Peter Hartlaub

Watching The Goldfinch is like reading a novel where someone ripped out every third page from front to back. You can tell there’s a good story, with compelling characters, and maybe a strong mystery. But the connective tissue is missing to the point of constant distraction.

Aquaman continues to revel in the outdated 1970s superhero ideal that mankind is unquestionably worth saving. Add to that some awkward dialogue, a poorly conceived visual effects palette, and a soul-crushing and bladder-crushing 139-minute run time, and you have another disappointing entry in the DC Comics cinematic universe.

Unfortunately, it’s not much of a movie. The best thing “Happytime” has going for it is shock value, and that wears away after about 10 minutes. It doesn’t have an interesting story, and the jokes fall flat.

Show Dogs is really bad, even for a talking-dog movie.

The new version is a weak facsimile of an already mediocre film.

A film that looks way more fun to make than it is to watch. There’s a stubbornness to the comedic approach, mostly in its unwillingness to age since the first “Super Troopers.”

Mostly it serves as a comprehensive manual of bad places to hide from a masked killer.

Although it isn’t a top-flight horror movie — too slow for thrill-chasers, too ridiculously fictionalized for historians — the film serves as a proper 99-minute commercial for that San Jose tourist spot.

It’s a poorly made film, with rough edits, distracting staging and plot contrivances that can be predicted to the moment.

And then there’s the real problem with Pitch Perfect 3: The best thing about the first movie — the singing — feels like an afterthought.

Daddy’s Home 2 is an excessively negative, strained and predictable comedy.

Some people clearly had a good time making this film. Whether you have a good time watching it depends almost entirely on your Pony love walking in.

The filmmakers offer very few clues, just more aqua filters and low-contrast visuals. And with each new jarring edit, the viewer cares less and less, until the 100 minutes seem to stretch on forever.

The Nut Job 2 isn’t maddening like “Smurfs 2,” where you continue to hate yourself years later for spending the money. It’s an adequate babysitter that completely fails to inspire.

Captain Underpants is a very popular book series that doesn’t seamlessly translate to the big screen, and the filmmakers can’t solve this problem. The result is a cinematic wedgie: a little too dark, a little too nihilistic, a little too empty.

Smurfs: The Lost Village has the look of a film that was rushed, and made on a tight budget. At best, it’s an adequate cinematic babysitter.

We get a lot of hapless victims in an expensive endeavor that is surprisingly lifeless.

The Shack is unshakable in its religious message, and that’s admirable in a cynical world. But viewed objectively as cinema, it’s just not a very good film.

The film is a plodding 2 ½ hours long, with an abundance of livestock gore, endless dental trauma and a violent sex scene.

A Dog’s Purpose is peril porn; the animal grows old or faces tragedy and expires over and over, reincarnating into a new dog with the same brain.

The Bye Bye Man is the kind of mess that happened by committee.

The Ice Age screenwriters seem to be making up the rules as they go along, distracted by tired side plots to give the other characters a reason to exist in the film.

The sequel is even more silly, and much less fun.

There are isolated moments of humor, and even charm. The visual effects are at times outstanding. But these positives are overwhelmed by the uninspired whole.

The makers were clearly paying attention to the smaller details. But somehow, they missed all the big things that made the first Point Break a memorable escapist film of its time.

Yes, the life expectancy of a chipmunk maxes out at 10 years in captivity. So biologically, we must be coming toward the end of this franchise. That’s not the type of thing a critic looks up when filmmakers make more of an effort.

Every key plot turn is telegraphed at least twice, just in case you missed it the first time. Every emotional moment in the movie is foreshadowed a few beats in advance by the manipulative musical score.

Belongs in a less ambitious category of sequels, alongside the creatively lacking “Alvin and the Chipmunks” and “Ice Age” movies.

“Avoiding unhappiness is not the road to happiness,” Hector writes in his book. But avoiding this movie might be a good start.

