Marc Savlov

You can take a page from Wes Craven before he went flat and keep repeating, "It's only a movie; it's only a movie; it's only a movie." But is it?

As it stands, The Ruins is about as interesting as a pile of old stones and a monkey-dumb yanqui falling prey to the horrors of globalization. And that's pretty dumb.

It's a testament to Bill Nighy's cadaverous panache that this third entry in the ongoing exsanguinators vs. lycanthropes franchise (that's vampires and werewolves to anyone not weaned on Famous Monsters) is as tolerable as it is.

Make no mistake -- this Mummy is an effects film all the way.

Sure, Double Team is a mind-numbingly silly outing, full of gratuitous violence, testosterone-fueled goonishness, and acting turns that make TV's Van Patten family look positively Emmy-bound, but lest we forget, it's also pulse-pounding, often hilarious fun.

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

It's a mess alright, but it's easy on the eyes. Like phone sex is for the ears. Only not as much fun.

This Hangover is a doozy, not quite as much fun (or well-written) as the original, but neither does it lack for lunatic plot complications that could only spring from the minds of writers Phillips, Craig Mazin, and Scot Armstrong.

Something of a snooze.

A gothic little slip of a film, beautiful to behold but with less substance than the shadowy tendrils of fog that blanket nearly every scene.

It's only at film's end that you realize the whole soggy, overlong mess isn't going to go anywhere.

Of course, the film is critic-proof, but as a longtime comic book (and film) nerd, I can say with some surety that Snyder has crammed too much of a great thing into his film, resulting in a super-slog that has just too much of everything.

It's chop-socky vindaloo, pleasing on a platter but awfully difficult to swallow whole.

It's exasperating watching so much top-drawer talent wasted in a film that wraps itself up with one of the most preposterous (not to mention obvious) endings the genre has ever seen.

Widen gets an “A” for ambition here, but by the end of the whole shebang, you really couldn't care less.

It fails to rise above the inherent limitations of the traditional Hollywood biopic and it's about as insanely great as a Mac "low cost" LC model – which was, to be fair, pretty cool.

Do we like John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester? As played by Depp, this 17th-century nobleman-cum-travesty is a carriage crash of epic proportions, and so it's difficult not to crane your neck around to get a better view of the proceedings.

It's not rocket science making nonstop action feel semi-fresh, and The Losers’ script by Peter Berg and James Vanderbilt manages to render each individual, um, a loser in the broadest and most memorable strokes. It's not a masterpiece, either, but it'll do until Hannibal, Murdock, and the rest the A-gamers start blowing things up come June.

In the end, Devil feels like an ingenious short film pumped up for theatrical release. Shyamalan's story is sound, but the execution dragged me to hell and left me there wondering if his much-rumored sequel to "Unbreakable" was ever going to arrive.

At its heart the film wants nothing more than to make you giggle, and at that it succeeds admirably.

Palmetto follows the rules of film noir so slavishly that it's tough not to like it just on its own dopey, headstrong merit.

The film feels like a truly awful "Saturday Night Live" sketch padded out to such unholy lengths as to make "It's Pat" seems like a comic masterstroke.

Only Palance is worthwhile, as Curly's long-lost brother Duke (there's an inspired cowboy name for ya), and even that role seems dazed and clichéd. Tack on an absolutely deranged, hackneyed final reel, and you've got a movie that'll fade from your memory so quick it'll make your eyes water and your teeth hurt.

Aside from the ridiculous dialogue, of which there is much, and truly crappy CGI gore, of which there is even more, Survival of the Dead feels like the single weakest link in what is otherwise the strongest, smartest, and most transgressively revolutionary horror series in cinema history.

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.

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

Now it's just another romantic comedy, neither terribly bad nor truly great, buoyed along on currents of hope and post-traumatic good cheer.

Utterly pointless remake.

Suicide Kings' morbid sense of humor does nothing but muddle the film's overall tone. Comedy? Caper flick? It's all too much, and simultaneously not enough by a long shot.

Plenty of killings abound, nevertheless the film is a masterful -- albeit warped -- love-story-cum-road-movie that revolves around three of the most invigorating performances of the year.

Hardly a comic masterpiece -- the jokes are awfully broad and obvious -- but I couldn't help feeling relieved at the film's absence of malice.

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.

There are precious few surprises here, but parents will find director Robbins' breezy remake a painless affair and, judging by the yowls of laughter from the peanut gallery at the screening I attended, the kids will be barking all the way home.

It's a hockey affair at the best of times.

It's all patently ridiculous, but it's also ridiculously fun.

It's hobbled by odd plot contrivances and some less-than-stellar acting from DiCaprio.

