David Fear

This seventh chapter just seems to be exploiting our affection for the Scream team’s history and thinking die-hards will simply go see anything with the name slapped on it.

It takes a lot of hard work and the perfect alignment of movie stars to make something this god-awful.

At one point, a character is forced to stand in front of an automatic football launcher and take a series of pigskins to the cranium, each of which is shot at him with increasing speed. And by the end of this mess, you’re left thinking: I now know exactly how that guy felt.

There are many reasons that 1999 is considered a banner year for American cinema. This attempt to revisit the type of fanciful, footloose and fancy-twee storytelling that helped characterize that cultural moment is a big swing, and an even bigger miss.

Fixed should have been, by any measure, the fix we needed in terms of balls-out hilarity about neurotic, sex-crazed creatures, or even just a parable from an animation godhead about humans being just as beholden to animal instincts as our four-legged friends. Instead, we get a wildly uneven, totally obvious, and often painfully unfunny 80 minutes.

This War of the Worlds isn’t bad or even so-bad-it’s-good. It’s a secret third thing, a hodgepodge of shoddy CGI and dead-eyed reaction shots from Ice Cube that make you feel like you can identify individual brain cells mid-death cycle.

It’s the sensation that you’re watching something that’s sloppy, overthought, undercooked and can’t decide whether it wants to honor the original (it fails), add to both the in-house lore and the longstanding genre tropes of the slasher canon (it does not), or some combo of both (two missed opportunities for the price of one).

The overbaked, underwhelming, narratively restless movie itself is 0.0 percent watchable.

Regardless of whether you’ve ever played Minecraft or not, you’ll recognize the kind of endless ribbing, nudging, winking knowingness on display here; this is steeped in the self-aware absurdism of, say, those Old Spice commercials that aim to confuse and confound in the name of moving products off store shelves. A Minecraft Movie is essentially a 101-minute version of that.

This Snow White may not be the worst live-action adaptation of an animated touchstone, though it’s a strong contender for its blandest. The movie does earn points as a bedtime story, however, because it will definitely put you to sleep.

It’s a bad movie, full stop. Which is a pity, because the pedigree looks great on paper.

Love may hurt, sure. But it’s not nearly as painful as being forced to watch a great actor stuck in a bad movie.

What you’re left with is something that wants the brand-name recognition of being a Spider-Man project by proxy, but also wants to give you an overly violent, extremely gory vigilante movie that, despite featuring Kraven fighting a weak-tea CGI version of another well-known Marvel villain, has nothing to do with those films. Congratulations on failing twice, we guess?

On the page, the limitations somehow feel groundbreaking and expansive. Onscreen, the film somehow reduces the same notion of one angle/one thousand different moments to little more than a blinkered gimmick.

This tale of self-involved millennials, a mystery machine, and a whole mess of purposefully mistaken identities is the kind of mashup of high-concept horror and ham-fisted satire that mistakes complicated for complex and a pile-up of confusing plot twists for storytelling.

It doesn’t take long to realize that what was meant to be a franchise-starter is, unlike its hero, permanently DOA.

The movie may be so scared of being an Auto-Tuned biopic that it settles for simply being out of tune altogether.

When continuity and plot logic are AWOL in your movie, who ya gonna call? Not these folks.

A genuine Chernobyl-level disaster that seems to get exponentially more radioactive as it goes along, this detour to one of the dustier corners of Marvel’s content farm is a dead-end from start to finish.

There’s a deadening feeling you get watching all of this, as if Argylle’s real revelation is: We’ve cracked the code on how to take a handful of your favorite actors and a surefire ha-ha-bang-bang storyline and leech every single thing out that you usually like about these kinds of things.

Even if you view this as just another superhero movie, it still feels like a litter’s runt. We’d have been fine if this kingdom stayed lost.

Thanksgiving is less a movie than a messy attempt to coast off an oldie-but-goodie one-off without adding anything to the party. It can 100 percent go stuff itself.

