M. E. Russell

For starters, everything's grimy and humorless in a way that infects even Aniston.

It's a waste of classic material. Rent "The Incredibles" and see what should have been.

Nicolas Cageologists will be sad to hear that he's entirely too normal in National Treasure -- he's mildly funny but doesn't make any of the kooky dramatic choices (needless accents, ranting about the orifices of Greek gods) that made his other Bruckheimer performances so much fun to watch.

You might be better off reading the book and imagining Nolte as Socrates.

In the films at least, there's something so naked about the Potter/Percy story parallels that's it's hard not to sit there as a viewer and get distracted playing connect the dots.

The writing is lazy, the movie focuses on all the wrong things and the tone lurches unpleasantly between gum-soft comedy and lukewarm thriller.

It's fun junk. And it doesn't satisfy. Dot the I is a weird, pretty film with a dumb script, a skilled cast and a good twist, plus one hot sex scene and one brilliant scene-chew by D'Arcy.

Why did they think anyone would want to watch a Fat Albert adaptation that can't answer a simple question: "Who is this movie for?"

When it sticks to its central flirtation, the latest movie based on a Nicholas Sparks romance, The Lucky One, is blandly pleasant enough.

Simultaneously boring and cringe-inducing; you can't decide whether to flee the theater or lightly nap.

Director Stefen Fangmeier, a well-regarded special-effects man and second-unit director ("Master and Commander," "Galaxy Quest") does a superb job visualizing the CGI dragon. But Fangmeier is working with a script without a single memorable line and far too many characters and creatures with silly names.

The script is just all kinds of terrible. The characters are hollow mannequins telling a thin, depressing story that's less of a noir and more of a simple-minded bummer full of barely connected scenes and stunningly empty dialogue.

It's trying to fill some perceived market void created by the end of "Harry Potter."

The dialogue is dippy. And there's no real suspense: The filmmakers are so deadly earnest about the power of music and love and all that stuff, you just twiddle your thumbs waiting for the inevitable.

It's pathetic.

Has a surprising number of problems: dire scripting, sloppy plotting and coffee-jittery editing, for starters. But its biggest problem is that Blade himself takes a back seat to a host of new and mostly uninteresting characters.

In small doses, this looks kind of cool. For two hours, it's excruciating.

Hilariously, gut-bustingly, mind-blowingly, jaw-droppingly stupid.

The movie gets just enough right that the things it doesn't get right (beyond its overdependence on a not-so-surprising story puzzle) smack you cold in the face.

It's just another bland, junior-high-basketball riff on "The Bad News Bears" formula, one that takes every single dramatic cue from the underdog sports-movie playbook.

That cast is precisely what makes the new Arthur so frustrating.

The bad news? The movie is monumentally stupid. The good news? It's a fun kind of stupid.

By the film's end, you feel like you've spent two hours rapidly changing channels between a WB sitcom, the gospel-choir segments of the "Ladykillers" remake, an episode of "Law & Order" and a Mexican soap opera.

It's a cartoon that thinks it isn't one.

The end result is mediocre, slightly sloppy and a mild waste of a great cast.

Endless and tedious. It's also written-in-crayon, smack-your-face dumb, and edited so that every other shot is a close-up of a flailing limb.

I appreciate that talented people wanted to honor Shelly by making this film. They likely would have better honored her by mounting her script as a play.

After the initial charm wears off, the whole thing gets check-your-text-messages dull.

While you're in the theater, it's actually -- heaven help me -- pretty fun to watch.

Unlike its predecessors, this one doesn't even try to aspire to myth. It aspires only to merchandising.

Sets up a situation so weird, it's almost weirder that Rob Reiner directs it as a cookie-cutter romantic comedy.

Revenge of the Fallen almost feels like it's signaling an end-game for blockbuster movies: all sensation, no content, catastrophic expense.

Kind of a drag.

The deadly dull action-comedy Identity Thief is an infuriating waste of time, on all sides of camera and screen. I did not know I could yawn angrily. This movie somehow proved it possible.