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.

This Total Recall is fast, furious, and frequently confusing fun, but to be completely honest, it lacks the snappy, weirdo vibe of its predecessor.

Ruffalo, actually, who was so perfect in the little-seen "You Can Count On Me," is the only real reason to sit through The Last Castle.

Maybe it’s time for Woo to finally make that musical he keeps talking about.

Possibly one of the dullest takes on a real-life murder mystery, this gutter’s-eye-view of the waning days of Los Angeles porn king John "Johnny Wadd" Holmes is barely as interesting as one of the big man’s films, and a lot less revelatory.

Kingpin is no classic, but I've got to admit that after sitting though a number of the film's less-than-inspiring previews over the last few weeks, I wasn't exactly expecting the second coming of Laurel and Hardy.

Toei Animation has done their usual bang-up job on the 2-D animation, filling nearly the entire running time with skirmishes, melees, and battles royal beyond compare.

There's plenty of doom, gloom, and outright despair on hand here but very little genuine human emotion.

A horror film (or, more accurately, a shocker film) that takes such exuberant, gleeful delight in the unspeakably gory dispatch of assorted teenagers that it may well be the most fun you'll have at the movies all week.

It seems almost beside the point to bring up the notion of plotting and characterization in such an effects-driven film ; nobody's going to rush out to catch Dante's Peak on account of the Shakespearean-caliber thespians involved.

Needful Things is hardly a cinema milestone -- it's a bit too episodic in chronicling the downfall of the town, and some of King's best bits are glossed over in favor of some of King's worst bits, but all things considered, it's still a hell of a good ride.

Meet Joe Black flows nicely, and the whole of the film is bathed in some of the most sumptuous cinematography (courtesy of "Like Water for Chocolate's" Emmanuel Lubezki) of the year.

Suffers from a lack of good gags. That’s not to say there aren’t scads of chuckles scattered throughout – Dylan and his cast are nothing if not gluttons for the fast and cheap yuk (not to mention yuck) – but the howls of laughter that arose from Paul and Chris Weitz’s original slice of Pie just aren’t there.

It's more fun than a poke in the heart with a sharp stick.

The wraparound storyline is unnecessary and continually interrupts the vastly more interesting story of Khayyam's history.

Anderson has neutered the original film's outrageously transgressive macadam mayhem and completely stripped the story of its pointedly political social satire, making this Death Race one of the most boring drags of all time.

With its combustible mix of high-octane action and Christian faith, and an overall vibe that falls somewhere between bloodthirsty nihilism and an unshakable belief in the twinned powers of religious redemption and obsession, Machine Gun Preacher is certainly the strangest examination of grace under AK-47 fire to merit a mainstream release in ages.

A remarkably solid, streamlined, action-comedy in the ugly-duckling-to-gorgeous-swan genre that elicits more laughs and genuinely affecting moments than you might expect from its tepid ad campaign.

Despite the sheer gorgeousness, it ends up feeling false and, towards the end, rushed.

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.

By no means an embarrassment to the fledgling DreamWorks, The Peacemaker is instead a grand, noisy step in the right direction.

Bombastic it may be, but it’s rarely boring, as was the first Tomb Raider. Keep your expectations in line with the source material and you may be pleasantly surprised.

Dogg has the makings of a genuinely great actor. When he's on screen the film crackles, and even when he's not it's a trippy, funhouse ride.

The film's two saving graces are the time machine itself -- a gorgeous, whirling array of burnished copper and blazing light -- and the CGI-created rise and fall of New York City.

It’s the sort of movie that defines the term “summer doldrums” in a way few others have.

Those audiences who have complained about the clunky exposition and mawkish emotional dialogue in Cameron's films will discover the "King of the World"'s own dramatic talents to be on par with the Bard in comparison to the shouty, over-emoted hokum on display here.

It's no "Dellamorte Dellamore," but neither is it "Uwe Boll," a smallish favor we should all be thankful for.

Sharply edited while ranging all over the comic map – Lazer Team has its share of groaners, to be sure – it’s a solid debut from Austin’s gaming and comedy hometown heroes.

Reminiscent of the opening moments of "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," actually, only without the clever wit.

More a meditation on the nature of life itself than anything else, and a welcome respite from Robin Williams, the emotion sponge.

Toils in high school hell and doesn't even manage to come up with one good shock.

It's nasty, brutal stuff, but it's also unlike anything else out there.

It's interesting, though, to think of double-billing Woods' Crow with Pacino's Prince of Darkness from Devil's Advocate: Scenery-chewing never looked so good.

It's big, it's stupid, it's pretty kick-ass.

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.

