Keith Phipps

Jones' role, on the other hand, only requires him to look embarrassed at all times, which shouldn't have been too hard to pull off, considering the circumstances. Is that what they call "method" acting?

This adaptation of Eric Bogosian's 1994 play-- which revolves around several post-high-school drifters hanging around a convenience store while awaiting the return of their rock-star classmate -- doesn't hold up to Linklater's previous work, and the problem is Bogosian's script.

While Zeffirelli couldn't have assembled a more capable cast, none of them, except Cher, are given characters colorful enough to make the film worthwhile; almost everyone gets lost amidst the Tuscan scenery.

The best that can be said is that neither Matthew Perry nor Salma Hayek embarrass themselves, but they're both appealing enough that the same could probably be said if they were starring in a commercial for a hair-replacement system.

Pacino never goes too big, as he’s had the tendency to do for a while, but he also never goes deep. Manglehorn wanders and rambles, and the movie follows along dutifully, even though there isn’t much to see along the way.

The setup almost needs footnotes, which makes it all the more puzzling that Zombie's obvious love for horror's past would translate into such a joyless, grisly rehashing.

When the twists arrive, they feel like much of the film: creepy and cliché-free, but still terribly wrong.

Written and directed by Robert Shallcross, and seemingly misdirected into theaters from its natural home on the ABC Family Channel, Uncle Nino is a sweet but not particularly distinguished effort.

Not especially funny, romantic, or exciting.

Earth To Echo is yet another found-footage film, and not a particularly inventive one at that.

It has the courage to feature some refreshingly lousy bear costumes, but the film seems likely to send most kids tugging at sleeves for the cinematic equivalent of Space Mountain.

In one of the most laughable confrontations between humanity and nature since Elisha Cuthbert stared down the cougar on "24," Quaid's family runs amok in the house, as each member simultaneously discovers a carefully placed snake meant to scare them off the property, almost as if the snakes were working off a timer system. The film never recovers.

It’s a monster movie made with energy, but no real enthusiasm, and its setting just makes it feel like a long way to go to get the same old thing.

Ella McCay has some fine moments but getting to those little gold nuggets requires a lot of tedious sifting through the sand.

A slow, ponderous, ultimately unsuccessful exercise in cerebral nihilism.

An overstuffed would-be epic.

Scott can invest just about any scene with heft and intelligence, but neither the material nor his co-star give him much help.

Maybe it could have worked had the movie found a story worth telling, but it simply drifts from depressing incident to depressing incident, resembling the nightmare of an adorable but deeply emotionally scarred pig. Anyone with fond memories of Babe ought to avoid this mirthless, dispiriting sequel.

Star Maps rather transparently equates prostitution with show business; both exploit the impoverished and do no favors to minorities. It's a valid equation, but once the point is made, Star Maps has no place to go.

Part of what made "Koyaanisqatsi" such a revelation was its purely cinematic dependence on unconstructed imagery. Here, he adds a parade of religious, corporate, and political icons, and what's already preachy turns heavy-handed.

Doesn't have a mean bone in its body, but it's so sloppily assembled that even Lohan's charm can't keep it together.

It takes mere seconds for every charming moment to go from "Ahhh..." to "Aarrggh!"

If there’s a real person beneath Danny’s over-the-top showbiz-lifer persona, Pacino never finds him. Pacino probably still has it in him to do measured, subtle performances, but this isn’t one of them. He’s more mannerism than man, even in some otherwise-relaxed scenes with Bening.

Lacks the creepiness and craft of the films that inspired it.

Where Locklear's careful, clipped delivery confirms that she's better suited for TV stardom than the movies, every time Duff opens her mouth, she confirms that her natural home is in magazines. Or voicing animated squirrels. Either one would work.

Despite the obviously mercenary nature of this sequel, there's a thimbleful of clever ideas at work here, most notably in the way Allen's RoboSanta begins to turn his toy factory into a tiny dictatorship.

First-time director Casey La Scala and some talented stunt doubles squeeze in a fair amount of impressive skating footage, but the film around it will gleam the cube only of viewers with an unusually high tolerance for porta-toilet and Dutch-oven gags.

One’s uptight. The other’s flamboyant. Put them together and… Well, not much happens, except the desperation Hot Pursuit brings to its attempts to wring laughs out of the contrast.

In spite of some affecting moments, the film never quite works. It's too theatrical, perhaps unavoidably.

The film wavers between the drippy and the glib from start to finish, sometimes within the course of a single scene.

Casting Affleck would have paid off had the conflicted, acerbic star of “Boiler Room,” “Changing Lanes,” or even “Bounce” shown up. Instead we're left with the cardboard hero of “Armageddon” and “The Sum Of All Fears,” a caretaker leading man wholly dependent on the quality of the movie around him. Sadly, there's not much of that.

