Appears to be a complete about-face for Kitano, and yet it's unmistakably his, both stylistically (the film is gorgeous to look at) and thematically.

It's vulgar, to be sure, but it's also brash and invigorating.

To an outsider, it's pretty thin stuff.

Based on the popular television series, Twilight Zone--The Movie is a frightfully lopsided omnibus that begins with two wretched episodes by John Landis and Steven Spielberg and finishes with an engrossing pair by Joe Dante and George Miller.

Its power lies in the intense, subtle performances of the ensemble cast and Bellott's ability to keep the tangled narrative threads from becoming a knotted mess.

Full of cheap disability jokes, stupid car chases, and boring shootouts, and none of it is very entertaining. Wilder and Pryor struggle mightily to pull it off, but the comic duo are capable of much more than this gimmick-filled rubbish allows.

The film is merciless in its depiction of death and suffering, Pitt and Corbet are perfectly cast, and Watts, who also served as executive producer, gives a disturbingly raw performance.

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.

Heartwarming is not always a bad thing.

The offbeat cast and gorgeous Barcelona locations can't quite make up for the thinness of the mystery and forced quirkiness of the characters and their tangled relationships.

While it may not be "Citizen Canine," Rise of the Lycans tells its tale competently and without the derivative nature of its predecessors.

Toothless satire punctuated by the occasional biting gag.

Neophytes may be baffled by the film's weirdly sentimental streak -- the vendetta that drives antiterrorist Van Damme and his nemesis (Rourke) is all about babies -- but by the time Rourke has mined the Colosseum (yes, the Colosseum) and sicced a Bengal tiger on Van Damme, the wise viewer is just sitting back and enjoying the show.

Although sporadically funny and not quite the disaster it was initially made out to be, this ROBIN HOOD robs gags from other films while giving the poor viewer far too few laughs.

Falk is as good as ever and the rest give it their all; you couldn't ask for a better cast, just better material.

Fascinating but thoroughly unbelievable.

This stirring if slightly overlong saga of England's WWII defense of its homeland features a staggering, star-studded cast, who abet the film's docudrama style with excellent portrayals down the line, despite the restrictions of their roles.

Spike Lee's newest is really a surprisingly vivid dramatic study of an aspiring actress in moonlighting hell.

WELCOME HOME ROXY CARMICHAEL is less a movie than it is an example of what the studios refer to as "product," the kind of toothless comedy that features big stars in frenetic and forgettable farces.

All that charm is wasted in careless scenes that don't make much sense and the whole thing feels slapped to together with chewing gum and spit.

A romantic comedy whose no-holds-barred gross-out elements sour an already graceless mix of crude pratfalls and heartache.

Relentlessly gray and paralyzed by narrative inertia, it collapses under the weight of its stars.

One-scene guest star Sissy Spacek packs enough genuine madness into her brief screen time to make the surrounding film feel like so much listless play-acting.

Overall it's a frustratingly uneven movie, delicate at one moment and bluntly obvious the next.

The kind of film only a mother could really love.

The insidious influence of too much therapy permeates this misguided and very long picture.

Whatever the project's "reality," it's insightful as well as entertaining, and the inclusion of real interviews with people both inside and outside the business means it functions as both an intelligent critique and a dire warning.

Campy hogwash.

The kids are fine, the original songs range from OK to wretched, and Barney is annoying as ever -- even more so, given his big-screen size and Dolby-enhanced guffaw.

It's an entertaining diversion whose clever structure gives pulp-crime cliches a welcome twist.

For the more intelligent Eastwood fan, the film offers an interesting exploration of the actor-director's screen persona. Throughout, he experiments with a number of different disguises, finally embracing total dehumanization when he steps into the Firefox, dons the special mind-reading helmet, and becomes one with the sleek, gleaming, high-tech killing machine.

Though positioned as a female buddy comedy, this uneven and overly busy comedy is more focused on the romantic travails of Vardalos and Duchovny, who's very nearly a carbon copy of her love interest in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding."

The film's gotcha! payoff doesn't justify the gloomy journey.

Labored and dispiriting.

Not much happens, but the the filmmakers' knowing, stylized eroticization of biker culture is extraordinary.