There are moments in this borderline incoherent mess of a movie in which fans may be convinced that its sole purpose is to try making the original follow-up, 1977’s legendarily godawful Exorcist II: The Heretic, look positively genius by comparison.

Even before the murderer is revealed, you’ll recognize the method in which the movie dispatches its victims: They, like us, were probably bored to death.

Retribution is not the worst of his thrillers/action movies — that honor belongs to either last year’s god-awful Blacklight or this freezer-burned turkey — but it does suggest that Neeson may want to consider retiring from the everyman action-hero beat for good. What once felt like a niche being expertly filled now resembles a formula beaten into submission, like so many nameless thugs threatening the safety of a tough guy’s offspring.

A corporate I.P. Easter-egg hunt posing as a movie, this horror-comedy raids the House of Mouse’s resident spoooooky ride’s signature bits while nudging your ribs as aggressively as (in)humanly possible. Even for die-hard Disney fanatics, it’s still about as fun as waiting endlessly in line for something permanently closed for repairs.

Not even J-Law off the nice-young-lady leash can save something this lazy and desperate to offend, however. The movie simply isn’t on her level. Or really much of any level at all.

Plane is, in essence, the Frontier Airlines of action films: It’s cut-rate to a fault, makes you endure a lot of unpleasantness on the way to its final destination, and still leaves you with the distinct feeling that you didn’t even get what you paid for.

This is the sort of lazy, slapdash, self-impressed excuse for “edgy” entertainment that makes you enraged. It’s not even so-bad-it’s-good; this is so bad you’re tempted to kick those responsible for it right in the jingle bells.

This is a movie that keeps going out of its way to be any kind of blockbuster except an actual Jurassic World movie.

While we do not condone the excessive consumption of alcohol, or sneaking spirits and other such beverages into a theater, or any display of public intoxication, we also do not think you should endure Ambulance while being sober.

If it’s not the worst of these films, it’s certainly the most anemic — and even die-hard fans are apt to feel completely drained by all of it.

For some reason — maybe it’s because the seminal, ’74 original holds such a special place in so many die-hards’ hearts (this one included), and still feels like such a potent example of channeling primal fear — this latest ransacking of a landmark title feels less like just another killer-versus-final-girl rerun and more like the final straw.

Recommending that someone actually subject themselves to Roland Emmerich’s sci-fi neo-disaster flick, however, is a little like shoving three-month old milk under an unsuspecting person’s nose and inquiring, Does this smell ok? You already know the answer; you just need to share the pain.

It’s a disaster movie in more ways than one. Should you indeed look up, you may be surprised to find one A-list bomb of a movie, all inchoate rage and flailing limbs, falling right on top of you.

There’s something incredibly deflating about all of this, from the waste of precious screen-talent resources to the sense that you’re watching the last gasp of an age-old formula. It is like staring at a bright, shiny epitaph for two hours.

Neeson has made better pulpy B movies, and he’ll probably make worse ones than this. The good news is that, like buses, a new film from the star tends to come around every few hours, so you can skip this one without regrets.

There’s an art to making action films, and that artistry is as AWOL here as it is in the first movie.

This is the final game: Do you recommend this to your friends out of brand loyalty, knowing that they’re Saw completists and hey, you endured this, so why shouldn’t they? Or should you take mercy on them and let them know that Spiral should be avoided at all costs, regardless of its slasher-flick pedigree.

Chaos Walking doesn’t even get to the level of high camp, where pleasure is found in the sheer badness of it all.

As for viewers, well … whoever won in the endless round-robin of interspecies chicanery, we all lost.

How can you recreate the first Ziggy concert in 1972 at Borough Assembly Hall, Aylesbury, and fail to evoke even an ounce of the moment’s dynamism even when you have the moves down? Does Stardust exist solely to make Bohemian Rhapsody seem better by comparison? Why are we still watching this?

It’s 94 minutes that you won’t remember seconds after its over. You could always just throw down the white flag before shots are fired and save yourself the trouble.

