Peter Hartlaub

Contains so many insults to the audience's intelligence.

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.

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

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

Who wants to spend a minute on the Strip with the chance that there might be people as annoying as the characters played by Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher walking around?

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.

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

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

The movie is overly long and much too intense for small children, yet it's filled with dialogue and plot turns that are too juvenile to thrill adult audiences.

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

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.

The fight scenes are lackluster and the plot is needlessly complicated. If you're making an action film that centers on fast cars and fast women, it's usually best to keep the rest of the story simple.

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

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

Aquaman continues to revel in the outdated 1970s superhero ideal that mankind is unquestionably worth saving.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.

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

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

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

Doesn't accomplish its objective.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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

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

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

A well-intentioned horror film that is weighted down by stellar cast members who for the most part act as if they don't want to be there.

This movie could really use an Avon Barksdale, but even actor Wood Harris, who played drug kingpin Barksdale in "The Wire," seems a bit lost.

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.

A film so self-centered that even the director's most dedicated stalkers might find it a bit too narcissistic.

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.

It isn't smart or even very scary.

There are a few laughs and some touching moments, but nothing you couldn't get by watching episodes of "Good Times" and "Little House on the Prairie" back to back.

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

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

Perhaps worst of all, the movie is painfully long.

It's a well-meaning but ultimately feeble and misguided attempt to say something profound about the aftereffects of the 2001 attacks on New York.

An ill-advised and severely wussified remake.

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.

Kind of a bore.

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

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

If you see only one bad movie this year, definitely make it Knowing. The first major disappointment from director Alex Proyas is a disaster movie, a horror picture, a "Da Vinci Code"-style thriller and an end-of-days religious film all at once.

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."

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.”

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

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.

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."

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.

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.

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

How can this movie not be fun?

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.

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 movie that features a cartoon rodent eating his brother's feces, and do you really need to know more about this update of Ross Bagdasarian's iconic musical creation?

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

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.

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.

This is the type of movie that you should be getting for free on television.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

It's just too bad that almost nothing in the movie seems original. The "Thriller" video may have featured hokey dancing zombies, but at least someone was making an effort.

Humorless, confusing and not very fun to watch.

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.

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

One more small thing: Every other scene in Saw IV starts and ends with a potential victim pressing "play" on a tape recorder, to the point where it's almost funny.

The movie appears to be a contrived, poorly produced attempt to sell more of the author's books.

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.

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.

Extremely boring.

Like most movies based on games, this film appears to have been quite literally doomed from the start.

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

A few amusing moments mixed in with the painful ones.

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.

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

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

Completely ridiculous, but fun to look at.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Plodding and unfunny.

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

Silent Hill has plenty of bad acting, bad dialogue and a confusing plot -- all of which become exponentially more painful when the movie goes on forever.

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