Mild as satire and completely unconvincing as tragicomedy.

Despite Arteta's best efforts, I eventually stopped caring about their bond because Chuck's character is conceived as such a two-dimensional yuppie.

Every time the movie seems poised to veer into watchability, however, Turteltaub is there, like a beat cop for the Fun Police, reminding us to laugh, sigh, or tear up.

Cho is raw, uncensored, and side-splittingly hilarious.

Shower isn't a bad movie -- just a baneful sign of things to come.

Limp satire isn't worthy of its good intentions.

A raunchy, scattershot, but often hilarious spoof.

But jaw-dropping trailer aside, there isn't much movie here.

So packed with knowingly dreadful puns, wily sight gags, and self-referential cheek that it's impossible not to be charmed.

This is one Rudolph opus that leaves no afterglow.

Whatever extraordinary ingredients are necessary to fashion a 1776 home run, this movie doesn't have them.

Praise will get under your skin.

A tepid and surprisingly dull farce stamped from the "About Mary" mold.

Flock (don't walk) to the theater to see Chicken Run.

What ultimately keeps Titan A.E. from taking off is an ordinary script.

This avenging cat gets no action whatsoever. Neither does the movie, despite a terrific cast and a heap of street style.

If you haven't seen his (Crudup's) work before, Jesus' Son could be the one that makes you his biggest disciple.

Dumont's movie has virtually nothing wrong with it -- aside from the fact that it drives people crazy. Take the leap, but expect no answers. Just like life, as they say.

The story is a pleasant one despite its pointed righteousness.

Oh-so-tiresomely familiar.

Its characters and plot are almost wholly negligible. It's just a party.

A satisfying, sentimental trip.

Eventually succumbs to fatal overlength.

A trifle of a farce fashioned into a '30s musical that gaily trips as much as it lightly skips, but nonetheless marks a welcome return to form.

Never less than riveting.

What does it say that we have a closer relationship with the car than with the characters? It says Bruckheimer.

There's no spirit of adventure to separate this one from the pack.

Jon Reiss' compelling documentary on the people, music, and social constructs of dance culture, may perhaps provide some needed balance to the mass media attention.

Given a decent script, they might make a fun summer movie. Given the script for Shanghai Noon, they've come up with a middling Old West oater that falls flat at least as often as it finds the funny bone.

Works best as romantic melodrama and is least convincing as a psychological suspenser.

The film has a standard trajectory, but the details are unpredictable: Kitano fluctuates between goofy pratfalls. . . and elliptical pathos.

Greenaway has hit a brick wall, and it's no fun to watch.

Strangely, what it most lacks is the genuine tension found in the first "Mission"'s signature set pieces.

The script is pure Disney formula. Dinosaur offers next to nothing in the way of variation.

Only Elaine May shines, in a weird and wonderful turn. Her loopy character has such a struck-by-lightning demeanor that she's always delightfully off in her own comic orbit even in the tritest of scenes.

It's a larky hoot in its best moments, and it has a refreshingly unforced sense of fun that buoys the scenes that are straight out of Lame Movie Laffs 101.

A pleasant and surprisingly polished fish-out-of-water comedy.

A big disappointment. It's toe-tappin' tripe aimed squarely at the undiscerning Britney Spears set.

Go see this movie and you'll be...yup. You should save your money; Norm Macdonald should save his career, by quitting movies altogether.

It's a lock to pile up the honors during Hollywood's annual awards season next spring (at the Golden Raspberries and the MTV Movie Awards).

Almereyda never plays up the gimmickry at the expense of the performances, and as a result, his movie largely succeeds, despite an overabundance of pretentious pokes at our consumer culture and the risky casting of Ethan Hawke in the lead role.

So desperate to be rebellious and cool, that it's impossible to see it as anything more than one big case of "been there, done that" -- even if your drugs have already kicked in.

For the discouraged filmgoer, Erice's tone poem will be a ray of hope itself.

A tepid, pretentious indie that flies from the memory like a tissue in a twister.

The total lack of sexual chemistry between them doesn't help. Frankly, I'd rather see Scott Thomas play a nun than sit through another one of these turgid romancers.

Why waste the price of a movie ticket when you can see wildebeests cavorting for free from the comfort of your own recliner?

Combining a seething physicality with enough weary nobility and tightly checked rage for a dozen wronged heroes, (Crowe) provides the movie's vital center of gravity without looming over his co-stars.

