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.

The script recycles clichés that go back to 1937'S "Dead End," the performances are one-note, and the whole thing has the flat, bright look of a TV cop show.

Hauser and Miles go for broke, lobbing their every comic idea at the screen. Some work better than others, and overall tomfoolery like this is a matter of taste.

Chanteuse Toni Braxton, making her feature film debut as Juanita, a snobbish Slocumb relative, delivers a scene-stealing turn.

Saturday Night Live veteran Chris Kattan more or less steals the film as the racially confused Mr. Feather, a white supremacist bad guy whose speech patterns tend to get down and funky against his will.

Jeremy Irons, giving what is, hands down, the worst performance of his career.

It's so cool all the life has drained away, leaving nothing behind but a faint whiff of attitude.

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 real trouble is Jack: He's narcissistic and tough to like (Pontevecchio's fine, but a younger actor might not have brought an impression of arrested development to the character), and his crude sense of humor borders on the disgusting.

The movie's tone fluctuates wildly, suggesting that no one was exactly sure what kind of movie they were making.

This labored farce relies on an unpleasant collection of stereotypes for its comic effects, and Janger is a singularly unappealing leading man.

Penn and Madonna both do a fine job with their roles, the supporting roles are excellent, the direction is passable, the camera work and art direction are accomplished, and the script mindless and predictable. There's nothing to create outrage, and there's nothing to stimulate excitement, which is probably why there was no substantial interest in SHANGHAI SURPRISE.

A deliciously bad reworking of The Karate Kid, with just a touch of Rocky IV tossed in.

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.

Not to be confused with the suggestive, subversive melodramas of Sirk and Minnelli, this is the kind of hypertensive trash that gives melodrama a bad name, cynically tempering its naughty bits with smug moralizing.

The year's most eagerly anticipated green-eyed monster finally rears its ugly head, not with his trademark radioactive roar, but a deafening yawn.

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.

This second feature from director Fred Dekker is a poorly paced and haphazardly scripted horror-comedy that is neither scary nor particularly funny.

The camera never ventures outside, but remains fixed on the action at the table, gliding languidly past the same sepia-toned tableau: In the film's universe, people are indistinguishable and the setting never changes. Hou does succeed in one key respect: His films evokes opium addiction, a narcotic delirium fading into a dreamless sleep.

That the film seems willing to erect a simple religious parable on such a moral morass is bewildering. That it should do so without accurately depicting the nightmare of Hitler's Europe is unconscionable.

Ridiculous scripting and frequently comical budget limitations make this film a mostly awful trip to Bruce Lee Land, though the fight scenes, choreographed by Mike Stone, a karate champion and former partner of Chuck Norris, are spectacular and not as silly as the usual Hong Kong product. For fans of the genre only.

The real-life Modigliani did indeed live a short, tragic life, but this factually inaccurate, plodding film makes it feel twice as long.

It's basically a one-joke comedy that spins out of control once the joke's over, but the cast is likable, the women smart, and one can't argue with the important safe-sex message.

Film is preposterous without being surreal; only at the Tailor's Ball -- which takes place shortly before the end -- does it strike that perfect balance between the bizarre and the curiously mundane.

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.

Serviceable enough, if you come to it with sufficiently modest expectations.

It's hard to care even just a little when you have no idea what's at stake or why, be it Heaven or Hell.

Believe it or not, this fantastic story (of a close encounter of the worst kind) ultimately proves to be pretty uninvolving, relying on the quality of the performances to maintain interest.