Whether this riot of unrepentant trashiness strikes you as tediously ridiculous or brainlessly amusing is probably a matter of mood.

The pacing and action sequences are staged in a manner reminiscent of a spaghetti western and are quite good, but the allegories are too much and too many.

The irony is that for all its "not your father's spy movie" posing, it's exactly like the later James Bond pictures: predictable, lightweight and 100 percent disposable

Sternfeld's script, developed at the Sundance screenwriters' lab, is spare to the point of stinginess; individual scenes play beautifully without adding up to anything, stranding the actors in an emotional vacuum that drains the life from their performances.

Nathanson processes this pungent stew of greed, ambition and self-delusion into pablum so sweet and bland it wouldn't shock a convent-raised idealist.

A feature-length Twilight Zone episode, filtered -- not entirely successfully -- though the sensibilities of David Lynch and his Wild at Heart collaborator, Barry Gifford.

Not even Drew Barrymore's million-dollar smile can save this humiliating comedy.

A few funny bits float the film for a while -- it's always nice to see Peters onscreen, no matter what she's doing -- but it's really as showcase for Marcus, who also wrote the script.

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

The darker hues of Amis's story, though frequently discernible beneath the gloss, are ultimately submerged beneath the usual set of artistic compromises.

The filmmaker's command of storytelling is less than assured, and with the exception of Figueroa and Annette Murphy (who plays Pepe's mistress Letti), the film's performances range from awkwardly wooden to amateurishly awful. While Arteta is definitely a filmmaker to watch, this particular movie is a testament to aspirations that considerably exceed his present abilities.

CONEHEADS represents a prime example of opportunistic commercial filmmaking, with plot and character sacrificed to an endless series of comic ideas that are never developed.

Rosie O'Donnell's bracing freshness and genuine likability cut through the cloying stuff every time, but there's nowhere near enough of her to balance things out.

The problem with Can't Buy Me Love is that too often characters do and say things teenagers wouldn't. At times this is a funny, touching film, but more often it isn't.

Long takes do not a masterpiece make, and the suspicion that the whole thing is a lark is only bolstered by Damon and Affleck's inability to contain their giggles.

Though extremely violent, the film is surprisingly boring in spots.

Although the story is as predictable as can be -- "surprise" twist ending included -- the performances are better than those in most super-low budget horror pictures, and Jessica Gallant's super-16mm cinematography is surprisingly handsome.

A winding story with no real direction.

Good intentions can't compensate for crude technique or lack of insight, but Israeli director Dan Wolman's deserves credit for broaching a serious subject.

CONSENTING ADULTS shows that the urban thriller genre spawned by FATAL ATTRACTION has run out of gas. Viewers who have seen such films as THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE, SINGLE WHITE FEMALE and UNLAWFUL ENTRY are unlikely to enjoy this derivative effort; it's the same paranoid mayhem--and not as much fun.

Things quickly degenerate into a series of juvenile jokes about flatulence and bosoms, and by the end the cast is reduced to frantically manhandling a corpse for yucks. Not funny.

It's neither romantic nor particularly funny.

The film's real star is its magnificent set (filmed and constructed in Malta), though Williams manages to screw up his face and eye in a credible imitation of the drawings, and Duvall is perfect as the gangly Olive Oyl.

It's even louder and dumber than the first XXX, but if watching things fall down and go boom in a very big way makes you cheer, you're in luck.

A sad blot on an impressive career.

Though glossy and smoothly directed, this limp concoction has all the sparkle of flat champagne.

Freighted with far more serious issues than most movies of its kind but neglects or glosses over most of them.

As contrived and pretentious as its title.

It's familiar, undemanding and not as bad as it could have been, but you can't help thinking that somewhere else, there's a real party going on.

The movie's gossamer-thin plot, padded with dream sequences and flashbacks to scenes you saw less than an hour earlier, exists only as an excuse for obvious homages to better films, stunt casting...and what pass for clever remarks in circles unfamiliar with real wit.

The kids, especially the Breslin siblings, are cute. Cusack is underused, but makes her annoying, potpourri-loving suburban mom seem sympathetic. And Corbett is well-cast as an eminently suitable, if slightly dull, life mate for the newly grown-up Helen.

The story itself is uninteresting, and the songs are painfully undistinguished.

