Marc Savlov

Mortal plods along for most of its running time with the occasional helicopter chase scene and plenty of CGI fulminology: But ultimately Ovredal’s not-so-deep-dive into Norwegian mythos is a too-obvious let down.

At least this excursion into mediocrity is relatively brief, although, as mentioned, a vastly shorter cut would be much preferred.

It doesn’t work, however, and the end result is one long yawn of mediocrity, devoid of any genuine suspense, hobbled by incoherent plotting, and ending on a note of goofy what-the-fuckery.

It’s both too much and not enough, an unsatisfying blood-and-guts B-movie with all the goonish, grindhouse fun eviscerated out of it.

Cobbled together on what appears to be a very low budget, Glass shatters under the weight of too many comic book allegories-cum-history lessons, weirdly abrupt plot machinations, epically puny bouts of brawny fisticuffs, and a third-act bit of outright what-the-f**k-ery that gives even the lamest deus ex machinas a bad name.

Granted, it's breezy enough in a retro-chic kind of way, but the meh factor is too high to overcome for all but the hardiest of J-Lo die-hards.

Combined with some awfully lazy riffs on Holmes’s fondness for his seven-per-cent solution, Holmes & Watson is not so much a case of whodunit as it is a question why bother.

Robin Hood isn’t as awful as all that, really. For one thing, it’s too singularly bizarre to be anything less than head scratchingly entertaining, and the action set-pieces are pulled off with much quivery panache.

The result is a cheerfully unfunny low-brow affair which simply can’t compare with the many genuinely entertaining James Bond spoofs that seem to crop up every decade or so, such as "Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery or the more sublime pleasures of Jean Dujardin in the "French OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies."

Crafted within the broadest, not-quite-funny brushstrokes possible, director Lee’s movie about a class of troublemakers, hustlers, adult J.D.s, and Rob Riggle’s patented goofy man-child schtick struggling to earn their GEDs at the eponymous classroom fails, epically.

It all feels like a poorly constructed and overwrought Lifetime drama from a decade ago, albeit one featuring a shaggy dog dubbed “Fuckface.”

The Meg is simply mediocre, PG-13 monster-moviemaking at its mind-numbing kinda/sorta best-ish. Meh.

Super Troopers 2 is a movie out of time and out of sync with comedy in 2018. It might have managed the success of its precursor, if only it had been released in 2002.

Well-paced and featuring a game cast, this is still a yawny yarn that steals outright from Hideo Nakata’s seminal "Ringu" and the more recent "It Follows," as well as several of Blum’s own prior productions.

Utter rubbish compared to its 2013 precursor. Enter with low expectations and you might just have some rock ‘em, sock ‘em, let’s-ravage-Tokyo fun.

You’d think the sordid history of the Winchester house would have inspired a more evocative or even entertaining haunted house story but the Spierigs rely far too much on the sort of shock-cut du jour that has become the lazy and boring norm for so many PG-13 “horror” films of the past 15 years.

A studied but silly misfire from the director of the abysmal London Has Fallen that attempts to walk the walk without ever actually being a movie genre fans, or much of anyone else for that matter, would want to see.

Abysmal, unfunny, and ultimately, completely unnecessary.

Despite the game cast and some marvelously atmospheric cinematography from Oscar-winning DP Dion Beebe, The Snowman is a slog.

Not a single character or the jeopardy that they find themselves in – end of the entire human race and all – is likable, canine-in-peril excluded.

A roaring snooze that should by all rights be edge-of-your-seat, compelling cinema, Mark Felt lives and dies by Landesman’s laborious script, which revels in the minutiae of the scandal without ever managing an iota of passion.

The annoyingly coy title of this non-epic about two people trying to survive a private plane crash in the high Rockies while a passive sort of romance develops during the descent pretty much says it all while simultaneously offering nothing of any great interest, much like the entire movie.

Ninjago’s sprawling team of screenwriters – nine credits in all – throw every joke they can at the screen, but few of them stick in your memory for longer than a moment.

The end result never really achieves much more than being exactly what it is: another horseshoes and hand grenades attempt to tell version ad infinitum of the legend of Bruce Lee.

