Based on a well-regarded novel by Brenda Navarro, it’s a wafty character study so stripped down and elliptical that it lacks the connective tissue to hook us into its story or provide emotional access to its characters.

Jim Queen is a crass, profane, giddily stupid romp through a heap of stereotypes about gay life in Paris. It’s teeming with jokes about prostate orgasms, about tops and bottoms, about fetishes and bodily fluids and G’d out party bois. It comes as a welcome shock to the system here at this august, black-tie film festival. I just wish the movie was funnier and fresher than it is.

Not bad enough to be considered a camp, guilty pleasure, it's more of a dull, defanged dirge with the reliably intriguing Benicio Del Toro and Anthony Hopkins turning in oddly disaffected performances.

Sherlock Holmes goes wrong in many ways except for one -- at the boxoffice.

An uneven romantic comedy that feels as fresh as a hunk of week-old soda bread.

Charmless sequel.

A mechanical sci-fi'er absent of logic or emotions. It functions as an expensive place-filler on the Disney release schedule and, as such, will be welcomed by only the least discriminating thriller fans.

The technical barrage of visual and digital effects, quick cuts and strobe lighting does produce something akin to the sensation of playing a video game. So why, one wonders, don't potential viewers simply play one instead of watching this pale imitation?

A dull actioner that looks like a bad video game.

An artistic fiasco that cuts across genre lines and all logic to become, perhaps, an instant midnight movie.

Combines purported raw case study footage with dramatic "recreations" to unsuccessful effect.

The title is a good indication of this movie's blandness and predictability.

Not a single person in this ensemble comedy doesn't suffer from colossal stupidity.

Mercilessly plodding pacing, problematic character motivations and a fundamental lack of chemistry between the two star-crossed lovers in question don't do a lot to help its cause.

Making a vampire movie without any bite is like removing guns from a Western.

The fifth outing for the slime-dripping, shape-changing creatures, the Aliens are looking a little dogged, perhaps ready for the Alien Retirement Home. Meanwhile, the Predator warriors, who never achieved the artistic heights of their counterpart, look better invisible. When visible, they resemble robotic can openers gone berserk.

Bruno is only intermittently funny and all too often the "ambushes" of celebrities and civilians look staged. The movie is even a tad -- dare we say it? -- tedious.

There are twist endings and there are twist endings -- and then there is the logic-strangling, complete cheat of a reveal that takes place in the final 10 minutes of Hide and Seek. It's so absolutely preposterous that it stops the film cold and draws a collective "Aw c'mon!"

An unwieldy, excessively talky affair, unintentionally exhibiting all the clunky stops and starts and self-conscious ramblings of a particularly awkward first date.

This tale of the theater could have used more time on the road.

The director's split-screen effects and hand-held digital camerawork go from being innovative to repetitive to irritating in a Santa Cruz minute.

Vin Diesel is out of his element in this lame family comedy.

There is little suspense, however, and while all the attention on the small details of their lives is laudable, it isn't very interesting.

Even as agile a performer as Sandra Bullock seems to be straining here amid the repetitive jokes and muddled girl-power message.

Eye-popping yet ultimately thin and shallow as a page in a graphic novel.

Any movie starring Penelope Cruz or William H. Macy can't be all bad. And Sahara, which stars both Penelope Cruz and William H. Macy, proves the point: It isn't all bad.

Ultimately a less-than-satisfying cinematic meal.

It's a highly stylized piece of work typical of director Todd Solondz, who renders wildly exaggerated sequences on a topic not generally thought of as a basis for comedy. He leaves it to the viewer to decide if it's insightful whimsy or meaningless drivel.