Applications/Utilities Refuse to Open

Title says the problem. All my applications and utilities refuse to open. A dialog box pops up saying close, send a report to apple (which doesn't do anything), or reopen. Reopen simply makes the same box pop-up. I'm kind of an apple newb, so I have no idea what to do to troubleshoot this problem.

can you get to you utilities folder and start console? if you can look for error messages in the /var/log dropdown or you can open a terminal and go there.

Has this started happening recently, or always been an issue? Is it literally ALL applications?