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

We so often hear the lament that Hollywood films don't have characters we can care about that it's a real pleasure to note that all the people in this one feel fully developed. It'd be nice if there were more of a plot to go along with them.

Rarely does an established filmmaker so ardently waste viewers' time with a gobbler like this -- it's pretty shocking that this thing isn't even artsy. Barring a few brief moments of instantaneously fizzling inspiration, it's merely fartsy.

Every plot point is obvious a mile away to anyone who's ever seen a film, and made even more obvious by the fact that the camera blatantly points out clues shortly before they're put to use.

The film feels like a violation of the festival's philosophy of "participants only, no spectators": Who, after all, is going to sit in a theater to see this but a spectator? It is fun stuff to look at, though.

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.

At 75, Aranda can still make his actors sizzle on the screen as well as he did 10 years ago in "Lovers." The explicitly hot bits here may be few and far between, but what there is of them is choice.

If only director Walter Hill and his coscreenwriter David Giler had scribbled a punch line for all these punches, this rage-in-the-cage redux would be more than merely a limp showcase of machismo so passé as to embarrass your average Australopithecus.

The pleasure is in watching veteran star Bouquet and the versatile Berling go at it -- they even seem to look alike.

It's inspiring and consistently exciting to the eye, mind and heart, as the plentiful formations -- global, but most of these English -- stimulate the imagination with their incredible beauty and complexity. Marvelous work all round.

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.

There is something distinctly self-satisfied about Amy's Orgasm that rubs the viewer the wrong way. The film should come with a warning label: Vanity project ahead!

Numbingly feeble -- The dialogue is witless, the situations are lame, the humor juvenile and the chemistry between the stars nonexistent.

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.

The nuances of the performances -- in dialogue and dance -- and the rich, organic feel of the locations mark Amari as a director of significant promise.

Robin Williams just may have found the greatest role of his career. Playing beautifully both to fans and haters, Williams' Sy is a character you don't know whether to hug or go vigilante on his ass, a balance Bob Hoskins couldn't quite capture in "Felicia's Journey."

Only Quaid, as a semiretarded horny robot, and Cleese as a fussy chauffeur hologram seem to get it. Even Murphy, as the titular nightclub big shot in outer space, forgets to be actually funny until the climax.

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.

Enormously appealing romantic comedy-drama.

The confusing, demanding role finally brings the actor home, and us with him.

The film is a whirlwind blur, a kinetic thrill ride through the industrial backwater that was one of punk and post-punk's most fertile Promised Lands: Manchester.

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.