While handsomely mounted and generally well acted, the film is undermined by long stretches of awkward, obvious dialogue and by the vagueness of Lisa's revolt against the status quo.

This bizarre hybrid of romantic comedy cliches and less-than-subtle social commentary defeats their best efforts to make it sparkle.

There's not much to this empty-headed feature except that Sheen gives a commendable performance with what little characterization is provided by the lame script.

Ruzowitzky concentrates on delivering on sporadic scares at the expense of figuring out how to make individual scenes coalesce into a coherent chiller about medical megalomania.

The non-stop insouciance soon becomes more grating than charming, and is sustained by some remarkably flat dialogue. Adding to the film's troubles is the gratuitously "cute" use made of the baby--one scene exists purely so the audience can coo appreciatively as she takes her first steps. Ten minutes of this, and Nick and Nora Charles would have ducked home for a highball.

Gallo's poor, poor pitiful me routine wears very thin, very fast, but Ricci is incandescent, a softly-glowing dumpling of a dream-girl in powder-blue fishnet tights and sparkly tap shoes: She's the diamond in the dirt.

What may have looked good on paper across the Atlantic gets lost in the translation to our shores.

Fiore captures various artists horsing around with groupies, smoking dope and hanging out backstage, and cuts the material together in the kinetic but meaningless manner of MTV promos.

Penn, in particular, is so subdued he's hardly there, while Hurley's seductive, hyper-articulate Adaline is actually ludicrous, sucking suggestively on ice cubes and reciting poetry like a phone-sex operator pretending to be a book-reading babe.

Professionally produced and surprisingly tame.

All of which would be fine if Figgis managed to work up any real suspense, but the film slogs towards its inevitable mano-a-mano showdown like something up to its knees in mud.

The bad news is that, though professionally produced on a micro-budget, Azita Zendel's ambitious writing-directing debut is undermined by an awkward script and some very amateurish acting.

Despite a few good moments here and there and a stunning performance by Gena Rowlands, Light of Day is an anemic drama with little to say.

The big trouble here is that there seem to be pieces of three different films rubbing up against each other without ever fitting together.

A gloomy, preposterous psychological thriller.

The results are a bit amateurish, but wholesome and achingly sweet.

A hick-town, screwball comedy version of "Dog Day Afternoon," and surprisingly palatable despite its sitcom soul and star.

The jabs at the expense of self-centered New Yorkers with more money than sense are so mild they're pointless -- if satire doesn't hurt, what's the point?

Simultaneously nakedly formulaic and oddly clumsy, particularly in terms of character introduction.

With all the glossy sex, you'd be forgiven for thinking Zalman King was directing, except that even King knows you don't need such a ludicrously complicated plot to show pretty people having sex. Each character is so burdened with gratuitous back story that it's exhausting trying to separate the grain from the chaff, until you realize none of it matters at all.

Once LL Cool J, easily the film's most magnetic presence, is out of the game, the whole thing falls apart in a hazy, confusing mess.

This dopey swashbuckler offers little action but lashings of DiCaprio's soft, hairless flesh.

The CGI is well-done, but Garfield's presence among the otherwise live cast is a constant distraction.

Lame and inane, but a huge hit in Spain.

Director Thomas Schlamme's unsure handling of scenes and indiscriminate use of unappealing close-ups of actors emoting at full steam only emphasize the material's weakness.

Davis not only wrote and directed the film but edited it as well, all of which is no mean feat. Too bad she couldn't have lent some of her own gumption and self-assurance to her pathetic heroine.

It's really all about the cars, kandy-kolored nitro-injected streamline babies with sweeter curves than a Playboy photo spread, more personality than Rome, Brian and Monica combined and enough juice to send a fleet of rockets to the farthest reaches of the known universe.

Yes, it's really silly, and no, you won't remember a thing about it the second it's over, but adults looking for fast moving, non-violent fun that kids might actually enjoy could do a lot worse.

Ugly, stupid, loud, offensive, and pointlessly violent--let's not mince words--this film should be called "Total Reject."

Purely literary stuff that's always the first to go whenever a book is adapted for the screen. Unfortunately, as this thin and entirely ill-conceived adaptation from director Neil LaBute demonstrates, that stuff happens to be the lifeblood of Byatt's wonderful book.

