So tedious it's almost worth watching to see just how bad acting, inadequate direction and most important, a criminally crass and unimaginative screenplay can make so little out of a proven idea.

Director Kevin Bray, whose clichéd style betrays his music-video roots, devotes far too much time to the mechanics of the illogical plot.

It's a shame that the book "We Were Soldiers Once . . . And Young" fell into the hands of writer-director Randall Wallace ("Braveheart"), a filmmaker who wouldn't recognize subtlety and understatement if they were to attack him in the street.

How do you inject life into a film whose central character is dull, slow, stupid and grim?If you're Arnaud Desplechin, you don't.

Somewhere along the way, Borstal Boy became fatally compromised.

So eyeball-gougingly awful that you're tempted to give up movies for Lent.

The two youngsters are not polished performers, but that's actually part of the subtle charm.

Has a secret weapon in Winger, whose part is small but crucial. Looking a bit older and with redder hair than previously, she brings an earthiness to a movie that could use a lot more of that quality.

Accomplishes a near miracle -- this British import makes you yearn for Burt Reynolds, who appeared in a vastly more entertaining version of the same story.

It is a boring parade of talking heads and technical gibberish that will do little to advance the Linux cause. Try again, guys.

Without Branagh's pitch-perfect comedic skills the entire movie could have been crushed under the avalanche of quips and wisecracks tumbling from Kalesniko's too-clever-by-half pen.

There are affecting scenes, and not all of Cacoyannis' additions to the Chekhov text detract from the effect of its moving brilliance.

Aaliyah rules as the undead Queen of the Damned, even if she has scarcely half an hour of screen time in this campy Anne Rice vampire tale.

Well-meaning but flawed drama.

Sheer delight. An ensemble comedy-drama that recalls Robert Altman's best work.

Hollywood movies are rarely as contemptuous of the audience as Dragonfly, with its half-witted, treacly New Age sappiness and its mechanical borrowings from other, better supernatural thrillers.

Quickly morphs into a messy double message movie with motifs and clichés lifted from military courtroom films like "A Soldier's Story" and "A Few Good Men."

A movie so pathetically lame that hopefully even Spears most ardent young fans will give this stinker a big thumbs down.

Ryan, the bodacious Seven of Nine on "Star Trek Voyager," is the only excuse to suffer through writer-director Harry Ralston's feeble comedy.

Pray will force you to look at the music as more than just gobbledygook created by musical-bower birds who can't spell.

Laugh-out-loud comedies are so rare that you shouldn't casually pass up Super Troopers, which is essentially a smarter and much funnier version of the old "Police Academy" flicks.

Not a movie but a live-action agitprop cartoon so shameless and coarse, it's almost funny.

It all falls apart when the Wendigo unleashes its fury - no doubt upset at being neutered to look about as frightening as Bambi.

It's certainly a lot more charming than the last attempt at a Peter Pan sequel, Steven Spielberg's star-laden, ham-fisted "Hook."

An entertaining documentary.

Your heart will have you cheering Gordy on -- even as your brain complains that there are plot holes you could drive a truck bomb through.

The girl you see stabbing and shooting prisoners and fellow trainees makes the killer from "La Femme Nikita" look like a wuss.

The first half of Scotland, PA is by far the funniest, with witty dialogue, hilariously ugly period fashions and hairstyles.

This oddly scrambled new version eventually falls apart so badly you feel embarrassed for the people who made it.

Loud and unfunny, this cheesy-looking farce is mostly an excuse for a series of plugs.

A predictable tearjerker whose main redeeming feature is that you don't actually see any of the angels in the title.

Ultimately, Birthday Girl disintegrates into a fairly routine -- and brutal -- caper movie.

This absurdist patchwork of a film, already a hit in the Czech Republic, features a number of amusing set pieces.

So patchy in its laughs, so calculated in its grossness and so lacking in genuine comic exuberance, it makes you look at "Road Trip" in an admiring new light.

