David Lynch probably should have let Laura Palmer stay dead. Twin Peaks -- Fire Walk With Me, a feature film prequel to the much-discussed, much-admired TV series by Lynch, is a wearing experience that apparently intrigued the director as little as it inspired him.[28 Aug 1992]

Tries to be too many things, none very convincingly: plea for tolerance, docu-style character study, old-fashioned weepie.

A crass, clumsily constructed romantic comedy.

Beckinsale delivers even if Underworld doesn't quite manage to follow through on its initial promise.

There seem to be some impressive performances here, though it's not always easy to tell because director James Cox is always feverishly cutting away to something or other.

Even assuming the best possible motives by its makers, Beyond Borders runs the risk of making human suffering exotic while glamorizing white disaster relief workers in the Third World.

Dolls soon becomes overloaded with symbolism, and consequently suffocates the audience.

Moore stays "on message" here from first shot to last. There is no debate, no analysis of facts or search for historical context. Moore simply wants to blame one man and his family for the situation in Iraq the United States now finds itself in…So the real question is not how good a film is Fahrenheit 9/11 -- it is undoubtedly Moore's weakest -- but will a film help to get a president fired?

Even those who have never been exposed to the considerable charms of the Masayuki Suo original will likely find Peter Chelsom's all-American version of Shall We Dance? to be a dishearteningly sullen, lead-footed misstep.

A misfire. The film that wants to be lighter than air instead crashes to earth with the swiftness of a concrete parachute.

A Christmas comedy where laughs and even Christmas joy are in short supply.

Nothing un-beguiles a fairy tale more than forced whimsy and labored magic, which is precisely what plagues Ella Enchanted.

Assembling this vehicle for his young clients, music producer/manager/video director Christopher B. Stokes has attached an anemic plot to a series of dynamic hip-hop dance sequences.

What might have proved reasonably compelling onstage comes across as forced on film, with credibility taking a back seat to contrivance.

Unfortunately, Twohy has tried to turn the Riddick enterprise into a sprawling, Tolkien-powered epic, jamming the screen with too many historical parallels and a confusion of new characters.

Generally succeeds -- in hit-and-miss fashion -- at bridging the gap between unlikable jerk and misunderstood good guy, though it's still something of a leap to leading-man territory.

It's disappointing the film is so sketchy and underdeveloped. The filmmakers may have sold their story short.

Emerges as a lackluster and nearly charmless affair.

Compounding the sense of predictability and deja vu is the presence of well-known TV actors portraying the sorts of characters they've perfected on the small screen.

First-time director Paul Abascal brings no style or personality to this B-movie exercise. Except for Farina, the actors go through the paces as if they too lack conviction in the proceedings.

While the likable Seth Green, Matthew Lillard and Dax Shepard are definitely up to the comic excursion, the picture charts an uncertain course between wild and mild, eventually running aground in a pile of male-bonding muck.

Unlike that widely appealing picture with the giant green ogre, this one's strictly for the kiddies.

Anne Hathaway's charms barely rescue this exercise in lame comedy and romance.

George Clooney is the best reason to submit yourself to From Dusk Till Dawn, an exceedingly grotesque thriller-horror-comedy that fails to live up to the promise of its opening reels.

A picture that clearly aspires for more ends up with considerably less.

Coming to America is the filmic equivalent of using a Maserati to go to the corner grocery store — Murphy's colossal comic gifts and Landis' countercultural sensibilities are largely wasted, never pushed to the floor in this idling, curbed comedy.

It admittedly starts off great guns, but all too quickly it becomes apparent that the big-screen arrival of the supernatural Western DC Comics series Jonah Hex"is firing loud, empty blanks.

It's all Kovacs for 94 minutes. Which means the viewer experiences a perilous tug-of-war between annoyance at the extreme artificiality of the conceit and admiration of the gutsy performance by an actress who must, literally, carry the movie. Annoyance wins out, unfortunately.

Unfortunately, the film lacks the hypnotizing strangeness of Foreman's best stage efforts and also pales in comparison to cinematic works like Matthew Barney's far more ambitious "Cremaster" series.

A less than satisfying cinematic experience.

