A tediously faithful remake of French filmmaker Luc Besson's terrific 2004 international hit "District 13," the Besson-produced Brick Mansions might have been mildly interesting had it been made a decade ago.

Dracula Untold is a movie that gives good trailer. That's not surprising because it's a visually arresting saga. Unfortunately, the story in the final, full version is thicker than blood.

What has Campbell wrought? An intermittently amusing, interminable affair that for sheer ugliness and a scenery-chewing performance by Peter Sarsgaard has a certain Camp appeal.

Lopez is so remarkably unaffected and guileless that she manages to carry the film through its mood swing, if not successfully to its conclusion.

Like the kids in detention, The Change-Up wants to offend your sensibilities. It sets new records for scatological humor and profanity.

So little time is devoted to developing characters that it's hard to share their hopes and fears.

There's nothing original, nor compelling, about Twist.

The film has been directed in a murky, rhythmless fashion by Niels Arden Oplev.

Clash of the Titans is ancient Greece at its cheesiest. It's a big hunk of feta comin' at ya in 3-D.

Although Will Ferrell materializes for a goofball cameo, The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard lacks a key element that his "Talladega Nights" and "Anchor Man" both had - that is, somebody to like.

An enjoyable (but long) romcom that's like "Meet the Parents" on LSD, laced with rat poison.

Hiring this sensitive fantasist (Gondry) to make the superhero saga The Green Hornet is like hiring satirist John Waters to make "Rambo." Hard to think of a more mystifying mismatch of filmmaker and material.

What a mess.

A high-performance low comedy, House succeeds because Martin's Peter Sanderson and Latifah's Charlene Morton each plays Henry Higgins to the other's Eliza Doolittle.

An ambitious, if wildly uneven, character study that relies on a taut script, snappy dialogue, and a few well-placed plot twists, The Barber boasts a fine turn by Scott Glenn as an aging serial killer.

It's the cars, and the mega-horsepowered action, that matter most. With its driver-POV spinouts, wrong-way chases, and multilane median jumps, the movie is a roaring revel of an automotive fantasy.

Rodanthe is a reliably steamy stormy sultry story.

With pratfalls and teardrops, the film swings from sitcom to sit-dram.

A stagy, arty, and uncompelling account of the Welsh writer and his menage-y relations.

Ultimately, the values and the CGI are good, but the acting is broad and the chipmunks aren't really differentiated. What happened to Alvin, the rodent counterpart of Dennis the Menace? Was he declawed in the translation to CGI?

The actors, individually fine although they appear to be in different films, tread warily on each other's turf, like Martian and Venusian making adjustments for an alien gravitational field.

The film is completely forgettable, frequently funny and weirdly satisfying in a Jersey Loser Gets Respect kind of way.

In fact, no one in The Gunman looks happy. And what happened to chivalry? If a fierce squad of goons is coming after you and your ex, whom you still love, and there's only one Kevlar vest to throw on, don't you offer it to her? Apparently not.

Most parents will find the movie has the familiar feeling of one of those kid birthday parties where the little ones are on chocolate highs and the adults run out of scheduled activities after 20 minutes.

Iridescent as each of the actors is, the result is like a handful of beads without the connecting string.

The plot itself has little momentum, and what should feel dramatic instead feels inert.

As full of terrible acting as it is devoid of suspense.

Down Periscope is not, alas, a wacky Naked Gun-style parody of submarine movies. It's more a mild-mannered comedy in the triumphant-underdogs vein, pitting Dodge and his USS Stingray crew against a high-tech Navy fleet and its high-strung general (Bruce Dern) in a series of maneuvers off the Atlantic coast. [01 Mar 1996, p.14]

Thank goodness for Leslie Mann. If not for the nutball charm of this tight-wound whirlwind, the dispiriting Hollywood sex comedy The Other Woman would be close to unbearable.

Repetitive and tedious.

While The Sitter isn't that dumb, or dreadful, there really isn't much going on here.

What a mess.

Harry Connick Jr. acquits himself best of the lot.

Alas, this eternally sunny character's mantra, "I don't have a problem, I solve problems," makes for paltry dramatic tension.

Often incomprehensible (a combination of jumpy editing and lots of thick British Isles accents) and hardly ever entertaining - even unintentionally.

An uninspired computer-animated feature that may satisfy undiscriminating pipsqueaks and nearly no one else, Planet 51 is a low-IQ E.T. in reverse.

There's not much to this movie beyond a slick procession of dark, gleaming violence. But Selene lovers would pay good 3D money to see her fight a parking ticket.

The animated film has all the hallmarks of a straight-to-DVD project - inferior plot, dull writing, cheap drawing.

Efron, who wears an "All glory is fleeting" tattoo on his back and a soulful look on his face, gets to be more of a grown-up in The Lucky One than in most of what he's done before.

The kind of glossy, Hollywood-forged waste of time that would depress even the most happily lackadaisical retiree.

Messy and confused, the film is a mishmash of tropes from Shakespeare, heist movies, family melodrama, and romance novels hastily thrown together.

Wait till the DVD release.

If Taking Lives starts off with a modicum of wit and creepy-crawly scares, it winds up somewhere else altogether: in the cliche-strewn land of preposterous red herrings.

An overblown hodgepodge of volcano-baked desertscapes, Egyptoid-gone-baroque architecture, and gladiator-geared storm troopers with goofy headpieces, The Chronicles of Riddick bears no resemblance to the movie that spawned its namesake.

Let sleeping bros lie.

if I want to know what Will Smith looked like in his 20s, I can always return, happily, to Men in Black.

I wish Eragon's cinematography were crisper, the music less Wagnerian, and the acting more consistent. But this movie isn't for me. It's for my 10-year-old, for whom the subtleties of narrative, photography and acting mean nothing.

If Blow Dry isn't a rousing triumph on the order "of The Full Monty" and "Brassed Off," Rickman, Richardson and Nighy make sure it's a winning film.

Empire, with its double-barreled shoot-outs, its predictable carnage and conflict, and a rush-job of a resolution, is ultimately just one more urban gangland genre flick.

Beyond turbocharged. It whooshes along at warp speed. And still, despite some awesomely choreographed stunts and the two stars' pedal-to-the-metal appeal, the movie seems endless.

Even at just 90 minutes, Balls of Fury - with its caricatures of the Asian underworld, with its G-man malarkey and gay jokes (Feng keeps an all-boy bevy of sex slaves) - begins to outstay its welcome.

I nodded off watching Just Visiting.

The real Radio, and the real coach -- seen together in the movie's feel-good epilogue -- deserve better.

What Never Die Alone is is a hackneyed tale of vengeance set in the 'hood, teeming with stock characters, slo-mo gunplay, and rampant misogyny.

The best thing about The Life Before Her Eyes, a somber meditation on fate and friendship, is the way it captures the close relationship between two teenage girls.

A taut thriller about an American family touching down in an unnamed country just as a violent coup erupts, No Escape goes about its gut-churning business by playing (and preying) on our worst xenophobic tendencies.

The film's recycled nature is most evident in director P.J. Hogan's attempt to marry the farcical hijinks of an "I Love Lucy" episode to an addiction scenario that would not be out of place in "The Lost Weekend."

An efficient, if not exactly inspiring, espionage thriller, full of high-tech gadgetry (surveillance drones! flash drives!) and low-tech action (car chases! shootouts! a shovel to the head!).

As Hopkins himself goes wild-eyed and FX-ed with popping veins, The Rite gives up on asking us to take it seriously.

Yes, bestiality in a PG-13 movie. It's the end of life as we know it.

It is inspirational in characterizing how people from such diverse cultures share the same human and spiritual needs.

Laughably predictable and lamentably unfunny, Laws of Attraction practically creaks from the effort exerted by its cast, straining to bring snap and panache to a hackneyed exercise. Sno Ball, anyone?

What Raising Helen doesn't offer is a competent (never mind compelling) performance from Hudson, who is as cute as lace pants and has approximately as much acting skill.

As a piece of filmmaking, What the Bleep isn't exactly transcendent stuff. But as an entryway into new ways of thinking about the self, the universe, and the vast infinite whatnot of whatever (you know what we mean, oh wise one), this little movie is big.