The dialogue is almost primitive at times, almost every female character is an idiot and McConaughey grossly overplays the bachelor-sleazeball antics at the beginning.

The movie starts out as a potboiler with a troubling character arc; unfortunately, it ends up becoming a goofy, story-overwhelming Rube Goldberg contraption that would make the producers of the "Saw" series blush.

What damage could Michael Bay inflict on Jason Voorhees that earlier producers hadn't already inflicted on everyone's favorite hockey-masked serial killer? Well, Bay could make Jason Voorhees ... boring.

Beyond a couple of cool guns and one long, gory, clever first-person shot, Doom is something the video games have never been: dull.

Unfortunately, the filmmakers failed to replace sex, splatter and cursing with sharp dialogue, characters and plotting.

Sporadically clever and chilling.

We end up with a piece of B-grade junk in which Elektra exchanges "banter" with the unexceptional Prout between fight scenes so badly shot that even Garner looks like a stunt double.

Structurally, this is as by-the-numbers as rom-coms get, right down to the wacky best friends, played by Judy Greer and Dan Fogler. For a while, it's low-key enough to be tolerable.

With the exception of one long improv riff on a campground basketball court, Williams nicely underplays his role. Unfortunately, Sonnenfeld also underplays his. We should expect more of him.

It's been fascinating to watch the "intellectual" subgenre of the serial-killer movie -- the one where poetic evil geniuses elude the cops while leaving trails of art-directed crime scenes -- run out of ideas and start feeding on itself.

A movie of utter inconsequence -- a cinematic Listerine Strip that evaporates from the brain before you even get your popcorn tub to the trash.

I was stunned to learn that "Beth Cooper" was adapted by former "Simpsons" writer Larry Doyle from his young-adult novel and directed by "Harry Potter" helmer Chris Columbus. Rarely have two seasoned Hollywood professionals produced something so painfully, amateurishly, relentlessly unfunny.

I'm pleased to report the new Land of the Lost movie keenly understands that what was once scary is now ridiculous.

Yet another mediocre-to-lame thriller shot in Portland.

Joins the growing list of blandly made erotic thrillers that contain no eroticism, few thrills and fewer likable characters.

Shrill, unfunny third installment.

The process of Farrell figuring out his divine purpose finally gets so convoluted and schmaltzy, it feels less like "destiny" and more like "cruel cosmic joke."

The movie is a septic tank of vapid noir posturing, bad narration, bizarre pacing, cartoonishly hot femme fatales and ineptly staged slapstick.

To be fair, Rudd and Bell are cute and funny in their scenes together, and Rudd salvages a few laughs with his deadpan line readings.

For every gag that flies there are at least one-and-a-half that don't.

Boring and fundamentally silly.

The movie's a fish-out-of-water romantic-comedy thriller that forgets to be romantic, comedic or thrilling.

Is there anything more depressing than when middlebrow filmmakers decide to remake bona fide classics that did not, under any circumstances, need to be remade?

Norbit might have worked if it had fully committed to being over the top or made Rasputia the lead character and found the human inside the cartoon. Instead, the movie doesn't give us anyone to care about.

A few bodies pile up. Surprisingly little sex is had. And given that Catherine's true nature was revealed at the end of the first "Basic," the mystery seems superfluous.

Fonda, playing grandmother to this clan of narcissists, is the only one who keeps her dignity. She's funny and low-key and deserves better comeback material than this and "Monster-in-Law." The other two actresses are humiliated.

Although it contains crime and absurdity, it's not thrilling or funny and the title doesn't refer to a gun.

I still kind of find myself admiring the actor, and the film. Love Guru is insane and self-indulgent but also fully committed, and there's a surprising undercurrent of earnestness to its philosophy portions.

At what point does The Condemned turn from a stupid-fun action movie into something unpleasant and hypocritical?

Spoiler alert: It can leave you feeling kind of empty and sad! It's pretty, icky and boring all at once, and feels like nothing so much as an unusually depressing Ban du Soleil commercial.