Stupidity has worked for the Wayans brothers in the past, but White Chicks will likely test the patience of even their most loyal fans.

The setpieces, in addition to mostly rehashing better scenes from earlier films, feel thrown together to serve the effects, and the effects look far less astonishing than anything in Cameron’s first two films.

It's an undistinguished effort in which none of the actors distinguish themselves.

By the time Arnott's whining monologues begin to number in the dozens, the notion of a swift apocalypse seems like a good idea.

Bay directs Armageddon in a way that seems more concerned with constantly assaulting the senses than anything else, hoping perhaps that the quick cuts and constant explosions will distract from his film's many flaws.

Whatever Crowe’s ambitions, Aloha feels like a tropical transplant of past work, and an unfortunate demonstration of the law of diminishing returns.

McConaughey is usually a welcome presence, but here, he looks like making the movie was getting in the way of his exciting African adventure.

Nonetheless, the film never amounts to more than the sum of a few good moments, and it leaves the aftertaste of a second-tier X-Files episode.

Fans of the books might enjoy seeing their world brought to life, but most everyone else will likely leave feeling as if they’ve just completed a seminar on vampire lore, and they’re likely to fail any pop quiz that follows.

The story is thrown together in the most perfunctory way possible, and director Steve Miner's ("Friday The 13th Part 3: 3D," "My Father The Hero") idea of a scary moment is having things spookily jump out of the blue.

Writer-director Martin Brest lends the film a professional sheen, and his stars (who some rumors suggest may have become romantically involved) have charisma to spare, but the film has all the charge and momentum of a Paxil ad.

The ick-factor deepens as the story progresses, but the mystery never does.

Marginally watchable-in part because of the odd presence of Dan Aykroyd and Courtney Love-it's ultimately pointless, repetitive and more concerned with appearing offbeat than actually doing anything inventive.

In its absolute commitment to inoffensive, fun-for-the-whole-family entertainment, it's as extreme in its own way as hardcore pornography.

A moralizing thriller so listless that it plays out like a game of mouse and mouse.

Consider that in “Point Blank,” Lee Marvin walks through the film with the look of a man who's lost his soul. You can see it in his eyes. Look in Gibson's eyes in this one and you'll see soullessness, but it doesn't seem to come from anywhere within his character.

It’s the work of someone who didn’t take the time to realize he had nothing to say, then decided to say something anyway.

Freeman and Judd are fine, as could be expected, but their pairing deserves a better movie -- not one with a cheap twist ending that will easily be spotted by anyone who's studied the complex machinations of any episode of Murder, She Wrote.

It's every bit as silly as it sounds, sillier really.

Pompeii just feels like an excuse to rain digital terror on screaming extras. There’s much to see here, but little to feel, and even less to remember.

Hitchcock's Psycho had a lot more than watchability going for it. Van Sant's film impresses only on the level of a cinematic parlor trick, and while that makes it an interesting curiosity, the world doesn't need it.

In retelling a story whose political implications could still start a screaming match decades later, it takes a mushy approach seemingly determined to offend no one, or at least offend no one all that much or for very long.

Despite an intriguing opening and an overqualified cast, The Lazarus Effect can’t shake a been-there/resurrected-that vibe left over from Flatliners, Pet Sematary, and countless other films stretching back to Frankenstein.

Radford’s pacing, which alternates between “stately” and “deathly,” keeps robbing the film of any momentum, and for every charming moment between the two leads, the film offers annoying bits of overstatement.

Condon seems to hope energetic staging and furrowed brows will compensate for a script that’s essentially an exchange of halfhearted arguments.

Its flat whimsy, VH1-ready musical montage sequences, and less-than-magic magic realism will probably not be enough to hold the attention of all but the most undiscriminating fans of witches and Stockard Channing.

Van Sant's direction is surprisingly static and conventional, which doesn't help this earnest, underwhelming misfire.

It’s hard to care about the fate of characters who never seem particularly alive in the first place.

Weiner might have a great movie in him yet, but Are You Here suggests his true talent lies elsewhere.

Mostly, however, Candyman: Farewell To The Flesh is content to rely on easy jolts and an overabundance of fake-out scares, rather than hard-earned suspense. It’s never awful, but it also never feels necessary. Mostly, it proves that even the most innovative horror concepts can find ways to spin their wheels.

Schepisi does nothing inventive visually, and the stars can’t find the humanity beneath Di Pego’s dialogue, generate much romantic chemistry, or make their personal struggles feel like burdens instead of scripted complications they’re destined to overcome before the credits roll.

It almost takes skill to make this cast dull, but the relentlessly tepid film does it anyway, by never getting the characters straight.

Either a radical reinterpretation of the source material or a mammoth failure of nerve. Whichever the case, it makes for a tremendously dull film that gives Witherspoon little to do except pose against a pretty backdrop.

