You can see all the jokes and heart-tugs coming a mile away. But writer Joseph A. Ciota and director Frank Ciota have a light touch. And they have a real find in their leading man, Eddie Malavarca.

Another disposable kidnapping thriller.

Here's a fervent, G-rated version of contemporary life in which the divine overcomes the earthly and miracles are commonplace. It's aimed squarely at the emerging Christian market.

It has its moments, but they never add up to a record you'd want to play again and again in its entirety.

The problem with Secretary isn't that it is offensive or unnerving -- although you get the idea the filmmakers hoped it might be at least one of those. The problem is that the story is slow-moving and dull.

The plot can be really tough to follow, in part because Banderas' accent, rarely a problem in recent years, is surprisingly hard to understand at crucial moments, and partly because it's tough to keep track of just who's working for whom...and why...and even where.

Don't go to this movie looking to be actually scared, but as a gothic romp it's surprisingly effective.

Isn't as funny as it should be. Cedric's speech impediment only goes so far -- he's actually funnier in Serving Sara, without having to rely on a big wig to do his acting for him.

No one in a McCulloch movie is ever normal -- most of the humor comes from characters saying or doing the weirdest thing you could possibly come up with in any given circumstance, and if that kind of humor's your bag, there's frequently a lot to enjoy in the bizarre antics of Green and Jason Lee,

While it's crucial to preserve and make available every bit of available footage of such an earth-shattering event, it must be said that Rosenbaum's film manages to become slack and uninvolving after a while.

Nominal comedy has a few bright spots but never seems to find its rhythm.

If sudden loud noises, relentless strobe lights, digital hallucinations and mutilated corpses make you jump, and you feel that nothing more is required for a good time at the movies, welcome to Feardotcom.

A teen-anxiety movie that leaves no doubt where it stands on "family values" and moral absolutes: It approves. The shock troops of the Cinema Without Limits army are unlikely to buy many tickets, but those who do will probably see the thing as sanctimonious pabulum -- even for its target audience of adolescents.

That's not to say Simone doesn't offer a good time. Shove aside its self-righteous agenda and it's a deft kick, a light comedy whenever it's not trying to play heavy. And it's bolstered by Al Pacino in a lively performance.

By movie's end what began as an occasionally tragic comedy has slowly and effectively become a grand metaphor for the journey of life.

It's a visually poetic style, and likely to find hardcore devotees, especially among the ranks of Terence Malick and Marc Forster fans. Others will just find it painfully slow.

Unless you count "Lilo & Stitch," this is the first of several surfer-girl movies out of the gate, and it seems clear that in the rush to put it out there, a script was the last thing on Universal's mind.

The cold distance that LaBute brings to the material keeps the viewer at arms' length.

There are no stunning revelations herein, but then, that's not why you're going to go see it, is it?

An occasionally funny, but overall limp, fish-out-of-water story.

Argento knows how to work her stuff, and the result is by turns saucy and grody, a fat lasagna of yesterday's "extreme" behavior dripping with Euro cheesiness.

Doesn't hit a home run on every action sequence -- an early bit set in Colombia is too long and too disjointed -- but there are one or two bits in the movie's latter third that are guaranteed to hook action fans.

It's far more than merely disappointing that Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams lacks the charm and wit -- and humanity --of its predecessor. It's dispiriting.

It's the usual struggle of growing up and growing old, but Muccino's twists are plucky and revealing when he's not suffocating us with heavy-handed mortality and pathos.

what we've got here is a little propaganda film. A mild one, certainly, but the cliché of DIY hopefuls (band) versus the Big Machine (music industry) foments the same tedious struggle of art versus commerce.

Filled with sharp observations and interesting, often subtle, bits of visual trickery, much of it evoking the technique of Douglas Sirk's American domestic melodramas. Still, the very simple story seems too simple and the working out of the plot almost arbitrary.

Schnitzler's film has a great hook, some clever bits and well-drawn, if standard issue, characters, but is still only partly satisfying. The problem may very well be one of cultural translation.

Of all the A-list men playing dedicated authority figures, Star Wars alums Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson remain among the most amusing and pleasing, which is why K-19: The Widowmaker glides along engagingly rather than sinking.

The next time Irwin wants to make a feature, however, he should find a director who knows how.

Audiences are advised to sit near the back and squint to avoid noticing some truly egregious lip-non-synching, but otherwise the production is suitably elegant, a fine retreat from summer cinema overkill.

Thing is, movie's 100 percent mystery-free, but mildly creative, mixing Psych 101 with cynical Hollywood in-jokes with Tylenol-sponsored grainy-cam footage. Best revelation is source of Myers' superhuman strength: eats big rats, apparently.

This is not exactly original, but Schaeffer and his cast manage to make it tolerable.