It is the perfectly cast Beckinsale who lifts Underworld out and away from the film’s many moments of silly gravitas and steers it into a truly interesting take on the whole vampires 'n' werewolves genre.

Pass the popcorn, dude; this shit rocks.

Effects-driven chills rarely work as well these days as good old-fashioned audience imagination (a fact firmly driven home by the breakaway success of The Blair Witch Project). Unfortunately, De Bont has wedged so much bang-pow drivel in his film that it ends up being about as tantalizing as a desiccated Gummi Bear.

Shamlessly dumb movie.

The real problem with this Aliens encounter is that it's patently a Nick at Night midweek movie that inadvertently got greenlighted for a big-screen opening.

Benjamin Walker, as Lincoln, may not have the gangly gravitas of Raymond Massey's "Abe Lincoln in Illinois" – he looks like a young Liam Neeson doing a younger Bruce Campbell, frankly – but he does have a sly, self-effacing sense of humor that feels ever so Lincoln-esque

Bottom line: This Orphan is an atmospheric and occasionally vicious little git and an above-average entry into the "cuddly hellspawn" genre, overlong at two-plus hours, but nowhere near as excruciatingly overdone as others of its ilk (Devil Times Five, I'm talking to you).

Why remake Craven's original at all? Oh, yeah, I forgot: Reheated depravity sells. To avoid existential despair, keep repeating: It's only a remake; it's only a remake; it's only a remake.

Stylistically thrilling but ultimately tedious French import.

The Boy’s overriding concern is telegraphed enough in advance that fans of Gothic suspense will almost certainly have guessed it 45 minutes in.

For Sandler's core audience of developmentally arrested males, it may all be a little too cute.

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

This might not matter so much to the youngest members of the audience, but for anyone over the age of 10, it’s strictly a colorful bore.

It's certainly one of the most beautiful costume-drama/historical-romance naps you'll ever have, but this effortlessly evocative, endlessly ennui-inducing paean to Hawaii's final princess is, ultimately, a dull, "Upstairs Downstairs" affair.

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

A slight, facile, and ultimately yawn worthy romantic comedy, and one of the most obvious if unexpected missteps in Hanks' career.

Director Condon displays a sure hand with material that could easily have turned out far worse, making this a nicely disturbing piece of work that rises well above the conventions of the genre almost all the way through.

It works extremely well as a drunken, date-night midnighter or film-fest entry, all madcap bloodletting and surrealist non sequiturs.

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.

Torque knows it’s one big joke, dusty chaps, heaving bosoms, and all, which makes it all that much easier to swallow. And forget.

Absolutely harrowing, shocking in its sudden revelatory immediacy, and very, very well done, Black Hawk Down is one of the best depictions of the outright lunacy inherent to battle I have ever seen.

Almost all of it has to do with watching the occasionally nude Jovovich look absolutely smashing in duster and sidearms, but sometimes, let's face it, that's not enough.

Director Irwin Winkler and his cast obviously hope to shed light on the boundaries of love, and instead come up with a walloping case of the preachies.

The Squeakquel might be appreciated by filmgoers aged 10 or younger.

It's not "Billy Madison," quite, but The Waterboy is still pure Sandler. If you like that sort of thing.

It's a shame that the subjects of Gazecki's film come off as so many quasi-mystical loonies.

Tyler Perry has already been here and done that to such a degree that this particular cinematic field should now be plowed under and salted so that nothing might grow thereupon forevermore. Amen.

Kick-Ass 2 returns with the original’s rollicking sense of vulgarity and bodily trauma fully intact, but the story has more plot lines to string together than absolutely necessary.

As a take on contemporary television culture, Stay Tuned has a lot to say, but much of it is presented in such a broad comedic format that it passes by unnoticed. This is a comedy, after all; politics aside, though, it never really rises above the level of mediocrity, and never actually descends to the level of television itself.

Forster should be commended for attempting something as daunting as the overreaching Stay, which despite all of its muddled logic and porous reality – or perhaps because of it – forces you to think, a genuine rarity these days.

Carpenter's updating of the classic 1960 chiller is mediocre at best, and at times plummets into unintentional humor. It's arguably the weakest horror film he's ever made.

Much to my dismay this is not an unauthorized sequel to Abel Ferrara's 1979 East Village art-world freakout "Driller Killer." This is instead a dispiritingly mediocre tweener comedy from some very talented people who appear to be experiencing a delayed sophomore slump.

Pompeii delivers the goods – well, at least during its final 20 minutes.

Just don't go expecting complex moral and ethical quandaries and you'll likely never think of "Ishtar" even once.