The Judge ultimately plays less like a film than a series of big moments, some of which work well. Downey, Duvall, Farmiga, D’Onofrio, and Thornton aren’t known for making dull choices, and they often dig out nuance where others wouldn’t find it.

The D Train hangs some inspired ideas and winning comic moments on material that’s not strong enough to support them.

While endearing as cartoons, they don't wear flesh well.

Its mad rush to offer shallow takes on every Big American Issue would be offensive if it weren't so misguided. It's almost cute the way Dear Wendy thinks it knows what it's talking about and then just keeps going and going long after it's stopped making sense.

Even when better members of Jaglom's cast make connections, the atmosphere remains one of dull chaos.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is, like its predecessor, solidly put together and even elicits a chuckle here and there (most of them, as before, courtesy of Black). But it’s also pretty much as impenetrable as Finnegan’s Wake for those not locked into its hermetic, mushroom-and-brick-filled world.

Sluggish, laugh-free comedy (or is it an ineffectual drama?).

For twists to work, viewers have to feel like they're being led along, not jerked around, and James Vanderbilt's script eventually devolves into little more than a series of jerks, stopping short only of introducing evil twins and alien interlopers.

It would take a true visionary not to borrow from Alien Vs. Predator's predecessors, but Anderson lifts more than most will consider polite, borrowing to the point where some viewers may wonder whether he simply edited in footage from the old movies (or even, at one point, "Jurassic Park").

It's as if Gordon feared his film's none-too-subtle suggestion that kids should ask questions and decided to provide answers instead, tying up his story with a phony happy ending.

Maddeningly dull. It works on the cerebrum while the rest of the body drifts off to sleep, and the dullness only intensifies as the film goes on.

Unfortunately, Brother Bear doesn't offer much to marvel at beyond its animation.

The film's attempts at meaning do it in. The longer it goes on and the darker it grows, the further it drifts from any kind of human experience, outside of its protagonists' particular flavor of madness.

Sadly, Taking Lives, adapted from a novel by Michael Pye, proves to be one long wallow in elements that have long since had their effectiveness dulled flat.

Though the episodic, low-key action bears a resemblance to Kurosawa's Madadayo -- his little-seen, underrated final film -- neither the characters nor the plot lend it even a hint of dynamism.

McCormack admirably tries to squeeze a lot of real-world messiness into Expecting, but her film’s essential phoniness refuses to make room for it.

Given nothing to do, Carrie-Anne Moss looks on from the sidelines as the film halfheartedly toys with the tired old notion that only a thin line separates the dogged investigator and the compulsive killer. She looks bored, and she should.

As it goes with the TV show, so it goes with the movie, which benefits from being shot largely in Rome and suffers from trying to stretch its sitcom antics to feature length.

In the tradition of the opening scene, let’s bring it all full circle with the question that kicked off this series: Do you like scary movies? If so, there are plenty of other ones you could watch.

The film too often gets bogged down by a rhythmless pace and an overabundance of the kind of wacky physical business better left to experts in a dumber brand of comedy.

The amusements here are mostly of the unintentional kind.

One long tease, not just because it keeps promising sex it doesn't deliver. It teases at deeper themes and cultural commentary.

As satire, it’s toothless. (The rich are awful. We know.) That might be forgivable if the film was at all funny or could decide if Becket was a victim or a psychopath, a problem not aided by Powell’s noncommittal performance. He’s doing too little.

The Last Party's scattershot approach doesn't linger on any single topic long enough to make a convincing case for any side.

It’s as if everyone seemed to think that all the film needed was to assemble the right pieces and the rest would take care of itself. And with pros like these, they almost do.

Once the dust clears, it's hard to think of a film saga that's wound down with such a profound anticlimax. It's a whimper in bang's clothing.

Too pretty to dismiss, but too dull to recommend.

Ultimately, the film is the kind of neither-fish-nor-fowl work unlikely to satisfy anyone: There's not enough hot-and-heavy action for thrill-seekers, and not enough substance for those looking for above-the-waistline kicks.

At least Christensen seems to have the right idea: She gives her character a look that's part lust, part thousand-yard stare, and part Machiavelli in tight sweaters and form-fitting skirts. It's not exactly acting, but it's not predictable, either, which makes it stand out all the more.

That points to the problem at Sleepover's heart: It buys into the caste system it ostensibly flouts.

Girotti has no magical powers, but his dementia has a way of coming and going at just the right time to move the story and themes wherever director Ferzan Ozpetek and co-writer Gianni Romoli want them to go.

The issues Decena raises rarely get treated on any but the most superficial of levels, and the flatly realized characters make it difficult to care what becomes of them.

League begins as a smart variation on the summer blockbuster, then loses its nerve in a second half sure to satisfy neither cheap-thrill-seekers nor fans of neglected literary oddities.

