Kirk Honeycutt

This remake turns a fondly remembered horror/thriller into a mild and tedious suspense film.

The acting is overly broad, so even the dimmest light bulb in the audience gets the gags.

Nothing anchors the lighter-than-air story as it drifts away under the direction of Stephen Norrington ("Blade") into an FX stratosphere where wit, character and vigorous storytelling cease to matter.

Lame sketch comedy, an uninspired performance from Will Ferrell and an overall failure of the imagination turn Brad Silberling's Land of the Lost into a lethargic meander through a wilderness of misfiring gags.

A lackluster affair, devoid of laughs and just about anything else one might construe as entertainment.

Just lousy.

Splinter is a bad idea, borrowing body parts, as it were, from old horror flicks to genuinely unsatisfying results.

The film might amuse some, especially fans of Alfred Hitchcock, but is likely to annoy almost everyone else.

A bottomless pit of lame characters, horror-film cliches and improbable monsters.

This Mexican action flick from director-writer Beto Gómez has all the makings of a great comedy only no one told the filmmakers.

There is no purpose to the film other than random blood splattering amid scenes of bondage, primitive savagery and S&M eroticism. The film is numbing and dumb with its hero indistinguishable from its villains.

For those wearied by cliches about poverty, rote characterizations of minorities and shocks for their own sake, best to avoid "Cracktown."

Fails to exploit the myriad comedic possibilities, settling instead for broad, unconvincing slapstick aimed at 12-year-olds and gags Shakespeare would have rejected as ancient.

What the problem comes down to is a group of filmmakers making misguided choices in an effort to broaden the movie's demographics beyond those who attend X Games.

The Banishment (Izgnanie) starts off like a thriller with a car roaring into the city and a clandestine surgery by a man to remove a bullet in his brother's arm. Then, ever so slowly, the movie falls into the clutches of long, solemn stares into space, meaningful drags on cigarettes, cryptic dialogue revealing little and a tiny drama that feels old, tired and empty of real purpose.

A laugh-starved comedy that seeks to plug into the comic stylings of Mo'Nique for its energy and humor.

One of the unfunniest comedies ever. Punch lines are lifeless. Characters are borderline catatonic. Running gags can't even walk.

Combining the ludicrous with the lurid, Twisted is twisted all right.

The film seems nearly writer-free. Absolutely no time gets wasted on story, character development or logic.

The scariest thing about this film is how desperate the makers are to earn a scream.

Odd too, for a film that wants to correct impression anyone had as to the abilities of black U.S. soldier in combat, are the ethnic cliches about Italians and Germans, to say nothing of rednecks.

Longing makes you long for a good movie. Tedious and long-winded even at 90 minutes, this German film, written and directed by Valeska Grisebach, tells a mundane tale of adultery that lacks even the slightest insight.

Rarely do films from Hollywood emerge in such an inane manner. Its rote characters are inevitably in predictable situations with no subtext or subtlety to any of their predicaments.

All the while, the music screams and clamors like an ignored child because director Xavier Gens and writer Skip Woods can't pump suspense into this inept mess.

Dirty Deeds is as feeble as a teen comedy can get.

The writing is rudimentary and the direction often awkward, but Mo'Nique would confound a veteran director.

No one on the creative side has his eyes on the characters, so they flounder in a sea of misguided energy.

The lameness of the gags and dialogue and the film's frequent deep dives for the bottom at the expense of real comedy speak to desperation in Hollywood to figure out the audience for contemporary naughty comedy.