play like a fable plays, instead, like an overly long car commercial crossed with a scare-mongering public service announcement.

The biggest mystery, perhaps, is why accomplished actors such as Molina and Hope Davis agreed to be in this.

The idea of a revenge comedy isn't necessarily a bad one, Bride Wars simply fails at it despite having the formidable duo of Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway, who in their own distinctive ways usually command the screen.

Mostly, though, the movie is something of a snooze, a gabby PG-13 horror flick whose most shocking image might be the bored look on Gary Oldman's face as he goes through the motions of playing the rabbi in charge of dispatching the film's damnable demon to somewhere over hell's rainbow.

Without dwelling on the limited abilities of novice British filmmakers Tom and Charles Guard (a.k.a. the Guard Brothers) -- who seem to have divvied up duties here by having one sibling focus exclusively on close-up shots of doorknobs and the other oversee everything else -- the movie's fatal flaw is the undeveloped relationship between the two sisters.

The new comedy is flat, the romance is listless, the pacing is sluggish, and the fish-out-of-water flops -- flip-flop, flip-flop, I can hear it still.

All Echelon can offer is some wobbly action and views of Red Square.

Although the script by star Anton Pardoe is ambitious and creative, its dizzying array of characters, along with a dense story that unfolds more like a checklist of showdowns than an organic narrative, make for a tedious sit.

That's about all Next Day Air can muster by way of invention, trying to slap a new face on a gaggle of rote gestures in a vain attempt to cover its own uselessness. But no matter how big the guns it draws, every shot is a dud.

At the end, all is horrifically explained, the body count inflates, yet hardly anything makes sense. In Papa Lynch's films, little is explained, yet because he's so gifted at mining our deepest fears and scariest desires, logic is excused.

A joyless fluffball about after-college job woes with a dispiriting message for smart young women.

Someone has driven a stake through the heart and ripped out the soul of the 1980 original. The responsible parties, make that irresponsible parties, should be found, thrown in movie jail and not allowed within 50 feet of a set again. Ever.

Invites the kind of judgment it condemns.

Satire aside, what the oddball folks here never feel is real, despite the filmmakers' claims of autobiographical parallels.

What are in very short supply, though, are the central chords of Dickens' carol: Crachit's generous spirit, Tiny Tim's sad plight, Scrooge's emotional arc as he finds his humanity. Oh, the scenes are there amid the action, but they are fleeting. By the time A Christmas Carol finishes piling its many shiny presents with their many bells and whistles under the tree, there's no room left for tears for Tiny Tim. Bah humbug indeed.

One can't help experiencing the same dread about the exhausting flood of lackluster horror films that swamp our screens and, as Case 39 unfolds, realizing we're enduring one more.

It's doubtful that records are kept about this sort of thing, but consider the possibility that Clash of the Titans is the first film to actually be made worse by being in 3-D.

With so little trust and even less dialogue to back him up, it's no wonder Li rarely takes his left hand out of his pants pocket. His fists aren't furious; they're on strike.

They never generates any real fear until its last minutes, by which time it is too late to redeem the dull events that preceded them.

While adapting accomplished fiction such as this is a lure Hollywood can never resist, some characters breathe better on the page, and that is the case here.

Too often we feel that left-out-in-the-cold draft that blows over the shoulder whenever actors appear to be having more fun than the audience.

A dreary title for an even drearier picture.

Can never rise above the melodrama of a past era, despite a splendid, impassioned portrayal by Willem Dafoe and an affecting one by Luo Yan.

Might work on the stage but is merely tedious on the screen.

If you think that Martin Lawrence dressed up as a hefty grandmother is funny, be gone with you .For the rest of you, you'd be better off just taking a ride on the bus. The script.. .is off and stumbling over unfunny one-liners.

Like a hall of mirrors, casting back at us distorted images from other movies. It even calls to mind "The Sixth Sense." It isn't engaging in the least.

Typical of this movie's cluelessness is the way it cavalierly traffics in stereotypes.

So uninvolving it scarcely matters what it looks like.

Opens and closes on a jaunty note: It's the tedious, relentlessly talky 80 minutes in between that's the problem.

Though there's a thin noir line between lust and hate, Lansdown delivers nothing to stir the passions of filmgoers one way or the other.

An undernourished romantic comedy-drama that's especially short on that most essential ingredient: credibility.

Misfires badly as both an entertainment and a message movie.

Leaves us with a heightened appreciation of the bold and personal films made by a number of filmmakers of the former Yugoslavia.

Doesn't have the courage of its conceit, only an abundance of bad ideas and worse taste.

There are any number of aspects to The Invisible Circus that simply don't ring true.

Goes into a tailspin after its impressive setup. Its dramatic tactics become so tangled and diffuse that, by the end, you get the feeling that everything gets tied up too hastily.

One Night at McCool's is one night too much.

By the time Duets faces the music, hardly anyone is going to care.

Affleck and Paltrow, who've been excellent elsewhere, display less chemistry than they've shown in magazine photo shoots. Even Woody and Bo Peep had more going on between them in "Toy Story" than these two manage here.

