You can take the phoenix-rising actor out of straight-to-video trash, but-well, you know the rest of it.

Given how prominent the postcard sultriness of her backdrop is compared with the story's emotional ping-pong, all she ends up with is a kinder, chicer Adrian Lyne movie.

While Jumping the Broom showcases rarely depicted class issues within the black community, the film still relies on wince-inducing stereotypes to delineate them.

Two monologues-one in which the Hobo compares himself to a bear, the other a Travis Bickle–like screed delivered to a roomful of increasingly distressed babies-are damn near Shakespearean. It's a shame the performance is contained in a Z-movie patchwork that's a bit too knowingly repugnant.

Fulkerson's out to tweak the medical establishment, as well as offer dietary tips, and his film makes effective use of case studies and graphs to build a convincing, if inevitably simplified, argument for better living through fresh produce.

Michael Goldbach's pretentious take on identity development is woefully lacking in either subversive humor or genuine pathos; the overwrought end-of-the-world backdrop of a rampaging serial killer and a toxic industrial fire only poisons the concoction further.

Based on a banned short story from the 1920s, Caterpillar might be read as a reaction to hawkish nationalism, but it's more a cry for the unknown soldier in the kitchen and bedroom.

Gibson simply turns his signature righteous rage into a crushing inward sorrow-Sad Max?-and Foster boldly plays everything straight, rendering her actor's unnerving turn to mania (and a pitch-black third act) with zero tongue-in-cheek.

Except for two brief summits between Alba and Messina's pillowy lips, however, An Invisible Sign fails even to pander effectively.

This rom-com certainly has something old, something borrowed and something blue-the something new, however, is MIA.

The Fast and the Furious movies haven't exactly gotten better as they've gone along.

Thor accomplishes its essential goal and little else, which is to introduce the mighty warrior to the Marvel screen universe.

The culture wars may be simmering throughout writer-director Ben Hickernell's script-the Save the Whales and pro-choice bumper stickers on Will's VW invite a brutal barfly beatdown-but the real casualties are momentum and narrative cohesion.

A mess-but a beautiful one, crammed with enough big ideas and outsize performances for three movies.

Lessons are learned, bullies get their comeuppance, and every Wonder Years plot device is trotted out for maximum and-I-was-never-the-same-again nostalgia.

Further marred by second-rate 3-D and the sort of cornball one-liners that even a fairy godmother couldn't love, it's a tolerance-testing tale that puts the grim in Grimm.

Some viewers might give the movie a few extra points for its retro vibe of taciturn badassedness. But little punctures the wall of emotional remove-the pulse rate is way too controlled for entertainment's sake.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams feels stuck in a middling zone of too much conjecture and not enough scholarship.

The writer-director does have a wonderful eye-a shot of a tractor wheel sticking out of the Hudson River is museumworthy-but his grasp of the melodramatic could use a little more grounding.

Offers an intriguing outsider's document of Russian culture reinventing itself from the outside in; its main export, however, seems to be good old-fashioned Ugly Americanism.

The Arbor's pummeling second half begins with the collapse of its celebrity subject; the following spirals of self-destruction make you suspect that some childhoods are simply too hard to escape. Tough, worthy stuff.

Fortunately, Teegarden and McDonell make up for the hand-me-down plotting with a sweet, unaffected chemistry.

A classically structured rampage that bears serious comparison to the definitive greats of Akira Kurosawa, 13 Assassins will floor connoisseurs of action, mood and the dignity of a pissed-off scowl.

Epitomizing the shrill franchise's schizophrenic tonal shifts, Madea metes out Christian life lessons with one hand-and righteously bitch-slaps with the other.

Without larger-than-life drama or a steady stream of historical detail, it's merely a gargantuan production that's been lavished on a story hardly worth trumpeting.

The bulk of the film inspires little more than eye-rolling and impatient finger-tapping.

Shindô concocts a stylistic mix of odd experimental flourishes, female nudity, Soviet-style close-ups and baldly sentimental melodrama to emphasize the toll this disaster took; its cup may runneth over, yet the stark vibe is impossible to shake.

The film isn't blinded by Candy's beauty and celebrity; it digs critically, if still empathetically, beneath.