The prettiest Dogme film to date may be the one that has the least to say.

Since we know most of this cast is capable of acting, one must assume they received little instruction. Even if they did, who could blame them for not listening? After all, they are dealing with a script that tries to play scenes featuring drunken ghosts with silly accents for tragedy.

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.

Viewers expecting another enchanting, whimsical tale of high energy and mischievous spirits will be sorely disappointed.

The actual finale, which so betrays what's come before it that it leaves one walking out of the theater holding a grudge against what was.

Where "Twin Falls" was slow, brooding and haunting in a manner that fit the subject matter -- the imminent death of one of the principal characters -- Jackpot is just slow and uneventful, like a cross-country Greyhound bus trip that never stops.

Roberto Schaefer's cinematography keeps things visually interesting, but spending an hour and a half with a gloomy, static lunatic hardly makes for a scintillating evening out, no matter how pretty she may be.

Like hundreds of doomed movie protagonists before him, the hero of Life as a House doesn't have long to live. By the second reel, you may find yourself wishing his time on the planet was even shorter.

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

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 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.

It would be hard to imagine a less exciting movie. Still, inoffensiveness can sometimes lead to success, at least initially, for a family film.

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

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

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.

If you're a Basquiat fan, or were around in New York back then, you'll want to take a look. If not, this film has little to recommend.

Full of fits and starts, it never really gets going, stalling at every turn without even giving us enough of what we paid to see -- Snoop Dogg and gore.

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.

Evolution is merely stale, sterile and, worst of all, safe.

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.

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 real star of the film is the food, which is sliced, diced, shredded, rolled, sautéed and fricasseed to mouthwatering perfection.

A film you can dump your kids off at the mall to see in order to get peace and quiet for an hour and a half.

Austere little creep-out.

Hilarity should ensue, but it doesn't.

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.

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.