The idea of putting these images out there at this very moment, and pimping it out as “entertainment” is, frankly, nauseating. It goes from being a crime against an art form to something a little more toxic. No. Nope. Nuh-uh. Netflix, what the hell were you thinking?

Something vital definitely seems to have been lost in the translation, however, and what you’re left with is a retelling that feels deader than anything skulking around the shadows.

OK, so, listen: There’s really no point describing what happens, or how, or when, or why. This is not a narrative film. This is not “cinema,” or maybe it is, who the f**k knows anymore? This is a Michael Bay movie.

It makes sense that Last Christmas isn’t coming out at the end of December but right on the cusp of Thanksgiving. It’s a bona fide holiday-movie turkey.

The taste of toxicity will overwhelm whatever pulpy grindhouse pleasures you might have experienced. A franchise that started off with a sense of betrayal and righteous anti-authoritarian anger ends by parroting authoritarian talking points that betray what this country is about. Let this please be the last of its kind.

You can only swindle audiences by thinking you simply throw A-list stars in anything and people will still show up, drooling like Pavlov’s pups, for so long before the echo in empty theaters is deafening.

Jack proves he’s (von Trier) also capable of making a failed act of provocation. The fact that he ends the movie in hell seems superfluous. We’ve already been there for two and a half hours.

This London Fields is nothing but fallow ground. Or, to apply the metaphor that Thornton’s scribe gives to Heard’s sexed-up temptress when he first meets her, it’s a black hole — something that sucks talent, taste, light, energy and matter into maw and leaves everything stranded in a void.

This is Transformers-level inanity. This is a blow to your head from a mallet. It will not make you feel like a 10-year-old, but it will make you feel 10 years older than when you first entered the theater. It is certainly not personal in any way, shape or form, just strictly chilly, corporate to a fault and somehow both chintzy and wildly overblown.

The problem with setting a familiar story in a foreign universe is that you have to establish the parameters of said universe or risk losing your audience. That's world-building 101, folks. Bright does not care about that. Bright's attitude is closer to "fuck you for not somehow keeping up with our cool shit" before doing a lot of push-ups.

Well, it's a little confusing. And slightly incoherent in terms of how it lays out the book's narrative about a serial killer who is targeting mothers and whose calling card is a snowman. And sort of not very good overall. It's bad.

Such manic fumblings and desperate crassness might be more forgivable were any of it actually, y’know, funny, but other than Olivia Colman’s occasional cameos as a raging therapist, the laughs have been granted a leave of absence.

There’s a need for redemption here, to be certain, and it has nothing to do with the narrative.

The film does offer some revealing anecdotes about his infamous Monroe sessions, but mostly, it simply slouches from one sensationalistic, salacious bit to the next, sans any historical context. Worse, filmmaker Shannah Laumeister continually rhapsodizes on-camera about her own “soul mate” relationship with the subject—leaving viewers feeling mad as hell.

No matter; this aggressively humorless farce would play like a dead rabbit pulled out of a hat, regardless of the casting choices.

Thanks to his pitch-perfect portrayal of Parks and Recreation's Type A–personality-run-amuck boss, we're willing to forgive Rob Lowe for virtually anything. This pitiful excuse for a political satire, however, seriously tests that theory.

Then observe as all but the hard-core Colferphiles slink out embarrassed, feeling as confused and discombobulated as if they too just took an electric bolt to the brain.

What, exactly, is the payoff for suffering through such painfully bad filmmaking for 93 minutes? Forget about getting "A Few Good Men"–style military melodramatics; this movie quickly proves that even a few good performances, lines of dialogue or music cues are a pipe dream. Your loyalty will not be rewarded.

Given that porn star and academic Lorelei Lee cowrote the script, we can assume that the film's portrayal of the cine-erotica industry is accurate. Which simply means that, while totally botching little things like how people speak, act and live in the real world, the film gets at least one thing right.