In an era when documentaries are looking more and more glossy, it's almost refreshing to see the austere approach taken by veteran Frederick Wiseman.

Another mean-spirited black comedy from Todd Solondz, tries even harder than the director's two earlier films to shock and outrage -- but the overall effect of his sophomoric excess is tiresome and dull, like watching someone else's 2-year-old act out for the 50th time.

Strikingly photographed, Maelstrom, which explores its nautical themes in non-linear fashion, is not for all tastes. But I, for one, was hooked by this fish's tale.

Despite pitch-perfect performances, the craft of Moretti's direction and his honorable intentions, The Son's Room was not especially moving.

Quirky and sometimes hilarious Canadian comedy.

This is the time of the year movie studios traditionally dump their mistakes into theaters -- and boy, did Disney make a whopper with The Count of Monte Cristo.

As the plot loses steam, director Mark Pellington (whose paranoid thriller "Arlington Road" was one of the worst movies of 1999) tends to rely on cheap tricks to maintain suspense, although the final catastrophe is very nicely done.

The dialogue is dubbed into English by generic actors, whose phony, emotionless rendition undermines what's on the screen.

Isn't really a movie: It's a grab bag of mobster clichés lifted without finesse from "A Bronx Tale," "GoodFellas" and at least a score of lesser Mafia flicks.

About as edgy as a cup of Ovaltine, A Walk to Remember is an old-fashioned teen romance so sweet and free of irony that criticizing it feels like taking a baseball bat to a sack full of newborn kittens.

An inept, tedious spoof of '70s kung fu pictures, it contains almost enough chuckles for a three-minute sketch, and no more.

Beyond the Ocean, which at its best is reminiscent of Jim Jarmusch's "Stranger in Paradise," doesn't integrate its two story lines in a particularly satisfying manner and the ending is somewhat abrupt.

Marinated in clichés and mawkish dialogue.

As for Gooding, he's sadly gone to the dogs -- Snow Dogs has got to be his most humiliating role since "Lightning Jack."

Interestingly for an Israeli movie, the bombers are not Palestinians -- they're young, ultra-Orthodox fanatics.

Has a generosity of spirit and a wonderfully upbeat ending that makes it a nice little antidote to a bleak season.

A low-end scam by Lions Gate Films -- whose recent "The Wash" was a masterpiece by comparison.

The movie could have used more of the band's music and less talk.

Full of fine performances, led by Josef Bierbichler as Brecht and Monica Bleibtreu as Helene Weigel, his wife. Taken on its own terms, The Farewell makes for rewarding viewing.

Why make a documentary about these marginal historical figures? Wouldn't one about their famous dad, author of "Death in Venice," etc., be more valuable?

Entertaining as he is, there are many times when you wish you'd been given a few more facts and numbers so you could understand what the young CEO and his colleagues were celebrating or bemoaning.

In any case, the presence of O'Hara, Kline, Ramis, Black, Tomlin and John Lithgow (who plays Shaun's father) serve mainly to underline the feebleness of the screenplay and the slackness of the direction.

May be the most purely entertaining foreign-language crossover since "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."

Very slowly builds to an emotional payoff in a devastating scene where the three main characters simultaneously seek relief in sex.

Unfortunately, Impostor doesn't do much with its template, despite a remarkably strong cast.

Thoughtful and entertaining documentary.

A beautifully filmed, scrupulously authentic but strangely evasive exercise in combat ultra-realism.

It isn't as ridiculous as this year's other version of a local best seller set during WWII ("Captain Corelli's Mandolin"), but it's arguably even less entertaining.

Penn makes us take the leap required by Kristine Johnson and Jessie Nelson's screenplay -- you end up deeply caring about Sam and Lucy.

Has some terrific aerial sequences and exciting dogfights. But the clichés in the script by Zdenek Sverak (the director's father) keep the film firmly grounded when the action's not aloft.

