Suffers from an excess of material crammed into too little screen time. There's so much story that the characters get short shrift; you have to wonder, for example, what became of Siddalee's three siblings.

A thoroughly respectable affair: Your high school English teacher would approve, and parts are terrifically enjoyable.

For the first hour director Arau and his co-writer and wife, actress Arizmendi, negotiate the story's tricky mix of comedy, social satire and science fiction with surprising aplomb.

There's something inherently funny and surreal about Chinese kids speaking Singlish while trying to be goombahs from Brooklyn.

Feels hokey, generic and dated.

Driven by sheer enthusiam (much of it for the worst excesses of Hollywood filmmaking), which makes it fun to watch in spite of its fundamental ridiculousness.

The situations Carroll devises are perfectly controlled but dramatically void.

The voice-over narration is obvious, but overall the message is integrated into an unusual story that's enhanced by Liberato's and Fulton's appealing performances as the youngsters who see through their elders' lies and help right a terrible wrong.

An utterly formulaic, teen-oriented romance whose greatest asset is charming leads Julia Stiles and Sean Patrick Thomas.

This megastar mix of CGI animation and live action is remarkably faithful to the spirit of the original.

Epic, meticulously researched and ultimately disappointing, Martin Scorsese's bloody valentine to the birth of his beloved city is less than the sum of its parts.

Cocaine Angel may be a fine counterpoint to glammy cocaine-scare films like "Less Than Zero" (1987) and "Blow" (2001), but it comes on so strong it risks being dismissed along with the "this is your brain on drugs" school of dope-scare PSAs.

The truly heartbreaking sacrifice of a few extraordinarily heroic men is lost under the ponderous score and a series of even heavier speeches.

And while it was always clear that Lucas cared more about special effects than acting, here his lack of interest has produced phenomenally wooden performances from newcomers and veterans alike: Only the imperious Christopher Lee, as baleful Count Dooku, emerges unscathed.

As star, director and co-producer, Streisand shifts the book's focus from the Wingo past to the Tom-Susan love affair. This could have worked had Streisand directed herself better--if, indeed, she had directed herself at all. Instead of a performance, we get smirks, poses, campy shots that linger on her outrageously long manicured fingernails, and radiant, cloying smiles. Streisand's inadequacies, though, are more than compensated for by Nolte's compelling Tom. He brings conviction and depth to the role, treading a fine line between self-pity and self-respect and exposing his frailties with a rare sensitivity.

The soundtrack, which ranges from Johnny Cash to Serge Gainsbourg to the Wu-Tang Clan, is admirably eclectic but can't be said to pull things together.

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

Abel Ferrara's gift for getting actors to dredge up the ugliest muck in their souls and bare it onscreen is used to strong effect in this psychological thriller.

The story is slim but the jazz is great, especially when legendary Louis Armstrong gets into the act.

While director John Hough (Twins of Evil) does a fine job with the things-that-go-bump-in-the-night aspects of the material, he fails to breathe any life into Richard Matheson's woefully underdeveloped screenplay, which he adapted from his own novel.

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

From her speech patterns to her body language, Roberts's performance is wrong for the period.

Ira Levin is an eclectic writer who has done comedy-drama (Sleuth), adventure (The Boys from Brazil), thrillers (Rosemary's Baby), and science fiction such as The Stepford Wives. But Goldman's screenplay and Forbes's ponderous direction slow his exciting novel to a laborious pace.

Ultimately, the material is so familiar that it's hard to work up any enthusiasm for another trip though the seamy underside of glittering gaming life.

As a document of the ever-mutable musician's signature persona, a wraithlike androgyne with a head full of apocalyptic dreams, it's fascinating.

Starts with a bang and ends in a long, protracted whimper.

THE SHADOW is the worst kind of homage, recreating childhood enthusiasms in a manner so clunky and unsophisticated that it's actively off-putting, while entirely missing their essence.

This efficient but soulless funhouse ride eschews suspense in favor of frantic scrambling from disturbing specters, like the naked female ghost who lurks around bloody bathtubs.