Often frustrating and at times incomprehensible, the Bourne/Bond clone keeps the pulse racing but ultimately fails to satisfy.

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For is still a visual buffet, but adding 102 more minutes of double crosses, slow torture and hookers with hearts of gold just exposes the tediousness of the exercise.

The narrative is a mess, and the overly long action sequences are easily forgotten.

At best, it will be remembered as "that exorcism movie with Eric Bana." More likely, "that exorcism movie where everyone has a bad New York accent."

Imagine if instead of creating new music, a recording artist kept putting out the exact same album, just playing the songs a little louder each time. That's what it feels like watching Transformers: Age of Extinction.

All the brains, heart and courage in the world can't save a movie that doesn't have a third act.

The update is a different kind of failure, too much endless and not enough love.

Nowhere near the worst film of 2013, but it is definitely the most exhausting.

In execution, the film is all sidekicks and sight gags, with little story cohesion or purpose.

The 3-D 1D movie is aimless, seemingly deceptive and spreads a poor message: that it's OK to act extremely immature, as long as you have millions of blind followers who think it's cute.

You've probably seen this movie before, watching a child play with his toy Hot Wheels cars after eating multiple bowls of sugary breakfast cereal.

Every moviegoer will have his own breaking point, when The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones surpasses the mundane and enters the ridiculous.

There's so much torture and suffering in this movie, it starts to feel like "Zero Dark Smurfy."

By the end, I was adding my own internal "Deadwood"-style profanities to McShane's clean dialogue. "For the sake of the (God-@#$%) kingdom, cut it (the @#$%) down!" Movies about mile-high beanstalks shouldn't require additional audience imagination.

The film Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away highlights both the strains of the franchise and the willingness to promote the brand at any cost - including a coherent narrative. It's a big promo reel, and not a carefully disguised one.

Bornedal invests so much time in the characters - Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Kyra Sedgwick play the split parents of the girls - that there are times you will forget this is a horror movie. It's Kramer vs. Kramer vs. Lucifer.

Way too serious for its own good. The best vampire movies are some combination of sexy, scary or campy. This one is 100 percent earnest, and the hazy mysteries taken from Rachel Klein's book aren't strong enough to keep the audience engaged.

It's an uninspired and instantly forgettable film. But it completely succeeds by its own standards: an 87-minute rainy-day distraction that will probably make a zillion dollars.

Don't invest too much in the word "Golf" at the beginning of the title. Golf in the Kingdom is arguably less of a sports movie than the first "Harry Potter." (At least someone won that game of quidditch ...)

Dragons may have seemed less out of place three decades ago, but it would have been a bad movie then as well. It's filled with clumsy transitions and erratic performances, and tied together by an awkward framing device.

The need for a sequel was zero - proved by the fact that the characters end the movie pretty much exactly where they started it.

The Nutcracker in 3D will be barely recognizable to fans of the beloved holiday classic. Imagine watching Tchaikovsky's ballet after taking a handful of peyote - on a day when all of the dancers call in sick and the orchestra decides to play a different set of the composer's works.

Children will enjoy the physical humor, but discerning adults are advised to pawn their sons and daughters off on some other unsuspecting chaperone -- preferably one who doesn't read movie reviews.

The mockumentary-style delivery of a serious subject proves to be an unworkable mash-up.

It's surprising how dated some of the humor is.

At the heart of The Return is a murder that even the most bumbling homicide investigator could have solved in about 12 seconds.

Not since "An American Werewolf in London" in 1981 reset the standard for man-to-wolf transformations has anyone tried to get away with special effects as pitiful as the ones in this movie.

There's no attempt at humor in Dead Silence, but the biggest sin in the film is the lack of scares.

Throwing your $10.25 down a storm drain is a better idea; at least that way you won't feel the added self-loathing of wasting more than an hour and a half of your life watching Eva Mendes in the worst acting job of her career.

If you want to see Li and Statham in an underwhelming martial arts film, rent "The One" instead. Li talks considerably more in that movie, but at least he punches a lot of people out.

