The conclusion, clearly meant to feel ambiguously poetic, is distinctly unsatisfying.

Such a glorious cast, deployed to such trivial effect!

In the end, it all remains a dramatically inert set of talking points, and not even the high-caliber cast can make much more out of it.

The entire movie is one big build-up to a twist that, while not exactly cheating, plays is an awfully cheap trick.

This film's rhythms suggest nothing so much as a weirdly macho telenovela, full of family drama, isn't-it-ironic humor and maudlin twists of cruel fate.

The look is overpowering enough to delay--though not forever--examination of the plot, which has to pull a fast one at every turn to keep moving and which eventually makes a mockery of plausibility.

Although director Rosman spices up the predictable murders with some stabs at surrealism, a slasher movie is a slasher movie is a slasher movie, and this one soon wears out its welcome.

Unfortunately, Defending Your Life suffers from a slushy-headed pop fever.

No Small Affair, while nothing special, at least doesn't resort to the usual teen sex-fantasy cliches and gains more points for what it isn't (sophomoric) than what it is (occasionally touching).

The film's 85 minutes drag by painfully slowly, because there's no respite from Chapman's tedious, self-pitying reveries.

Smith has changed a few plot points around to keep readers who already know the secret of the ruins guessing, and to some extent the strategy works. There was, however, no reason whatsoever to change the book's perfect endings.

Attempting to force the story into a romantic comedy template compels Marshall to gloss over the disturbing aspects his characters' disabilities, frequently forcing Ribisi and Lewis to act the part of noble fools.

The film's characters, computer-animated over motion-caputure footage of flesh-and-blood performers, are as blank-eyed and rubbery-looking as moving mannequins -- the stuff of nightmares, not dreams.

Overall, rookie director Ross stumbles over the material, neither destroying nor enhancing the talents of O'Toole, Clark, and company.

But it's all done with such high style and whizzes along at such an exhausting pace that you probably won't have enough time to notice how little you care.

Regardless of his true intentions, Resnikoff has made a screwy horror movie that, despite itself, is fun to watch.

Predictable but pleasant fluff.

A heavy-duty mediocrity, sluggish, unwieldy, and instantly forgettable.

A disappointing hodgepodge of rehashed clichés.

Sandler's shtick is the main thing dragging down this otherwise pleasant romantic comedy, but he's come a long way since the crude, juvenile "Billy Madison" (1995).

For all its shocking content, it remains a rather conventional psychological portrait of Oedipal attraction taken to a disturbing extreme.

Animator Bill Plympton's seventh feature is a must-see for fans of his often witty, always scabrous, hand-drawn work.

The first half of Lover's film is surprisingly affecting...But the film comes apart in its second half, when James' flight triggers a long series of flashbacks to the brothers' childhood.

The story works, in that everything fits together, but the film feels hollow and unfinished, like a run-through for a movie rather than the movie itself.

Romano is no match for his heavy-hitting supporting cast: Next to the seasoned likes of Harden or Rip Torn, who's hilarious as Cole's campaign manager, Romano's presence barely registers. Aside from the charming Tierney, there are no surprises in Mooseport.

Exactly the kind of sporadically clever, button-pushing fright-fest that keeps genre fans hanging on until something more fulfilling comes along.

Boasting an inventive concept, with a nicely nuanced performance from Breaking Away's Christopher, Fade To Black is a creepy little film that, perhaps, doesn't go quite far enough.

Without question the breeziest viewing experience now available at a multiplex near you.

In the end, the sheer obviousness of Shainberg and screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson's take on Diane Arbus' perverse determination to examine and document the forbidden overshadows even Kidman's beautifully modulated performance, which takes Diane from brittle neurosis to a vaguely predatory ingenuousness.

This dreary satire of the post-war American family has a small but devoted following. Writer-director Tony Richardson has constructed a complex screenplay based on an even more convoluted novel by John Irving. It's a fairy tale about virtually everything and, as such, will not satisfy everybody. The film is laced with blackly humorous takes on heterosexuality, homosexuality, incest, abandonment, Nazism, masochism--a veritable laundry list of contemporary neuroses.

Haynes's feature debut, is an exercise in cinema of ideas that, while audacious and occasionally compelling, is ultimately less than the sum of its parts.

Decent songs, an amusing script and some surprisingly imaginative animation.

Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger step into the roles originally played by Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw, but their attempts to inject steamy romance into the action are undermined by indifferent direction.

Congo, adapted by John Patrick Shanley and directed by Stephen Spielberg protege Frank Marshall, is not one of the better silly action pictures set in gratuitously fake jungles and featuring nefarious foreigners, threatening natives, and talking gorillas.

They don't make movies like they used to, and this Oscar-winning Italian-French co-production spends the better part of three hours proving it.

