Pete Vonder Haar

Doesn't do much besides giving original "Ringu" and "Ringu 2" director Hideo Nakata the chance to strut his stuff in front of a wide-release audience.

Wolf Creek 2 merely offers more of the same casual brutality. The only shocking (and depressing) part is how inured to it moviegoers have become.

Won't make anybody’s "best of" lists a year from now, but it's nowhere near as offensive as some other examples of this moldy genre.

Seriously, that kid is creepy as hell.

What, a white woman can’t take an innocent drive through the ghetto without arousing suspicion? What’s this world coming to?

Is love a disease, as Marquez possibly wanted us to believe? Maybe, but in the case of this adaptation, it’s more of a laughing sickness.

It's serviceable.

Desperate Acts of Magic is a pleasant little film.

This is a superior horror film. It hits hard and fast, letting up only to inject some black humor and amp up the tension again before coming back for more. Feast is nasty, brutish, and short, just like Hobbes said all horror flicks should be.

If you didn't like "Charlie’s Angels," there’s a good chance you'll enjoy the smarter, sexier D.E.B.S.

Lowell hews so close to the reunion-film formula he ends up stifling anything new that may otherwise have resulted.

Edward and Carter are like the original Odd Couple, except nobody’s laughing.

Fred Claus is belligerently unfunny.

The rape scene is, admittedly, as brutal as any I've seen in recent memory, but much of what Iliadis shows us is a direct riff on the original.

It's noisy, nonsensical, and will fade from your consciousness even before you make it out of the theater lobby, but it's entertaining enough, and Tamahori throws us a few curve balls to keep things interesting.

While I could probably spend an entire weekend watching Milla twirl her kukris, it's obvious from the rather lazy pacing that Anderson is growing increasingly self-indulgent with his creation.

There was a movie called “My Bodyguard” about the new kid in high school who hires the sullen loner to protect him from a bully. That was good. Drillbit Taylor is shit but, hey, I’m in Judd Apatow’s Hollywood.

It ain't art, and it's dumber than I'd like, but I don't imagine you were expecting Kieslowski.

Works best when it sticks to some of the tenets of successful horror; namely, gore and surprise.

What you won’t be able to ignore is the ridiculous way Vantage Point’s brings everything to an end.

Intermittently refreshing yet thoroughly unpleasant.

The release of Fantastic Four marks the beginning of the end for movies based on Marvel Comics' upper tier of characters.

One of the drawbacks to rushing your sequel to theaters is that there's not a lot of time to hone dialogue and performances.

Director Adam Randall keeps the action tightly paced and the dialogue to a refreshing minimum, helping to heighten Matt's growing isolation.

Eragon is laughably bad, mind-bogglingly derivative, and easily one of the worst movies of the year.

Sellers' comic mastery is completely fumbled by Martin and director Shawn Levy.

Easily one of the most lackadaisical movies I've seen. Don't get me wrong, the plot is entertaining enough, and there are some genuine laughs, but almost everyone in the movie is half-a--ing it.

So remarkably free of laughs I might as well have been watching John Wayne Gacy’s home movies.

Comes up short in many ways, but none more so than its failure to fulfill Penn's and Zaillian's desire to provide the catalyst for political sea change.

It isn't going to set the world on fire, but it's perfectly acceptable for what it is.

Every rumor you’ve heard about this film is true; it’s an absolute wreck.

It tries to toe the line between romantic comedy and vulgar pseudo-satire and fails at both.

Lackluster dialogue, ludicrously unbelievable storyline, and the fact that the entire film looks and sounds like it was shot on a camcorder mean nobody outside of the studio’s target demographic is likely to check this out.

Dumb, loud, and ludicrous in the extreme, and I actually enjoyed it.

The Wicker Man isn't all that bad a movie; it's visually striking and ambitious in some ways. It just fails to bring enough to the table to fully distance itself from the original.

Veers back and forth between indigestibly syrupy romance and vulgar "ethnic" comedy, with healthy doses of Christian proselytizing thrown in for good measure.

Lady is more of an ensemble picture, and truly the Cove is the most ethnically diverse and community-minded apartment complex in the continental United States.

Standoff holds up as a welcome alternative to its more strident brethren.

Turistas fails in almost every way a movie like this can.

The Reaping isn't a total failure. Swank is never less than competent.

If What Happens in Vegas... serves any purpose, it's to make me consider spending my gambling money in Reno or on a riverboat instead.

The whole thing feels like a continuation of Lucas' experiments to see how much sh-- his dwindling supporters will take before finally saying "enough" and moving on to adult pursuits.

Let's start with the obvious: Olyphant just isn't that intimidating an assassin. Think of some of cinema's more memorable button men: Léon, Luca Brasi, Frank Nitti...that's right, not a pretty boy in the bunch.

A subject like the Holodomor demands something more than a TV-movie aesthetic and pitched battle scenes featuring a couple dozen combatants.

An almost constant misfire. From its paper-thin plot to the utterly flat script, virtually nothing works.

The question isn't whether Nispel's remake is better than the 1980 original (it isn't) but whether anything original is brought into the mix. And minus a mild plot twist you"ll probably see coming from the first five minutes, there isn't.

Doesn’t break any new ground – it actually steals from half a dozen other sci-fi movies – but it’ll make enough at the box office to justify further game flicks.