An acquired taste.

The movie's onslaught of psychobabble is the annoyance most likely to ruin your evening. Imagine getting stuck on a ski lift with Dr. Phil for nearly two hours.

May be a good tactical move for the artist's career, but it's a bad movie.

While it's filled with quality actors, this James Bond tale for tweens feels like something you should be getting for free on television.

An ill-advised and severely wussified remake.

The result is an incredibly disorganized movie with a few funny scenes -- most of which are revealed in the commercials.

Much of the action onscreen doesn't ring true. Seasoned independent film director Henry Jaglom doesn't just explore the subject - he smothers the audience with it.

A mindless comedy where the blatant racial stereotypes are outnumbered only by the flatulence jokes. The best thing that can be said about this movie is it falls just short of being an international incident.

Contains so many insults to the audience's intelligence.

The action sequences are just as ridiculous as the romance parts, but at least James seems comfortable with the pratfalls and gross-out scenarios.

Ghost Rider has everything you don't want from your superhero movie, including lack of logic, boring action scenes, bad acting in the supporting performances, a brutally slow 114-minute running time and cringe-worthy dialogue.

Less an original product than a shoddy tribute to other mediocre cop movies.

While "Saw" and "Saw II" were pretty good splatter films hampered by spectacularly unbelievable endings, Saw III is annoying for almost the duration of the movie.

When You're Strange is a remedial Doors class, taught by a professor who sounds as if he's doing voiceovers for car commercials.

Plodding and unfunny.

The Cave is National Geographic mixed with Roger Corman, and by the end you'll probably be wishing you saw "Red Eye" instead.

First, and perhaps most important, it should be disclosed that my 4-year-old laughed pretty much nonstop throughout Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel. This was his "Citizen Kane."

The movie is occasionally clever, but still inferior to last year's "Twilight" film, mostly because the story is so muddled.

You'll feel so much better just sending your $9.50 to the Red Cross then catching "I Know What You Did Last Summer" one more time on television.

This movie is so horrible that it actually spends some time in "so bad it's good" territory, before getting significantly worse.

Had a lot of promise, but ultimately isn't very funny.

It isn't smart or even very scary.

Besson is a pro when it comes to action movies, but this part live, part animation effort is a mess, highlighted by creepy animation, derivative plot points and a child star who speaks way too fast.

If you're no longer old enough to carry a Hannah Montana lunch box, this movie will feel like punishment.

A few amusing moments mixed in with the painful ones.

The movie plays more like a WB network teen drama than something audiences should be expected to pay to see.

May not be a very enjoyable movie, but at least the badness is in good taste.

Sporadic on-field violence is only a tiny reason that Gracie disappoints, but it's indicative of the film's greater problem. Producers Elisabeth and Andrew Shue seem so intent on creating a hero out of the main character and villains out of almost everyone else, that they've completely distorted reality.

Devoid of thrills, and with nothing even vaguely frightening to distract moviegoers, it becomes clear that the story wasn't worth telling in the first place.

Piles cliched character upon cliched character, and then doesn't give any of them very much to do.

The result is a well-intentioned mess -- a dishonest fantasy that begins with promise and gets more frustrating with every scene.

At best a little boring and at worst stomach-churningly offensive.

It's a movie packed with so many idiot characters that Rob Schneider is cast as the cool guy -- and sort of pulls it off.

Props to the Weinstein Brothers for having the guts to release a slasher film on Christmas Day. Too bad this one is the cinematic equivalent of tryptophan.

Nowhere near as bad as "Coneheads," but still isn't worth your time.

If there was ever a human being who needed a visit from the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future, this is the guy.

Has all kinds of good intentions, but the comedy is too broad and the pacing is clumsy. And then there's the Andy Griffith sex scene.

This is the animated children's film equivalent of "Another 48 Hours."

A film to be enjoyed only by science-fiction movie completists and middle school boys with extreme cases of attention deficit disorder.