Keith Uhlich

Every serious narrative beat in the film is ultimately undercut by pro-forma storytelling, or by faux-improvised humor.

Steven Soderbergh takes a macro approach to the scandal, though the results, with rare exception, are vexingly micro.

The film is one that might have been dreamed up by one of the cynical douche bros from the Hangover during a blacked-out stupor.

For all of the film’s attempts to get back to the sinisterly sidling Michael of the first Halloween, his stealth movements no longer terrify because his fixations are less unthinkingly instinctual, more compulsively mortal.

It's never fun watching a comedian's shrewdness ossify into shtick. Yet whatever incisiveness Ricky Gervais once had (and he had plenty, if The Office and Extras are any indication) is barely evident in the new Netflix-released satire Special Correspondents

What spark there is in the movie comes in the scenes when Vivian and Nana are getting to know each other. Both actresses have a sweet chemistry and strong screen presences that you wish were better utilized.

There's barely a scene in IO that's performed with pulse or verve. It's Sad-Face Emoji Sci-Fi, with po-faced references to Greek mythology, Chopin and T.S. Eliot, among others, and empirical techno-jargon spoken at a Valley Girl level of credibility.

No one emerges especially worse for wear because the entire production is wholly apathetic to everything from a compelling story to sharp comic timing.

Tennant is awful, by which I mean wonderful, by which I mean truly terrible, yet in a legitimately magnificent way…I think. This is a you-can’t-kill-THAT-performance! par excellence, beginning at peak nutball and staying breathlessly atop the trash heap.

If there are any dadaist cinephiles out there, perhaps they can reclaim Second Act as a multilayered masterpiece of illogic. Certainly the film seems destined to survive all future nuclear winters, enduring as a time capsule of humanity at its most pitiably pedestrian.

Sutton is aiming to make a grand statement about America's downtrodden, and he never lets you forget it.

Godzilla and Kong’s brawls have the ennui-inducing feel of a child arbitrarily smashing action figures together.

Noah Hawley treats his protagonist’s story as a somber tragedy that at times stoops to trashiness.

[Chazelle’s] torturously glib cynicism is quite the attitude around which to build an epic boondoggle of this sort. Equally as heinous is the 11th-hour optimism that he then attempts to tack onto Babylon via a jaw-droppingly wrongheaded climactic montage.

What played as rousingly dumb fun in "Independence Day" (1996) — all those pie-eyed nationalistic monologues, and U.S. landmarks reduced to rubble — now come off as callously insensitive, even with tongue firmly in cheek.

This moronically unfunny gangster comedy fluctuates wildly between the lowest-of-low humor and pity-the-aged-man pathos, and offers further evidence that the best days are behind its iconic cast members.

As is, this semi-improvised feature comes off as a willfully vague exercise that, like its dimwit protagonist, presumes that profundity and enlightenment will emerge from the morass eventually. Er, maybe - or maybe not. Kinda like "Signs;" only much, much worse.

Berger’s script is little more than a series of contrived comic vignettes that prevent the actors from creating believable characters, forcing them to contort to fit the low-rent farce.

For the most part, The Forgotten Space treats its subjects and settings as exploitable commodities in service to a lot of facile rise-working-man! muckraking. The ism trumps all.

The uniformly awful performances seem beamed in from Planet Ed Wood, while the script is filled with mock-macho zingers (“If I wanted to hear from an a**hole, I’d rip you a new one!”) that would give former Governor Schwarzenegger pause.

This frenetic horror-comedy from "Bubba Ho Tep's" Don Coscarelli is of the make-it-up-as-you-go-along school of storytelling.

The whole sorry enterprise leaves you feeling, well, shafted.

Christopher Isherwood’s seminal queer novel deserves a film adaptation that captures both its sense of place and its activist spirit. Cowriter-director Tom Ford settles for the glossy ephemera of a Vanity Fair cover spread.

Only Gaby Hoffmann makes a lasting impression, as the thick-skinned pariah of the bunch. Somehow she’s able to give the ring of truth to even the hoariest of Hennelly and cowriter Sarah Adina Smith’s conceits (notably a rally-the-troops speech cribbed from founding father George Washington). The rest makes you long for Armageddon.

No stranger to one-joke premises, writer-director Tommy Wirkola (of 2009's Nazi-zombie "classic" "Dead Snow") populates this frenzied horror-satire with tons of incoherently staged bloodletting and f-bomb–accentuated kiss-off lines. It's a grim fairy tale, all right.

By the time The Son of No One reaches its wanna-be-tragic finale, you'd like nothing more than to kick this bastard child to the curb.

Im could care less about these people as characters, presenting them as either obscenely hot or repellently decaying bundles of flesh.

The funny thing about all these sub-"Matrix" shenanigans is that they’re genuinely meant to stoke thought and reflection. Frankly, though, few movies have left me feeling as shorn of gray matter.

By the end of Pray’s skin-deep love letter, only one sweeping reaction seems appropriate: “A pox on all your houses.”

Only Kinnear manages to give his role some shades beyond the broadly farcical, though even he ultimately succumbs to his leading lady's toothy grin and Oprah-sanctioned bromides.

Only Wilson acquits himself, finding a few insightful layers in his black-sheep stereotype and working up a sweet chemistry with Taraji P. Henson as his sassily devoted lady-friend.

