An enjoyable female buddy caper -- more "Outrageous Fortune" than "Thelma and Louise."

The only reason to sit through On the Line is for some entertaining, if fleeting, musical moments.

There's really nothing more to this by-the-numbers, ailment-of-the-week fodder dressed up with a classy cast.

This predictable romantic comedy outing has occasional flickers of ingenuity.

This might be as perfect a new-millennium Halloween creepshow as we can expect.

The rapper-ever-increasingly-turned actor -- is having the time of his life, big pimp styling in a flashy wardrobe as he guts and struts.

Relevant message aside, there's no good reason to sit through photographer Neal Slavin's directorial debut.

This bed-swapping crime story is ultimately too protracted, but Piñeyro's direction is richly atmospheric, full of noir shadows and strong period detail.

The movie's most glaring flaw is that the brothers and their screenwriters, Terry Hayes and Rafael Yglesias, don't manage to preserve the secret of the Ripper's identity for nearly as long as they intend to.

It's good enough, smart enough, and people will like it. It's also a high-concept cop-out, a convention-strangled genre movie that never zigs when your every instinct is screaming that it's about to zag.

Exhausting and fruitless: Having seen it, you know nothing more about strippers or the stripper mentality than you did going in. What's the point?

It's all well-acted and eerily compelling, but the shocker ending is patently implausible.

Ultimately, Grateful Dawg will only be of real interest to musicology students and diehard Deadheads.

Pure, irrational, claustrophobic, gritty, unpretentious.

The wrap-up's pretty charming, as are the performances, but the film's too heavy for its soufflé-ready ingredients.

Born Romantic feels less like it was born than assembled, in a kooky Britcom factory. It's no "Four Weddings and a Funeral," but it's certainly a happier conception than last month's "Maybe Baby."

This is nothing more than one more run-of-the-mill, surprise-free, suspense programmer.

The watchability of Extreme Days can be mostly chalked up to Hannah's playful impulses -- and his cast's infectious camaraderie.

About Lustig's direction. Badly employing all kinds of tricks like alternating film speed, jump cuts, and various color tints, she ultimately overpowers her actors and does in her own film.

The actors playing the team members have stereotypical roles, but these kids have got game.

Quite handsomely produced, and there's a definite swashbuckling verve to it. Most of the characters have been contemporized, but the actors are engaging.

Far from creating a pungent portrait of a society gone mad with blood and greed, Schroeder's movie strives for political points while it's whiffing on simplicities like character, motivation, and believability.

All of the interviewees are compelling, whether proudly showing off bruises and bullet holes from on-the-job scuffles, or voicing their opinions about how the profession has changed.

By the time Rock Star reaches its cop-out, "All About Eve"-ish ending, the only thrashing that should be going on is of the filmmakers, for bungling such a promising premise.

All that this really amounts to is a lot of hot-headed, hairy men threatening each other -- whenever they're not dancing on table tops, that is.

The real reason to see it is Brian Cox, best known for being filmdom's other Hannibal Lecter (he played the role in Michael Mann's "Manhunter").

Too much of a locker-room melodrama to make for great tragedy.

It's a shame that Jeepers Creepers cops out -- as American genre movies have been doing for years -- and plays it safe with an F/X-heavy creature that no one would believe in a thousand years.

Opting for this refried mash over Lee's rentable beauty is like choosing canned beans over an Asian feast.

This one's all labor pains, and, in the end, nothing gets delivered.

Whenever we're not at the ballpark, the film falls back on teenage relationship clichés. That's most of what's wrong with it, actually.

As amusing and sharply performed as it is, Lisa Picard quickly grows thin and dull. Perhaps it would have been better as a real documentary, with Kirk and DeWolf simply playing their pathetic selves.

Good old-fashioned romantic entertainment, just restrained enough to skirt schmaltz.

Pie 2 has neither undercurrent, and hence what was passably cute the first time seems much more puerile and shrill here.

The flat, gross-out live-action bits, directed by (surprise!) Peter and Bobby Farrelly, don't jive with the zippy, Tex Avery-style animated segments, directed by former storyboard artists Piet Kroon and Tom Sito.

Its emotional sweep is ultimately undercut by murky characterizations and generic plotting.

Families already know exactly what they're in for, and they're likely to leave the multiplex high on the hum of a charming cast, sunny San Francisco locations, and a suitably happy ending.

The most disappointing aspect of Planet of the Apes is that, despite its presentation, the film is so very ordinary, without urgency or revelation.

Makes for compulsive viewing.

For some viewers, this will seem a trial of predictability and unrelenting sweetness; for others, it's more than enough.

The more we realize that we're stuck in the company of a totally relentless loser, the drearier the entire experience becomes.

A mess, bouncing nonsensically from one style of farce to another, leaving large vacuums and dead spots — which may themselves, of course, be deliberate.