A stiff, clumsy, amateurish mess, one of those ethnically righteous movies likely to be endured exclusively by its story's demographic.

As an audience member, you end up feeling like a sucker for even having tolerated that sickly sweet notion about a father, a son, and their silly radio.

Bossa Nova has no beat.

Shot on location, handheld camera, available light, no props, no music, no filters, etc. We may wonder, "What are we doing here?" But we won't look away.

But for all its pretensions toward exemplifying a brave new way of making movies, Time Code offers less and less worth discovering as it slouches toward its tritely "fatal" climax.

A ponderous stage adaptation that expends only the mildest effort to overcome its staginess.

There's a sense of life to Committed that's unpredictable and sweet, but too much of it is cluttered with lazy shortcuts.

It's a yabba-dabba-delight.

A swamp of clichés, contrivances, and cheap ham-and-cheese hero sentimentality.

Just keeps grinding along, pushing its way through a barrage of boom-boom and a sea of tight-lipped clichés.

Croupier should please people who take their noir straight up -- with plenty of twists.

For all its pretense of critiquing our tabloid culture, it amounts to much ado about nothing.

A detective story without a solution and a coming-of-ager without discernable characters.

It's a tad too generic to be a slam dunk.

Blessedly free of candy-box prettiness, cloying gentility, and anything else that might dishonor its deeply felt, sensitively observed memoir.

A reliably solid treat.

Hazards nothing to speak of and asks chiefly to be congratulated for its modesty.

Works so hard at being pleasant and ingratiating that it wears out its welcome.

The film's details are spot-on, its tone ludicrously ironic, and its casting deft.

Plays like "The Honeymooners" might have if Ralph Kramden were from Pakistan, but with less laughs and more ignorant spite.

Pearce is shot in such distorting closeups that he looks like an overdeveloped athlete who's been getting steroid injections in his cheeks.

Packed with melodrama, and often it works in the passionate, easy-to-watch manner of an old-fashioned "woman's film."

Juggles a few too many subplots, cramming in more issues than your average nightly newscast. But more often than not, this is a film to savor.

There are only a handful of great music documentaries ... but Temple's film deserves a place in the canon.

Tucci has crafted a poignant remembrance of a bygone era, and a touching examination of the responsibilities of creativity.

Comes off as an exceedingly pleasant, wistful romantic romp.

If you're expecting an experience approximately as dumb, badly acted, and childish as a pro wrestling match, you'll be pleasantly surprised.

An audacious but underconceived blend of fiction and documentary that questions the idea of race and identity in America.

Complaints? None, except perhaps a wish for more length, and a little more depth.

This lightweight thriller has an enjoyable premise.

Feels like it was pulled out of the freezer and hastily microwaved about 10 minutes before you arrived at the theater.

The characters are barely characters, the story barely a story, and the elliptical filmmaking style that so besots Denis' many fans could drive you to drink.

Even if it sometimes skips, it's consistently wittier and more idiosyncratic that most studio movies.

It's an exhilarating display of filmic artistry.

First-time writer-director Mark Hanlon creates a solidly trippy atmosphere.

Offers little in the way of splendor in the grass.

The movie is a shambles, a rambling, disjointed love tragedy with a story that amounts to little more than a mess of fade-outs, sloppy montages, and dramatic sketches.

It's gibberish, but when X works at all, it works not on the brain, but on the gut.

Yet another leaden, witless, cliché-drunk, teen romantic comedy starring the preposterously good-looking stars of mediocre TV series.

Li's light touch and explosive fighting skills deserve a better vehicle than this overcooked pot of New Jack suey.

All of the filmmaker's fine work and good intentions cannot make this repetitive and finally tiresome saga fly.

Only really comes to exuberant life during the musical numbers.

Crude and witless.

Yields beguiling nectar.

The once-talented Mr. Polanski is hard to spot.

Alas, for now we're at the mercy of a screenplay whose beats are too often as poorly calculated as the movie's title.

I've not stopped thinking about it -- weighing might-have-beens and alternative courses of action, as though remembering an actual event rather than a nimble, superbly-realized fantasy. That's a first-rate achievement.

As intriguing as the premise sounds, Mission to Mars hasn't a single moment of real suspense.

Isn't terribly revealing, and though it is interesting to watch Condo paint, it's only interesting for so long.

This one somehow gets about 300 percent better in its last quarter-hour -- suddenly this is a movie worth watching -- and it's over.

The two leads have a wonderful chemistry together.