Fortunately for the brothers, when your protagonist is personified as Jack Black, you can get away with a lot.

With a movie like this, there's no risk of spoiling the ending, because the entire plot is merely a formality trudging toward a foregone conclusion. The viewer's biggest challenge is to survive fits of yawning so violent they could disrupt ornithic migratory patterns.

Leguizamo is all twitches and spasms; there's not a bit of subtlety in his high-wire performance. By the time you get past it, the film bogs down in dime-store potboiling.

A film bereft of emotion, characters and words with more than two syllables.

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.

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

For those partial to sublimely happy endings there won't be a peep of complaint. Only us recalcitrant souls will be left wishing Punks had just a tad more spunk.

As giddy and antic as any great Warner Bros. cartoon of the 1930s and '40s -- it bears seeing more than once, if only to allow for the sight gags that play second fiddle to the plot, a rarity in animation -- but also resonant and real. In other words, it's the perfect movie.

Not a film for everyone, but if you're in the mood for a little sensory overload, some spirited intellectual gymnastics and an introduction to the most intriguing new actress Europe has produced in years, get in line with the rest of the thrill-seekers.

The whole thing is best enjoyed while really drunk.

For three jerks bitching in a box, Tape makes the most of its minimalism. At its best, it's Betrayal for the Breakfast Club set.

Travolta is stuck giving a remarkable performance in a film so trivial and offensive its mere existence is as loathsome as it is laughable.

For all its long shadows and ominous atmosphere, this is a very funny movie -- as funny as the Coens' masterful "Fargo."

Isn't quite as offensive as it sounds, nor is it in any way rousing; Spacey and Bridges are watchable, but nothing more.

This movie is every bit the mess its title makes it sound.

This pallid little ditty, like the rest of Lance Bass and pals' oeuvre, is soulless, banal and derivative.

The challenge faced here by writer-director Robert Guédiguian (Charge!) is to keep his cheap melodrama from curdling his insightful societal appraisal.

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.

Neither sensuously sizzling nor daftly off-beat, Better Than Sex occasionally rises to its own modest occasion by gently reversing our expectations.

This bloody stab at William Castle's 1960 gimmick flick substitutes chaos for chills.

Like gathering storm clouds, Donnie Darko creates an atmosphere of eerie calm and mounting menace -- stands as one of the most exceptional movies of 2001.

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.

Deeply moving and exceptionally gracious piece of documentary filmmaking.

Not to be missed.

A lacerating study of sexual alienation.

Yes, the movie is obvious at time, banging you over the head with its message, and the use of shadows on a wall can seem overly broad. But these are small complaints when compared to the film's many strengths.

This isn't entertainment for the faint of heart.

Of all the various low-budget documentaries chronicling the Star Wars phenomenon, Tariq Jalil's is certainly the most recent. There's not a whole lot else to say about it.