The comedy is obvious and flat while the drama is stale. They did do one thing right, however: They attracted a stellar cast.

Boasts an uncommon stylization and some first-rate comic performances. But its provocative setup is undercut by its lengthy depiction of an all-too-familiar game of cat and mouse between the culprits and a dogged detective.

For hard-core David Mamet fans only...Edmond serves to remind you how artificial the dialogue and dramaturgy truly was in early Mamet.

Unfortunately, the film itself -- though it contains some superbly staged and highly lavish action sequences -- lacks the tautness of its heroine.

A darker, grittier creature that, while benefiting considerably from Dion Beebe's HD cinematography, is a frustratingly inert affair -- a long and talky excursion that fails to engage the viewer from the outset.

Feels anonymously generic and charmlessly mechanical.

While youngsters might enjoy the movie, more discerning tweens, teens and adults will not be as easily amused.

Unfortunately, while the film has some fascinating and compelling arguments, it quickly assumes the tone of an angry diatribe rather than a well-reasoned political discussion.

In his director's statement, filmmaker Todd Stephens proclaims that he wants his latest effort to be "the gayest movie ever made." Damn if he doesn't succeed.

The film clicks briefly when capturing the silliness of XXX concerns, especially in script-development scenes. But whatever hilarity might have prevailed on the set doesn't translate to the screen. Intrusive music and last-act contrivances do nothing to lift the flat tone or allow the film to earn its intended emotional payoff.

While its sexy young lead performers and enjoyable dance sequences should provide some boxoffice enticement, this directorial debut from choreographer Anne Fletcher likely will score bigger on video.

A routine mob thriller.

An entertaining mess. It blends together musical styles and dances, historical periods with howling anachronisms, coy, almost childish gimmicks with R-rated sex and violence.

While the director-screenwriter clearly has a sensitive affinity for his characters, his film lacks narrative momentum and fresh observations.

While director-screenwriter Preston A. Whitmore II's film is to be admired for its proponing the values of a higher education over the dream of a career in the NBA, its dialogue, characterizations and situations rarely transcend the level of cliche.

A relentless focus on action over character and story will leave more mainstream viewers cold.

A tweener but not necessarily a good one. It falls into the gap between good intentions and faulty storytelling.

Great material, but the film never catches fire.

Furiously crossing and double-crossing, the two main story lines never quite fuse or comment on each other.

Audience can certainly find entertainment in this movie, so long as no one takes things too seriously. One suspects, however, that Zaillian and a vast team of producers and executive producers that includes political consultant and pundit James Carville believe they are making a serious commentary on American politics. It comes closer to kitsch.

Contains no shocks. But it works as a funny and slicker-than-expected parody of the genre.

Pitched as "animation for adults," Renaissance will find an audience among those in the 20-35 age group who enjoy graphic novels, but will disappoint anyone hoping for emotional or intellectual sustenance.

An inert and muddled mash-up of romantic comedy and theater of stupid cruelty.

After a while, the crudeness and venality of the central characters proves as stifling as the incessant Queens summer heat does to our dubious protagonists.

The whole fear-of-obese-hillbillies device is starting to smell as stale as Leatherface's playroom. Does this horror trend simply reflect a national fear, as giant radioactive ants personified the Bomb in the 1950s? If so, maybe it's time for us all to go on a diet; America needs fresh fodder for its boogeymen.

The film lacks the depth and discipline of Mitchell's first film venture, "Hedwig and the Angry Inch," which makes Shortbus a real disappointment.

Levinson diverts his film into a political thriller with its own conspiracy theory, an improbable romance and a curious subplot that feels like an anti-smoking ad. Little wonder his bewildered star, Robin Williams, looks confused much of the time.

The film's saving grace are its fast pacing and generous doses of humor, the latter of which is mostly provided by Robert Patrick's sly delivery of the many wisecracks doled out by his villainous character.

A thoroughly uninspiring drama that ultimately buckles under Michael Mayer's weighty direction.

Audiences might enjoy this cinematic sleight of hand, but the key characters are such single-minded, calculating individuals that the real magic would be to find any heart in this tale.

Under Ceylan's dull direction and the equally leaden editing, technical contributions are lackluster and straight-forward. Similar to the script, they only serve to distend an undernourished central story.

As convincing as the manipulated footage of the President's death in Chicago in October 2007 is, the movie itself cannot be more unconvincing in its approach.

