Joe Leydon

Far too aggressively seamy (and ferociously foul-mouthed) to please diehard fans of traditional sagebrush sagas, this misfire offers nothing in the way of wit, innovation or even marquee allure to interest auds accustomed to edgier revisionist oaters.

Emerald Run is one of the weirdest hodgepodges to make its way to theater screens and digital platforms in quite some time.

The result is a movie that is not merely disappointingly uneven, but irredeemably unbalanced.

Gun Shy is the sort of leaden misfire in which actors labor mightily to transform themselves into cartoon caricatures in a desperate (and largely unsuccessful) attempt to make viewers think, despite all evidence to the contrary, they are watching a comedy.

A picture so thoroughly generic as to suggest a contraption assembled from spare parts with the aid of a how-to manual.

There’s barely enough plot for a half-hour episode of a weekly TV series spinoff. And there’s even less here in terms of acting, writing and filmmaking polish to appeal to anyone over the age of 10.

A gonzo mashup of gothic melodrama, Wild West survival story, and voodoo-flavored supernaturalism, with a side order of slasher-movie tropes and a sprinkling of kinky sex insinuations.

Only small children with limited attention spans will be impressed by the lackluster kung-foolishness in 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain.

The narrative is so predictable that, when an outburst of trash-talking doesn’t escalate into a barroom brawl, it’s not just surprising, it’s pretty close to shocking.

Has the unmistakable look and feel of a micro-budget indie produced for a small circle of friends, many of whom are listed in the credits.

A stunningly unfunny farce that makes the worst of a stale concept.

There’s a point beyond which it’s difficult to believe anything that happens on screen, and impossible to care what is supposed to be real or not. Unfortunately, the movie continues for a lengthy stretch after that, until it literally trudges into a deep, dark hole.

They Remain is a movie that lives down to your worst expectations.

Plodding and repetitive in its efforts to maintain pressure-cooker intensity, The Divide resembles nothing so much as an extended "Twilight Zone" episode as it brings a sci-fi twist to a familiar scenario about stressed characters who bring out the worst in each other while trapped in close quarters.

As bad as Dead Water might seem while you’re watching it, it’s even worse when you replay it in your mind after the fact, and pay stricter attention to holes in the plot and gaps in the logic.

The concept is thought-provoking but the execution is flat-footed.

Imagine a standard-issue romantic comedy drained of humor and suffused with sincerity, and you’ll know what to expect from The Competition, a ponderous trifle that plays very much like the cinematic equivalent of a 45 RPM record spun on a turntable set at 33 1/3.

A '70s-style redneck romp aimed at folks who felt intellectually challenged by the complex narrative stratagems of "The Dukes of Hazzard" and "The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo."

Only very small children still easily impressed by interaction of human actors and CGI quadrupeds will be amused by Garfield.

Plays like an overextended variety-show sketch.

Even when judged by the standards of broad farce, however, Expecting repeatedly strains credibility and defies logic in ways too glaring to ignore.

Instead of persuasive verisimilitude and compelling character development, we get scene after scene of Jesse waiting for something, anything.

Will Wallace's turgid indie tells an earthbound and anemic story about an orphan's progress in small-town Texas.

Be prepared to laugh less at a lot more of the same thing in this overbearing but underwhelming sequel.

An exceptionally lame genre parody that plumbs depths of ineptitude heretofore charted only by the marginally less abysmal "Date Movie."

Overall, though, the slapdash pic appears to be the work of folks who made things up as they went along; you might say they were, well, vamping.

The Girl in the Photographs is a slasher movie filled with smug and self-absorbed characters who are not nearly as clever as they obviously assume they are.

Paradox, a waste of time made bearable only by its brevity, plays like a bad acid flashback from the 1970s, a time when similarly self-conscious trippy pastiches of rock music and genre conventions proliferated on the midnight-movie circuit.