Laughably and knowingly preposterous, cheerfully un-PC, and violent in a way that makes the myriad slaphappy deaths of Wile E. Coyote seem downright dull in comparison.

Quite possibly, this could have been a hit back in 1975 or so, and almost certainly for Blake Edwards, but here and now it's just a puzzling aberration.

187 (the title refers to copspeak for a homicide) circles round and round, never making a salient point that isn't countered by another, utterly opposite notion three scenes later.

It's not just a bad movie it actually manages to suck the very hope out of the air, leaving behind a cinematic vacuum populated by mobsters, sadists, pedophiliac demon-people, and an overwhelming sense of futility that just makes you want to run in the other direction.

From the swooping aerial shots of downtown Miami, to the long, long-legged beauties that seem to crop up every time the action threatens to slow down, to the nonsensical lack of logic that permeates the film like the acrid odor of wasted cordite, Bad Boys oozes Eighties Hollywood clichés like no film since "Top Gun."

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.

The script, written by the three brothers, is ludicrous and incomprehensible, and plays cat-and-mouse games with what could have been some deeply funny comments on race, wealth, and, in one inspired changing-room scene, eating disorders.

It sounds as ridiculous as a "Pokemon" episode gone horribly awry.

Feels sterile and chilly; the humor -- Yiddish and otherwise -- falls flat, and sadly so does the film.

If you can work your way past Vantage Point's goofy casting that places a bland, blank-eyed Hurt in the White House, then I suppose you can manage to forgive this "Rashomon" rip-off's other glaring idiosyncrasies, of which there are many.

There's more at work in this gorgeous and affecting picture than simple culinary sex appeal.

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.

Pixar this isn't, but neither is it "Mary Shelley's Veggie Tales." If only.

"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.

For some reason Derailed never fully engages our sympathies. I think that's because it's difficult to swallow Owen as anything other than eminently resourceful.

It's gritty, nasty, predictably meat-and-potatoes suspense, but genuinely gonzo fun nonetheless.

It's a comic book movie in the broadest sense of the term, and although it's neither as emotionally resonant as "The Crow" nor as surreally goofy as "Tank Girl," Barb Wire still manages to get you going, Anderson Lee fan or not.

Selick is widely and rightly regarded as a master of surreal, dark humor, and wildly inventive animation technique, and Monkeybone is the first tarnish on his otherwise spotless reputation.

This American version can't hold a candle to its French counterpart, which was deeply, eerily resonant where this is only frustrating, a Rubik's cube, minus its colorful signage.

In the end, it's much ado about nothing. Oh, the ennui, the ennui.

After this mediocrity, no one's even going to remember Roger Corman's godawful bargain-basement 1994 version. Which, on second thought, had a lot more heart that this one.

It is, in a word, boring, and that's the most un-Oliver Stone adjective I can think of.

So lazy it's downright boring, something not even a naked Leslie Nielson (!) can salvage.

Absurdism taken to a new extreme.

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.

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.

No groundbreaking cinemagic there, but Out of the Shadows’ oddball moments keep things weirdly surreal throughout.

At its core, a very manipulative piece of work.

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."

To its credit, the film rockets toward its conclusion with scant downtime. It's come and gone before you even know it, and, like death, that's a good thing.

A thing of beauty. But then so is a cloud and I wouldn't want to stare at one of those for an hour and half.

In the end it's all much ado about not so much, a semifunctional thriller that tingles but never terrifies. Ledge schmedge.

Doesn't tell you anything about human nature you probably haven't already suspected, but then again it's good to be reminded of these dark things from time to time. Especially these days.

Be it the use of faux snow that looks like the dog ends of previously owned Q-Tips or the successively worse series of blue-screened visuals, the film is shoddy from frame one.

Deep Impact takes the high road and offers up more tearful reunions than actual fireballs and more egregious, sappy dialogue than you can shake a tsunami at.

The script by S.S. Wilson and Brent Maddock (Ghost Dad) is so jumbled and the direction so chaotic that it's often hard to tell what's going on -- where, when, and why.

Dull, unnecessary film.

It's a pleasure to watch, but I found myself wondering if having a story here even mattered to the director at all.

Above all, there's Nolte, who hovers over the whole production like some sapient force of nature.

Hudgens' dimples threaten at times to overtake the narrative, but in the end, they're no match for Olsen's creepy-ass smirk, which, frankly, appears ready-made for Tim Burton's next outing.

Wolverine is a noisy mess, an origin/prequel that's nicely full of Jackman's ace glare as Wolverine and seriously killer snarl – The Boy From Aaarrrgh! – but utterly devoid of any of the borderline subversive smarts that made Bryan Singer's "X-Men" outings so contemporarily resonant.

