As though fatalistically compelled, all three leads self-destruct: Li is as flat, colorless, and stiff as a panel of Sheetrock, Karyo plays his every syllable in overdrive, and Fonda seems trapped in the midst of a failed screen test for Pretty Woman II.

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

Never takes off, and much of the time Pool seems lost herself, resorting to clichés, redundancy, and dead-end allegory.

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.

Has a blithe tone and a capable cast, but Veber's script is 100 percent laugh-free.

The material it does pull off is daring and sharp.

A teenage movie that trusts its audience -- it sounds crazy, but it's actually quite beautiful.

Actually, it's a childhood "A Clockwork Orange," a reverent realization of the late Stanley Kubrick's final obsession.

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

There's nothing more incendiary than the reopening of a forgotten chapter of history --nothing more incendiary than telling the truth.

A preachy, monotonous failure hyped as a follow-up to his incendiary 1991 debut, "Boyz N the Hood."

An absurdist semi-romance between two traumatized somnambulists.

The results are far more real than MTV's The Real World.

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.

Optimistically explores how vastly different people can come together, and how any journey is more about what happens along the way than simply getting from one place to another.

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.

Confident, mature, deeply conceived, and convincingly inhabited, it's a surprisingly humane film -- despite the close-range shotgun spray.

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).

A wide-eyed, action-adventure throwback to the era of Disney's magnificent adaptation of "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea."