Storks feels way too much like a belabored and mediocre SNL sketch. Each character has some neurotic tic or crazy fixation, which they expound upon in monologues that feel like material for a stand-up act or a sitcom.

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

Freeman and Hoskins lend the film a level of artistry it doesn't really deserve. Unleashed has a vivid concept, but savagery and sentimentality make strange costars.

If, like me, you were hoping for "Scarface" as a hip-hopera, I am sad to report that Get Rich or Die Tryin' has heat, but not sweep.

Less a movie than a collection of pretty cool action set-pieces, linked together with some seriously awful acting and dialogue that even Dr. Evil couldn't deliver with a straight face.

It's low-energy, and it's also depressing to know that people are still listening to Van Halen 20 years from now.

Throughout Flatley, now 52, is triumphal and indefatigable. There are two mysteries here: From whence comes Flatley's boundless energy? And why does it make me feel so tapped out?

The Weather Man belongs to a school of earnest, artsy Hollywood flicks that includes the Michael Douglas-goes-bonkers "Falling Down," and a lineage that goes back to revered 1970s pics like "Five Easy Pieces."

Evening might be the most shocking waste of natural resources since the despoiling of the Amazon rain forest.

This is the type of movie best enjoyed as a late-night indulgence on cable. Really late at night, when your eyes are still partially open, but your brain has called it quits.

In some scenes, Faris' sheer velocity gives the movie liftoff. In others, it doesn't hurt that Evans, who looks like the very young Alec Baldwin, and has the sonorous voice of Mark Feuerstein, is the film's sex object.

At this point in her career, Lopez can clearly bend the universe -- but no amount of bending can make Enough anything more than formulaic.

The film is an accelerated version of MTV's perennial reality series, "The Real World," only with more drinking and more sex. The results, however, are the same.

Stiff but handsome film, there's little sense of the conflict and complexities that drove Alma Mahler.

By the end of Machine Gun Preacher, its title character has become a cartoon.

With clunky dialogue...I Am Number Four puts the burden on its special effects (passable) and the chemistry between Pettyfer and Agron.

If illuminating dawns and dusks had basked Mia Wasikowska and Henry Hopper in a rosy glow, the mopey cuteness of Restless would have been too much to bear.

Ultimately, this movie cowritten by Shelton and former L.A. police detective Robert Souza has more laughs than suspense, but not enough of either.

A movie that provokes as many rueful sighs as it does bruising laughs.

A thriller is only as good as its villain is bad, and this is the film's problem.

Jeremy Irons slithers on board with a haughty sneer and papal vestments, playing Bishop Pucci.

The main distinction of this particular raunchfest, about the economic opportunities available to women in the phone-sex industry, is that it does not reconcile its slim narrative conflict with a big, fat wedding.

Michael Hoffman, whose credits include the far more lively Soapdish, directs this predictable business in a predictable fashion. [20 Dec 1996, p.03]

On many levels, Kingsman has the makings of a sure-fire hit. Yet, this is one spy story even the most dedicated addicts of the genre would do well to miss.

Freely mixing reality therapy, fairy tale and satire, Dobkin's film does not maintain a consistent tone. Is it a seriocomedy about brothers who need to work on unfinished business? Is it a holiday fable about a Scrooge who comes to surf the yuletide? Is it a satire in which an efficiency expert (Kevin Spacey) puts pressure on St. Nick to outsource gift allocation and distribution?

A creaky, cliched, feel-good family drama about learning to stop and smell the roses - and planting a vegetable garden while you're at it - Uncle Nino is shameless, sappy fare.

Dizzyingly incoherent and subversively surreal, this sophomore effort from the man who made the great, strange "Donnie Darko" is certain to have its fans. I'm not going to be one of them.

Has its compelling moments, and its playfully inventive ones, too.