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.

It's a helluva comic book, to be sure, but it's a godawful mess of a movie.

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.

Not only is the franchise growing hoary, by now it's become downright laughable, leaving Lethal Weapon 4 feeling more like a bad Fox sitcom than anything else.

I like my shockers to be anything but predictable, and Saw is the very definition of predictability and, ultimately, tedium. That horse corpse has been flogged and flayed enough, already.

Kline and Spacey are excellent here, playing off of each other like a couple of professional combatants; it's by far the most interesting thriller in the last six months.

There are a number of cheeky winks from the filmmakers specifically aimed at Harryhausen fans; in the end, though, Leterrier's Clash of the Titans is nearly as messy an assemblage of mythic odds and ends as the original.

Gondry's update of vigilante crime fighter The Green Hornet's escapades is above all an exercise in frustration.

They shoot rodents, don't they?

But instead of being the hippest kid on the block, this plays like some ranty, paranoid comic thriller. It'd be more fun watching Jimmy Stewart get the beat-down from Claude Rains on the Senate floor; when Mr. Williams goes to Washington, the result is a total snooze.

Make no mistake, I'm not saying Dr. Giggles is a cinematic watershed or anything like that, but it does manage to mix humor and horror in a way that very few films ever manage successfully.

Despite some briefly breathtaking, computer-generated special effects, Virtuosity is 95 minutes of unsubstantial firefights and meandering plot twists.

Jovovich's physicality and chilly mien (she was originally a "project" of the Umbrella Corp.) carry the series from start to … whenever it finishes, which might not be for quite a while yet.

There's barely a belly laugh here, and judging from the deafening silence in the theatre where I saw the film, it's not just me.

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."

Almost insufferably sufferable. It's a chick flick of the tallest order, with schmaltz galore and the sort of ongoing romantic hubris that practically screams, "This is codswallop, right?"

It's even worse than you thought it might be.

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

Despite an ambitious script from Wadlow and Beau Bauman, it's extremely difficult to care, seeing as how these tropes have already been recycled enough to make Greenpeace proud.

Will make monster fans ache for what might have been.

The first impression is definitely one of all style, and precious little substance.

While expertly executed animation-wise and passably entertaining for very young kids (less so, their parents), is still as dull as the hull on Rocketship X-M.

What if the filmmaker had found a way to reconcile his two storylines into a cohesive whole? Wouldn’t that have made a wonderfully affecting film? Why yes, it would have.

While this is no "Clueless," to be sure, it's also, thankfully, no "Born in East L.A."

The chickiest flick you're likely to see this season. Depending on your taste in romantic fare, you'll either find it toe-curlingly dreamy or ploddingly predictable.

The man behind the "Rush Hour" franchise proves that dropping sly nods in Alfred Hitchcock's direction does not necessarily a fine caper make.

This newest laff-riot from the once and future director of The Decline of Western Civilization documentaries is a lamentable mess, chiefly made up of stale gags that went bad sometime during the Kennedy administration and a stunningly unengaging romance that has all the snap of a moist cotton swab.

While it’s far from bad, it also falls far short of the icy frissons produced by the original.

The pleasure of The Chronicles of Riddick comes mostly from the fascinating and outlandishly detailed production design, which sprawls across the screen in nearly every shot, with the Necromonger’s gigantic starships looking similar to those strange stone heads on Easter Island.

Submergence – despite much lovesick gravitas from its two leads – never quite coalesces into the epic romance that it should. It fizzles when it should ignite, leaving the viewer with a palpable yearning for something other than a shrug.

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.”

Dear George Lucas: What gives with this Eragon jazz? I mean, gee whiz, did you seriously think that we wouldn't recognize you, the Great Man, as the guiding, um, FORCE behind this dull retelling of "Star Wars"?

Like its protagonist, the movie tries to rise above convention, flails about a bit, and slides back into self-parody.

A limp and lackluster affair that telegraphs its feel-good smarm miles in advance.

Gleefully, goofily over-the-top.

The Green Inferno feels like a retread of a retread.

It really IS fun to watch yet another oddball turn by Sutherland, and a marginally restrained one from Spacek. It's just not THAT fun.

From the creature FX to the stilted dialogue, Sleepwalkers offers nothing new for horror fans to sink their collective fangs into.

A mildly entertaining reworking of the Farrelly Brothers' superior micro-sport parody "Kingpin."

This is a scattershot affair, though fans of Reno should find it engagingly loopy.

If Never Die Alone had even a smidgeon of comic relief (or even, say, a bunch of zombies) to offset some of its relentlessly downbeat brutality, it might have been at best tolerable. But it doesn't, and it's not.

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.