Blame screenwriters Akiva Goldsman, Jeff Pinkner, Anders Thomas Jensen, and Nikolaj Arcel (who also directed) for trying too hard to cram so much of King’s original into a film format.

The third time is definitely not the charm.

This latest entry is simply dumb, dull, and pointless.

It’s big, it’s slick, it’s very, very Hollywood, but it’s just not that good a film. It’s not even as much fun – and monster movies, as opposed to horror movies, should be fun – as the 1999 Brendan Fraser vehicle of the same name.

This ship has sailed, sank, and not to put too fine a bowsprit on it, sucks.

Phoenix Forgotten is borderline generic, desert-set found footage that apes the aforementioned Witchiness and genre constraints to a snooze-worthy T.

A strictly-for-the-kiddies animated reboot of the seemingly ancient Smurf brand, The Lost Village is so tame it hardly merits a PG rating.

In the end, Collide is a cheap genre product produced with an eye on foreign market box office. Wake me when Dominic Toretto torques his way into Havana.

It’s a history lesson wrapped up in a romance, gallows grim but far too often unnecessarily heavy-handed in a way that drives home the factual historical horrors it portrays while somehow managing to feel like a sizably budgeted but no less maladroit television movie of the week.

Rings is an unfortunate and often incomprehensible mess that kicks off with a neat premise and then never fully explores it.

The Resurrection of Gavin Stone isn’t as exploitive as some recent Christian-based films – for that, check out 2014’s truly offensive "Heaven Is for Real" – and while it’s got its charms, it’s far from likely to bring in any new converts.

For the majority of filmgoers, Beckinsale is Selene. It’s not the worst legacy for an actor, and she’s managed to keep her character prideful yet vicious, film after backstabbing film. (Did I mention the catsuit? Va va voom!)

Incoherent mashup of previous demonized tyke films and unfailingly inept pseudo-science and the result is about as devoid of suspense, much less genuine horror, as this specific sub-genre can be.

Regardless, the upside is that Shut In is cinematic Sominex for those in need of a 90-minute nap, a thousand yawns, and zero thrills.

There’s nary a hint of the original Troll dolls' disconcerting unearthliness in this utterly tame although vibrantly animated feature.

The Disappointments Room lives (and dies) up to its name.

Collision Course is overstuffed with meandering, unnecessary micro-storylines, far too many new characters, and an obvious lack of focus, none of which should impact the movie’s target demographic, kids under 10.

Honestly, I could watch Goldblum and Gainsbourg – two of the most quirkily sublime multihypenate artists alive – reading phonebooks to each other and enjoy the experience thoroughly, but sadly even they seem wasted here.

Longtime World of Warcraft players should and likely will storm the cineplex gates, burn the castle down, and salt the earth (and screenwriters) from whence this abomination sprung. Me, I’m going to chill out and download 1982’s top-notch "The Sword and the Sorcerer."

Maybe it’s supposed to be the enlightening tale of one bird’s self-redemption from neurotic negativity, but I just wanted to punch this film in the snout.

This is Baron Cohen’s worst film, period.

Perhaps these are dark times, both onscreen and off, but even if they are not, London Has Fallen is an hour-and-a-half of viciously Us vs. Them, Trump-style bad filmmaking on all known levels.

Go back and re-watch Nick Cassavetes’ vastly superior "The Notebook" and steer clear of director Ross Katz’s grindingly dull, Valentine’s Day folly.

Still, "The Haunting" these films are not.

Director Eisner helmed the excellent remake of George R. Romero’s The Crazies back in 2010, but this film shows none of the lunatic flair for the ghastly that the previous film so easily served up.

The Green Inferno feels like a retread of a retread.

An odd mix, to be sure, but full-tilt performances from Mara, as meth-addicted, widowed mom-cum-kidnappee Ashley Smith, and Oyelowo, playing the stone-cold killer turned cornered kidnapper Brian Nichols, help this spiritual thriller rise (very slightly) above other, more hamfisted, heaven-friendly fare.