The film slowly reveals its true colors, pointing a fanatically accusatory finger at teachers' unions while using twisted Obama-esque sloganeering about "order" and "hope" to further its simplistically anticollectivist agenda.

Interminable scenes of macho posturing and mock-Tarantino dialogue (including a lengthy dissection of the word fags!) mark time between a number of ineptly staged car chases that would embarrass the makers of "Cannonball Run II."

Probably best to dissuade the so-bad-it’s-good crowd: There’s nothing here to laugh at with the communal glee of a "Rocky Horror" or "The Room"; only a spectacularly bad composite shot of a fire-fighting plane induces any real giggles.

Berg may be adhering to the basic facts, but his movie’s childish machismo is a disgrace to all involved.

All three of you clamoring for a sequel to "Wild Wild West" have got your wish: Jonah Hex--an adaptation of the DC Comics series about a Western antihero with otherworldly abilities--gives that Fresh Prince–starring disaster from 1999 a run for its wasted money.

I'll respect the studio's wishes to abbreviate all plot description. God knows, they're marketing it like the second coming of "The Crying Game," though the revelations that await Nev are only shocking if you believe P.T. Barnum was really in possession of a genuine Fiji mermaid.

Probably the biggest sin in a movie filled with many is turning Fonda into a nymphomaniacal sight gag who makes Barbarella look like Gloria Steinem.

This ludicrous CGI extravaganza, based on the comic horror novel by Seth Grahame-Smith, can stand proudly beside the best-worst of Ed Wood and Uwe Boll.

Sandler's drool-accompanied ogling of the female form is now near Woody Allen levels of ick.

All highs eventually fade, and The Last Laugh quickly returns to its noxious mix of sweet and sour.

It should surprise no one that, as Hell Fest comes to a close, Evil Hoodie Man pulls a Michael Myers disappearing act. This leads to a narrative twist so ridiculous that all non-syringe-pierced oculi will roll.

Even supremely talented actors like Melissa Leo (as a confidently sexy trucker) and Brendan Sexton III (as a train-station beggar) are stifled by all the pseudo-redemptive mush.

This smug and callous action-comedy is about nothing but teeth.

Twi-Hards shall attend en masse. Adults shall roll their eyes. And on our human comedy shall go.

This one barely musters a pulse.

To call this a turkey would be an insult to poultry.

Take the last train to anywhere but here.

Speed can be a virtue, but there’s something extremely off-putting about the way The Wolfman, Universal’s latest horror classic redux, races through its opening scenes.

We’re a long way from this shoot-’em-up franchise’s John McTiernan–helmed heyday. Willis gives one of his laziest ever performances, leadenly tossing off each quip (“I’m on vacation!” is the most abused) and acting like he’s passing a kidney stone during the bathetic father-son bonding scenes.

It would be kind to call this satire; what it comes off as is a pummeling, testosterone-fueled sensory assault that the film then makes minor variations on for two very long hours.

Smurftastic! Now where's that noose?

This is hackwork of the highest order, lacking in all poetry and barely comprehensible aurally or visually.

It’s too easy to say that Peter Billingsley shot his eye out with this inept comic trifle, but…well, he shot his eye out.

Good God almighty: Not since Edward D. Wood Jr. unleashed a flotilla of paper-plate UFOs on beautiful downtown Burbank has there been a movie as stem-to-stern inept as this adaptation of the bestselling Christian novel series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins.

What really makes Rudderless a full-blown affront is a late-breaking narrative revelation (no spoilers here) that’s meant to add resonant emotional depth, but instead comes off as jaw-droppingly repugnant. That’s appropriate, though, for a movie with no sense of direction.

Bless you, R.Patz & Co., because this gloriously steaming pile is officially in the bad-movies-we-love pantheon.

The basics of the story remain unchanged, but it’s the wanna-be-blockbuster additions that rankle, be it the incoherent direction of first-time feature director Carl Rinsch or the copious CGI beasties who look like rejected "Lord of the Rings" villains.

It’s a dud.

Hurt tries on an English accent as if he were in the Walmart changing room and a splendid-in-theory supporting cast - Simon Callow, Joanna Lumley, Arta Dobroshi - either ham it up or make moony eyes. Extra discredit to the embarrassingly jaunty score by Sodi Marciszewer, which should be taken behind the recording studio and shot.

Dull and perfunctory, the film's saving grace is MVP Neil Patrick Harris as Kyle's blind tutor, who has a witty aside for every woodenly expressed sentiment. You go, Doog!

Only Billy Connolly, as the boys’ way-of-the-gun pa, brings a smidgen of sobering gravitas to the proceedings, though he can hardly counter the pounding hangover brought on by all the mock-virtuous butchery.

Desperation oozes from every frame of Cop Out, which front-loads its best joke -- then spends the rest of its running time endlessly spinning its wheels.

You can practically taste the grime in Jorge Michel Grau's art-house horror show-the film looks like it's been slathered with gooey discards from a backyard barbecue.

A wrongheaded, utterly incompetent, and nearly laugh-free satire.

Waititi is incapable of dealing with the twin horrors of oppression and indoctrination beyond cheap-seats sentimentality and joke-making.

Nearly eight years on from the signing of all the brand extension contracts, here is the primarily pop-star-voiced animated musical UglyDolls, an imbecilic eyesore that could lay claim to being one of the worst movies ever made if it was worth such hyperbole.