1) The Village
- Another Big Twist special from M. Night Shyamalan, but the surprise turned out to be how dull, stilted and muddled this excursion into Ye Oldeland turned out to be. Scarily contrived.
2) Van Helsing
- Get the stake! This overstuffed, overamped Monster jamboree is a perfect demonstration that more can be so much less. You never want to see another special effect after directer Stephen Sommers is done abusing them. Poor Hugh Jackman.
3) Alexander
- The passion, and the point, have gone AWOL in this Oliver Stone misfire, arguably the first dull film this gifted filmmaker has made. It's a long, grueling epic; be sure to pack supplies.
4) The Alamo
- How do you take a stirring tale of gallantry in the face of death and turn it into a nap-inducing Saturday-afternoon special? Disney did it, and got what it deserved - an Alamo nobody remembers, because nobody went to see it.
5) Dogville
- That sometimes brilliant sadist Lars Von Trier pushed the limits of cinema (and our patience) with this dogmatic fable about the black feral soul of small-town America. Enacted on a bare stage, with barren Brechtian results.
6) Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
- This ambitious CGI experiment - everything but the actors was digitally created - produced some stunning retro sci-fi images. But who could care, when the human drama was so anemic? A stylish bore.
7) Silver City
- It sounded good on paper: a zinging political satire about a Bush-like candidate from smart-guy John Sayles. But this clumsily made jeremaid seemed tame and old hat. Sayles's fiction couldn't hold a candle to current political fact.
8) A Very Long Engagement
- Jean-Pierre Jeunet's whimsical, cluttered, antique-store approach to cinema was fine for "Amelie," but in an epic love story against the backdrop of World War I it just alienates. Audrey Tautou, with a limp and a tuba, cuts a preciously unreal figure as she searches for ther lost soldier love. We wanted to be moved.
9) The Terminal
- Spielberg's airport-bound fable stars fresh and frisky, with Tom Hanks's Eastern European traveler forced to use his wits to survive as a permanent resident of JFK. But reality gives way to secondhand Capra corn and an improbable romance, as a great premise devolves into a long layover.
10) De-Lovely
- A fine Kevin Kline performance in wasted in this lugubrious, tone-deaf biopic of Cole Porter, which bungles a fascinating subject -- the marriage a gay man and a straight woman. The big musical production numbers are hopeless. Not swell, not witty.