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.

It's just not all that interesting to watch two pretty young things go through the muddled rituals of the pas de duh when I can, you know, do it just as poorly myself.

Sporadically funny, the film seems weighted down, literally, with bulging, bulbous Murphys flatulating endlessly.

None of this made a lick of sense to me, nor did it appear to be all that obvious to either the cast or screenwriter Hodge, whose work here feels as though he'd given up in frustration halfway through before deciding to see how far he could push the vaguely Harry Potter-esque shenanigans before getting sacked.

Part metaphysical treatise, part educational primer, and part dangerously goofy self-help manual for the New Age set, this bizarre and not unentertaining documentary strives mightily to teach the lay audience everything there is to know about quantum physics in 108 minutes.

Sick, twisted, and very funny, Parker and Stone have arrived. Again.

August Rush is a rather prosaic, oddly anxious, contemporary take on Dickens' Oliver Twist, with Williams – in nasty-man twee mode, a newish one for him – thrown in for bad measure.

The finished product is as predictably dull as a newborn's soft spot.

It’s all very nice to look at, sure, but pretty colors and molten intercoolers aside, 2 Fast 2 Furious is about as exciting as a Yugo in quicksand.

One of the Peking Opera-trained superstar's most mediocre films, rivaling last year’s God-awful "The Tuxedo" for sheer messy filmmaking and brazen acts of tedium... Abysmal.

It’s a message movie, as are all kids films these days, but these environmentally-aware messages are sweet and unforced, and well worth hearing.

It's good -- no, great -- to see Williams as a mean rat bastard.

Does it make any sense? Nope. Does this detract from the film? Not at all. It's classic Italian Grand Guignol at its most disturbing; a car crash, autopsy, and disembowelment all wrapped up in a nice, soggy package.

At it's best, it's a wishy-washy treatise that fails to elicit much of any reaction.

Tamra Davis' directorial debut is a noir-ish, adrenaline-fueled tale of a love on the border between teen angst and homicide, and it packs a mean, unrelenting punch.

Of all the missteps made and absurdities offered, the most glaring is the casting of what appears to be a steroidal Eurotrash pimp as no less than Dracula.

A moribund Harrison Ford vehicle, stodgily dull, and seemingly endless in its monotony.

It’s most definitely not for the squeamish nor the easily offended -- the death scenes in Final Destination 2, of which there are many, are immensely bloody and imaginative affairs, full of exploding limbs, squashed bodies, and graphic, gory ultra-violence.

It's not atrocious, but it borders on it, thanks to Dennis Quaid's annoying narration and his even more irritating portrait of the self-loathing writer whose presence bookends the two main storylines.

By the time the closing credits roll, you're wondering if anyone else noticed that nothing made much sense.

The Last Legion offers guilty-pleasure fun in a cheesy, very De Laurentiis way (much like 1976's Mandingo rip-off Drum), but, in the end, it's just not a very inspired or well-conceived film, despite Kingsley's strangely endearing turn as the proto-Merlin.

Best never to have left dry dock with this one.

Ultimately, though, and despite an enormously creepy turn from Bentley (American Beauty), the story has nowhere else to go but into the standard (albeit judiciously-used) stalk-and-slash territory.

Charmless, unfrightening, and even devoid of the requisite gratuitous nudity, Anaconda just plain bites.

It's a messy, overlong film, but it's impossible to take seriously and therefore more than a little entertaining.

It pains me to say it, but Afterlife, the latest installment in this seemingly eternal zombie apocalypse franchise, is considerably more entertaining than George A. Romero's most recent exhumation.

10 times too much, a nonstop orgy of bullets, bombs, and booty that aims low and hits the bull’s-eye with enough firepower to sink the Bismarck.

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.

For one thing, Seven Days in Utopia feels an awful lot like Victor Salva's 2006 New Age uplifter "Peaceful Warrior." That film at least had the appeal of watching Nick Nolte play Yoda, whereas here Duvall simply seems to be playing Duvall.

All Nighter feels way too much like its own title, a soporific exercise in style over substance.

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.

Hoge's film raises more questions than it answers – that's his point, I think, to get us thinking – and Gosling, who previously played the conflicted Jewish Nazi skinhead in "The Believer," inhabits the role of Leland so fully it's as if the character had killed him as well.

Far more coherent than its immediate predecessor, Spy Kids: All the Time in the World in 4D benefits greatly from its two likable young leads and some of the series' wittiest, pun-filled writing.

Less a Nic Cage movie than a movie with an extended cameo by Nic Cage in a “finely crafted” paper hat (!), this Greek/Cypriot co-production mixes mediocre martial artistry with a sci-fi spin and ends up a puzzlement to both genres.