The film's unrelenting bleakness and misanthropic tone is likely to be a turnoff to mainstream performances, but it provides its lead actor with another opportunity to display his riveting intensity.

Fur is a misfire by the talented people who four years ago gave us "Secretary," whose tongue-in-cheek approach might have served this film better, taking the edge off much of its pretensions.

The picture never successfully comes off the written page.

Following up on Morgan Spurlock's wildly successful indie film "Super Size Me," critics of fast food were hoping that a one-two punch would further raise consciousness among consumers and purveyors alike. Alas, Fast Food Nation is punchless.

What starts out seeming like a poor man's Woody Allen morphs into something closer to an American version of "Scenes From a Marriage."

Ends up having all the satisfying substance of a supermarket impulse item.

A little charm and inventiveness would have gone a long way to tone down some of the picture's more obnoxious impulses.

There is little complexity in the social, cultural or political shape of this world. So this film, directed by visual effects master Stefen Fangmeier and written by Peter Buchman in a straightforward manner, cannot escape the rote nature of such a fantasy.

The movie is too parochial for a wide audience. The French judicial system is totally alien to Americans, for instance, plus the film is a talkathon.

Most of this is fairly predictable spoofing, and Englund is wasted as a psycho-hunting shrink clearly modeled after Donald Pleasence's character in "Halloween." But there are moments when the proceedings are unsettling and original.

The film is both too short and too long at two hours-plus. Not enough time is spent with the teens and far too much with their teacher.

The fairly routine plot is made somewhat more interesting by the infusion of issues regarding morality and faith, but ultimately Three, for all its philosophizing, is little more than a standard serial-killer movie with pretensions.

As the central character in this musical melodrama about step dancing in black fraternities, Short displays an uncanny dramatic sensibility to go with the eye-catching athleticism of his dance moves.

A beautifully shot (by Oscar-winning cinematographer John Toll) but dramatically empty pursuit picture set in the untamed West.

While unlikely to set the documentary market afire, is entertaining enough.

Daddy's Little Girls may be heavy-handed and drearily predictable, but it also should connect with its core audience as solidly as Perry's previous efforts did, even if the drama is frequently just as over the top as its predecessors.

While several members of the cast valiantly fill the void where they can, these fish out of water could have made a greater high-definition splash if they had been thrown an occasional line or two rather than counting on inspiration to wash over them.

The greatest failure of the film, written by David Wolstencroft, is its inability to enter into the lives of the Rwandans, Tutsi and Hutu alike. The movie never moves beyond the tragic facts to show us the human face of either victims or perpetrators. All we get are white people shaking their heads and cursing Western governments.

"Gift" comes across as a television-ready effort that would work perfectly for Hallmark.

Boasts nothing new under the sun, but it does provide a few decent scares.

Atmospheric but pedestrian, it is a retelling of the classic tragedy of all civil wars, from the U.S. to Vietnam to England, where brother is pitched against brother.

Terrence Howard delivers another solid lead performance and competition swimming is a new arena for such films. Nonetheless, Pride is just plain trite.

A tad too conservative and calculated. CGI delivers best on moody sets and a noirish atmosphere achieved by lighting, backgrounds and visual effects. But the characters look like plastic dolls, and the story is recycled sci-fi.

Brilliantly sung by an extremely talented lyric theater company in Cape Town called Dimpho Di Kopane. Whether this all works will be a matter of opinion -- mine is that it does not -- but the experiment is fascinating.

The most un-Disneylike cartoon yet from Disney animation. The thing is a hellzapoppin' of eccentric characters, zany situations and wacky gizmos, but little effort has gone into making any of this connect with an audience.

Although more than a little familiar in its road movie-style romantic banter and bickering, the film is easy to take for a number of reasons, including the witty and frequently caustic dialogue. Modest in its aspirations, "Race You" succeeds by not trying to do too much.

Tpicture delivers the requisite number of pratfalls, and the genial Ice Cube makes for a credibly hapless everyman, but the comedy still feels a little too safely soft around the edges.

No best in show but a decent family comedy.

Overlong and overstuffed with characters and situations, Ping Pong doesn't really succeed on a dramatic level. But there is no denying its skill in rendering its chosen milieu with an intense visual immediacy.

Whether outsiders will find much to appreciate in The TV Set is another question because the film fails to provide the thematic resonance of similarly themed predecessors like the brilliant "Network."

A static and awkward effort that never quite comes to life.

