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]