Although Oliver & Company is fairly entertaining and better looking than the average Saturday morning cartoon show, the computer-assisted animation is relatively stiff and inexpressive.

O'Hara looks like she's just doing Wayne a favor, and Pat Wayne and singer Vinton just don't have much screen presence. These weaknesses plus a mediocre script add up to a very weak Wayne outing.

This short documentary might teach you a thing or two about the electronic instrument that revolutionized the sound of modern music.

Far too long for a movie so unabashedly formulaic, Sylvain White's drama about a kid from L.A. who discovers the world of "stepping" at an Atlanta university uses a propulsive soundtrack and flashy dance sequences to draw attention away from wooden acting and a cliched plot.

This mix of sweat and uplift in the Civil Rights era doesn't quite come off, despite some strong performances and the fact that it's based on a genuinely inspirational true story.

The trouble with this satirical take US involvement in Iraq, penned by Mark Leyner, John Cusack and Jeremy Pikser, is that the real thing is equally absurd and only marginally less funny.

While it is true that nothing all that original happens during the funny parts of the movie either, the family's Puerto Rican heritage gives the movie's comedy a unique spin.

Scott swaddles this fundamentally straightforward revenge story in a jumble of bleary freeze frames, random changes of color saturation and film stock, jump cuts and stuttering montages, splashing text from some menacing word soup onto the resulting collage of chicly disturbing images.

Harkening back to a time when race relations in New York City were even worse than they seem today.

Putting Julie Andrews in a Hitchcock film at all, meanwhile, proves that a spoonful of sugar doesn't help the medicine go down...in the most de-light-ful way. Dull and way too long.

It shares all the original's shortcomings —--it’s too long and too loud and filled with historical disinformation -- but none of the snap that made "National Treasure" fun for kids and a guilty pleasure for some adults.

It's all very well to say that laughter and tears are just a heartbeat apart, but both variations on Melinda's story bear the unmistakable mark of Allen's morose sensibilities.

Ernest Dickerson, formerly Spike Lee's cinematographer, continues to show promise in the director's seat with this solidly made, well-acted survival thriller that is unfortunately limited by its overworked premise.

None of it really amounts to anything, even as a nostalgic snapshot of a time and place.

Vince and Cesar have been written to evoke equal audience sympathy, so there's no suspense whatsover in the outcome of their climactic match-up, the brutal realism of Shelton's staging notwithstanding.

A good example of the now-neglected caper genre.

The less said about Simpson the better; whatever her talents, she can't sell a simple reaction shot, and, perhaps sensing this, Coolidge's camera tends to drift south of her face.

You can't accuse the film of making speed addiction look glamorous, but the freak-show kick is too compelling for it to be called cautionary.

Ultimately, the comedy here is grounded in self-hatred, hostility, and despair. Nearly everyone who wanders through this brash and deliberately tasteless film is stupid, ungainly, or grotesquely tragic. But this only heightens the pleasure during moments of delirious merriment.

The irony is that Shakur's speaking voice is the film's greatest asset: His transformation from eager-to-please teenager to gangsta icon is vividly apparent in the sound bites.

It's all densely imagined and more than a little goofy -- perhaps too goofy for the average American viewer.

This lighthearted meditation on life, death, love and timing contains some genuinely lovely scenes, but they're buried in a shapeless jumble of cutesy-pie vignettes.

Girard and his collaborators are so focused on the stunning tableaux that all other considerations fall by the wayside, leaving their visual achievements -- miraculous on such a small budget -- mired in the elaborate but maladroit storytelling.

While trying so hard to have such a good time, the movie simply forgets to be funny, and begins to grate before the body even cools.

The crime story here is lazily constructed, mostly an excuse for the give-and-take between Tucker and Chan, which is shrill and raucous without being especially clever.

The whole film has a rag-tag, purposefully shambolic feel -- but this communal commitment to a DIY aesthetic is also his undoing, particularly when he allows an irritatingly manic Jack Black to run wild and virtually hijack the movie.

The direction is slack -- it's Lloyd's first feature film and it shows -- the choreography clumsy and every ten minutes there's yet another gratuitous showstopper shouting in your face and insisting you have a good time.

Fans of the series may be disappointed to see so little of Barker's sadistic Cenobites, but while they're used sparingly, they're used to good effect.

Despite, or perhaps because of, a flurry of 11th-hour recutting and reshoots -- the film feels rushed and unfocused.

Visually inventive, The Maker is a superficially compelling film that adds nothing new to the environment-vs.-heredity debate.

That Carrey, who's a bit old for the part, always seems one facial muscle away from a smirk doesn't help matters.