There is more anxiety than loving humor in the proceedings, and a noticeable lack of charm.

The film was shot with six cameras simultaneously and the images are projected on six split screens, à la Mike Figgis' "Time Code." While the subject's appeal is limited and the film's 106-minute running time excessive, viewers who do respond to the pic will find it raw, real and cathartic.

I liked when they had the paint fights and the pillow fights.

Toback has taken a distinctly '60s-ish personal experience and done his best to transplant it into the current, vastly different, cultural milieu. Harvard Man is a semi-throwback, a reminiscence without nostalgia or sentimentality.

Just barely diverting, even at under 80 minutes -- a TV episode inflated past its natural length.

Director Mick Jackson (L.A. Story) delivers playful and charming teens-turned-30 moxie.

Star Jeremy Renner seems shorter than Dahmer, but is otherwise a look-alike and gives a convincingly intense and weird performance. Bruce Davison (as Papa Dahmer) and the rest of the cast also do nice work.

It just doesn¹t get very good until halfway through, in large part because the usually excellent Walston is miscast.

Either a put-on or a straight shooter; that you can't tell the difference underscores its small but ultimately overwhelming flaws.

The over-the-top sincerity that is so rewarding in "Face/Off" (1998), Woo's best American film, feels too clichéd in this more conventional context.

Give Care and McFarlane points for trying to do something innovative with the same old thing. But realize that, as spruced up as the facade may be, this movie is indeed still the same old thing.

Their (Tunney and Nelson) interplay is what saves the movie, and possibly should have been expanded upon to the exclusion of the other plot points.

When Affleck keeps getting work, the terrorists HAVE won. With blank eyes and soft features, he has none of the gravitas of his predecessors, Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford, who saved the world with swagger. Affleck merely looks like a frat boy in over his head, which is perhaps the point.

It's refreshing and unusual to see clever strategy trumping ritual honor in a film of this genre, even if one of the tricks seems gratuitously brutal.

A key problem here is that the film is adapting a short story, and, as such, has to pad it out to feature length -- it still comes in at a scant 82 minutes, about 52 minutes too long.

Sometimes it bounces along, other times it feels forced. Kids and hardcore fans will love it regardless, and those who don't will nonetheless be talking about it for the next three years.

Wacky chaos ensues, as the film veers toward a subplot about industrial espionage, but director Clare Kilner's debut is never as daft as it should have been.

Jeffrey Greeley's loving photography of the wintry landscapes is beautiful, but lead actor Jacob Lee Hedman is nowhere near as charismatic as he needs to be for a film with this few characters.

A small story, with fewer lofty ambitions than its lead character, the film runs out of steam at a certain point. Overall, its leisurely pace and lack of overt action will bore some filmgoers, while the movie's final section, during which Ganesh pursues his political aspirations, feels strangely hurried and less satisfying than the rest of the story.

Heavy with mood and Finn's fine music, Jeffs' debut feature merely moistens us when we should be soaked. Maybe next time she'll let it all come down.

When Circuit is on its game it's very telling and where it's at its best is detailing just how difficult it is for men so hedonistically self-involved to love one another.

Certainly a terrific sense of urgency underlies the story and Tom's desperation over Claire is palpable, but that may not be enough for viewers who actually like to understand how the riddle is unraveling.

Loses significant points for its lazy story and complacent delivery.

While the humor is recognizably Plympton, he has actually bothered to construct a real story this time, and the joke sequences are shorter and better integrated. The visual style is also richer and "better drawn" than before.

What's in it for you? Mostly a bunch of astronauts and cosmonauts onboard the International Space Station, floating around filming each other.

The budget is low and the acting grade C at best, but director Lorena David stages one or two genuinely impressive stunts, and the script, by newbies Scott Duncan and Ned Kerwin, manages to skillfully maintain the plot's central mystery all the way to the end.

If you can roll with these moments, the rest of the film pays off, but even with a relatively happy ending (one that, given the characters in question, may not last), it's a heck of a downer for date night.

Like so many other allegedly scary movies, it gets so tangled up in The Twist that it chokes the energy right out of the very audience it seeks to frighten.

This is mostly well-constructed fluff, which is all it seems intended to be.

While nostalgically recalling the past, this is a clear-eyed look at Jewish history that should prove compelling even to those who've never heard of the Yiddish theater.

Les Destinées has a leisurely, contemplative pace without ever growing boring. Still, at the end, we are left somehow empty. For all the time we spend with these people, we never really get inside of them.

Film falls into the same trap as the book: a moderately interesting setup ultimately undone by an ending that makes the audience feel like fools for investing any sympathy with the characters.

The underlying theme constantly changes shape, not in a way that seems rich in ambiguity, but in a way that seems poorly worked out.