For all its genuine thrill-ride gestalt, No Escape completely short-shrifts its Southeast Asian players. There’s exactly one Asian character of note, a Kenny Rogers-loving tuk-tuk driver (Boonthanakit). Everyone else is a nameless victim of the equally nameless mob.

Steer clear, Friends of Ol’ Marvel!

Terminator: Genisys is a catastrophic misfire on nearly all counts. It’s only saving grace? 2015 Oscar winner J.K. Simmons (Whiplash) as a Mulder-gone-to-pot-esque cop who believes in these “goddamn time-traveling robots.”

San Andreas, by its very nature, begs, borrows, and outright steals from other, occasionally better, disaster epics.

Bad writing, shoddy effects work, and Laser’s nonstop shouting of every single line of dialogue do not add up to a transgressive statement about the American for-profit prison system, but instead achieve the dubious honor of being the most annoyingly in-your-face horror flick of the year thus far.

Beyond a leper’s handful of jokes that actually connect, this might as well be Ferrell’s most abysmal piece of work since the disastrous "Land of the Lost."

While the totality of Jupiter Ascending is just too much for its own massive narrative heft to support, kudos to the Wachowskis for beating back against mainstream Hollywood by casting actors of all races and genders in key roles, something they’ve been doing since their 1996 debut "Bound."

What’s missing from The Woman in Black 2, and what it needs most and has least of all, is suspense.

Hasbro’s long-lasting occult board game gets its own starring role in a film that makes those other recent Hasbro plaything adaptations – namely "Transformers" and "G.I. Joe" – look like triumphs of subtly engineered cinematic magic.

The creature’s big reveal is masterfully handled and a final revelation is exceptionally memorable, but the characters, unsurprisingly, remain interchangeable with those of any number of other teens-in-peril pics.

The Indonesian-born brother/sister filmmaking duo of Ken and Livi Zheng scores high points for creating a new take on the undocumented-immigrant badass story (hola, Machete), and for their obvious martial arts skills, but this first feature from the pair is ultimately hobbled by a paucity of credible acting.

Another addition to Universal’s Pictures Classic Monsters arsenal of crap (remember Van Helsing?), director Shore, in his feature debut, displays a fine sense of pacing but little else.

While it’s possible that Annabelle might give a few audience members goosebumps, anyone who’s ever seen "Rosemary’s Baby" –or pretty much any film James Wan’s had a hand in since helming 2007’s "Dead Silence", the "Saw" franchise excepted – will figure out what’s going on within the first 30 minutes.

The Boxtrolls feels rough-and-tumble and not as much fun by half.

Innocence certainly has all the right genre conventions to toy with, but the haphazard script by Brougher and Tristine Skyler is a bloody mess.

For those who haven’t read the Mark Helprin novel on which Akiva Goldsman’s film is based, prepare to be confused, annoyed, bewildered, and yet more annoyed by the director’s inability to construct even the most basic of narrative fantasy romances.

It’s really just a tortuous series of blackout sketches hung together with the flimsiest of threads.

Yeah, this movie's a dog, but you can't blame the producers for strip-mining the same old fool-proof formula to death … and beyond.

This is a strange, unfunny, and unmoving boxing riff that simultaneously apes the hoary templates of Thirties and Forties fisticuffs films, nails cliches, and telegraphs its eventual outcome at every opportunity. A remarkably uninspired movie overall, Grudge Match is pure pablum melodrama all the way down to the final count.

On the not-much-of-a-plus side, at over two hours long, sitting through The Book Thief engenders in the viewer some serious sympathy for the interminable plight of poor, sickly Max, concealed below stairs in a dank, dark corner of the house on Himmelstrasse.

Insidious: Chapter 2 is perhaps an even more scattershot mess than its predecessor. Whannell's script is so rife with portentous backstory, third-act goofiness, and a denouement that practically screams "Insidious 3: Same Old Shit," that the film as a whole is jarring, and not in a good way.

Sea of Monsters most bizarre and apropos-of-nothing moment comes when the half-blood kids find themselves stuck on – I kid you not – what appears to be the Civil War ironclad ship Monitor, captained and crewed by a host of Confederate zombies.

