As titillating novelty turns into tired cliche, the dyke-psycho-killer genre may soon burn itself out, but in the meantime, we have the grim Brit art-film variation on the gruesome genre, Butterfly Kiss.

Something in Hutton's wounded puppy look always communicates an untapped intelligence or wasted potential, both of which are perfect for this role.

Chain Reaction is one explosion after another, none of which seem to advance the . . . uh . . . plot. But, of course, in a movie this lead-footed you spend more time wondering what the filmmakers were thinking, or if they were thinking, than about the few plot-like fragments that do present themselves now and then.

Trouble is, it's too close-up.

Stupid.

The boredom of the temporary office workers of the title was nothing compared to the boredom I experienced as this movie dribbled on before my eyes.

Second-banana material.

The Phantom is a spiritless affair likely to vanish quickly from first-run screens.

Miserable as it crawls for two eternal hours toward being "life-affirming."

Just another in a long line of blue-collar-kid-at-prep-school movies, and it may be the worst of the lot. Nothing, absolutely nothing, is original in this movie.

In Total Eclipse, directed by Agnieszka Holland, they fail to persuade us that their versions of the 19th century French poets Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine were great artists. They just seem like rattle-brained hedonists with superiority complexes. Genius ought to be as alluring as any other well-developed human attribute, like beauty or sexuality. If this is genius, we are in trouble.

A salacious mess of a film written and directed by rapper Ice Cube.

If only it wasn't such bloody nonsense.

Legends of the Fall never makes you think too hard; its woes-of-a-proud-family formula takes a back seat to a self-conscious visual style that strains toward the level of myth.

There are some semi-funny bits, but few are worth repeating and none will make much sense on paper. The only time when the film truly clicks is during a staged concert featuring the veteran Seattle grunge band Mudhoney. Suddenly there are wacky camera angles, wild editing, actual ideas. Despite her low-brow comedy rep, Spheeris still excels at capturing the intensity and drama of live rock music, which she did so well in both editions of "The Decline of Western Civilization."

The best-looking bad movie in years.

DENIS LEARY may be a funny guy when he's standing on stage spraying invective at a live audience, but as a movie star he has a lot to learn.

Has no intention of taking a more sophisticated path to make its point.

Wields its Middle America values and moralistic flogging of idiosyncratic lifestyle choices like a flipped bird.

Hush, which is an absurdly bad mixture of "Rosemary's Baby" and any Bette Davis movie from the 1960s, seems to be a classic case of a grasping mother trying to possess her beloved son.

In order to like Striptease, you have to be a pretty serious Moore fan because although director Andrew Bergman's script (based on the book by Carl Hiaasen) has a few funny lines, this is otherwise one of the dumbest movies I've ever seen.

A scary example of bad movies happening to good people.

An artificial and hypocritical effort to escape the artistic limitations of teenage slasher flicks.

Moore can't help but be rotten. She has no grace and little nuance, which is why she's always best as a hard-ass in movies.

This is the most-off-the-mark adaptation of a novel since Brian DePalma's what-was-that "Bonfire of the Vanities."

Lacks genuine magic.

It's a movie so foul even the folks at the NAACP Image Awards would have to look the other way.

Offers nothing new, and a lot less. It's a hollow shell of a film, rife with plot twists that go nowhere.