This non-secular variation on "The Usual Suspects" falls prey to a creeping structural rigor mortis that sets in early.

Actual footage of Afghanistan makes it an interesting experiment, but as a dramatic thriller, the story of an American documaker is not as taut or compelling as it could be; instead, it's often confusing and irritating.

Poire's comedy often pushes the definition of good taste to its limit. Many of his jokes are vulgar and crass. Too often, they're downright puerile.

Too squeaky-clean to convey the turbulence of the period.

Repellant to look at and fairly inscrutable, the film does at least offer vivid if at times overly broad performances from the three leads.

Crudely shot and edited, the film is most notable for the strong performances by its two leads.

Telling an obviously lived-in tale, this small-scale indie drama suffers from a compendium of cliches.

Finally, there is an answer to the old question, "What's more boring than watching golf on television?" As the new docu 95 Miles to Go reveals, watching Ray Romano watching golf on television is much more boring.

Sets out to be a baby "Big Chill" but plays out like an unsold Fox pilot.

While The Empire in Africa offers a litany of talking heads and shockingly violent images in its exploration of the conflict, it is more confusing and disturbing than enlightening.

For a comedy, it's not really funny.

Perhaps a greater passage of time was needed to provide a more effective historical perspective, but "Tiger" has a bigger problem with a dramatic structure that sags conspicuously in the middle, never to completely correct itself.

Doesn't quite manage to elevate its subject to a sufficiently interesting level for anyone who isn't already one of its frequent visitors. A good stroll inside your nearest city park would provide a more edifying experience.

Filmmakers have long recognized that high school makes a terrific arena for social satire and comedy in films ranging from "Heathers" to "Mean Girls" and "Election." There is a glimmer of such a comedy in Full of It, but this is quickly swamped in overextended gags and broad caricatures.

Lights will put in more appearances at festivals before achieving a brief theatrical window for Kaurismaki devotees to gaze through. Most will do so with discouragement.

O Jerusalem has the virtue of energy, but it suffers from superficiality, particularly with regard to the characterizations.

The dull production obviously sees itself as an updated "Cincinnati Kid" for the World Poker Tour set, but the end result and its characters have all the originality and dramatic depth of a TV telecast.

A failed cinematic experiment mainly notable for its fine starring performance by a pre-"Juno" Ellen Page, The Tracey Fragments provides more evidence (not that any was needed) that an extensive use of split-screen visuals is far more irritating than arresting.

Obviously, Munro is reaching for something about how people allow themselves to get mired in the past. But his characters and situations are so exaggerated and dreary that his point gets quickly lost.

Even the easygoing Broderick can't inject any lift or charm into the story.

While Atwater exerted notable influence on contemporary politics, this account of his career doesn't make for particularly absorbing viewing.

The resulting cat-and-mouse game -- occupies most of the film's running time, to gradually diminishing results.

A coming-of-age tale and a JFK assassination conspiracy movie. The first half of that equation works nicely...But the assassination story line is absurd.

It's all an earnest effort, three decades too late.

There are several impressive scenes, but taken as a whole, the film is weighed down by significant creative and technical missteps.

Undeniably offers cheap laughs, its most receptive audiences will likely be found in retirement-community auditoriums.

A slow meander through the mostly stagnant life of a character hardly worth the bother.

This would-be tearjerker without the musical numbers of typical Bollywood fare is for die-hard Amitabh Bachchan fans only.

With neither the dramatic nor comedic aspects of the story line being remotely convincing, the best efforts of the talented cast go for naught.

Rather than delving deep into its subject, the film loses focus by concentrating on the feelings of Harlan's descendants rather than a deep analysis of the man himself.

Never really gets up to speed on any engrossing level, save for Michael Hardwick's notable cinematography.

It is so outrageous with its ethnic caricatures, hokey plot and twin-brother mix-ups that you know the whole thing is a lark.

Should be intriguing to all who know the family, as well as to cineastes yonder at the arty film schools who will lap up its elliptical/self-reflexive style. Normal people will simply walk out on it.

One hates to say it, but after this and "Black Snake Moan," it might be time for the talented actress (Ricci) to keep her clothes on.

