Brainless thriller.

Elegant.

Like laughing into a mirror for 113 minutes.

Any movie that opens with a Goo Goo Dolls song and ends with a line like "I'm going to live -- just not as long as you" is bound to leave somebody reaching for a Kleenex.

As involved as Crudup and Connelly beseech you to be with this story, their very youthfulness, their nagging lack of adulthood, keeps the film from being anything more credible than a tight grad-school tryst.

Whatever It Takes is DOA -- dated on arrival.

A tedious, soapy romp about overlapping lives and destiny.

Between fights, the film can't even rely on the luxury of Lindo, Isaiah Washington, Russell Wong, Rottweiler rapper DMX or the scary Henry O as Han's father to make it watchable - the dialogue is wreaking more havoc than Li.

Loose and funny with verve.

Trouble is, it's too close-up.

Stupid.

It's an experience as frustrating as watching Jeff Gordon drive a stock car through a bowl of oatmeal.

Right up to its deliberate thud of a closer, Polanski had me.

Ludicrously written and appallingly directed by ex-film critic Rod Lurie, seems to pride itself on the fact that it never (ever) leaves the greasy-spoon milieu in which the president and his staff are trapped by heavy snowfall.

In another universe - though it is difficult to imagine which one - Garry Shandling might be sexy.

It's too cryptic and unfulfilled to serve as a tool for anything beyond its own obfuscation.

There are enough mullets to win this movie a Stanley Cup.

The best-looking bad movie in years.

Queasy comedy.

The first more-than-halfway-decent movie of a new millennium.

The best and worst of old school -- retro but stale. Frankenheimer, along with Ben Affleck, donates what cool there is.

Broadway-sized performances.

The sudden cranking of the volume that makes us jump, even if we're just watching a cow chew on its cud.

Too screwy to be really funny.

Offers insights from a host of former players.

It's not easy to wrench belly laughs out of contract killing, but Nine Yards does just that.

Like a Sally Field movie by Vittorio De Sica: Zhang wants to affect you with the subtle sting of his politics.

Generates very little heat.