War, Inc. is neither all that interesting nor all that cool.

Not quite loud enough to be a seasonal blockbuster, Mercury Rising is instead more of a dull thud on the action film map, fodder for Willis fanatics, and not much else.

Even Cathy Moriarty-Gentile's role as a rival mob boss (with a nod to "Raging Bull") can't save this DOA affair.

A Life Less Ordinary fails on so many levels it's nearly a textbook case of What Not to Do.

The very Thai-specific charms that made the original Shutter such an unforeseen, unpredictable delight when I first saw it – and when I screened it again, last night – are almost entirely absent here, eclipsed by the annoying blonde highlights of Taylor, ex-Transformer babe and forever, as the Thai say, farang.

Amid the endless stream of catch-a-rising-star movie clichés that Honey screenwriters Alonzo Brown and Kim Watson throw up and out are a few new ones, notably "skinny girls always win out in the end" and "hootchie bad, faux hootchie good."

Viewed as a war film, it's strictly standard run 'n' gun fare.

About as thrilling as cleaning out your garage.

Thankfully, The Nomi Song should go a long way toward re-cementing this striking creature's legendary status.

This is either one of the best “head” films of all time or one of the worst examples of Disneyfied opportunism to come down the pike in years. I'd like to think it was the former, really I would, but somehow I suspect otherwise.

Just as clichéd as its predecessor, and lacks the old-school charm of films like "Wild Style" and "Breakin’."

There's more story, heart, and – cutting to the chase, the quick, and the dead – pure, unadulterated fun contained within a scant five minutes of Rockstar Games' new Grand Theft Auto IV video game than there is in the whole of Speed Racer.

Hit-or-miss comedy at its best and worst: When it connects, the belly laughs are long and loud, but when it misses, the groans you'll be hearing are your own.

An unpredictably bizarre and tonally askew Hong Kong freak show.

Director Carr, who helmed the similarly predictable "Daddy Day Care," keeps things moving, both on and off the court, with the sort of light, sweet humor you're not likely to find in too many other summer movies.

Color of Night is yet another in a string of vapid, low-tension headaches passing for suspense thrillers (Fatal Attraction, Jennifer 8, Single White Female) that tries to go everywhere and, instead, goes nowhere. At all.

While its heart is in the right place, Aeon Flux's head is just a little too high to make much sense.

Neither the riveting boy band documentary nor the riveted gay porn its title seems to suggest, Biker Boyz is instead a late-model knockoff of 2001’s outlaw auto racing epic The Fast and the Furious, reconfigured with a predominantly black cast and a whole lotta two-wheeled saké.

Hopefully, someone will grab the torch and, if not run with it, at the very least track down and set fire to the highly combustible prints of this inexcusably inept yawn-a-thon - it's not so much bad as it is unfathomable.

The film falls just shy of both Diesel and Gray's mark.

Most unforgivably, this Eye culminates not with the mounting dread and spectacular tragedy of the original film's decidedly downbeat vision, but with the trademark LASIK laziness of Hollywood's stylistically blank remake factory.

Co-writers Don Calame and Chris Conroy utterly fail to notice the wealth of black-comedy gold inherent in the very notion of sprawling supercenters and instead go for the dumbest gags they can find.

Tired and formulaic.

With its eye-popping color palette and surreal sense of ever-heightening melodrama, Thunderbirds comes across as "Spy Kids'" poorer British cousin.

Daniel Radcliffe cleans up nicely as Igor, the man behind the madman who makes the monster in this, the 60th (thereabouts) film to adapt or riff on Mary Shelley’s prescient 1818 sci-fi/horror novel. Happily, director Paul McGuigan, working from a script by Max Landis, takes the story in some new directions by choosing to retell the tale from the perspective of the famed hunchback.

Fans of the video game will doubtless love it all but for true fans of the gnashing dead – and we count ourselves among them – this is strictly second-tier terror.

Do yourself a favor: Go rent Hardy's original film, watch it, and then try and get it out of your head. You never, ever will.

Who doesn't love an animated, anthropomorphized-chimpanzee-starring, sci-fi romantic comedy?

It's not quite quick enough to be anywhere near as gloomily engaging as the cast's original outing.

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.

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.

Pure Luck manages to deliver only four decent laughs in its entire 105-minute time.

There's nothing righteous about this tired and tiresome good cop/bad cop NYPD procedural.

Adding to weirdness is a tacked-on, live-action appearance from the real Aldrin, who reassures kids and terrified X-Files fans that there weren't, in fact, any houseflies on board Apollo 11.

A dull, tired mess.

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.