Packs a dramatic wallop that makes it one of the year's best movies.

It ranks among Robert Altman's best work ever, and that its many satisfactions derive in large part from a superbly written screenplay by Julian Fellowes that has no equal this year.

Perhaps no movie could do Muhammad Ali justice. But this overlong but sketchy biopic by Michael Mann, in which style repeatedly tramples substance, actually does the great man a disservice.

This morbid and self-consciously literary adaptation of E. Annie Proulx's Pulitzer-winning novel is no crowd pleaser.

Has its heart in the right place -- and in a season filled with somber or goopy Oscar contenders, it makes a perfectly decent date movie.

Aimed squarely at the under-6 crowd, is basically the pilot for a Nickelodeon series with an already heavily merchandised character.

This mess was directed with no skill whatsoever by Jesse Dylan, whose father, Bob, once urged us all to get stoned.

This slow-moving Swedish film offers not even a hint of joy, preferring to focus on the humiliation of Martin as he defecates in bed and urinates on the plants at his own birthday party.

Gripping, smart and moving, without falling prey to sentimentality, it shows what can be achieved when mainstream filmmakers like Howard and Goldsman are genuinely inspired and determined to be honest.

Might have been more successful if Darabont and his pal had attempted a Preston Sturges-like farce. Instead, it's played totally without any kind of edge - a fantasy that makes "The Lord of the Rings" look realistic by comparison.

The demands of formula eventually stifle anything that even looks like inspiration or honesty.

Subversively funny, it's a welcome alternative to the big-budget movies flooding into theaters at this time of year.

So consistently involving because the excellent cast delivers their lines with the kind of utter conviction not seen in this kind of movie since the first "Star Wars."

Though Iris is extremely well-acted and beautifully photographed, some audience members may find themselves agreeing with Bayley's frustrated complaint: "I've never known who you are."

This isn't a mystery except in the most general sense. It's a dense, Altman-esque psychological drama centering on 10 characters whose lives become as tangled as the lantana.

You'll laugh, you'll cry -- the year's best movie.

Unfortunately, you are often distractingly aware that you are watching re-enactments of real events.

Toomuch of the humor in Not Another Teen Movie is either lame (the school in the movie is called "John Hughes High") or lamely disgusting.

Has moments that are eerily beautiful and genuinely moving -- and some that are surprisingly vulgar.

A gorgeously photographed, sun-baked fable.

Director Bolton could easily have exploited the film's unsettling issues, but he takes a nonsensationalized approach that leaves viewers to decide the moral questions for themselves.

You might be tempted to walk out. Don't.

But by the time events unfold, viewers will most likely have given up on this melodramatic.

A far more impressive and affecting piece of filmmaking and storytelling than most movies put out by Hollywood this year, and offers, as a bonus, a glimpse into a fascinating, contradictory society.

Features abundant sex and nudity, yet it manages to tell its story (based on a real character) with great sensitivity.

A ho-hum male weepie/road comedy that's worth watching mostly because of a once-in-a-lifetime gathering of England's greatest working-class actors.

An absorbing, deeply affecting, well-acted --and remarkably evenhanded -- antiwar statement. It's also incredibly suspenseful and very blackly funny.

Soderbergh -- helms a much tighter and arguably cooler film -- even if the only thing audiences are likely to remember about this Ocean's Eleven is that, while they were watching it, they enjoyed it tremendously

Never less than breezily entertaining.

I'm not generally a huge fan of movies with two-or three-person casts -- they tend to resemble filmed plays -- but The Business of Strangers is a knockout.

It's hard to imagine how Shyer and script writer John Sweet could have brought this tale to the screen in a cruder, cornier or less interesting way.

Epic waste of celluloid.

A slickly entertaining war movie that's sometimes striking, sometimes silly -- but never, ever boring.

The thing that makes Haneke’s Code Unknown so enjoyable and effective is that that he says it in such a wonderfully restrained and light-handed yet suspenseful way.