Much of it is funny and endearing, and its toned-down star, Adam Sandler, is as winning as he's ever been.

For a film so intent on the rules of engagement, this is hardly engaging drama.

The ploddingly literal screenplay by John Logan doesn't help matters.

Sandler and Barrymore generate some believable, if low-voltage, chemistry: they're both so shallow and conceited and dingy that you think -- yes! -- in real life, these two people probably would go for each other in a second.

For all of its weakness, Ju-On: The Grudge is creepy and unnerving, qualities in short supply in gore-filled American horror films.

Disastrously unfunny sex farce.

There are a number of funny and unexpected moments in the film, but they are ultimately swamped by the mean-spirited tone and increasingly over-the-top raunch and drug humor.

A winning combination. By some bizarre quirk of star chemistry, their persona complement each other, the action scenes have comic flair and the movie is mindless fun.

If it sounds like Prey for Rock and Roll might be fun despite its shortcomings, it is not. Even those with a predilection for bad movies about rock 'n' roll should avoid this one.

It's often funny but it flails around like a chicken with its head cut off, flapping and squawking and making a spectacle, but never really going anywhere.

Von Trier is far more hypocritical than his straw-figure characters, and he's simply too cynical and insincere to be provocative.

A thoroughly ordinary drama of temptation, dubious redemption and easy revenge.

Ultimately less psychological thriller than polemic about the effects of living in an atmosphere of paranoia fed by daily threat-level assessments and round-the-clock TV news-channel coverage of fear-mongering speeches.

While it lacks the original's streamlined core, the father-son relationship, the sequel gets by on assembled moments of sentiment

Morrow and Linney are gifted, extremely likable actors, and the movie has some ingratiating moments and a seductive soundtrack. But there's a by-the-numbers inevitability to every scene, and it never clicks into place to be anything special.

The surprise is that it's one of the most exciting and enjoyable disaster epics to come out of Hollywood in some time.

It should have been a cut above the usual teen comedy. But it touches the same old bases in the same old dumb ways.

The cast, collectively a successful example of the lovable-loser protagonist, shows deft comic timing, particularly Chandrasekhar, who wrings laughs just by his reaction to the locals' racist remarks.

Predictable and agonizingly politically correct.

Even if it lacks the finesse of Franklin's earlier work, High Crimes moves like a bullet.

Shallow Hal begs for the Farrellys to unleash their arsenal of offensiveness, but they want to be liked so much they appear afraid to offend. The result is safe, well-meaning and dull.

Fortress is as harrowing a cat-and-mouse game as the conflict between Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones in "The Fugitive," and the new arrival also offers the perk of being about ideas bigger than mere pursuit. [3 Sept 1993]

Sandler's frequent director, Peter Segal, also rises to the occasion, giving the proceedings some of the rough-hewn, hard-edged look of the original, and brings it to a funny, satisfying climax that -- happily -- doesn't cop out.

The movie is a fascinating, if often confusing, mix of dramatized scenes from the novel, re-created and actual interviews with Desclos.

It's not "The Wizard of Oz," and its cotton-candy fantasy of a story line is definitely aimed at very young children. But it's well made, and adults likely will find themselves yielding to its gentle, whimsical charm.

Step Up never quite does fly: its dance routines are low-voltage, the star chemistry is weak, the characters are clichés and the movie is practically an instant remake of Dewan's other '06 dance musical, "Take the Lead," which told the story better.

There are some flat moments, to be sure, and Palansky's direction can be a bit unsteady and awkward, but he doesn't wallow in the eccentricities or the modestly self-empowering moral. This fairy tale feels pleasantly down-to-earth.

Even though she's (Khouri) determined to give us feel-good entertainment, she's not at all afraid to let the darker moments be very dark indeed.

Amanda Peet exudes her patented mix of charm, beauty, humor and smarts as the best friend who may become more than a friend.

Truth be told, the film is routine: the kind of one-note war movie that Hollywood used to crank out by the dozens every year in the 1950s.

The truly bizarre Ben Stiller farce, Night at the Museum, is no laugh riot, and misfires all over the screen, but it develops its own unique charm and leaves a pleasant afterglow. A family audience could do worse for a comedy this holiday season.