All strained artifice, inhabited by individuals who either lack dimension or are merely stereotypes. The result is a movie not nearly as amusing as its makers may think.

Not the kind of unwatchable mess you might assume a film withheld from reviewers' scrutiny would be. It is, however, something equally unfortunate: a mess you'd rather not be watching.

Ready for a singing and dancing "Reservoir Dogs"?

So mild, so benign, its humiliation-to-vindication are so predictable and its old-folks jokes so feeble.

Not even the strong, reflective, world-weary presence of Reno or Cassel's energy can make a dent in a movie in which suspense and tension dissipate quickly, with action sequences not spectacular enough to compensate. All that's left is gratuitous gore.

Kept in check by his character's neuroses, Pearce holds our attention throughout, but it isn't until near the end that he manages to break free of his character's and his director's inhibitions.

Certainly, Malkovich's portrayal of mob lieutenant Teddy Deserve (!) and his lacquered swagger represent the only thing here that you haven't seen a hundred times before.

It's too labored and ponderous to qualify as a so-bad-it's-good amusement. Original Sin is merely an old-fashioned bore.

Begins as a captivating romantic comedy and then, at the very moment it's most involving, takes a wholly gratuitous and disastrous swerve and just keeps on going from bad to worse.

Has plenty of warmth, affection and conventional wisdom, but too much of the time it plays out in routine fashion with moments of contrivance.

Dust is a bust, a big bad movie of the scope, ambition and bravura that could be made only by a talented filmmaker run amok.

Begins on a mildly entertaining note, with each successive vignette the film grows increasingly tedious.

An L.A. neo-noir raised to an insufferable degree of artiness.

It's too bad this Rollerball veered off-track so swiftly, derailed by bad writing and possibly also by some of that extensive post-production reworking.

Looks sensational, moves like lightning. But its script (by Joel Soisson) makes no pretense about being logical or even comprehensible.

Isn't for teens, it's for the kids who aspire to be teens.

The best the makers of Down to You can hope for is that girls in their early teens--clearly the film's target audience--will be so carried away by its charismatic stars that they'll overlook the film's various flaws.

A painfully contrived and artificial exercise in futility.

It's a portrayal so unconvincing it makes it close to impossible for the rest of the film to function as intended.

Without complexity to its characters, with little balance and without a hint of the personal, family or community issues involved, Colors becomes a movie that never has to ask "Why?"--a vivid, noisy shell of a film filled with eager young actors rattling along on the surface of a lethally important subject. [15 Apr 1988]

All the sound and fury in the world can't disguise the fact that yowling music, typing montages and computer animation do not a gripping finale make. This movie megabytes.

Cast adrift with vague, improbable characters and a plot that's at once under-and overcooked, the actors struggle to find a steady tone, lurching from somber to silly as the director tries to figure out what he's doing.

You can't help but feel that Disney has delivered a turkey for Thanksgiving.

Peel away the layers of contrivances, however, and the leftover plot barely fills a doggy bag.

Too often is as garbled as Pootie's own jargon.

Even Phoenix, an actor who can make an incestuous-minded Roman emperor seem sensitive, can't smooth over political nihilism this unsavory.

This documentary-like realism, alas, only underlines the preposterousness of its plot with its torrent of contrived, credibility-defying cliffhangers.

Buried under the miscalculations, the shamelessness, the off-putting and inappropriate broadness are sporadically visible souvenirs of a good project gone bad, hints of the unusual, bittersweet story that got away.

Melts swiftly...don't expect a shred of credibility.

A trite psychological thriller -- all buildup and no payoff, a mystery that essentially offers only two alternative solutions, which diminishes the element of surprise and strings the viewer along way past caring which possibility proves to be true.

Low comedy doesn't get any lower than Love Stinks.

Gadget instead ends up as another mindless, noisy thrill ride that gorges its audience on bright effects and leaves it queasy from overconsumption.

Far from great, and this off-putting French romantic comedy is sure to test severely the indulgence of fans of "Amélie."

There's some technical dexterity in melding the various formats and capturing some impressive surf footage, but the shaggy dog nature of the story proves exhausting.

Just the ticket for girls in their early teens.

A tedious comedy... It's not the worst premise for humor dashed with a little wisdom, but the script, written by the film's star Eddie Griffin and others, is less than inspired and tends to blur the line between immaturity and just plain stupidity.

Whatever his intentions, Clark, in his third outing as a director, has come up with a film that is seriously flawed.

More a 99-minute public service announcement about the plight of illegal immigrants than a fully formed drama, the film finds itself in a no-win situation not unlike that of its protagonist.

Pretty dreadful.

More travesty than tragedy.

That rarest of all genre hybrids, the screwball-romantic-action-situation-black comedy. Rare for good reason. Who'd want to see a thing like that?

Implausible at every turn, it offers a dab of quirkiness and edge from writer-director Finn Taylor, but otherwise has nothing for audiences to embrace.

Writer-director Steers has chosen to overload "Igby" with phony archness and forced black humor, making it not the place to look for satisfying acting.