What really grabs your attention about Undead, however, are the effects. For a movie budgeted under $1 million, the Spierigs have done an amazing job putting together believable visuals.

The same problems that plagued the original are on display here. Most notably, the lack of any coherent plot. Lots of creepy kids jump out at us, but these scenes are never satisfactorily meshed into the story itself.

The recreational vehicle has a long and storied tradition in American cinema, from "Damnation Alley" to "Lost in America" to "Stripes." Sadly, RV shares little of its namesake' nationwide appeal.

There are some genuine scares to be had here, and not just of the “Boo!” variety.

I humbly submit that Cedric the Entertainer be required to give up the "Entertainer" portion of his nom de plume until he actually starts entertaining us.

I haven't seen such meaningful insight into the nature of human cooperation since this morning's "Sesame Street."

Just make sure you exit the theater before Simpson's god-awful version of "These Boots Are Made for Walking" starts playing during the end credits, or you may find yourself taking the straw from your drink and puncturing your own eardrums in self defense.

Ferrara, best known as "Turtle" on HBO's Entourage, plays what is essentially a muted version of that character. Abeckaser is more believable, which is unsurprising, since the movie is loosely based on his own experiences.

Computer movies have come a long way since the good old days of monitors projecting vector graphics on hackers’ faces, but there are still some forehead slappers in Untraceable.

Waiting… is only intermittently funny, but when it is, it's hilarious.

"The Beginning" is a better movie than the 2003 remake, even if the plot is understandably similar. There are only so many ways hapless teens can get brutally slaughtered, after all, but Liebesman and company keep things appropriately creepy, right down to aping the look of the 1974 original.

Fool's Gold could easily have been released in 1977, and there's a sort of laid-back, timeless, Gerald Ford feel to the movie: the resolution is never in doubt, the villains are comedic rather than menacing, and no one involved seems to care one way or the other that their names are attached to this indifferent mess.

The depressingly predictable script—and tendency of everyone involved to jump to ridiculous conclusions—suggests a combination of Noises Off at best, and at worst, Three's Company.

Reviewing it is a wholly meaningless exercise, but I do it against my better judgment that anyone even seeks a second opinion before plopping down their hard-earned money for garbage like this.

Vlahakis's tale should be compelling, but a weak script and mostly dull performances (one exception: Billy Zane . . . I know!) make A Green Story more monotonous than mythic.

An indolent, PG-13, Disney "biker" flick that does for comedies what Exxon did for Prince William Sound.

Bound to Vengeance strains credibility (seriously, she never calls the cops?) and swerves dangerously close to exploitation often enough that its semi-clever premise can't keep it on course.

It's an inferior remake (of a movie that wasn't that great to begin with), it's poorly acted, and it's yet another in an unending string of PG-13 "horror" movies that do nothing to build even the most rudimentary sense of real dread.

Compared to Norbit, “Date Movie” is "Casablanca." If I thought hijacking a plane carrying prints of the film and crashing it into Murphy’s house would put a stop to it, I’d go out and buy a box cutter right now.

That legendary adolescent tolerance for garbage may be severely tested by Supercross.

It isn't as if any of the actors do an especially bad job or anything – Fox is capable enough as the lead, and Whitley and Wilson especially carry themselves quite well – but you can't help asking yourself, what's the point? Are there that many more broad topics in need of shallow examination by a Hollywood studio picture?

The endless hidden connections and coincidences eventually become ridiculous.

The original movie One Missed Call is based on was pretty tame, at least by Miike standards. And since it appears studios have no intention of halting this flood of abysmal rehashes, allow me to suggest that they at least have the stones not to pussyfoot around and give us a remake worthy of Hollywood, of America, and of an audience that lacks the willpower to stop buying tickets to half-assed crap.

Vaxxed is, in the words of Sheriff Bart, the last act of a desperate man. It’s Andrew Wakefield’s Hail Mary, thrown — I hope — as his time in the public arena finally runs out.

Yoga Hosers is lazy, unfunny, and self-indulgent.

Home Sweet Hell is a pleasantly unpleasant dark comedy, one that gives new meaning to "detached and subdivided" in the mass production zone.

Locker 13 brings the hurt, and not in a good way.

Writer-director Clément Michel can't escape the usual infant-related movie pitfalls.

Hey, Crave, the jerk store called, and they're running out of you.

What starts out as a moderately interesting thriller in the vein of Blue Velvet and Angel Heart ends up less than the sum of its portentous parts.

Veers between flaccid slapstick and mean-spirited vulgarity.

One small step for bad filmmaking and one giant leap for the increasing insignificance of the former Michael Corleone.

Criminal negligence of Dolph is far from Black Water’s only sin — there’s also the sluggish pacing, murky musical score, and somnambulant lead — but it might be its most egregious.

Elapsed time before I walked out: 29 minutes Total laughs (in that period): 0

Scary Movie V murdered my capacity to feel joy.

L.A. Slasher isn't perceptive, shocking, or funny, and if it's remembered for anything, it will be for the tastelessly tone-deaf decision to have the Slasher kill a black actress by dragging her behind a van.

While his story is moving, Godspeed would perhaps have been more powerful if Barry spent more time balancing Jones's relative good fortune with the monumental hurdles faced by the less fortunate with similar injuries, instead of touching upon the issue in the film's final minutes.

Convergence ends up squandering too much of its setup time and rushing to a largely unsatisfying conclusion instead of actually coming together in a meaningful way.