Kirk Honeycutt

In the end, it isn't so much that the New Arthur isn't the Old Arthur. Rather it's the anti-Arthur.

The film doesn't just fail, it actually gets sillier by the minute.

From its uninspiring title -- and certain turnoff for young males -- to its limp slapstick and uneven acting, A Cinderella Story arrives with a dull thud.

Only Diaz shows spark because the actress knows how to simultaneously play nice and be a nasty character, thereby gaining audience sympathy. Everyone else hits one note, and it isn't nice.

The new gimmick here is that all the flying body parts and absurd impalements come in 3D. And that's about as inspired as anything gets in this edition. Story and character get chucked to the sidelines as the arena has room for only death scenes.

Pretentious to the core and lacking any context or credible characterizations.

A complete wipeout.

(Perry) style is too crude and stagy for Shange's transformative evocation of black female life, and his moralizing strikes exactly the wrong notes to express the pain and longing that cries out from her heated poetry.

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.

In his second feature as a director, Gallo acts as writer, director, producer, star, cinematographer, production designer and editor. Thus, the failure is all his.

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.

Insipid, predictable, broad comedy mixed with Disney Family Values makes for one exasperating sit.

Nothing is bleaker than failed black comedy, which this is.

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

Well, that didn't take long. Everything fun and terrific about "Iron Man," a mere two years ago, has vanished with its sequel. In its place, Iron Man 2 has substituted noise, confusion, multiple villains, irrelevant stunts and misguided story lines.

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.

Snyder and writers David Hayter and Alex Tse never find a reason for those unfamiliar with the graphic novel to care about any of this nonsense. And it is nonsense.

For the most part, the acting is shrill and cartoonish. Indeed, most of the actors appear to be, in the finest desi filmmaking tradition, from the filmmakers' close circle of friends and family.

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

The movie strands you in two miserable flats with these cliche-ridden characters and a static love story that is as predictable as it is pedestrian.

Casa feels like a miss. The digging into each of these women's lives stays shallow and seldom uncovers anything unexpected.

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.

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

Going the Distance is, in a way, a remarkable film: It's hard to imagine any romantic comedy going wrong in so many different ways.

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

What fans of the original movie, "Charlie's Angels," which was fun and good-natured, will make of this sloppy mess is hard to guess.

Paints a surprisingly sour portrait of nearly all its characters, so much so that even the final-reel redemption rings hollow and forced.

A cloyingly sentimental story that rings false in every moment.