While the sadism doesn't stoop -- rise? -- to the level of the "Saw" horror-thrillers, Vacancy does have a name cast.

Probably needed more originality than is on display. With an age-old cinema theme of a young man's maturation, it also needs to land female ticket-buyers but seems a lot like something women could find at home on the WE channel.

The mental and physical landscape would do justice to an Atom Egoyan film, but in this film, the key dramatic moments feel as forced as they are predictable.

A repellent movie filled with gratuitous violence, Election is bound to find an appreciative audience among those who like their cinematic criminals noisy, stupid and deadly.

The writing in Brooklyn seems even more generic. An excessive use of voice-over narration is a sure sign of a failure of dramatization.

While Michael Keaton and Brendan Fraser turn in a pair of sturdy performances, the film itself proves to be a harder sell, especially because it looks and sounds like Mamet but proves to be a flimsy knockoff.

For all the personal ties to the material, the film too often reaches for broad-strokes inspiration in a way that feels generic.

Despite the inherent, shocking nature of the material, Dan Klores' narrowly focused, poorly paced documentary lacks a narrative thrust that could have made for a more compelling film.

An improvement of sorts over the lifeless 2005 edition.

The culture-clash procedural, which brings the small-town teen to big bad Hollywood, feels more perfunctory than inspired.

Carell is getting quite good as these everyman characters but lacks the audacity of, say, a Carrey or a Robin Williams. He is making comedy out of dullness.

What a cast but what a disappointment.

More accessible than some of the filmmaker's more extreme work.

The film feels miscast. Neither Zeta-Jones nor Eckhart look the least bit comfortable in a restaurant kitchen. More troubling, they look downright uncomfortable with each other.

Finally, a postfeminist multicultural musical extravaganza for 8-year-old girls. Is Bratz not the most totally stylin' movie ever? Grownups won't think so, but for their daughters who share a "passion for fashion" with the dolls that are giving Barbie a run for her money, it will be the event of the season.

The ending underscores the old cliche about the banality of evil but getting there is meant to be the whole fun. For some people at least.

A comedy-drama with alarming similarities to a relic from 1976, "Norman, Is That You?" In that film, Redd Foxx and Pearl Bailey were parents shocked to discover that their son was gay and living with a white lover. That's basically the same gimmick in this new film from writer-director Maurice Jamal.

In its third time out of the gate, Rush Hour 3, reuniting Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan, hits the ground stalling.

The comedy has several inspired moments and a genuine flair for the satiric, but overall the film leaves you cold.

Cain has crafted a modest picture, filmed in Canada, that too often feels like a very elaborate episode of "Gunsmoke."

Bears more than a slight connection to the landmark of the genre, 1974's "Death Wish," starring Charles Bronson. It is based on novelist Brian Garfield's sequel to his original book, though any resemblance is tenuous at best.

The movie doesn't have much visual style or atmosphere, but it does have a kinder, gentler spirit than many gross-out comedies, and that makes it a likable time killer.

Julie Taymor's visual gifts are very much in evidence in Across the Universe, an ambitious, only partly successful attempt to reinvigorate the musical genre.

As Mr. Woodcock demonstrates, a great premise can generate a lot of goodwill and almost overcome an uneven script. So too can expert performances.

Cute and cartoonish rule the day, and teens and tweens will be the film's chief audience.

This fascinating relationship gets smothered in pointlessly long takes, repetitive scenes, grim Western landscapes and mumbled, heavily accented dialogue.

Ang Lee's lugubrious spy epic Lust, Caution brings to mind what soldiers say about war: that it's long periods of boredom relieved by moments of extremely heightened excitement.

No one will mistake director Alejandro Chomski's Feel the Noise for great drama. But there's an undeniable sweetness to the characters, the performers are highly appealing, and the music sizzles.

There is a fine idea for a romantic comedy in Jake Paltrow's The Good Night but the writer-director, in his debut feature, never develops it much beyond the idea stage.

The film plods along without a lot of excitement or inspiration.

Ultimately, the film, for all its evident verisimilitude, never really demonstrates a compelling reason for being.

Rendition tackles the concern in a heavy-handed thriller with simplistic characters and manipulative story lines.

An unstable mix of a tearjerker, junkie-recovery story and odd-couple pairing. The film marks the American debut of Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier, whose European films show a strong affinity for stories of human frailties and of families unraveling.

Somewhat original and amusing. But only somewhat.

Blandly interesting.