A knockoff in everything from style to story, it also suffers from 3-D effects that are dim and underwhelming, a maddeningly obtuse storyline, and performances that could have used some serious Herbert West-style reanimation.

This is one horror franchise that's burned itself out, and then some – not even the rare shock cuts to nothing much at all will startle anyone over the age of 8.

"Here Comes the Bomb" would've been a more fitting title, but props to Henry Winkler for rising to the occasion and turning in a sweet, idealistic performance in a film that otherwise feels like a tawdry commercial for the UFC and MMA.

It's a courageous but misguided move on Perry's part; he has none of Freeman's soulful, nuanced subtlety, and watching him display the gamut of emotions called for in Marc Moss and Kerry Williamson's script is like watching the Hulk attempt Swan Lake.

As for Hotel Transylvania,, no need to put a stake in it, it's deadly dull already.

Shue, to her credit, looks like she's trying to crawl out of her skin, but hey, anything to get away from this hell house, right? Right.

The film strives so much to have heart, it comes across as heartless and mean-spirited. Bah, humbug!

The film is an ingenious, deranged, bloated, and just plain batshit crazy riff on advertising and the mad men and women it creates and/or consumes. Heady stuff, but it's no "How to Get Ahead in Advertising." This film is absolutely mental, and not in a good way, either.

Weaver and Willis look bored silly while essaying their paint-by-numbers roles, and this film does nothing to make me think Cavill is going to be Zack Snyder's Superman incarnate.

Come to think of it, it's a lot like the departed shade of a better, longer movie, hovering in tatters before us, vanishing when we blink. When you look into this abyss, it yawns back at you.

If ever America needed Hollywood to crank out a comedic antidote to the toxic political madness that has engulfed our nation, now is the time. Unfortunately, this loopy, muddled, and ultimately insulting Campaign isn't it. It feels more like an extended Saturday Night Live-meets-FunnyOrDie.com castoff than an actual comedic commentary on American politics.

In short, it's nothing you haven't seen countless times before and, while it's not offensively bad, it also adds zero to the same old routine. Meh.

In short, the character is a lot like the way Stan Lee first envisioned him, but the trilogy's screenwriter Steve Ditko would probably loathe this new, unsatisfying, and hollow-feeling entry into the new cinematic Marvel Universe.

The set-up, and indeed the entire film, reeks of yawn-inducing boilerplate plotting.

Disappointingly, Piranha 3DD, the inevitable sequel to the remake, has none of Dante's wit, Aja's directorial skills, or Greg Nicotero's grotesqueries.

Less extraordinary and considerably more banal, given the sci-fi/comedy subject matter, is Men in Black 3's story, which jumps the ectomorphic shark in high style but with a deficit of actual belly laughs.

This crass and hugely dumb aliens vs. multiple earthling navies should thrill the hyperactive 10-year-old inside you. Adults, on the other hand – and especially genre-fan adults – will be bored to tears and wishing Bay (or at least Jerry Bruckheimer) had something of their own on the marquee out front.

It is, in a word or two, everything that Poe's tales and poems were not: interminable and picayune.

A work of near-existential pointlessness. It's true to the anarchic, silly spirit of the original clowning, but there's very little else to it.

I've always said, "If you've seen one god, you've seen them all," and Wrath of the Titans only serves to underscore my point.

Seyfried acquits herself admirably in the panicky, hysterical mode, if that's what you're looking for, but by the time the final, goofy revelations roll around, you're slapping yourself for not having just taken a nap instead.

This time out, the action is in 3-D, which amounts to a few shots of flaming motorcycle parts comin' at ya, but little else.

The result is a goofy-weird mishmash of some pretty swell CGI creatures and some downright lousy screenwriting.

The cynic in me notes that the whole, dismal enterprise is just a cheap steal from Roger Corman's 1955 film "Day the World Ended." At least that single set-bound cheapie had a three-eyed mutant to enliven the otherwise stagy proceedings.

The Devil Inside offers proof, if any were needed, that demons run rampant in Hollywood, possessing otherwise intelligent and creative people to make absolutely shitty "gotcha!" mockumonstrosities like this one.