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."