Ostensibly an "adult comedy" about serious things, screenwriter Richard LaGravenese's disjointed directing debut rings profoundly false, a story about class distinctions and suffering conceived and executed in privilege.

James Woods adds another hateful, embittered creep to his gallery of losers, neurotics and junkyard dogs with vampire slayer Jack Crow.

Benigni wants to tell a poignant fable rooted in the love between a father and son, but everything hinges on whether one finds his gags inspired or tasteless. Humor can only save some of us.

His (Ross) sophisticated handling -- and the efforts of his able cast, notably the stellar Joan Allen -- produces a surprisingly accomplished cumulative effect.

Do director Bryan Singer and screenwriter Brandon Boyce really mean to suggest that the roots of genocide lie in homosexual desire?

It's all pretty tasteless, but surprisingly chaste and not very funny.

The horror of the images is unforgettable, but what lingers are the small particulars of the survivor's stories, recalled as if it all happened yesterday.

[Solondz's] blistering, brilliantly transgressive satire is sure to rattle even the most jaded filmgoer. It's also a remarkably compassionate profile of American life at its most desperate.

They've taken material with the power to insinuate itself directly into the realm of the imagination, and made it strangely inert and lifeless.

You can see the outline of an interesting movie beneath the cutesy-pie characterizations and heavy-handed mockery of small-town small-mindedness, but any chance it might have had is short-circuited by director Griffin Dunne's overwhelming inability to establish a consistent tone for the admittedly off-kilter material.

God bless Jennifer Tilly, who attacks her role in this third sequel to 1988's killer-doll picture CHILD'S PLAY with incomparable slutty brio.

This creepy and cryptic early film from director Arnaud Desplechin isn't as assured as his MY SEX LIFE... (OR HOW I GOT INTO AN ARGUMENT), but it has its own intriguing charms.

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

Although it begins promisingly enough, with a documentary-like look at the options available to young African-American men who grow up in the "ghetto life," this visually polished film stumbles when it comes to actually telling a story.

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.

Adults also are more likely than kids to snicker at jokes.

Steve and Doug's story just isn't funny, and it would take far better writing than Kattan, Ferrell and Steve Koren can muster to make it less than an ordeal.

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

Between Nahon's pressure-cooker performance and the director's assaultive style (he's fond of brooding long takes interrupted by shotgun blasts of lurching, skip-frame edits and bold intertitles), the film would be an unbearable expression of rage, except that Noé's winking, nearly absurd sense of humor offers a disconcerting reminder of the unreality of it all.

Nasty fun all around.

Frankenheimer pretty much ignores everything that's happened in the action and thriller genres since 1975, and mostly that's a good thing.

Fun if you like this kind of thing and don't expect too much of it.

We've come a long way from the filthiest people in the world: Who knew Waters could be so bland?

The fewer movies like this you've already seen, the better this one will play.

The crime story here is lazily constructed, mostly an excuse for the give-and-take between Tucker and Chan, which is shrill and raucous without being especially clever.

The framing story is pointless and almost insulting, even though it's part of former New York Times columnist Anna Quindlen's novel.

James Ivory's direction is meandering in the best sense: Rarely obvious or predictable, he quietly builds a complex portrait of a intimate family.

This cautionary tale, complete with the swank cars, cool clothes and depraved babes that inevitably accompany degradation Hollywood style, is based on former sitcom scribe Jerry Stahl's lurid tell-all memoir of his descent into heroin addiction. Under the witty surface, the moral seems to be "The devil made me do it." Even by sitcom standards, that's old.