The character relationships are solid and there's blessed little in the way of smug, smart talk

Farley -- one of the few comedians who could ever be justly accused of debasing the pratfall -- has made a film that's tantamount to watching an overweight man slip on a banana peel for nearly 90 minutes.

Tedious...To call the picture formulaic is to miss the point: It's so openly contemptuous of its audience that it doesn't even bother to run the formula.

There's nothing much new going on here (we feel compelled to point out the resemblance to one of the worst-ever episodes of The X-Files, "Teso Los Bichos"), but it's all slickly done, with the requisite big jumps, false leads, weird science and scary trips down dark corridors.

But long after you've grown tired of [Flynt's] escapades, the scenes in which he and Althea support one another against the slings an arrows of outrageous fortune are touching and, ultimately, genuinely tragic.

Alan Parker's big-budget adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's surpassingly shrewd stage spectacular isn't a big fat failure. But it isn't a resounding success, either: It's an awkward hybrid, neither lavish eye candy nor credible drama.

For a movie about all sorts of warm and gooey things -- faith, surrender to wonder, and the possibility of love in a hard, cold world -- it's got a bracingly astringent edge.

A gallon of grade-A filmmaking fuel squandered on unoriginal material, but serious moviegoers will want to take a look.

[A] bold and brilliant rendering of Henry James' masterpiece.

Compared with most of what passes for scary movies these days, this is golden: It's not stupid, it's not wussy and it pulls off a couple of pretty nasty jolts.

It's just as juvenile as you'd expect, and even funnier.

Yes, it's a deeply formulaic buddy movie predicated on geezer charm. But the surprise of this comedy about two former Chief Executives forced to get along and get in touch with the real America is how sharply written it is -- almost sharply enough to overcome the crude direction that grotesquely overemphasizes the picture's inevitable sentimental interludes.

A film that takes such sadistic delight in the thorough humiliation of its heroine.

Tony Award-winning stage director Jerry Zaks' debut feature is a gentle, surprisingly funny film about dying that manages to tug a few heartstrings without the usual emotional manhandling.

Unforgettably, Bastard out of Carolina makes a bold statement about a little girl's grace under inordinate pressure.

A meandering and deeply shallow tale of spiritual redemption.

It may seem mean-spirited to complain that in the end Burton's spectacle is a bit hollow. But his genius has always resided in his ability to give depth and a curious, dark richness to the ephemeral fluff of his pop-culture memories -- this is all sparkly surface.

The result is studded with brilliant moments and an eccentric cast.

Until the patently preposterous finale (you can just hear the studio suits saying, "Ya gotta make it big"), the miserable perils faced by the damp, sooty, squabbling motorists are claustrophobically convincing, assuming you accept in the first place that they escaped a fireball that looks as though it should have fried every living thing between the New Jersey and Manhattan shores.

The atmosphere is Southern Gothic pure enough to do Carson McCullers proud -- grotesque, sentimental and dankly nasty -- and Thornton manages not to undermine his own writing.

Since each is more adorable than the one before - and together they're an irresistible mass of squirming speckles - the whole elaborate edifice holds up pretty well.

Joan Allen -- playing goody-two-shoes Elizabeth Proctor -- is the standout: She gives Proctor both spine and a desperate, late-blooming awareness that her own unyielding righteousness has helped bring about her family's destruction. Her performance is so true it's almost painful.

Like most Trek movies, it's a bit talky and a bit thin, unless you come to it with an extensive background gleaned from the series. But then, who but a fan would be going anyway?

Perhaps a die-hard Freudian desperate for a laugh could find humor in this wretched attempt at a holiday heart-warmer. Unfortunately, that leaves the rest of us twisting in the wind.

Perfectly gorgeous and perfectly nasty.

Feel-good tone notwithstanding (and creepy to boot), there are nagging riddles about the Helfgott story that the film has neither the nerve nor the sense to tackle.

Kristin Scott Thomas is the film's revelation. She takes center stage as a smart, fearless woman who's utterly irresistible.

Ramshackle as comedy and mundane as drama, this noisily energetic and splashily - literally - photographed hang-ten flick doesn't wipe out due to spectacular surfing stunts and the fun of seeing McGregor and Zeta-Jones in pre-stardom mode.