What really hurts is seeing Jamie Travis's name attached; for those of us who love his extraordinary "Patterns" trilogy, watching the talented Toronto filmmaker add his characterically kitschy touch to such a witless, faux-edgy movie can only be described as a Travis-ty.

Nothing - script, performances, comedy, drama - works in the slightest. To answer the title: Where do we start?

They've taken an intriguing story about female neuroses with gothic overtones and turned it into a graceless, butt-ugly attempt at Twilight-lite.

The movie adaptation's version of religion may be more nuanced than the usual Left Behind fire-and-brimstone sermonizing you find in much contemporary pro-Christian cinema, but it still leaves behind a sulfuric stink.

Such pitiable incompetence isn't charming, it's embarrassing - and simply inexcusable.

Director Michael Corrente has delivered decent petty-criminal movies before - see 1994's "Federal Hill" - but every aspect here smacks of faux-street toughness at its worst.

As for parents: Are you cool with feeling like you're having artificial sweetener sandblasted into your eyeballs for 87 minutes?

Not one single character strikes you as being anything but a mouthpiece for writer-director Matthew Leutwyler's simplistic views on socio-emotional problems (racial self-hatred! post-rehab guilt!) or an excuse for self-satisfied, back-patting acting exercises. The title is an understatement.

A veteran of the Saw franchise, Darren Lynn Bousman trades torture-porn antics for an old-fashioned Euro-horror vibe, complete with old dark houses and creepy maids; he then wastes what little suspense he generates with endless dorm-room philosophical debates about faith versus atheism and religio-conspiracy theories so far-fetched they'd embarrass Dan Brown.

A completely incoherent mess.

Jones may be a charismatic comedian, but no amount of her skilled mugging, Britpop tunes or help from supporting stars (Brooke Shields, Bill Nighy) can transform this derivative ugly duckling into a comic Anglophile swan.

The "bumpkins are people too" message will certainly please the Appalachian Anti-Defamation League; midnight-movie fans, however, will recognize that this mess misses the mark by a country mile.

This haphazard "exposé" only proves that hackery plus hot air [time] does not equal skillful muckraking.

Once AIDS rears its head, this nostalgic look back goes into melodrama mode - and quickly descends from bad to much, much worse.

This bloody, messy action film devolves into a plain ol' bloody mess.

Performances barely meet a junior-collegiate theater-troupe level, the narration hits maxi-fromage heights, and just when you think it can't get any more derivative, out comes a glowing suitcase à la "Pulp Fiction." Rock bottom has now been firmly established.

Fess up: You want to see Los Angeles get blowed up real good, and it's a measure of this movie's incompetence that it can't even deliver that vicarious thrill properly.

Even if you ignore the bad acting, dogmatic dirty-talk dialogue so wooden it'd put a Redwood forest to shame and director Phillippe Diaz's total lack of visual sense, you'd still have to digest a junior-collegiate lecture with less savvy than a horny 14-year-old.

We've come to expect diminishing returns from the once-promising Mexican director who then gave the world "Babel," but the combination of wallowing humanistic-cinema overkill and outright ridiculousness he lays out here represents a new low. Biutiful is not a tragedy. It's a straight-up travesty.

Those of us who dig the comedian's hyperactive persona may feel that the meter is now officially running on his amiable rocker-doofus act; everyone else will simply marvel that a Christmas season could produce such an unfunny, unentertaining lump of coal.

Even if Women in Trouble didn’t keep bringing to mind a superior artist, the film would still be badly written (DOA tangents about cunnilingus and kink don’t make dialogue edgy, only vulgar), not to mention unevenly paced and an embarrassment to all involved.

It’s just blinkered middle-class pandering at its most shameless.

Kari Skogland’s flashy yet dead-on-arrival drama turns Belfast’s backstreet battlefields into music-video backgrounds.

The only thing that remains a mystery is why anyone thinks they can pass off a poorly made, predictable-to-a-fault movie as inspiring entertainment.

This film will make you cry tears. They won’t be happy ones.