Amazingly amateurish, the film lands wide of satirical targets that should be impossible to miss.

Might have worked as a travelogue, minus the story. In its present form, it is hardly worth the $10 you will be asked to fork over at the box office.

Familiar and predictable enough, especially if you have seen Hollywood serial-killer thrillers like "Se7en."

The characters are so cartoonish, it's hard to care on any level -- except that it wastes such talented performers.

An example of lazy, dumb and couldn't-care-less hack movie making.

Flat dialogue and stiff performances (especially by the street kids, like Ballesteros, turned into actors by Schroeder) don't help.

Skip it, and rent "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" instead.

There are also food scenes that will whet your appetite. But somehow a satisfying climax never makes it out of the oven.

Much of the resulting material is very funny, though there are a few times when the filmmakers patronize or mock their subjects in a way that makes you uncomfortable.

Easily one of the most enjoyable big-budget Hollywood movies to come along in a while, Rock Star is an unexpected pleasure.

Neither convincing nor remotely dramatic.

Depicts the bleak suburban milieu in a manner that avoids exploitation.

Agonizingly slow-moving and talky, it consists primarily of conversations between two men in a truck.

A micro-budget black-and-white musical set in outer space, The American Astronaut is obviously not for all tastes -- but it's quite unlike anything else out there at the moment.

Exceptionally intelligent and powerful contemporary adaptation.

The first half-hour of Jeepers Creepers is so frightening that it's almost a relief when the movie subsequently collapses into silliness.

Powerful, provocative and often surprisingly funny, this may be the year's outstanding documentary.

English-language remakes of foreign films are usually suspect, but Tortilla Soup is the exception that proves the rule - a flavorful comedy about a food-centric Latino family in Los Angeles.

Free love, vegetarianism and lack of personal property are the rule.

A deep disappointment to fans of sci-fi and the once great John Carpenter.

This would be a stultifyingly incestuous affair even if all the jokes about fertilization weren't so tiresomely lame and predictable.

This is an overlong film interesting chiefly for its performances.

The originality and intelligence that made Smith's "Clerks" and "Chasing Amy" such refreshing pleasures are all but absent.

For one thing, it goes on too long. But it looks good, the cast is perky.

Summer Catch is the sludge at the bottom of the barrel.

Fitfully funny at best, it's a sophomoric, facetious road comedy.

Woody Allen's most purely entertaining film in years.

It turns into something that is much smarter, and in a gentle, low-key way, tougher and funnier than you expect.

This is a beautifully acted chamber piece --especially by the magnificent Blake, who is married to Norris in real life.

The acting is, at best, serviceable; the sound track is too often unintelligible; the direction is often over the top; and the script relies heavily on stereotypes.

This poorly done, digitally animated work, directed by Hiroyuki Kitakubo, might be of interest to die-hard fans of anime. Others should pass it by.

Intelligent, moving and often beautifully photographed, Aberdeen boasts superb performances.

We began this dismal movie season with one lethally bad World War II romance -- "Pearl Harbor" -- and now we're wrapping up with another howling dog.

Repackage clichés and stereotypes with attractive young performers in a simple-minded script that panders to the teen audience.

A cheesy affair with no big winners. Especially the audience.

You can tell this is a smart take on Hamlet from the first wordless opening shots.

In general, it's a confusing, rather shapeless disappointment.

Indulges in some of the crudest Jewish stereotypes seen in a recent movie, right down to the crack about every Jewish girl having a nose job.

Very, very funny, albeit inferior in a number of ways to the original.

It's no funnier than your average grade-school biology lesson and less pedagogically useful than your typical Farrelly brothers comedy.

It's in the teenage section where the film goes seriously wrong and veers from an absorbing family story.

The film isn't remotely scary. That's a shame, because it has top-notch performances by Peter Mullan and David Caruso.

What Amenabar offers here is an unconvincing, pretentiously artsy pastiche of just about every hoary old gothic thriller you can think of.

An intelligent, extremely well-acted thriller about a mother's endless love for her son.

The faint of heart might want to leave early. If you elect to stay, remember: You were warned.

Even the lovemaking scenes between two of Hollywood's most attractive stars -- often shot from above, like Cinemax soft porn -- are so unerotic, they make your skin crawl.

The contrast between Chan's charm and physical prowess and Tucker's lack of same is even more dramatic in this tiresome, leaden sequel.

Occasionally funny but more often hackneyed, schmaltzy, predictable and overdone fairy tale that seems longer than 100 choruses of ''Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious."

