Like the bloated channels it parodies, the movie stretches to find something to say, then settles for stupid.

While this gritty indie is light on plot, the world of bars, casinos, hospitals and gallows humor is real and heartbreaking.

While Lomborg is an engaging though sometimes smug subject, director Ondi Timoner allows a coterie of scientists to spend too much time puncturing Gore than propping up Lomborg - who comes off as charismatic and engaged but, ultimately, merely a contrarian.

The result: a dangerously cracked creep flick.

Built on dry one-liners, off-kilter timing and self-conscious nostalgia, The Kings of Summer seems expressly designed to delight quirk-loving Sundance audiences.

Brooks works overtime finding laughs more in line with his rambunctious kind of comedy...Only in Anne Bancroft's luscious, Lombard-light performance of Brooks' better (but parenthetically billed) half do you get a hint of this film's smart and stylish origin.

Both neurotic and endearing, it's so carefully accessorized you may not even notice that, at heart, it's a standard-issue romantic comedy.

Barrymore is a delicious opportunity to watch the great Christopher Plummer perform the role that won him a second Tony Award. But it's also a lesson in the pitfalls of personality-based minimalism. While Plummer acts his heart out, the script becomes one punchline after another.

Offering often-hysterical testimony to Vilanch's talent.

There are several small, startling moments of insight hidden amid the long, slow stretches of listlessness. But the balance is slightly off. We could have used a little more pleasure to get us through his grim adolescent unknown.

What the movie cannot take from the book is its dreamily descriptive prose and interior monologue. Perhaps because of that, the movie changes the focus from Ingrid, the more fascinating creature, to Astrid, whose clay is more malleable for the big screen.

The direction is still slick, but Matchstick Men gets most of its thrills from the unknowable in human interaction. This could be the biggest "scam" Scott himself has pulled off.

What they say, mostly over black-and-white stills from his early career and meandering footage of desolate Mali, could be said in 10 minutes. The good news is that much of the remaining documentary is devoted to Kar Kar's elegant voice and exquisite guitar playing.

Everyone thinks sex is easy to do, but that doesn’t mean they’re good at it. The To Do List is exactly that type of movie, one that thinks a sex-obsessed version of a John Hughes comedy by its very nature is hilarious. It’s not, but there are still some things to like here.

Fox stumbles a little at the end, which is unnecessarily exaggerated. He should have trusted his own talent - it's the attention to minor details that makes his work so memorable.

But where there is a natural poetry of motion in surfing movies, off-road racing is a herky-jerky pastime whose ­appeal is hard to fathom. I guess you had to be there.

Writer-director James Mottern's drama has a lived-in feel, but is notable mainly for Michelle Monaghan's glam-less turn as Diane.

As narrated by Mickey Rourke and with appearances from Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lou Ferrigno, the movie captures the men who mix “sports, entertainment, art and a way of life” — as the former Governator describes body sculpting. It’s their honesty that looms large.

What Fast Times at Ridgemont High has is an attractive, personable cast, a bunch of young actors who are very easy to like. What it doesn't have is a clear point of view, something that would make it of more interest than leafing through a high school yearbook. Its final sequence, for instance, could just as easily come in the middle of the movie for all the relation it bears to what goes on before.

With destitute and disillusioned Mexican laborers much in the news lately, Star Maps is timely, and Spain is effective and affecting in the lead role. The movie's efforts at realism, however, are undermined by a cast of scenery chewers starved for attention. [23 July 1997, p.45]

Parents, who are more apt to be bored by the simple story line, are going to be amazed nevertheless by the smooth, convincing animation that lends Stuart his lifelike physicality and expressive facial gestures.

While it's visually stunning, the pretentiousness makes it hard to take seriously.

Feels less like history than a bad episode of "Mission: Impossible."

Characters do little more than run around the same track incessantly, leaving us waiting for revelations that never arrive.

Mostly, though, Hayek's problem is one of physical miscasting. She's so tiny next to the tall, rotund Molina that she looks like child in their scenes together. And despite a fake caterpillar brow, she's just not believable as a woman bemoaning her disfigurements.

An intriguing idea undermined by a lackluster follow-through.

Once in a while, a little reality can be a welcome antidote to our increasingly outsized film fantasies.

Ristovski needs us to feel his nation's torment, and he succeeds.