The movie turns into a rather-dull mad-scientist romp. Craven's direction is nothing more than workmanlike, and it appears that out of sheer boredom he threw two nightmare sequences into the mix.

CADENCE is watchable while it lasts, with a generous leavening of humor, but the film keeps throwing emotional punches that never quite connect.

Uneven tragicomedy.

John Irvin's direction is rudimentary for an action film and adds little excitement to the proceedings. There's not much suspense, with good guys and bad guys clearly drawn, and the final shootout is all too routine.

Johnny Depp's coruscating, rigorously uningratiating performance as debauched, self-destructive 17th-century aristocrat John Wilmot, the Earl of Rochester, is the glue that doesn't quite hold together first-time director Laurence Dunmore's adaptation of Stephen Jeffreys' 1994 play.

Delivers equal parts overwrought tedium and mind-bending beauty, spiked with brilliant throwaway images that more than make up for Kelly's heavy-handed hot-button pretensions.

Light and sweet, comfort food dressed up with a dash of exotic spice.

A combination of fresh twists, worn cliches, and frenetic camerawork, this film offers a premise that adults may not subscribe to--namely, that even Santa gets old, tired, forgetful, and in need of replacement. Still, the character with a heart of gold aims to entertain the young set and generally hits his targets.

A painfully self-conscious comedy that mistakes relentless self-referentiality for cleverness, this half-witted misfire is filled with accelerated motion, repeated and overlapping scenes, direct address to the camera and other cliches of defamiliarization.

Considering the standards set by the first two Superman films, Superman III is a disappointment. The story's mythic qualities had worn thin by the time this film was made, so the makers had to rely on Richard Pryor as their audience grabber.

The film is graphic without being lurid, and the naked emotions onscreen are far more shocking than the naked bodies -- though there are plenty of those, in all shapes and sizes.

Though clearly shot on a shoestring, it's handsome, tightly written and generally well acted.

Impressively stylish but curiously empty.

Flawed, but fascinating, this somber adaptation of David Guterson's award-winning novel is sometimes sluggish and difficult to follow, but it's also unexpectedly poetic.

While the film delivers some sharp dialogue, overall it's soft and slightly unfocused.

The plot is Kate-Moss thin. Basically agreeable stuff, but not much more. And that's a shame.

Stylish but shallow story.

Despite a terribly conceived coda, Luke and his brothers have mostly succeeded, thanks in large part to sharp dialogue, a solid vintage soundtrack (Rick Nelson's "Garden Party" features prominently) and some great older actors -- Cassel is a particular standout -- from the heyday of American cinema.

Heartfelt but only intermittently interesting documentary.

No cliché is unturned, no "dog duty" pun avoided (get it -- dog doody), no creepy gay-panic subtext unplumbed in this family comedy.

A modest but well-done film with a little something for everyone.

Not even the high-caliber talents of Gene Hackman and Morgan Freeman can save this stagy, ridiculously over-baked psychological thriller.

The film delivers some genuine laughs — Diggs and Anderson are a hoot throughout — and real rapper Snoop Dogg all but steals the picture with his brief voice turn as Ronnie Rizzat.

The film's shortcomings notwithstanding, it's a must-see for Swinton fans, who can select a favorite among four different variations of their idol or simply adore them all.

This neo-noir pastiche is so preposterously overwrought that you keep figuring it must be some kind of joke, except that it's not funny.

Bland family comedy.

Noisy, derivative and thoroughly preposterous even by the standards of 21st-century action movies.

This amiable comedy has laughs, but can't compete with the warmth and charm of the original.

Not one of the team's best, but enough fun flowed from the combined pens of Barry (who wrote the play) and Stewart (who wrote the screenplay) to make it a pleasant comedy.

The unfortunate fact is that it's more than a little dull when it isn't preposterous.

Never adds up to much of anything.

Davidson elicits warm performances from inexperienced actors, but his efforts are in vain because the script provides a hackneyed treatment of its delicate subject.

This otherwise amiable family film plods whenever the action returns to dry land.

As soon as it pitches camp in generic romantic-comedy territory, it loses its intriguing edge and becomes one more predictable girl-meets-unsuitable-boy story.