You won't see any film this year as beautiful, and plain thrilling as Apocalypse Now Redux. Watching it after sitting through this summer's record number of dumb, dreadful movies is almost a painfully good experience. [3 Aug 2001, p.30]

The marvelous Burtonic gothic/nightmare production design -- scenery, weaponry, costumes, etc. constantly pleases the eye without ever distracting you from the plot.

Remarkably sluggish and not particularly suspenseful.

So s-l-o-w-l-y paced it seems twice as long as its two-hour running time.

An utterly beguiling tale.

The director has listed Jean-Luc Godard as an influence, which explains the movie's French New Wave exuberance.

Barely enough chuckles to keep from running out of gas. Yet it's the sharpest-looking movie shot so far on digital video, outdistancing even "The Anniversary Party."

Mostly it fails to score. Maybe that's why no one has attempted summer-camp comedy since the third "Meatballs" sequel a decade ago.

Entertaining and heartwarming -- especially when Mirren sweeps into scenes with acid observations that fail to disguise a heart of gold.

Accurately described as an Icelandic version of Pedro Almodovar's gender-bending black comedies -- but it's also reminiscent of early Woody Allen movies.

Takeshi's elliptical directorial style here is overwhelmed by the script's crudeness and lack of narrative power.

Surprisingly funny and sweet, despite some missed comic opportunities and curious casting choices.

It's a positive hat trick by John Cameron Mitchell.

As hip, funny and truthful a sleeper as has ever flown under Tinseltown's radar.

The "Jurassic Park" movie franchise does not evolve. Quite the opposite: It degenerates at great speed.

Amateurish in the extreme, the film is a feast of bohemian cliché, bad writing and worse acting.

Except when Norton is playing retarded, he and De Niro basically compete to see who can under-act the other. It's positively mesmerizing.

It's often hilarious, and there is lots of the zippy, apparently improvised dialogue that made "Swingers" such a pleasure.

Merely a watery, poorly directed update of "Clueless."

A truly repulsive piece of trash that says far more about the absence of values from contemporary filmmaking than the waywardness of teens.

Writer-director Patrick Hasson whips up a surprising amount of fun.

Well-acted and nicely photographed, and has good action sequences, even if the screenplay (by M'Bala, Jean-Marie Adiaffi and Bertin Akaffou) is simplistic and there are slow stretches.

What makes Final Fantasy a final failure is a predictable, nonsensical plot, laughably lame dialogue and a surfeit of cloying environmentalist piety.

Light summer fun with a Flemish accent.

Li is powerless when the film slows to a crawl to provide a little drama.

Overlong and not well-acted.

For all its virtues, this is not a film to see on less than a good night's sleep.

Perabo gives a fairly impressive and flashy performance, even when the script descends into melodrama.

Quirky and good-natured, it makes the most of an unknown but able and refreshingly international cast. And for a low-budget indie, it looks remarkably good and moves along with real snap.

Every good joke in the movie is to be found in those trailers.

Desperately unfunny.

Two things make this film slightly more interesting than its American B-movie equivalents. There's the artless way it shows the French state exercising its power and the charisma of French stars.

Pandaemonium plays like a bus-and-truck version of such Ken Russell's '60s classics as "The Music Lovers."

Hilarious French farce.

One bad movie -- in the original sense of the word.

Courageous, convincing performance by Dunst.

Audiences may find that the deliberate, Kubrickesque pacing -- without his intellectual rigor -- causes them to tune out.

One of those French films whose makers won't lower themselves to tell a story in a way that is entertaining or compelling.

Never much more than hagiography that lets the context of its hero's death remain confused.

Sometimes gets repetitive and is slightly overlong. But it's got solid performances.

Its plot and political symbolism manage to be both over-familiar and confusingly muddled.

Demonstrates that sometimes letting subjects and the facts speak for themselves can be quietly devastating.

Vastly more explicit (be warned) and intelligent (than "Angel Eyes"). It also leads to much darker - and more interesting - places.

A fascinating snapshot of contemporary teenagers.

Better than any automobile flick put out by Hollywood in a while and, thanks to some genuinely exciting moments, it is easily the most entertaining so far of this summer's big, brainless action movies.

Wholesome entertainment that will please the under-10 crowd without boring their parents.

A summer delight that also provides a quick cultural education.

Self-righteous, economically illiterate and sometimes flatly dishonest.

Resolves the romantic dilemma in the most artificial and unsatisfying way. A blaring swing score and some obvious dubbing do little to ease the pain.

Begins exceptionally well. Indeed, for at least its first half it's an unusually thoughtful, admirably underplayed piece of work of disorienting, rather harsh realism that builds its mysteries in pleasurably oblique and unpredictable ways.