Writer-director David Kittredge clearly has serious things on his mind about such subjects as voyeurism, the thin line between fantasy and reality, the link between sex and violence, etc., but whatever points he is trying to make are lost in the general muddle.

Bland, predictable picture, whose sole assets are a cute premise, the Italian countryside and the dignity Vanessa Redgrave brings to a part that, on the page, is quite beneath her.

That it squanders a terrific cast in the process -- one that also includes Common, Phylicia Rashad and Pam Grier -- makes it all the more disappointing.

This mostly unfunny effort -- though it might have made them laugh silly in its home country -- is unlikely to appeal to art house audiences on this side of the Atlantic.

Not for the faint of heart or for those who like their films to have beginnings, middles, and ends.

"Apprentice" lurches from one been-there-done-that sequence to another.

As the film veers between cartoonish and earnest, it doesn't so much find bliss as try very hard to manufacture it.

A horror spoof that has little reason for being, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Undead pretty much uses up its quotient of wit with the title.

Hamm is unable to do much with his underwritten role, and the present-day sequences don't really hold interest.

This is a discouragingly limp movie in which nothing is at stake.

As with his 2007 effort, director-screenwriter Rob Zombie's approach is far grittier than in the original series.

Ultimately, there's not enough material to sustain a feature-length film, and the sloppy editing, cheesy re-enactments and cheap graphics don't exactly make for compelling viewing.

An artistically arresting yet narratively lame and strangely unfocused cartoon aimed at older children and young adults.

Depressingly one-note, a story that never springs to life.

Largely devoid of the sex-farce style comic wit to which it aspires, the film is palatable largely because of the charm of lead actress Cheung.

Bran Nue Dae has so much feel-good fizz that you can almost overlook its rickety construction. But not quite.

A dramatically inert, lethargic dramedy that isn't nearly as quirky and poignant is it perceives itself.

There is not a credible moment in this overly calculated melodrama.

After slipping badly with the second installment two years ago, the Narnia franchise does a full-on belly flop with this third.

Clearly nothing but a paycheck project for all concerned, this is definitely the least and hopefully the last of a franchise that started amusingly enough a decade ago but has now officially overstayed its welcome.

Many flashbacks to the children's early trauma, along with other scenes, are unnecessarily repeated several times.

Dull, talk-heavy snoozer that most closely resembles something that would show up on the CW network.

Indeed, White Swan/Black Swan dynamics almost work, but the horror-movie nonsense drags everything down the rabbit hole of preposterousness.

While not the worst in recent 3D films, Gulliver's Travels is more gimmicky than a crackling good yarn.

Watching Gerrymandering is like taking a course on a subject you keenly want to learn about only to discover the lecturer is a boring, old windbag.

They don't make movies like Jolene anymore, and that's a good thing.

This tedious exercise in abstraction by Belgian filmmakers Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani well apes the visual stylization of such filmmakers as Mario Bava and Dario Argento without bothering to provide anything equivalent in terms of theme or content.

The Dilemma is so tone deaf to its themes that it thinks it's a light and slightly rude Vince Vaughn movie. It's not.

The Rite becomes more ludicrous as it goes along, with more than a few lines of dialogue from Michael Petroni's over-the-top screenplay eliciting unintended titters.

Banal dialogue, over-modulated performances and melodramatic scoring combine forces to sink the stirringly photographed proceedings quicker than that treacherous flash flood.

Director Patrick Lussier and his co-screenwriter Todd Farmer string together smash-up car chases, hyper-violent physical clashes, flying viscera and a dollop of sex and nudity with ludicrous dialogue and only a passing concern for logic in this high-octane trash.

Certain to create a gaping divide between generational and aesthetic camps, Sucker Punch is a largely grim and unpleasant display of technical wizardry wrapped around a story that purports to be inspirational.

There's insufficient suspense in the life-or-death stakes, sketchy plot detail in the gang clash that triggers the action and too little ambiguity in the intercharacter dynamics.

Cage supplies energy but no depth in his portrayal of a disillusioned knight. Ditto that for Perlman, who never feels comfortable in the sidekick role so he pretty much goes through the (exaggerated) motions.