There are no surprises for anyone who's seen the earlier version, and younger horror fans may find the modest body count and restrained gore unsatisfying.

Everything honest and hard-hitting in the book has been tastefully subverted, and the performances are scaled to meet the script's tiny demands.

The movie's selling point is Schneider acting goofy, chewing on worms, making goo-goo eyes at a she-goat and licking his private parts.

Apparently intended as a larky, character-driven adventure with dark underpinnings, this attenuated road movie was originally envisioned as a vehicle for relative unknowns, and might have worked better that way.

Overall it's an enjoyable cruise down the Garden State Parkway, and Affleck and Castro are charming companions.

Character and plot are the main event, and the film's got both in spades.

QUICKSILVER isn't a movie. It's actually a series of rock videos occasionally interrupted by a slight dalliance with story progression. The premise is wholly fabricated, the style is pure MTV, and the characters are all pressed from Hollywood cliche cutters.

How much you enjoy the film will depend entirely on how much you enjoy the spectacle of Williams spewing forth streams of nonsensical gibberish in an attempt to impersonate a German record producer, and Crystal pitching snit fits.

Members of what used to be referred to euphemistically as the "raincoat crowd," will probably enjoy Winterbottom's experiment more than most.

A little like a leisurely surf through YouTube.

Director Andrew Davis (THE FUGITIVE) punches out the action sequences with frightening efficiency, and The Fugitive Guy keeps things moving -- so fast, in fact, that it's easy to get lost in the tangle of conflicting conspiracies. The whole breathless business feels as though it should be over about 15 minutes before it is.

Stanzler's ideas about the psychic legacy of 9/11 are so confused -- that by the time he unveils the final plot twist, his film has lost every shred of credibility.

Crafting this crude, noisy remake of Disney's first live-action comedy required the labor of no fewer than five screenwriters.

It's a bit of 60s idealism wedged in what basically looks like a hip-hop music video.

This lively and nicely timed comedy has plenty enough, farce, slapstick and even drawing-room humor.

Boyle's movie jettisons much of the telling detail; it has the shambling rhythm of a shaggy dog story and so simplifies the characters' ethical dilemmas that it's hard to care what they do.

The film founders during a series of uncomfortable scenes involving Biggs and DeVito, whose performance verges on painful caricature, but Ricci is adorable and delivers Allen's sharp dialogue with real flare.

This is the kind of movie in which a dozen bad guys with an automatic weapon in each hand couldn't hit a lake if they were standing at the bottom of it, to steal the screenplay's best wiseacre remark.

Cutting Class does a nice job of concealing the killer's true identity, even as it leaves a trail of clues pointing to him. However, this sloppily directed, indifferently written black comedy fails to create sympathetic characters or even deliciously nasty ones.

Medicine Man tries hard to be a film for all tastes, but it ends up appealing to none.

While the film is shot in shades of gray, the drama is played out in black and white.

Added bonuses: A nice selection of oldies on the soundtrack, and an amusing third-act cameo by Rosie Perez as Ray's second wife.

An uneasy mix of B-movie scares.

Affleck is no more convincing as a flesh-and-blood action than as a superbrain, Thurman is cruelly photographed and director Woo appears to be imitating his own worst work.

Director Forest Whitaker, who appears to have been typed as a female-friendly director in the wake of "Waitinh to Exhale's" runaway success, drags out the already painfully slow proceedings with syrupy dissolves, slo-mo sequences and redundant flashbacks, underscoring it all with an intrusively obvious country soundtrack that matches lyrics to emotions with cringe-inducing exactness.

This lowbrow romp doesn't even have the courage of its own infantile grossness.

Without the gloss of novelty, the film's underdeveloped characters and thin -- though busy -- story are forced into the foreground, and its 88-minute running time feels far longer.

In KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE a potentially interesting genre-warping concept is turned into a merely dull and repetitive one by the Chiodo brothers, who created CRITTERS.

Under direction that can only be described as scatterbrained by choreographer-turned-director Kenny Ortega (NEWSIES), HOCUS POCUS runs off in so many directions at once that it keeps tripping over itself behind a plot that doesn't make the slightest bit of sense.