Aaron Hillis

Between the generic shadowy cinematography and a gothic score that manages to telegraph even the film's jump-scares, there's no tangible tension by which to build an effective climax.

The filmmakers blend tones like a child mixing fountain drinks into one unidentifiable flavor.

It's an exploitation film that never gets its audience off, even with cheap thrills — what a dud.

Lazy, schmaltzy, and on-the-nose from its Hallmark-friendly production design to its rancid pop-music cues and naive dialogue.

Overlong and slack in suspense, the film is most noteworthy for its patchy accents and the late Ellen Albertini Dow (the "rapping granny" from The Wedding Singer).

Canadian comedy hits rock bottom in this abhorrent meta-infomercial.

Attempts to offer the white-knuckle gratifications of a studio procedural with a conspicuous lack of production values, screen talent, plausibility, originality, or a lick of aesthetic flair.

There's no bite to the criminality, the motives, the acting, or filmmaking to make us care.

It's the very definition of direct-to-video schlock.

There's no drama illustrating the thanklessness of their jobs, and potential wisdom about fiscal instability, animal welfare, or GMOs waft by without much argument.

No bodices were harmed in veteran French filmmaker Patrice Leconte's chaste and bloodless English-language debut.

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean your speculations are sound, your writing and filmmaking skills are passable, or that you're preaching to anyone but the fearfully converted.

There's very little to distinguish this from every other characterless rom-com with a demographically marketable hook.

The overall comic premise is both clumsy and truly icky, because how exactly do you make progressive good on a "parody of violence against women" logline?

Self-taught Kurdish-American filmmaker Jano Rosebiani's mostly English-language drama...is deadened by milquetoast characters, uninspired landscape photography, and no perceptible stakes.

Doesn't try to be anything more than a soft-serve pull of treacly pandering.

Director-producer Florian Steinbiss's German-set, largely German-cast comedy mixes genres with all the quality control of a fourth-grader dispensing every soda flavor into one cup.

If cinema's most narcissistic actor-filmmakers were swimming in a talent pool, with Vincent Gallo confidently backstroking in the deep end and Eric Schaeffer wading in children's pee, Hendrickson's dipping his toe near Tommy Wiseau.

Since the conversation is unfocused and there's no real thesis, we get a girl and a gun but not really a movie.

The final leg of director Cathy Garcia-Molina's exceptionally broad, partly English-dubbed cockles-warmer of a trilogy outright apes Hollywood rom-com formulas with a personality so affably lobotomized it wouldn't dare frighten delicate tastes.

Attempts to transform meet-cute romance into an absurdist fatal-attraction thriller, but ends up neither fish nor fowl.

Shallow, witless but pretty enough French ode to Woody Allen.

Filmmaker Maria Ilioú's uninspired flake of talking-head Wikipedia cinema focuses on the forgotten Anatolian port city's post-World War I years.

Filmed in 2005, the first of two Cusack widower flicks this season (the weepier and more indie "Grace is Gone" hits theaters in December) Martian Child is also a Franken-schmaltz monster of cobbled-together Cusack movie parts.

A sadistically bland entertainment that oversells its reveals and lets its suspense drip so long that it would be nice if something (anything!) happened.

So go on, pay your ten bucks and get your hate on.

For his fourth paycheck-cashing run through “J-Bruck’s” action-hero gauntlet, Cage lazily plays Benjamin Franklin Gates-the first of many overstuffed social-studies references.

This terminally ill, terminally awful dramedy marks a sad cinematic milestone: The Bucket List is the first film in history to feature a truly wretched Nicholson performance -- and we're not talking about the character he plays.

Unstylized, inconsistent, unconvincing, and familiar to a fault.

With its cheap scares, its defiant lack of special effects, and the most blatant usage of a red coat as a stand-out prop since Schindler’s List, Godsend is as much an experiment-gone-wrong as its Frankensteinesque plot.

This one's been sitting on shelves for two years -- never good news -- and you can almost see the dollar signs in the cast's eyes.

Despite the attempts of the Academy Award-winning makeup artist behind Mrs. Doubtfire, these doubtful misfires can't pass as white or as chicks.

It’s terrible enough to torture the damned.

Flashy, forgettable fluff.

Not even within earshot of a masterpiece, Man on Fire, based on its ratio of production costs to quality alone, may prove to be the worst movie of 2004.

Fails in what amounts to its only distinct purpose: to smugly push the envelope of depravity farther than anyone else.

What once was a gifted comic's fluid improvisation is now a doddering old man so embarrassing he's uncomfortable to watch, and the surrogate father-daughter needling he has with Johansson is creepy when you realize Woody the director is shooting her seductively in that skintight bathing suit.

A clumsy, dreadfully preposterous and pedestrian thriller that seems to believe loud noises are the same as good frights.

Not to chastise the movie for simply being rude or crude -- since "The Wedding Crashers" proved that hormone-raging '80s throwbacks can still be harmless fun -- but this contemptible sex-com redux should be taken to task for how its infantilized yucks give license to entertaining closed-minded acceptances of very real human ugliness.

What little anti-war critique Peirce presents -- and she has it in her, which makes it all the more dubious -- gets trampled over by jingoistic Rambo porn.

Paycheck is a bogus journey.

The story is a vapid "Casablanca"-lite.

From an audience perspective, the title’s fairly apt as well.

Blunderingly out-of-touch, star-studded embarrassment of a sequel.

Chan still sounds silly talkin' jive, the action sequences are peppy if not exactly memorable, and the gags have been sitting out long enough to make penicillin.

Paths collide and allegiances form between the good, bad, and ugly, but under the incoherent direction of Chalerm Wongpim, a clunky dullness sets in whenever the action subsides.

A thin sprinkling of exuberance and a couple of choice cameos, that's about all this underwritten and overly choreographed spectacle has to tease us with.

Lacks thrills, narrative, emotion, believability, character development--and frankly--watchability.

From less a purist's standpoint than a seeker of serviceable junk food, this comprehensive waste of time is too bouncy to be an "Elektra" bummer, but should make Marvel mascot Stan Lee think twice about burning another lucrative bridge with unintentional hilarity.