Bill Goodykoontz

Johnson and Dornan retain the chemistry of two mannequins knocked into each other in a department-store storage closet; the actual sex scenes play more like aerobics videos than anything actually steamy.

Could be fun, you might think. No. Bad acting and worse dialogue quickly put an end to that notion.

If nothing else, it's consistent — consistently stupid, with things like character development and story advancement never getting in the way of another parkour stunt.

Dinesh D'Souza's America: Imagine a World Without Her paints a genuinely troublesome portrait of the country — just not at all in the way he intends.

It’s hard to get excited about any of the on-screen happenings, because director Justin Lin can’t seem to hit the right notes.

Josh C. Waller’s movie is just prurient nonsense, a film only a couple of notches up from the women-in-prison films that were popular years and years ago.

A mean-spirited little movie, investing its limited charms in all the wrong characters.

These supremely talented women are put through embarrassing paces by director and co-writer Bill Holderman. It’s meant to be a film about a reawakening of desire, and thus life. It turns out to be a wince-inducing mess.

It’s all predictable and, despite the best efforts of Turteltaub and screenwriter Dan Fogelman at something a little risky, it’s pretty lame.

Vincent Grashaw's film, although well-meaning (as a postscript reminds us), tries too hard, both in content and form.

Overall the film is goofy, slight, without a truly deep thought in its pretty little head. And for a movie with vampires and werewolves, the only scary thing is in the title - "Part 1," which means "Part 2" is on its way. Shudder.

Mean-spirited.

What a mess. Its meandering plot draws attention to the alarming lack of laughs — not what you look for in a supposed comedy.

In fairness, you can say that Mortal Kombat is pretty much exactly what you expect it to be. It’s clearly meant as the first film in a renewed franchise. But for me, it’s game over.

The purpose of San Andreas is not to make us think, but to make us gape, to pummel us with effect and effect until we finally give in. Fair enough. Uncle. I need a Tylenol anyway.

Jenkins is a fantastically adaptable talent. It helps that his character here is supposed to be innately likable (by everyone, evidently, but his girlfriend's family), since Jenkins is so likable as an actor. Good thing, because there is little else to like about Darling Companion.

Without Lohan, Falling for Christmas would be another of the near-anonymous morass of holiday movies so prevalent during the season. Even with her it’s not much more.

There is very little on the screen to capture your attention.

There is something admirable about Fun Size. Not in how it succeeds, because it doesn't. Whoo, boy, it doesn't. Rather, in how bad it is on so many levels, in how it will offend and disappoint different segments of its audience for different reasons. It's an equal-opportunity bad movie. Something to hate for everyone! [25 Oct 2012]

Paul Schrader, the once-brilliant screenwriter of such films as “Taxi Driver” and “Raging Bull,” has fashioned a movie that seems to exist to be repugnant. Maybe that’s the point; it was written by Bret Easton Ellis. Nearly every character in this movie is unlikable.

There's just not a lot to like here, with the exception of what may be one of the all-time best bad movie lines, one Conan utters to Tamara as a kind of personal credo: "I live. I love. I slay. I am content."

The Dark Tower is a near-total whiff, a mess of a movie that took forever to get made and by the look of things should have taken about twice that long. Or maybe just never have been made at all.

It’s not clear that the movie has anything to say, new or otherwise. . . . Other than that it’s just blood and guts, and lots of it.

Jonah Hex somehow manages to waste the talents of Josh Brolin, John Malkovich, Michael Fassbender, Will Arnett, Aidan Quinn and Jeffrey Dean Morgan in a story that combines vengeance, the occult and an Old West war on terror (really).

It's big, it's loud and it's all over the place, never really making a lick of sense. To his credit, sort of, director Michael Bay tries to insert a little story into the film early on, even a little humor, but that's overrun at some point by explosions and plot digressions.

Aside from the waste of talent, the frustrating thing about The Lazarus Effect is how it cheats. Good horror movies work on internal logic.

This is one of those movies you feel stupider just for having sat through. I think I'm already worse at math.

Director Jessie Nelson shoots it all like a Hallmark card that comes to life, which sounds like a cliche, which it is, which is the point.