Director Graham Baker has little gift for atmosphere, and apart from one inspired sequence, I suspect I'll forget every aspect of this movie in a couple of days.

Peter Stormare has fun engaging in some Walken-level scenery-chewing-almost literally-as the patriarch of a werewolf clan. Good for him. That means at least one person has found something to like about this tedious collection of wisecracks and hand-me-down monsters.

The original was a tart dipped in acid; this one's a biscuit sprinkled in Splenda.

A lot of The Break-Up doesn't work. Actually, apart from some funny moments between old Swingers sparring partners Favreau and Vaughn, and a nice scene with Jason Bateman as the couple's realtor, virtually none of it works.

It doesn't help that neither Ferrell nor McBride bring their best material, with McBride offering yet another variation on an angry redneck, and Ferrell falling back on Ron Burgundy-like bluster and nonsense exclamations.

It's a horror film better suited for skittish cats than humans.

As a piece of storytelling, The Haunting In Connecticut is pretty lazy. As a horror movie, it’s lazier still, bringing out every annoying shock-cut and disorienting sound-design trick of the last decade.

Candy-coated or otherwise, crap's still crap.

Dredd, a second attempt at making Judge Dredd a movie star, overcorrects, veering in the opposite direction with a dark - literally and otherwise - nearly humorless bit of ultraviolence distinguished largely by a fondness for spurting CGI blood.

As long it sticks to that chase, Babylon A.D. remains a sub-passable lead-footed action film with neat scenery.

Cage has some fun with the role, making Blaze a kind of Zen Elvis with a strange fixation on Carpenters songs, but the film's priorities lie with the digital effects and not the story, and even the effects aren't that hot.

When a film whose cast includes Michael Keaton, Jane Lynch, Fred Armisen, Craig Robinson, Demetri Martin, and the now rarely seen Carol Burnett can’t scare up more than a smattering of laughs, the patient was never meant to live in the first place.

There must be some solid marketing reason for putting out a Christmas movie before the jack o'lanterns have begun to rot, but if so, it's elusive. Couldn't this lump of coal have waited another month?

It's a film for kids who want to know what headaches feel like.

If there's anything sadder than a satire without teeth, it's a thriller without thrills. Even sadder is the rare movie that fails at both genres simultaneously. That, and that alone, makes Man Of The Year exceptional.

It doesn't help that the characters have so little to them. Weston plays Moriarty as such an unfailingly good, temptation-free kid that he only needs a halo floating above his pre-Raphaelite curls to complete the picture.

If director Jaume Collet-Serra (House Of Wax) set out to make a parody of horror-film clichés, he succeeded brilliantly.

The Black Hole will likely bore anyone not immediately captivated by V.I.N.CENT, the prissy, Cicero-quoting robot with a voice provided by Roddy McDowall and a body that looks like an art-nouveau reinterpretation of a can of beans.

This isn’t a movie. It’s a MySpace page.

No one makes it out of this laughless mess unscathed.

Whatever its model, the film is assembled from much poorer material, leftover parts of Lifetime movies and well-meaning indie films seen only on opening nights at some forgotten festival in Tampa.

Even the movie's rubber monsters look tired.

Dunmore creates a memorably grimy London, but the moral grime covering the film proves less memorable.

As for the 3-D, much ballyhooed in the film's advertisements, it's another muddy conversion that does little but make the film's unconvincing blood effects look a little darker. It's good, theoretically at least, to have Craven back. But why come back for this?

Maher's too smart to make a movie this dumb.

So instead of history and drama, we get images, many of them striking but none of them memorable, and noise that deafens until no sense can escape. The events beg for Shakespearean gravity, but the only tragedy here is that so little could be made of so much.

It's seldom a good sign when a Rob Schneider cameo elevates a comedy, but Little Man aims so low and fires so often that it can't miss all the time.

About Piven: When did it go wrong? When did the caustic character actor guaranteed to liven up even the dullest movie turn into a walking black hole of smarm from which no joy can escape?

It's as dull as it is brainless, the work of creators who've spent far more time concocting silly stories about Shakespeare than learning from him.

Yet another comedy that suggests someone should take Martin aside and remind him that he can do better.

The film combines dour heroes with a drab look, and the string of "Don't try this at home"-style stunts should underwhelm even viewers too young for James Bond or XXX.

Even Neeson can’t rescue this halfhearted shrug of a movie.

When they (the family) arrive at their destination, the story arrives at an ending that's neither obvious nor interesting, kind of like the film leading up to it.

It's a sign of trouble when watching a movie prompts nostalgia for the movie it's ripping off, particularly when that movie wasn't any good. But walking out of Johnson Family Vacation, it's hard not to feel misty-eyed for the urine-soaked-sandwich gags, incest jokes, and other refined comic elements of "National Lampoon's Vacation."