It wobbles between a conventionally quirky lighthearted goof and an oddball farce in which character is sacrificed for sight gags.

Director Fran Rubel Kuzui ("Tokyo Pop") cannot begin to find the style that would give some unity and originality to this mess. The result is a grindingly dull horror comedy and an unnecessary satire of Valley Girls - a full decade after that phenomenon has come and gone. [31 Jul 1992, p.12]

Momentum, motivation and story are all swallowed by simple sensation, and the film finally exhausts itself for lack of stylistic imagination.

Sommers is a pure pop Steven Spielberg who's put his deft technical skills in the service of the ultimate rollercoaster movie ride. It's sometimes more exhausting than exciting.

Wants to be an offbeat, hard-edged, inspirational sports movie, but it misses its target by a country mile.

It's overblown and greedy and feels like more of a merchandizing scheme than a movie.

Travolta has dusted off his folksy Southern character from "Primary Colors" (one of his most acclaimed roles) and he has his moments with it.

Is Hollywood so disconnected from its past and bankrupt of ideas that it doesn't even know this movie is a screaming cliché?

It's a consistently funny script, tastefully packaged by super-producer Brian Grazer and directed with just the right touch by Dean Parisot.

Has neither the raucous energy and impudence of "Animal House," the defiance of "If ...," nor the grace and wit of "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle."

It's a romantic fantasy of the gangster brotherhood and their doomed lives, executed with Takeshi's unique mix of stoic ruthlessness and giddy energy.

Offers precious little inspiration, and the only irony it manages is surely unintended.

A new millennium version of "A Hard Day's Night" without any wit to balance the silliness.

Wenham and Porter make the film better than it should be.

It all feels pretty empty.

Sivan makes it all quite beautiful with verdant imagery and tastefully melodramatic direction, but at the cost of emotional and social ambiguities, not to mention living, breathing characters.

Actually, the film may be too grubby and sordid and ghoulish for its own box-office good. It's certainly going to send more than a few of the New Zealand director's sensitive women fans running from the auditorium.

It's an art-house genre piece, very much in the tradition of "Enchanted April," "Shirley Valentine" and "Under the Tuscan Sun." But, a few charming scenes aside, A Good Year is in the hands of the wrong star and wrong director.

A pedestrian movie with a predictable romance at its heart.

Somehow the screwball concoction does not jell. The stars are pleasant but unexciting, the goofy ensemble has a few moments of hilarity but never catches fire, the laughs are very scattered and the film's title is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

For all it's warmth and wonder, it carries little more power than a storybook fable.

Favors giggly juvenile humor over inspired satire and ends up not with a moral, but a moral vacuum.

Easily the least passionate romantic comedy I've seen in years.

No, it doesn't exactly re-create the magic that made the original such an instant classic, but it's faster and more involving than "Reloaded" and it rounds off the premise and themes of the trilogy in a surprisingly satisfying way.

Most of this is harmless enough, but Kasdan's Hollywood logic is simply too implausible.

All the good intentions in the world and solid performances from three of the biggest and most respected movie stars of our time cannot disguise the fact that Lions for Lambs is resting on a talky, disjointed and not-very-well-thought-out script.

An uninvolving film.

It's a sorry specimen if ever there was one, and could even stand as an argument for how the movies have deteriorated in recent years.

airily works not only because of Witherspoon and a game supporting cast...but because, with its bark-and-bite agenda wrapped in a blanket of laughs, has the sense to remember that, first and foremost, it's entertainment.

In its best moments, the film works as both an exciting and formula-breaking action-adventure and as an enjoyably sappy tearjerker.

It's a botched job...the new "Phoenix" lacks the very things that made the old one special.

As imaginatively as some of them are staged, the action scenes are never authentically gripping. This seems to be the hidden handicap of our new digital filmmaking era in which all big action sequences are generated in the computer and look vaguely like cartoons.

Does have one saving grace, however. As Nick's long-suffering wife, Blanchett gives the movie some badly needed charisma, and its one point of sympathy -- even nobility.

The thing is far too absurd and broadly played for its own good.

A strangely warm, affectionate look at bad behavior amid emotional damage and a stranglehold of identity issues.