March has the requisite child-woman quality and evinces some sly humor but she, too, is stymied by the schematic screenplay. She is far more convincing as an emblem of nostalgic, adolescent eroticism than as one of France's most distinguished future writers. Small wonder, then, that Duras herself has publicly disowned this adaptation.

The tone is inconsistent -- sometimes it seems to be straining for black comedy, other times it seems dead serious.

Despite the Lear-like trappings and the talented young cast, which does its work with considerable grace, it has little momentum or punch.

Among the disconnected scenes are a few that are downright hilarious, and the actors do their best to rise above disjointed material.

Though the film certainly isn't awful, the filmmakers couldn't decide on their focus. Did they want the picture to be be a fun little piece full of black humor, or did they want to go the usual blood-and-gore route?

Tierney's so-serious script lacks any trace of humor, which might actually have made this depressing film feel a bit more real.

Heartfelt as Reno and Applegate are here, the film strands them with an impotently blustering, straw-dog villain and a limp, directionless story.

While there's little to be gained from over-critiquing a child's performance, it must be said that director Alejandro Agresti badly miscalculates the appeal of his young star; the fact he not only dominates each scene but provides the film's narration means there's not getting away from young Noya.

Bad enough that the plot is shopworn, but the tough-gal talk is unintentionally hilarious, and the complicated narrative structure is annoying and pointless.

Despite the handsome production values and best efforts of the attractive young cast, it's hard to get deeply involved with the frantic "what's going on?" sturm und drang.

Screenwriter Lona Williams doesn't seem to have gotten much beyond the petty absurdity of theme headdresses and ludicrous talent competitions.

Slight, smart-alecky romantic comedy.

UNDER CAPRICORN is talky and static, with little of Hitchcock's trademark suspense.

Bronson does his usual violent-teddy-bear number believably, and the other actors do what they can with the formula script and hack direction.

To make up for the lack of blood, the film provided more gratuitous nudity than had been seen in the previous installments of the series.

The few minutes of footage devoted to a performance by bona fide jazz artist "Little" Jimmy Scott, an eccentric cult favorite, is more genuinely evocative than anything else in the film

A painfully claustrophobic picture.

In the end the film has absolutely nothing to say.

An unsatisfactory feature treatment of beloved characters from the world of television.

A rare misfire from the normally reliable team of Powell and Pressburger (THE RED SHOES), this 1890s British-based film was taken from a fair novel and only barely came up to the novel's standards, despite an excellent and lively turn by Jones in the lead.

A sickly soft-swirl confection of low laughs and smarmy sentiment.

An apparently unintentional parody of the he-man school of filmmaking, in which gunfire replaces dialogue and escalating violence passes for story development.

The performances are uneven and the loosely structured story never actually goes anywhere.

So pleased is this film with its own sanctimony that children forced to sit through it may end up joining gangs, defacing the walls at Bible school, and questioning their parents' sincerity.

Pascal's low-key presence is particularly important, since in another actor's hands Alain's whining and waffling could easily be insufferable.

By enlisting jingoism and reducing an entire culture to caricature, Not Without My Daughter defeats any progressive point it may have intended to make.

For a romantic comedy, this offers few laughs and little tenderness, and mainly evokes confusion with its muddled storyline and inept execution.

Although the premise of Goin' South is clever, the story is unbelievable and, under Nicholson's first grip as a director, is unwieldy and directionless. The tale is presented in disjointed, confusing, poorly set sequences. Nicholson the actor is mildly amusing, as are some of his riotous gang members, DeVito and Belushi (the latter appearing only briefly, irrespective of his high billing). But the whole film deteriorates midway into amateurish mugging and slapstick.

"Alien" redux.

Besides featuring some of the same actors in the same roles, what this six-gun sequel has in common with Young Guns is that it is wholly unmemorable.

Well intentioned but unfocused, director John Henry Davis's debut feature tries to tackle two serious subjects at once: maintaining one's faith in a universe that's seemingly without meaning, and the ways in which scripture is used to justify anti-gay violence.

The movie's tone and plot twists are so ludicrously overwrought that even Washington's admirably restrained performance -- can't rescue it from its own excesses.

This scattershot comedy (which might be called "irreverent" if anyone actually revered movies like AMERICAN PIE) features vulgar gags at the expense of recent youth-oriented pictures.

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.

A hyperactive hodgepodge.

Lacks a sense of bone-chilling dread.