Playing in theaters when it belongs on television, where snacks and bathroom breaks can counteract its punishing dryness, and the option of watching something else doesn't involve driving home.

Neither Grossman’s uninspired staging nor the performances help much.

The once-reliable Danes is a particular detriment, but it's really hard to care whether either character escapes from what looks like a really unappealing summer camp.

McKellen is fine, of course, but the film as a whole offers about as much insight into evil as Ming The Merciless in a “Flash Gordon” serial.

Chow has a future in a America if given better material with which to work; here, he's wasted in a movie that's forgotten 20 minutes after the credits roll.

Mostly Boogeyman remains content to be a film about a boogeyman who hides in closets and under beds and gobbles people up. And for that, it deserves a certain amount of respect. On the other hand, the film could hardly be any sillier.

Troy does look good--so good, in fact, that it takes a while to reveal itself as a thundering dud with much action but little personality, human drama, or brains.

Spade can still be funny when he lets himself be mean, and Dickie Roberts shows glimmers of that dynamic, but they're muscled out by lazy slapstick and maudlin stuff.

The film aims for twee, but lands on torturous. It’s narcissism blown up to a global scale, in the guise of a quirky voyage of self-discovery.

A mess.

The result is a relentlessly dour film livened up only by Bardem’s shameless scenery-chewing and the occasional jolt of action. Otherwise, it’s an endless frown of a movie that does little but confirm that Penn’s talents, while impressive, aren’t limitless.

It's a lot to suffer through for a film that has nothing to say, but insists on saying it anyway. Repeatedly.

No doubt a decent movie could have been made about the behind-the-scenes life of CBGB, but CBGB isn’t it. It’s as flip about the club as it is about Kristal, the music, and the time and place that shaped it all.

Domino de-emphasizes the human element--not to mention such niceties as plot and clarity--to such a degree that only those who show up purely to watch combustibles go "boom" won't feel insulted.

Though light on drama, Apple’s scenes at the shelter are easily the best part of the film, among the few moments when Gimme Shelter decides to show the effect of faith and charity rather than simply preach it.

Some good Bob Dylan songs are called in to underline the big moments, but end up eclipsing them instead. There's more drama and insight in a snippet of "One More Cup Of Coffee" than the entirety of Jack & Rose.

Works equally poorly as a tourist brochure and as a drama.

The first 20 minutes of Blast From The Past, in which the film actually does something with its central concept, aren't that bad.

If you've ever wanted to see Queen Latifah fatally attacked by jellyfish at the bottom of the ocean, Sphere is the movie for you. If you're looking for more, you're not going to find it here.

When a sequel has to hit the reset button and take all its characters back to where they started, it probably didn't need to be made.

Has little to recommend it. A sterling example of how an unimaginative combination of interviews and archival footage can drain the life from even the most compelling topic, it feels padded at a mere 68 minutes.

Plays less like an exposé than a piece of exploitation, its clear divide between good and evil allowing no breathing room for real drama.

The Spanish import The Other Side Of The Bed takes a winning idea and drives it directly into the ground.

If there's one thing more heartbreaking than a crying child, it's a crying child wearing thick glasses, an image exploited numerous times throughout the course of the dull, uninvolving, tissue-thin Hope Floats.

A fairly faithful adaptation of what a game is like, but without the pleasure of getting to play or the much-needed option of pressing the "off" button.

A film as grisly as it is dumb.

Shamelessly exploitative, but never entertainingly so.

Anyone who already knows better than to taunt the disabled, or former Oscar winners, should probably give it a pass.

Hardwick switches gears from wacky comedy to romantic drama about halfway through Deliver Us, but it's too late, and what follows is far too dull to make any difference.

Aside from a promising scene involving a cornfield rave and the pyrotechnic potential for grain alcohol, it drags along, taking a small eternity to set up a final showdown that plays more like a bloody pro-wrestling event than the stuff of nightmares.

There's no pea soup, but sketchy effects, cheap jolts, swirling cameras, and buckets of blood surround Exorcist: The Beginning with the potent aroma of cheese.

Excerpted from The History Channel’s 10-part 2013 miniseries The Bible, then given extra footage, Son Of God boils the life of Jesus down to feature-length, but it plays less like a movie than a hastily edited attempt to explore a new revenue stream.

Even without the difficult imagery, Breillat's grim observations on men, women, and sexual orientation, are tough to take.

It's drainingly mediocre.

Emmerich now directs entirely in watered-down Spielbergisms, and his storytelling skills, never strong, have gone slack. His talent for stretching a concept that can be described in 10 seconds into a feature-length movie, on the other hand, remains impressive.

The junk-shop surrealism ultimately gets the better of everyone's good intentions.

Parker's film is flat beyond the flatness appropriate to the story; the conflict between Glover and Paymer follows Melville's original so squarely that it quickly begins to feel like they're going through the motions.

