The usual John Grisham legal hokum, tranformed by director James Foley into surprisingly grim and affecting stuff.

The cast is little more than the sum total of golden skin, firm flesh and blindingly white teeth, but in a film that demands them to be half-naked and soaking wet most of the time, looks trump technical acting skill every time.

His (Crowe) emotionally charged performance stands in contrast to Ryan's annoying, movie-star turn.

Film's real sticky wicket is that the bad guys not only threaten to nuke a major American city but do it — a conceit that might have been more amusing before terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center using hijacked commercial jets. Witnesses said the WTC attack looked like a movie; they didn't say it was a movie they wanted to see.

The film has all the pregnant pauses, exaggerated reaction shots and melodramatic scoring of an overripe telenovela, but, unlike a good soap opera, the sisters' separate story lines are clumsily balanced.

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.

To call this scattered and cliché-ridden film less-than-cohesive would be generous, and Moore lacks the ability to imbue hackneyed dialogue with resonance.

Of course, no creepy movie worth its salt would be complete without an appearance by Udo Kier, and Parigi doesn't disappoint: Kier appears as Kenneth's louche, hookah-smoking next-door neighbor and, as always, is a disturbing delight.

The script originally began life as a stage play, but still feels underwritten.

The goofy use of animated, Flubber-like blobs aping Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love" video (by way of illustrating the irresistibility of desire itself) makes it hard to take the science seriously, which is the BLEEP problem in a nutshell.

Though filled with strong performances from all the principals, THAT WAS THEN...THIS IS NOW is thin material. We watch as Estevez's tortured character tries to come to grips with adult emotions and responsibilities, but we never really get a handle on what is inside him. Screenwriter-actor Estevez fails to provide any insight. What is refreshing about the film is that the teenagers seem real, with a keen sense of detail in the portrayal of their environment.

The childish narrative, doubtless inspired by a spate of similar duds such as Conan the Barbarian, is marred by poor story continuity and terrible transitions.

First-time feature director-writer Kevin S. Tenney imbues his picture with a surprisingly slick sense of style and employs some clever camerawork when the narrative warrants it, refusing to bore the viewer with the endless evil-point-of-view shots favored by so many other horror directors.

The Good Son is a second-rate thriller with first-rate production values. On a lower budget and without the hottest child star in America in the cast, Ruben and McEwan might have made a meaner, tougher and more successful thriller.

More interesting than entertaining and too long by far.

There's little room for ideas when there are flaming cars to be crashed, and overall the film is an infelicitous hodgepodge that lifts as liberally from "The Quatermass Experiment" (1956) and "28 Weeks Later" (2007) as "Body Snatchers" while leaving all the best bits behind -- even the iconic pods are gone.

Could as easily be called "Spurlock: Cultural Learnings Of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of America."

Pitch-black and bound to offend anyone who's not on its wavelength, Nick Guthe's entertainingly slick debut is a mordantly funny slice of lust, crime and sleaze life set in the world of L.A.'s industry elite: Call it 9021-noir.

The result is strictly for those who like their comic-book movies short and stupid.

Fans of 50 Cent, whose own endlessly exploited past keeps him surrounded by Kevlar and bodyguards, will probably see the film for what it is -- a weak, watered roman à clef -- while admirers of Irish director Jim Sheridan (My Left Foot, In America) will marvel that he had anything to do with such a trite variation on the venerable "Star is Born" scenario.

The charismatic Rajskub, who played a prickly computer geek on TV's "24," has nothing to do as Jack's loyal secretary.

For all its cute contrivances, Six Pack isn't a bad film and is guaranteed to warm the hearts of Rogers' fans.

There's no meat on this film's borrowed bones: They're polished to an exquisitely tasteful shine, but efforts to class up exploitation are pointless.

If the movie is remembered for anything, it will be for the feature-film debut of fiercely talented Jonathan Jackson: His performance truly transcends its dour setting.

Hoch's very funny satire on racial stereotyping cuts both ways.

To say that the film is unenjoyable would be an overstatement; a good time can be had counting the number of reassuringly stock characters it offers up.

The phrase "Everything happens for a reason" is heard more than once, a risibly simplistic cliché that not only stands as this film's hackneyed theme but also as a surprisingly honest confession as to just how calculated the entire film is.

Has a terminal case of the cutes.