The plot is preposterous. Particularly the part about a kid who has never before played an instrument, but can pick up a guitar and play like Eric Clapton and belly up to a church organ and perform like Mozart.

It works here and there. And then it doesn't.

Not to say that it isn't fun, only to say that it is more about sensation than sense.

In describing the conflict of a woman who has it all without enjoying it all, Pearson's book had teeth. McKenna's screenplay has only a smile. But is it ever good to laugh.

Full of macho swagger and unabashed hero-worship.

Two of its youthful actors, although adorable, are not skilled enogh to carry their parts.

Chan's signature mix of screwball comedy and gymnastic derring-do landed him his own cartoon series a few years back, and The Medallion -- with its bumbling spies and bounding star -- is about as cartoonish as live action gets.

I left the film wondering where at the Bellevue-like psychiatric facility that schizophrenic teenager obtained such a becoming brick-red lipstick.

Williams, going full throttle as the desperate deposed kiddie icon Rainbow Ralph, is, well, simply exhausting.

While Nemo's story line is as clear as its pellucid blues, Wild's narrative is as muddy as its colors.

Alas, this joyless affair doesn't have a clou.

A forced-march comedy.

Men, Women & Children isn't a cartoon. It wants to be real, terribly. Instead, it's just terrible.

Harrison Ford - in his best role in years - and Cliff Curtis are the main reasons to see the film.

The new Ben-Hur isn't much of an improvement. Dominated by CGI effects, it's a soap opera better fit for basic cable.

What redeems the film...is that for every nonstop explosion, there's a hilarious burst of Reynolds' nonstop patter.

Did I enjoy Shadyac's film? Very much. Do I think he made many of his points more accessibly and entertainingly in Bruce Almighty? You bet.

Despite its formulaic structure, The Abandoned has a lot going for it. It eschews cheap scares, bloodletting, and gore. Instead, it works the audience with good, old-fashioned suspense. And it has heart.

Full of kerplunkingly unfunny jokes and ex-"Saturday Night Live" cast members turning up to do shtick.

Sorely needs the injection of skepticism - a quality that would have been even more useful when Pollack was mulling over doing Random Hearts in the first place.

For those who want nothing more than a thorough scare, Gothika is effective. But for those of us who want some psychological insight with our frightfests, the film is sadly lacking.

A case of a yummy yarn spoiled by cheesy visuals.

Amazingly, though, Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal, cowriters and codirectors of The Words, have the audacity - and the skill sets - to pull this all off. They wrest emotional truth out of hokum. They also wrest intelligent, nuanced performances from their cast.

The film is just middling. A clever line here and there, a debonair Dempsey wink, a cute Monaghan nod, and another Bill and Monica reference to tie things all together.

Some movie-goers will be more annoyed than surprised by the finale.

Swank is no mere impersonator. Her Amelia, like Maggie in "Million Dollar Baby," is unwavering in her gaze, ambition, and drive... In Nair's evocatively art-directed (and sensationally costumed) film, Earhart comes alive.

An astoundingly senseless thriller.

Maybe the best reason to see Papa: Hemingway in Cuba is to catch a glimpse of the real Finca Vigia, the property, with its house and pool, gardens, and tree-lined drive, where Ernest Hemingway lived and wrote - and famously drank - from 1939 until 1960. Pages of For Whom the Bell Tolls were banged out here; so, too, The Old Man and the Sea.

It's refreshing to see a film set amid the daily life of an impoverished, rural immigrant community. It's a shame the only aspect of the social world that is explored is the sexual exploits of a few teens.

The result is two competing films, one about a failure's struggle to succeed in the Brigade Championships, the academy's boxing tournament, and the other about a quitter redeemed by military discipline. In the hands of director Justin Lin, the two story lines don't altogether merge.

Likable-to-a-point.

Predictable, tired, formulaic, it makes up for its lack of originality with a bigger budget, louder jokes, louder costumes, and louder music.

Connoisseurs of giant, gnarled chunks of charred flesh, rejoice! There's plenty of it -- or stuff resembling it -- in the slasher-fest convergence of two killer franchises.

How to count the ways that Be Cool isn't? For one thing, it looks terrible: grainy, ill-lit, edited with blunt, rusty shears.