The best that can be said of Son Of The Bride is that it's attractively photographed. But, then, so was the Hindenburg explosion, and this packs far less excitement into its two shapeless hours.

Hard not to pelt the screen with rotten fruit when confronted with a film like Christmas With The Kranks.

A mud bath of sentiment, strained speechifying, and gloppy music.

It's also hard to figure out who this movie is supposed to delight: It's too scary for little kids and not nearly scary enough for anyone allowed to rent "The Ring" without getting carded.

Never recovering the energy of its early scenes, the heavily improvised Château becomes shapeless and dull.

Shakespeare hasn't had it this rough since Lemmy from Motörhead performed the opening soliloquy in "Tromeo And Juliet."

Director Rob Bowman seems at a loss as to what to bring to the film, which, even with its good choice of leads, plods along from one dragon fight to the next, all of them staged to showcase Fire's impressive CGI dragons, but none choreographed with any real flair.

Sadly, The Punisher is about little more than bullets hitting bone, and how good it might feel to be on the right end of a gun.

This must all make sense to Yanes, somehow, but the film plays like a private joke with no punchline.

Attempts at high spirits and the presence of Matthew Lillard all suggest that this is supposed to be a comedy.

Pettyfer and Wilde look the parts, but any scenes asking them to emote quickly turn disastrous.

Strange Magic certainly isn’t an ordinary sort of mess, and the personal nature of the project is still evident in the finished film.

The plot's profound implausibility wouldn't matter if the ideas and emotions behind it had any power.

When the film doesn’t strain for twinkly enlightenment, it stoops to find the easiest possible joke.

All the principals -- except, significantly, screenwriter Kenneth Lonergan -- reprised their roles for the sequel, and all seem confused as to why they returned.

What a shame that The Hunting Of The President feels like part of the problem.

Hoffman and Travolta are both good, but this toothless satire does little to justify their performances.

This is teen product at its most generic.

It’s rare that a work of science fiction offers a grim vision of the future, then asks us to learn to love it.

Fascinating in the way only a wrongheaded film by a great filmmaker can be, Legend lends beauty to such imagery, but the story keeps dragging it back to the mystical land of kitsch.

Though it soon devolves into a laughable mess, The Forgotten at least spends its first 10 minutes or so raising provocative questions.

Through it all, Muccino piles on one shrill confrontation after another. At times, he seems headed for the melodramatic turf owned and operated by Pedro Almodóvar, but where the young Almodóvar would have deployed a prankish wit and the older Almodóvar scraped toward the humanity beneath.

It isn’t just sub-par for Argento, it’s sub-par for virtually any director. It’s a stain on Dracula’s good name, and a waste of time for even those looking for the cheapest of vampiric thrills.

In happier times, director Stuart Rosenberg confidently helmed Cool Hand Luke. Here, he resorts to one spookhouse cliché after another, and even the original touches are more puzzling than startling.

Rudnick is a wit, and his script allows everyone a decent one-liner or two. But the problem with one-liners is that they only last one line, leaving a whole movie around them that needs filling in.

Slater not only makes for a dull Supergirl, but she's stuck in a clumsy, silly film that tries for the light touch of Richard Lester's Superman II and fails decisively.

If you have an audience that doesn’t mind a story that includes lies, aversions, and omissions so long as it doesn’t get in the way of thinking too much about the songs they love and uncomfortable truths about the artist who created them, you don’t even have to put that much effort into what you’re making up.

As a sci-fi action movie, the latest Moreau is sub-schlock. As a thinly veiled post-colonial allegory, it's dangerously close to racism. Either way, it's one of the most ridiculous movies in a ridiculous summer.

The original was repulsive but impossible to shake. This remake is pure applause bait, which makes it barbaric in ways Peckinpah would never have dreamed.

Evening proves that there are such things as mistakes, by featuring two hours of bad choices and half-executed ideas.

It is, in short, sub-par as demon-possessed-car movies go, even if watching Brolin attempt to act horrified at the sight of a classic automobile makes it almost worthwhile.

A romantic triangle between werewolves and humans doesn't sound dull, but director Katja von Garnier seems to determined to drain the life out of it.

2012 is ultimately only about finding new ways to topple monoliths. Only they don’t feel that new.

It shouldn't, in other words, be that hard to make a good Conan movie. John Milius did a half-decent job with "Conan The Barbarian" in 1982, but this new film of the same name feels like a half-hearted revamp of virtually any of the Conan rip-offs that clogged up video-store shelves in the '80s.

It's thin material, to say the least, and manipulative to boot, putting women, children, and a SEAL father-to-be in jeopardy in ways more about servicing cheap thrills than any larger point about the perilous state of the world in 2012.

Aniston and Sandler, however, play characters too awful to deserve anyone better than each other. But what did we do to deserve them?

A witless reprise of '60s and '70s biker movies.