A fascinating ride through morally ambiguous territory to a place you've never been before.

Despite some engaging performances and good scenes, it's by far the least original, and least accomplished, of the six Redford-directed films.

Attempts to do for "The Big Sleep"-type detective movie and film-noir genre what "Blair Witch" did for horror films.

In a time when even the best of big Hollywood movies all seem to be mired in a certain nagging, unimaginative visual sameness, this one dares to take us to a place we haven't been before.

Veteran British director Eric Till otherwise does a credible job of sweeping us through this huge life, and his eye for detail combines with the Oscar-worthy production design and a succession of striking Eastern European locations to create a rich visual tapestry of the Middle Ages.

Baldwin and Broderick each click in their roles and consistently rise above their material in every scene. But the movie around them falls flat and can't begin to sustain its premise.

A warm-hearted and understated entertainment that's blissfully free of the heavy-handed crudity and other elements that have ravaged 21st-century Hollywood comedy.

It probably cost less than the catering budget of average Adam Sandler comedy and, in its own hit-and-miss scattershot fashion, it's about as funny. At least when it hits.

For all the color and lively music, it's an overlong, messy labor of love built on a sense of personal betrayal that rings hollow.

It's a bright, swiftly paced story with some spirited humor.

Several of the special-effects sequences -- a Tokyo hailstorm, a system of tornadoes ripping through L.A. (and tearing up the Hollywood sign), a tidal wave breaking on the East Side and washing through the canyons of Manhattan -- are just dandy.

The movie is full of action and stunts, but after the gangbusters opening, it loses steam and imagination very quickly.

It delivers everything you expect on a timetable you can predict to the minute. It's filmmaking as a cross between a carefully choreographed dance and an elaborate pageant.

All the jazzy effects and jumpy editing merely move us quicker to an otherwise predetermined tragedy.

Director Martha Coolidge attempts to keep the film grounded in reality, but the movie flutters away from her control.

It's resolutely grim and rather predictable but very compelling, and it offers a commanding star vehicle for Denzel Washington.

An effective political lampoon.

The exception is Matt Dillon, who goes all-out to be arrogant and despicable. Indeed, building on his scary performance earlier this year in "Crash," he's shaping up to be quite the movie villain: definitely someone you love to hate.

So bloated, self-righteous and exploitative, it's hard to imagine anyone staying to the end, much less demanding a sequel.

It's far from strikingly original, but it's well-acted, skillfully plotted and moderately chilling, and it's something slightly different in the haunted-house genre.

Does nothing so much as stir up a pining for the show in its prime -- a darkly imaginative and wonderfully weird thing -- though it is always nice to see old friends, however mellowed by age they turn out to be.

The charisma of L'il Bow Wow's spirited screen presence turn a contemporary Cinderella gimmick and a by-the-numbers script into a better film than anyone would have expected.

A slick, smart-alecky rat-a-tat crime comedy.

Ford tries very hard to be eccentrically funny -- to the point of forced, slapsticky mugging -- but he looks terrible, his timing is way off and his character is so uptight, abrasive and unappealing that he makes miserable company.

"Shrek" had some refreshing, genre-twisting innovation but Cats & Dogs plays it safe and nice instead and, by not taking risks, doesn't quite make it out of the doghouse.

It's a well-crafted, intelligent, no-nonsense western epic that zips us through the famous siege and the birth of Texas with style, verve and impressive historical accuracy.

Semi-Pro is the perfect name for this movie, because it feels like a half-baked comedy made by semi-professionals.

When a film has to blare its racially and incendiary stance as obviously as Lakeview Terrace, you know it's trying too hard.

Writer-director Chris Columbus (Home Alone) never manages to make the mix of humor and pathos gel. The characters never seem as engaging as he wants them to be, the comedy is often forced, and scenes fall flat left and right. [24 May 1991]

For all its good intentions in exploring the grace of death, November never creates a life outside of its all-too-obvious inspirations and the mystery becomes little more than a groaner.

A forgettable, patched-together clone of other ghostly romances.

It is one of the more pessimistic and repulsive views of the war of the sexes ever put on film. [14 Nov 1992]