When it comes to being brainless, The Skulls is at the head of the class.

Isn't all that romantic and is only half as funny as it thinks it is.

Earth to Earth's young director, Mark Piznarksi : It's tough turning straw into gold, isn't it?

Spanning the counterculture '70s to the more career-oriented '80s and doing justice to neither decade, this event-heavy adaptation of Scott Spencer's novel may give viewers whiplash.

Seductively pastoral but also a bit slight, the movie saves its best scene for the very end.

Didn't work this time, David. Maybe next season.

A plodding, play-it-safe rendition of "The Family Feud."

A first-rate office comedy of prickly exchanges.

The match winners and losers may be preordained, but these modern-day gladiators bleed plenty of real blood.

Proudly stupid, silly and gory.

You can feel the movie going wrong in the first scene.

The script is so bereft of real surprises that it's best to keep the lid on what few there are.

There's nothing super about the movie, aside from a loopiness that affords it a certain guilty-pleasure cachet.

Nichols usually can lure A-list casts to even C-grade projects, and this is no exception.

The movie is still too solemn.

The bad-taste murder farce is just an excuse for a bunch of actors to go slumming and ride about in - ha, ha - Yugos.

Funny how Madonna borrows Everett, Julia Roberts' gay pal from "My Best Friend's Wedding," and Bratt, Roberts' real-life beau, to be her co-stars. If only she could borrow her talent.

Interspersed between the misogyny and flatulence jokes apparently left over from Pooh's co-written script for "Friday," there's a story about an ex-con.

It is tough to fight off the ennui created by this comedy.

An unusual walk down the aisle.

Droll mild amusement.

As late Christmas presents go, Reindeer Games is best left unwrapped.

Tightly constructed and controlled.

Nothing really fun, scary or exceptionally gross occurs.

This is about Meg. Only about Meg. Meg in the Middle.

A model of what a largely talking-heads documentary should be, with on-camera testimonials and lots of film clips that offer layers of context.

A comedy without much zing but with an occasional zing-er that enables the film to pick up . . . well, if not nine yards, maybe an inch or two on the gridiron.

Shouldn't be overrated, but it's the first film of the year - and it's mid-February already - capable of keeping a grown-up awake.

The story isn't a grabber.

Increasingly piquant tale of culture clash in 1954 post-independence India.

Unless you have a craving to watch a sluggish Ski-Doo race or want to admire Chase dressed as a hula dancer, consider this the cinematic equivalent of yellow snow.

Murky, pretentious and torturously inert.

Can't stars attract better scripts than this?

(Craven) and his Scream dream team have done a frightfully good job of killing off and wrapping up the popular horror series.

Pleasing piffle.

A bottom-rung Bette Midler vehicle disguised as a biopic of novelist Jacqueline Susann, the movie is a wannabe satire shackled by misplaced reverence.

Far from being a run-of-the-mill slasher pic.

Good actors seem plastic and plastic actors seem worse in a knockoff of every rocket-ship movie you've ever seen.

A family movie with a heart and a brain. And if you aren't moved to tears, you might need an organ transplant.

But most of the humor is about as fresh as the air left behind whenever Witherspoon uses a toilet.

Still a one-of-a-kind mind-blower.

Epic in nearly every way, The Hurricane has the power to blow you away.

With his coolly objective moon's-eye view serving a story that's bizarre by even his long-established career standards, the great documentarian Errol Morris examines the perils of vanity - though others will understandably make more sinister interpretations.

Another invigorating, extremely raunchy sports movie from Ron Shelton .

There's a lot to talk about but so much outrageousness that the end effect is wearying and not a little absurd.

Skirts dangerously close to being the thing it parodies: a second-rate space opera.

In a possible breakthrough role, Law would seem to be the big winner.

Though there are helmets deeper than this movie, you do have to admire the level of screen showmanship .

True to the book's squalor but also finding honest humor where it can.

A movie of moments whose ultimate legacy may be to get Carrey out of formula comedies forever.

Compelling almost in spite of itself, thanks to the impressionistic imagery of cinematographer Robert Richardson.

Ryder's commitment is impressive. If her movie only had her courage.

One of the year's best movies and certainly its most delightful screen surprise.

The movie is something of a white elephant itself, a luxuriant, lumbering behemoth. It is pleasant, occasionally amusing - and often dull.