This is junk, a bunch of hard-R action scenes kept together by the thinnest of plots.

Garry Marshall has too much confidence that he can match the weighty issues here with the light comedy. He can't. Or at least he can't with this cast.

Bynes appears in practically every scene, and the film seems to have been designed as a showcase for her comedic skills, which she apparently left behind in the trailer.

Bravely or stupidly, both A Little Bit Of Heaven and its heroine charge on as if the introduction of terminal cancer didn't change things that much.

It's really gory and really dull. Mostly just dull.

Marmaduke saves its farts for the beginning and end, but the stink carries through the whole movie.

Maybe the broad gestures, colorful costumes, and exaggerated acting worked in the theater. As a movie, it's actively, fascinatingly terrible, with a vision of Christ more likely to instill in viewers a fear of traveling bands of loony street performers than a desire to embrace the Holy Spirit.

Dieckmann fails to notice that Thurman doesn’t have the comic chops for the material--she comes off more like a self-pitying loser than a witty, put-upon everywoman.

It's a potentially creepy setting that would give an innovative director a chance to do a lot with a little. Unfortunately, Lincoln isn't one of those.

Stone's film, more an act of boosterism than inquiry, is a tremendous missed opportunity.

What darkness the movie achieves comes solely from the lighting.

A couple of halfway decent action scenes do little to distract from the story’s mounting ludicrousness—two words: adamantium bullets—or a conclusion that’s only a little more satisfying than a projector breakdown. Maybe.

Apart from a funny turn by "Arrested Development's" Will Arnett as Williams' evil boss, nobody appears to be having a good time. And the feeling is infectious.

Adrien Brody delivers a colorful turn as a braided-and-tatted drug kingpin who thinks his pet toad talks to him (funny animal, check!), but High School is otherwise a tedious sludge through the same gray corridors where the same old gags wait around every turn.

Fans of the genre might appreciate the decidedly R-rated violence and nudity, but that's really all the film has to offer.

Adults should steer clear. Kids should be sent to it only if they’ve been extraordinarily naughty.

The first Human Centipede had audacity on its side. Human Centipede II has only excess.

Star Martin Lawrence, now the sole remaining element from the original "Big Momma's House" 11 years ago, looks pretty tired both in and out of makeup here.

Director Samuel Bayer, a veteran commercial and music video director responsible for Nirvana’s “Smell Like Teen Spirit Video” back when the original Nightmare series was still a going concern, brings a slick visual sense but not a hint of vision.

Craven's name doesn't appear anywhere in the credits of the film otherwise known as They. That's fitting, too, since even the worst Craven-directed movies have a lot more going for them than this painfully familiar bit of oogum-boogum.

However misguided, it’s clearly one from the heart, a movie that should never have happened, and one that’s hard to believe actually exists. Roar is one of a kind. With any luck, it always will be.

Gibson makes sure that no blow remains unfelt, and his approach can't help but stir the body, but he never touches the soul.

Only those attracted to "Waterworld" or "Last Action Hero" level big-budget disasters need bother with this one.

Torque has a sense of humor about itself, but the laughs stick in the throat.

There's not a relationship in He Got Game that feels right, especially the one between Washington and Allen, and if that doesn't work, neither does the film.

Gives virtually every cast member a shot at humiliation.

It mostly serves as a warning to stay away from future films involving director Nick Hamm and screenwriter Mark Bomback.

It's like a cross between "Heathers" and "Waiting For Guffman," had those movies been made by morons, for morons, and the cinematic equivalent of cow-tipping, only less graceful.

As much an inspirational email forward as a film, it’s helped by the work of a strong cast and some photography that makes Nebraska look like heaven on earth. That doesn’t make it persuasive, however.

Dylan's performance doesn't offer any clues. He's an icon and he delivers an icon's performance, literally: He could easily have been replaced by piece of wood with his face painted on it. That distance also means he remains more or less untouched by the embarrassment going on around him, even though it's largely his own creation.

There's "so bad it's good," but there's also "just plain bad," and Skeleton's pre-processed shittiness spoils the fun.

Clayburgh and Tambor demonstrate genuine chemistry, but the film keeps diluting it with awful attempts at comedy and worse attempts at drama.

Send a check to UNICEF and go see "Lost In Translation," "Mystic River," or "Kill Bill" instead.

Relies on the most time-tested basic moves of farce for laughs that just don't come.

Where 300 made a virtue of its low budget by stripping the visuals down to their essential elements, the shot-in-Bulgaria Legend Of Hercules mostly just looks rushed and cheap, only coming to life in a handful of fight scenes, and then only briefly.

Even if the time were somehow right for a madcap comedy about terrorists, What To Do In Case Of Fire would still look pretty lousy.

It's a worthless bit of low-grade satire that's as sophisticated and entertaining as a pile of twigs.