Resnick has crafted an ambitious, if extremely uneven, character study.

The cumulative effect is less thrilling than it is merely amusing.

The story's a trifle, but it's consistently edgy as the team stride straight into the middle of grisly violence so they can capture it on film.

Festival in Cannes is an amused indictment of Jaglom's own profession; he doesn't seem to be making excuses for anybody's compromised (or even downright immoral) behavior here.

At 145 minutes it's a bit of a stretch, but the cinematographer is the great Eric Gautier ("Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train," "Pola X") and the score by Howard Shore is far superior to his Oscar-winning "Lord of the Rings."

While the movie tries to make the connection between the rough but sensitive lad we see on screen and the notorious carouser of later years, there's little here to suggest whatever torment led Behan to drunkenness and an absurdly early death at 41.

Even Hartnett, designated Next Big Thing last year, seems like he's barely trying.

For better or worse -- plenty of both, in fact --it's a movie that has a coherent vision. It's a shame that vision just doesn't happen to be very interesting.

Not as tumultuous as "Happy Together" (the best gay break-up movie to date) it nonetheless offers much food for thought, particularly in regard to issues of trust and condom use.

Fact is, there is nothing feloniously awful about the whole thing, but the laughs are tepid and too infrequent.

Since the movie arrives and succeeds as entertaining B-movie fare, we may as well appreciate all of its howls, beastly or unintentional.

Joe Morton, Linda Hunt and Kathy Bates show up in supporting roles, only to have Costner's flagging energy drag them down, too.

Ultimately, Hart's War can't decide what it is: treatise on racism, escape (and escapist) thriller or murder mystery. So it sits there -- and we sit there with it, waiting and waiting. And waiting.

Highbrow self-appointed guardians of culture need not apply, but those who loved "Cool as Ice" have at last found a worthy follow-up.

This use of narrative irony is in fact not just the central joke; it's the only joke. And as a result, the movie slightly overstays its welcome.

It's technically a well-made film: Chandrasekhar, who directed, gives it the look of a studio feature on a sizably smaller budget. It's just the script that betrays its cast.

The problem with Wendigo, for all its effective moments, isn't really one of resources. At its heart, the story seems confused, as though the director has given it one too many twists.

Little more than direct-to-vid nonsense offered by Disney at dollars on the penny to parents looking to waste time and money keeping kids occupied away from the TV screen.

Feels dated in the post-9/11 world. But it would have felt passé and unnecessary regardless; it's the sort of film Michael Dudikoff, Chuck Norris and their ilk cranked out on a near-monthly basis when Reagan was president.

Thankfully, the final, long action set piece, which owes a debt to "The Manchurian Candidate" among others, is free of such problems. Shiri manages to go out on its most exciting sequence. There are worse ways to go.

Silva is a polished and sophisticated director who brings a surprisingly light touch to much of this apparently fact-based story.

Solondz's singular game plan is to dangle profoundly obnoxious caricatures before us, then punish them mercilessly for their stupidity, which is amusing enough if you're in the mood for that sort of thing.

In the end, it's a film so short on style and verve it feels lifeless; audiences might feel imprisoned in the Château d'If, praying for escape or quick death. Thankfully, one need not tunnel out of a movie theater.

Enjoyable, if utterly stupid, upscale entry in the old Amityville Horror genre -- that is, a horror film allegedly based on spooky and inexplicable real-life events.

Parents wishing to protect their beloved daughters from cliché overload might do well to withhold the old allowance money for a couple of weeks -- until the inevitable bout of Mandymoviemania subsides.

On the up side, there are some genuinely funny jokes, and Oedekerk has been wise enough to keep the running time down to 82 minutes, including the eight-minute closing credit sequence (which is worth staying through its entirety). But Kung Pow! is no "What's Up, Tiger Lily?"

The film is reasonably entertaining, though it begins to drag two-thirds through, when the melodramatic aspects start to overtake the comedy.

Never rises above the level of a 1950s-era adolescent romance novel.

Muhammad Ali's spirit, his life force, is not quite present here, despite Smith's astonishing mimicry and Mann's considerable perspiration.

Mangold gets stuck in the gooey sweet spots of his tale a little more often than he breaks loose with a bracing jolt of perversity.

It isn't until Joe starts getting confident and cocky that Allen starts to feel a little more natural in the role, and by then the movie's plot has all but evaporated into a series of wispy gags that barely register.

What Ichaso does do is take us on a dizzying, constantly moving ride through an exciting decade in the blossoming of "Nuyorican" culture with its most flamboyant figure as our focus.

A film worth your time, and if you know going into it that there's no closure, it'll give you all the more freedom to enjoy what IS there.