At least a few good things are found in this small package.

It's an awkward jumble whose only value is as a forum for movie junkies to track the progress of half-a-dozen screen careers at once.

The sad fact is Williams is at his best while trapped in Andrew's original sleek form. His performance is subtle, his reactions restrained. The more Robin is exposed, the more ham is served.

A quagmire that reportedly has undergone multiple edits to reach its current incomprehensible state.

The most imperfect of the year's best movies, Magnolia's flaws are easily forgiven because they are the result of go-for-broke ambition.

This being Irving, the story straddles the sweet and the creepy.

Rock actually rocks out as one of the year's most purely entertaining movies (just keep thinking: Bill Murray as a ventriloquist).

This road-trip piffle is basically a male version of a chick-bonding flick.

Well acted by an ensemble that leans toward equality for all, Mile carries its long running time extremely well.

A pathetically dumb attempt to string a bunch of second-rate skits together like a garland of rotten cranberries.

August Strindberg's psychological drama of erotic class conflict gets a bracing, claustrophobic workout from director Mike Figgis.

The economical, fast-paced style and creepy mood are reminiscent of "The Twilight Zone."

Great slabs of blarney are washed down with tears and Guinness in this yarn about a struggling Irish clan, and the resulting sentiment is blatant enough to wake Ned Devine.

This is the kind of movie in which even the sex scenes are soulless.

The movie Weaver has to carry has so many nagging imperfections that Academy Award attention looks like a long shot.

Sexy, snotty, vulnerable and above all contentious, she's (Winslet) the catalyst in a movie that creates more man-woman electricity than any other movie this year.

It's all very slight and only sporadically amusing, and it makes Allen's "Celebrity" from last year look even more underrated than it already is.

No, it isn't the slick and unfocused "Anywhere but Here," where mom and daughter choose Beverly Hills. Instead, it's the more modest and in most cases preferable Tumbleweeds.

Jewel is more like an acting zircon because she just can't project, but at least she looks the part, and her novelty value isn't unwelcome.

The actors take a back seat to computer-generated demonic images and apocalyptic special effects.

What's most amazing is the finely nuanced performances these bits and bytes deliver.

Worth stumbling into on cable not all that far into next year.

Fans will appreciate not only that the film is predictably solid and surprisingly sharp but that parts of it are just plain bad.

This is a very bloody fantasy (reds do eke their way into the black-and-blues), but it's hard to think of another film with as many severed heads whose overall tone is so sweet.

Mothers definitely get their due here: Birth mothers, adoptive mothers and mothers-to-be - with the only men in sight (save for one young fatality and one old eccentric) being those who wear flashy makeup and sport breasts

Not since Demi Moore lived happily ever after in "The Scarlet Letter" has a filmmaker felt so free to fudge a famous plot.

Just a good time at the movies, but it's still a smarter two hours than most "good times" are.

There is a keen intellect behind this devoutly defiant fable.

A chilly oddball that's easier to admire than love.

It's terrific to see such well-matched actresses of opposing generations duke it out.

Has a three-way split personality, which happily includes an action-packed middle to ease the pain of its early protracted exposition and later action so slow that you'll be asking "Gotta match?" to the person next to you.

A tough little hostage thriller with crackling dialogue, surprising intelligence and an emotional wallop.

Plays a little like a pacifistic variation on Bruce Lee's "Enter the Dragon."

The conclusion is a sweet bit of frosting on an otherwise unremarkable confection.

The ending stinks.

At its best, hard-hitting grown-up cinema (rare these days) and a movie blessed with a villain (Big Tobacco) for which all gloves can be removed and heaved into the next county.

This thorough original is a wall-to-wall exercise in gallows humor, a movie whose full funny/sad effect doesn't hit until you reflect upon the subject and the cast of characters.

Yearning for an old-fashioned movie with a well-told, uplifting message? Music of the Heart is playing your song.

Fun for less than 30 of the 80-minute running time.

A must-see for animation fans.

The story keeps reinventing itself (some of the later plot twists are among the funniest), but a little goes a long way at 112 minutes - maybe 25 minutes more than this sporadically pointed conceit really needs.

Best to wait until the movie makes it to TV - where its missteps will loom less large.

Audiences everywhere will tune out long before the projector does.

Were some group to launch a rival to the Oscars called The Wackys, it could do worse than make crazed Crazy its first recipient.