Lyne doesn't seem to get the novel, failing to incorporate any of Nabokov's black comedy -- which is to say, Lolita's heart and soul.

Looks like a video-game promo, has a story that plays like the fifth episode of a struggling syndicated action show, and feels like a headache waiting to happen.

A singularly uncharismatic leading man, the paunchy, expressionless, frequently inarticulate Sigel makes an unintentionally comic impression as a character named, naturally, Beans.

There’s little in Burying The Ex to suggest it’s a Dante movie at all, given how far it’s removed from the smart, exciting films he used to make. Maybe it’s best if everyone just pretends he wasn’t involved.

When the CGI snakes finally arrive, they look like they've just returned from a guest spot on "Charmed;" if the film had cut any more corners, it would have had to borrow graphics from an old Intellivision game.

Parlavecchio is kind of an asshole, and that–along with the stilted dialogue, clueless portrayals of women, and the fact that much of the plot has been lifted from Tom Perrotta's terrific novel "The Wishbones"–ranks among the film's main problems.

It's not the implausibility of its plot, the shallowness of its characters, its funereal pace, its tenuous understanding of teenage behavior, its commercial-ready TV-movie-style direction, or the fact that Pfeiffer and Williams may be the most implausible Italian-Americans since James Caan -- the film is most undone by its near-complete lack of genuine drama.

Perhaps Lee took a look at the script -- saw all the jokes about diarrhea, pubic lice, drunk old ladies, and drugged gravy, and thought, "Why bother?" Looking at the final results, it's hard to feel any other way.

The film could have turned out worse, but only via the addition of a Tom Green cameo, or an accident in which the actors caught on fire.

Never good, Crush takes a turn for the worse when it takes a turn for the serious. Its attempt to drop cartoon comedy for cartoon tragedy essentially thrusts the characters from Cathy into the panels of Mary Worth.

John Travolta should realize that people appreciate him, maybe more than ever, but that he should start making movies people won't feel ashamed for having seen if he wants to avoid co-starring with a talking lemur in the future.

It essentially uses the setup of an early Dick short story as a bookend to one long, dull chase scene.

Beloved has an almost gut-wrenching quality to it. But the same can't be said for the movie overall--it's a noble, ambitious failure, but a failure nonetheless.

This vanity project belongs to an audience of one.

Much poorly choreographed gunplay, many lovingly rendered head explosions, and some half-assed exposition about centuries-old, immortality-seeking pirates follow, with nothing to recommend House Of The Dead to anyone but the most undiscriminating zombie-movie fans.

In some ways it takes the right approach, attempting to mix moral lessons into a narrative rather than hit audiences over the head with them. But the lessons are so pat that every moment in which Pepper makes a good moral choice feels like an act of self-congratulation.

Either a thoroughly incomprehensible movie or a daring exercise in the cinema of disorientation, and a painful viewing experience either way.

Director Shawn Levy brings a yeoman-like joylessness to the project, spoiling whatever fun might have been had. Kutcher and Murphy seem game enough, and it's a testament to their charisma that they're the hardest element of the film to hate.

A grimy mess set among L.A.'s speed-abusing "tweakers," Salton has neither the substance to justify first-time feature director D.J. Caruso's pretentious flourishes, nor the skill to make those flourishes work on their own terms.

Extreme Ops seems to have only the slightest grasp of its own absurdity (or its own horribleness), which makes it almost charming.

Passion Play doesn't overreach so much as it overindulges in aimless pacing, inert acting, and a romance maudlin enough to make "Twilight" look restrained.

If there is a bottom of the Hollywood barrel, Jingle All The Way has been gleaned from the filth upon which that bottom rests.

Actually, it's pretty much the definition of absurd.

It's... directed by Andy Tennant ("It Takes Two") with all the flair of an episode of "7th Heaven", making it that much more worth avoiding.

A film about as funny as a seeping wound.

In short, every element suggests Envy ought to be amusing, but the only comparably disastrous movie in recent memory involves Ben Affleck, Jennifer Lopez, and a rapping retarded man.

Tough to respect a documentary that doesn't play fair. Anyone interested in the subject would be better off spending Life And Debt's torturous 80-minute running time with a good article on the topic.

An unintended gift to midnight-movie programmers and students of the bizarre, Roberto Benigni's Pinocchio could have become a "Howard The Duck" -- or "Battlefield Earth"-like synonym for cinematic miscalculation, were its title not already so familiar.

It's all handled so poorly that it comes off as more ghoulish than anything else, although those who find the word "bong" instantly entertaining and are easily distracted by the presence of flickering images may be amused.

Like everything else in this needless remake—from a heartless performance by Williams to the patented kiddie-sadism of screenwriter John Hughes—it's sloppily grafted onto a skeletal version of the original, with scenes lifted from the source and reinserted in a manner that doesn't make sense.