Quickly devolves into a violent thriller that resolves itself in sadomasochistic romance.

In this episodic film with a soupcon of "Sex and the City" (just as the Merchant Ivory Slaves of New York presaged the HBO hit), cross-cultural misunderstanding, not character, is the point.

By turns entertaining and excruciating.

Story and collaborators succeed in making a courtship comedy that will entertain women and amuse men.

Directed by veteran stuntman Ric Roman Waugh, Snitch is shot with a mix of nervous close-ups and weirdly vertiginous angles.

The script, which needs not just doctoring and could benefit from a spell in the critical-care ward, is full of dress-up and put-downs, and comes alive only when Prinze or Cook are on-screen. In short, She's All That aspires to be Clueless. It succeeds in being clueless.

It would seem that Allen and screenwriters John Quaintance and Jessica Bendinger couldn't decide between making a movie about the summer that 'tweens become teens or "Scenes From a Mal"l for the MTV set.

Succeeds as a do-it-yourself handbook of guerrilla filmmaking

Maybe, you think, there is something daring and brilliant going on here: an excursion into the darkest territories of the human soul. But no. In the end -- or the beginning -- there is no point to all this. Or at least not a point worth making, and making us watch.

While it descends too often into the melodramatic, it's a solid, smart picture and a welcome addition to the genre.

At one point, Statham chases down a sports car while pedaling madly on a kids' bike. Pathétique!

An exceptional film -- unpacks long-buried suitcases, both figuratively and literally.

His routine about the differences between cat lovers and dog lovers demonstrates how perceptive and just flat-out funny he can be when he's not trying so hard to shock us.

Dumb, dumb, dumb - borrowing scare tactics from Hitchcock and other suspense masters, but forgetting basic story.telling essentials such as character development and logical exposition.

Tonally, Casino Jack is all over the place: exaggerated comedy, cartoonish high jinks, then heavy-handed melodrama (a third-act face-off between Abramoff and his wife, played with no center of gravity by Kelly Preston, comes out of nowhere).

Filmmaker Maria Sole Tognazzi is going for a quiet, thoughtful character study: a modern woman, sure of herself, but still trying to come to terms with her place in the world.

Finding Amanda isn't bad, and there is some smart, jagged humor.

Intermittent moments of mild amusement ensue.

One caveat: The film has more blood-splatter than a dozen zombie movies. If you can handle that, Doomsday's drunken mash-up of futuristic and feudal is surprisingly satisfying.

The transformation of Reynold's lawyer from a bumbler and stumbler to a victorious litigator, sticking it to an entire nation, is the stuff of a Frank Capra/Jimmy Stewart pic.

It's totally down-to-earth, as real as a trip to the supermarket.

Jon Amiel's moody, and strangely moving, vignette of the naturalist is something else entirely. It is more about Darwin, father and husband, than Darwin the scientist.

Shameless in every way imaginable, Me Before You milks the pathos for all it's worth, but milks the comedy, too.

Has to be one of the nuttiest, sappiest (literally), most unintentionally hilarious spectacles to come down the time-travel turnpike in eons.

Frisky, raunchy and frequently riotous.

On the whole, it's a mess of action clichés built on top of a shaky premise that's so out-of-this-world that it'll either enrage you - or make you laugh. I chose the latter. I'm not ashamed to admit that I had a lot of fun at this movie.

Araki's films have never been known for their subtlety. Think Douglas-Sirk-meets-Johnny-Rotten. He tries to rein in his tendency for the baroque in White Bird in a Blizzard, but he pushes the story too far in the direction of the grotesque.

A preposterous, if admittedly fun, exercise in sci-fi/horror mayhem.