Watching this movie go through its simplistic dramatic motions, you begin to understand why some actors stick to summer stock and live Ibsen revivals.

Sags, lollygags, and blusters too much to sustain the what-the-hell momentum that Kitano achieves in his best movies.

It's dull, two-dimensional, and totally toothless.

The ending is so absurd, in fact, that it feels like it was improvised by a committee of 6-year-olds. If the raptors truly were intelligent, they'd have eaten the final reel.

It's Norton's movie, really, and he shines both as cocky Jack and as cerebral-palsied Brian.

That's just not enough to recommend it, though it does have one moment of real justice: The person sentenced to jail has truly bad hair.

Oddly, Bully's only moments of power come at the film's end, after the crime takes place.

The result is a feast for the eyes but frequently a famine for the frontal lobes, a movie of towering imagination and middling rewards.

Messy, frantic, and repetitive, Everybody Famous! takes on both vapid pop culture and the mindless hoi polloi that consumes it.

If you're looking for refuge from summer movie bombast, it's frequently intoxicating.

Just try not to smile while watching Jump Tomorrow.

A matted hairball of a kiddie flick that's alternately maudlin and slapstickishly violent.

Whenever the movie's not in the midst of a cinematic spoof it loses considerable steam.

Glossy, gruesome police drama.

Apart from the historical eminence of the poetry itself, Pandaemonium is about nothing much at all.

The material it does pull off is daring and sharp.

Come Undone is the quintessential gay date at the art house.

An absurdist semi-romance between two traumatized somnambulists.

Strictly where the boys are: posing, posturing, and talking engine envy.

Murphy's second outing as the M.D. who talks to the animals is surprisingly engaging.

For the most part, it's when the women do the singing -- that Songcatcher really comes alive.

Game boys and girls will be disappointed by this fast-paced but shockingly dull adaptation.

Demonstrates that even if you live in a country intimately familiar with fascist occupation, you might still not have the least clue how to communicate that experience on film.

Swordfish is exactly the kind of nominally high-octane actioner that breeds legions of apologists who will encourage you to "check your brain at the door" before seeing it.

Reitman has truly lost his gift for comic rhythms, cluttering up the film with running yuks that aren't that funny the first time and certainly don't improve with repetition.

The overlapping dialogue and the comedy of famous people playing self-variations is pure Altman (Leigh, not surprisingly, has worked in three Altman films).

The worst thing about The Animal -- is how frequently it becomes boring.

Struggles for any kind of movement and cohesion -- and most of all for any kind of humor.

The naked, artless display of nerve and rebellious bile is altogether unique in modern movies.

The cast is largely nonprofessional, and the story has the simplicity of myth.

What comes before and after the sound and fury of the bombing raid are reams of banal dialogue.

But it's Lopez's movie, and its limitations are hers: Both actress and movie tackle emotional turmoil with a minimum of insight.

It's the kind of flourish that makes you smile -- that makes you believe in the power of movies.

The most obvious casualty ends up being Jennifer Jason Leigh, an actress known for her fearless choices, who is literally pissed on for her trouble.

Simply a pleasant diversion rather the paean to crazy-in-love classics it would so like to be.

Makes for compulsive viewing even though its noirish plot doesn't make a lick of sense.

Like "Pollock," Nora is a convincing portrait of the intersection between creative genius and crazy, all-consuming love.

As its plot is entirely negligible, whether or not you enjoy One Night at McCool's probably depends on how funny you think the performances are.

Wincer keeps the insubstantial story moving and the comedy light.

A punishing tragedy that could best be described as the anti-"Shine."

Almost nothing happens for most of the movie.

Offers nothing but tired "Red Shoe" Diaries-style sexploitation for the art-house crowd.

What's right as rain with Diary is the casting.

A full-throated shout-out to the lowest common denominator.

The characters and their dilemmas are never convincing.

This fictionalized, frequently stomach-churning biography of Australian criminal Mark Chopper Read features the most bloody ear-severing scene since "Reservoir Dogs."

A watchable mediocrity at best.

With the dependably compelling Freeman present, even its worst moments are not unwatchable.

The only constant is the violence, which assaults rather than amuses.

The voyage is never less than interesting, even when you have no idea where it could possibly go.

One more attempt to pass off chopped liver as foie gras.

Starts as light, fluffy fun but becomes so blithely preposterous that it ceases to exist.

No matter how quotable the one-liners, the movie remains a far stretch from truth or insight.

Folks who are desperate to ogle Hewitt and Weaver probably can't be warned off this turkey.

A thoroughgoing mediocrity that musters up just enough low-down chuckles to remind you that you're not watching another Freddie Prinze Jr. yawner.

Gay jungle sex (gasp!), gone-native intellectuals, tribal rituals (gulp!), cannibalism (none of which the film shows, by the way) -- it sounds like a "Weekly World News" front page, not the thematic fodder of a highbrow non-fiction film.