The result is a somewhat functional blood feast for the exploitation crowd, but it's hardly a bead of sweat on the original's battered backside. Oh, and the score? Basil Poledouris' bombastic brass is still No. 1.

There are moments of great beauty throughout (the film was lensed by Wong Kar-Wai cinematographer Christopher Doyle), and Shyamalan's heart is nowhere if not on his sleeve, but even these moments cannot steer Lady in the Water clear of its director's zealously over-earnest pretensions.

A colorful mess, all style and substances and little else.

Colorful, kid-friendly, and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny. ’Nuff said.

The Watch is awfully lightweight, and while it earns its R rating via some comic gore and a whole lot of hyper-sexualized tomfoolery, it's hardly the best work of anyone involved.

With Turistas, Stockwell dives head-first into a veritable riptide of churning, vicious exploitation cinema, and the result is surprisingly effective.

Fumbles on so many levels it's just plain silly. To paraphrase the film's tagline: The Thirteenth Floor: You can go there, but why would you want to?

This may be a remake of a Swedish film from 2002 (itself based on a novel), but unspooling in the cineplex it feels more akin to one of emo godhead Conor Oberst's more emotionally mopey musical diversions.

There's really nothing new here (as if anyone expected there would be), but it's a decent enough entry into the Karate Kid series, if you don't mind having seen it all done before, and better.

The Dennis Miller Show… with nekkid vampire-vixens. That's it in a coffin-nail.

For his first shot at feature filmmaking, Longo does an admirable job of keeping the story line rocketing along, though his seeming attempts to out-Blade Runner Ridley Scott in the decaying cityscape department grow wearisome and the occasional wooden drivel that Reeves spouts adds a bit of unintentional humor to the proceedings.

Torture, you may recall, used to be an unparsable, unpardonable sin. Now it's porn.

I saw the original version of this same story 28 years ago. It was called "Scanners" and it blew my mind for real. Push just blows.

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.

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.

Is this the future of horror or just some bizarre fluke? Don't ask me, I'm having too much fun to care.

Williamson's directorial debut is a sad affair, devoid of shocks, surprises, or even his clever trademark diologue.

Plays like a slapdash assemblage of the greatest hits of conspiracy-minded action cinema.

Dream House is neither haunting (as the marketing appears to promise) nor all that original. But it does, thank goodness for small favors, have Elias Koteas.

The whole production does reek a bit of origin story filminess, but even so, it's light sabers beyond Christensen's sad, revengeful fate in "Episode III" and does offer a nice view of the top of the Sphinx's head no less than three times.

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.

Like the dead dog that it is, though, Pet Sematary deserves to be buried very, very deep.

It all falls apart at the end, however, and in such a loud and abrasive way that it makes Brian De Palma's "Raising Cain" look like a model of restraint.

A 119-minute trailer.

It's visceral bloodbathery at its most repellent, but worse than that, it's horrific like the aftermath of a suicide bombing instead of terrifying like the bomb beneath the table or the knife behind the back.

From its marketing-impaired title on down, Event Horizon is a steadily churning debacle that promises much more than it can deliver and ends up drowning in a crimson sea of gore and maddeningly out-of-place steals from other, better genre shockers.

Mansome is mostly miss, and pretty thin as well.

Bland to the point of pointlessness.

Van Helsing is simply far too much of a good thing, and although Hensley's Frankenstein Monster comes off better than anyone else, the film suffers from some truly inane dialogue and pacing that will likely cause tachycardia in members of the audience old enough to recall who Dwight Frye was.

Apart from the fang-restraint of the nosferatu, however, there's precious little that's altogether new or for that matter shocking about this by-the-numbers thriller.

It's pornography of the most depressing sort.

It keeps you off balance, all right, but not enough to obscure the sad fact that Ghosts of Mars is a muddled, derivative disaster straight on through.

Barely even worthy of a straight-to-video release, as simplistic and silly as it is.

Spottily directed and lacking the dubious merits of even the Friday the 13th franchise, this is one slasher film that should die a quick and lonely box-office death.

So much is going on, and so many bizarre and seemingly random subplots collide in Dreamcatcher, that the film feels like some crazy patchwork quilt sewn by a schizophrenic seamstress. It’s not only confusing, but dull, as well.

Bizarre, trenchant, and unexpectedly hilarious, this is one regular guy's foray into the lonely world of love. Were that all budding relationships came out this well.

At its core the film is as standardized as the exam it seeks to debunk, and nearly as tedious.

To be sure, Hitman is a lousy film, but like the video game that inspired it, it's also great fun, drawing as it does on everything from James Bondian Eurotrash panache to Vin Diesel's moribund XXX character.