Despite its preposterous storyline, Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dead is surprisingly entertaining and fun. While the film, directed by Stephen Herek from a screenplay by Neil Landau and Tara Ison, might have been sharper, wittier and cleverer, it nevertheless achieves on its own level by genuinely involving its young target audience.

Shane West does a pretty impressive impersonation of the on-stage antics of Darby Crash...Unfortunately, little else in this clunky, half-baked biopic rings very true.

It doesn't pay to look too closely at this sumptuous fantasy, but if you're in the right mood to let it wash over you it's very warm and fizzy indeed.

Seven segments make up this melange--some of them work; some of them are dreadful. It was Allen's sixth screenplay, his third directorial assignment, and one of his weakest efforts.

It desperately wants to be a paranoid political thriller, but this cobbled-together collection of corruption-on-Capitol Hill and cop movie cliches is so implausible that it's hard to care about any of the conspiratorial cover-ups and counter cover-ups.

There's nothing under the goofball gags and gushing gore, and its welcome is worn out well before it's over.

John Waters's film about a suburban mom turned serial killer lacks the bite it would need to be subversive, despite a few moments of vintage Waters tastelessness.

Aside from a few moments of comedy between Davis and Chase (in a relationship lifted almost unaltered from THE FRONT PAGE), HERO is an embarrassment best forgotten by everyone involved.

Though SMITHEREENS is not without its problems--much of the material seems to be cliched--it is a good display of what a persistent creative drive can achieve.

Fleder delivers the requisite shocks, and his direction is brisk, efficient and occasionally stylish; Judd and Freeman both give more than the material demands.

Though the material is nothing special and relies on the avenging angel mystique that had been established for Eastwood in the Leone films, director Post squeezes out some fine and memorable moments in the film

Wearing its patent ridiculousness on its sleeve, this slight but generally agreeable comedy integrates the Airplane/Top Secret school of non-sequitur comedy into a less explicitly parodic buddy flick.

Davis has a chance to let it all hang out in the two roles and she does.

This teen-oriented gloss on Shakespeare's tale is cute and occasionally quite funny, but it's undermined by slack direction.

Works better as a look at life among a family of Croatian immigrants in Vienna during the nightmare years of the Balkan conflicts than an exploration of the psychosexual tension between a prostitute and her son.

Eastwood, ironically, is the weak link in the cast, a less-than-ideal choice to play a screw-up who squeaks through life on personal magnetism: He's got star quality, sure, even a certain remote sexiness, but he's no charmer.

The Duffs are certainly cute together, but not even their natural chemistry can enliven all the preachy bits about hard work and the meaning of happiness.

Director Joe Chapelle knows how to stage a spooky scene, and Going and McGowan supply a refreshing alternative to the shrieking bimbos so familiar to horror fans.

THE BLUES BROTHERS is a monument to waste, noise and misplaced cool, but it does have its engagingly nutty moments.

James Woods adds another hateful, embittered creep to his gallery of losers, neurotics and junkyard dogs with vampire slayer Jack Crow.

For all its action, suspense, and intricate plotting, THE PACKAGE comes across as a mostly leaden entry in the political-paranoia thriller category.

Despite desperate efforts to sell this umpteenth recycling of the Camelot legend as a Sean Connery vehicle, it's Richard Gere's film and he's not much of a Lancelot.

Hope and Crosby had been making "Road" films for 12 years when they did this, their sixth installment in the series, the only one in color. It was getting tiresome by that time, although they managed some fun out of the slim plot.

Unfortunately, the trajectory of Mueller and co-screenwriter Kevin Kennedy's repetitive screenplay echoes "Taxi Driver" so closely as to invite unfavorable comparison with Martin Scorsese's benchmark chronicle of alienation.

The basic problem is that most of the humor is based on things that are beyond parody. Bad television commercials and lame low-budget films are funny enough as they are; exaggerating their ridiculousness is unnecessary. What is successful is the painstakingly accurate recreation of everything from the commercials to the title skit. The talented filmmakers demonstrate that they can handle a multitude of directing chores, and, although the scripting may lack imagination, the visuals are handled quite well.

A mighty strange movie, one that updates Chaucer's story to wartime Britain.

Offers exactly what you've come to expect from the series: Bland but wholly innocuous family entertainment featuring a cute kid and an even cuter dog.

Francis Ford Coppola falls down and goes boom with this depressing, ill-conceived comedy.

An uneven and somewhat predictable thriller.

A dismal misfire that attempts to make black comedy out of the adventures of war correspondents and the dirty business of international politics.

The cast gives believable and realistic performances, with script and direction contributing a sleekness, although the underlying messages receive undue emphasis.

The bizarrely entertaining relationship that blossoms between Sciorra and Piven is far more amusing and convincing, which only underscores the lack of chemistry between the dewy leads.