The more you know about the 1912 tragedy, the more you will appreciate the sights of Ghosts of the Abyss.

The actors are their usual reliable selves; you can't really blame them for the unlikely mess Levity becomes.

It's a cheery, impossible fantasy.

Loud and frantic and filled with all sorts of business, but it's also empty and inert, a creative exercise that would have played better as a 30-minute short.

Raises a few questions -- like just what were they thinking?

A sparkling exercise in movie cool.

There's nothing in the utterly enchanting Raising Victor Vargas you haven't seen before; you'd just be hard-pressed to name another movie that did it as well.

Assassination Tango offers little heat. In dancing with death, Duvall stumbles a few too many times.

An overly convoluted, tiresome mystery that exists primarily to antagonize the audience, Basic consists almost entirely of dense exposition, then concludes by laughing at anyone who tried to pay attention.

Right now, this goofy film is the best candidate for mindless, enjoyable laughs.

Never achieves takeoff.

If Dreamcatcher ultimately feels like an unwieldy pastiche, at least it's never boring.

Not that the film is so horrendously offensive -- it's almost, and I hesitate to say this, too stupid to provoke insult -- but it's juvenile enough to suck a few IQ points out of any audience member with a brain cell.

As filler for the long, dry winter movie season, the movie is more than passable, and its sense of humor has a wicked, unforgiving spin that is decidedly pro-rodent.

This is a gleefully repulsive movie. Spun is bound to be described as bold and cutting-edge by those who confuse shock value with achievement. Most people, however, will just long for a shower after it's over.

The Hunted is so openly, defiantly derivative of 1982's "First Blood," you figure there has to be a copyright lawsuit brewing right this very minute.

As the movie breathlessly cuts back and forth from a boisterous wedding celebration to a high-stakes soccer match, even the grumpy cynics will have been won over.

The Safety of Objects doesn't carry the power of Ang Lee's "The Ice Storm," a similarly themed work about WASPS in crisis. Objects is too artificial, clunky with too many preposterous situations.

It has everything Oscar voters fall in love with: sweep, romance, accessibility and social conscience.

Worst of all is the movie's finale, a noble attempt to avoid an overly-pat conclusion that strays too far in the opposite direction.

Taking a lightweight comedy such as this seriously is probably a fatal error, but there's no way around it: This House is built on a shaky foundation.

The moral of Irreversible -- time destroys everything -- isn't nearly as profound as writer-director Gaspar Noé seems to think it is, which is why some critics have already dismissed the movie as the facile, misogynistic posturings of a provocateur.

Cradle boasts a couple of bravura fight and chase scenes but they're stranded amid the predictable and the pedestrian.

Sharp, witty and decidedly different.

It is as emotionally raw and wrenching as life itself.

In the wake of TV's powerhouse "The Shield," Dark Blue comes off as something of a retread, with little of "The Shield's" electric fury, edgy camera work or deft characterizations.

The movie's hokey mysticism and heaving melancholy is closer in spirit to a solemn Hallmark greeting card.

If you're going to be offensive, by all means be offensive. Be tasteless! Be "There's Something About Mary." But at least stick to your guns, and don't wuss out when it counts.