Peter Hartlaub

Once the believability drops, the seams start to show, whether it’s some extras who seem aware of the camera, bad edits, comic-timing misfires or songs written for Thorne that aren’t quite as good as everyone onscreen says they are.

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

The film does thoroughly succeed in one important regard: offering a coherent, viewer-friendly account of the life of Jesus Christ.

The script highlights an annoying lack of self-preservation on behalf of the protagonists. But the movie tries to be more than just a creepy doll freakout, and delivers the requisite scares.

Despite the fact that the movie covers some new cinematic territory, much of the humor feels recycled, mostly from the "Seinfeld" episodes "The Boyfriend" (the one where Jerry has a man crush on Keith Hernandez) and "The Outing."

Well written but weakly executed, it's hard to imagine anyone is going to cherish the film, if they even remember it in three months' time.

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.

Watching this movie is like eating a hot fudge sundae and lasagna in alternating bites.

Forgettably mediocre, but it's not atrocious.

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.

Clumsily directed yet entertainingly written by Oakland native Nnegest Likké, Phat Girlz is like "Rocky" with cellulite. Or maybe "Pretty Woman" without all the bony butts. It has a lot of heart and soul, but it's almost never mean-spirited.

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.

Obvious, but at least it's clean.

Humorless, confusing and not very fun to watch.

Perhaps anticipating an older audience, most of the lessons are one-sided, with the old-timers seemingly harming the children while actually saving them.

A relatively harmless movie that becomes killing-a-mockingbird sinful for what it does to its leads.

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.

The sexual tension is thick between the woodland creatures in Alpha and Omega, an animated children's film with a plot that has more in common with "The Blue Lagoon" than "Bambi."

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?

The predictable script feels as if it were filmed right off the cocktail napkin it was jotted on, but at least the movie has an "Ocean's 11" sequel's worth of good actors, including Alfred Molina, Jeremy Irons and Jean Reno.

The Invisible is, at its core, a character study, albeit one with a Patrick Swayze-in-"Ghost" paranormal edge. But it's definitely not mindless trash. If anything, the movie is too introspective, to the point that it doesn't build enough conflict or tension.

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.

Grudge Match at its core is an affront to the cinema gods, an attempt to capitalize off two iconic films for a few cheap laughs.

Looks fantastic, but the film suffers from the TV-to-feature transition.

This movie isn't horrible, but it seems like a waste for Zombie to keep revisiting someone else's world.

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.

Not a spectacular movie, but the action scenes are well shot, there's no shortage of R-rated gore and the plot moves along quickly enough to mask the fact that the whole endeavor is completely ridiculous.

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.

Hannibal Rising isn't a classic, but it's entertaining and a surprisingly fitting addition to the franchise.

Extremely boring.

The reboot of the "Friday the 13th" series is a pretty big mess - not particularly scary or interesting or even gory by 21st century movie standards.

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.

Writer-directors Jon Lucas and Scott Moore find a nice balance between the over-the-top high jinks and an emotional core, which unexpectedly crystallizes relatively late in the movie.

It's Valentine's Day! Unrealistic romantic expectations are in the air! And Safe Haven does the unrealistic romance thing pretty well.

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.

Better than a lot of teen comedies.

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.

There are fun distractions, but it's easy to focus on the flaws.

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.

Delivers all the pain, melodrama and redemption that fans of the genre demand.

Although the finished product isn't great, it's more akin to a bad Steve Martin movie from the 1980s than bad Pauly Shore from the 1990s. We mean that as a compliment (sort of).

Contains so many insults to the audience's intelligence.

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.

Isn't a terrible addition to the teen coming-of-age party movie catalog. It just feels dated.

It's not fun to watch.

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

It's hard to deny that the first two-thirds of G.I. Joe is an enjoyable film, especially when graded on the curve of lowered expectations. Compared to other big-budget movies out this summer, it's pretty mediocre.

Plodding and unfunny.

The dialogue is so earnest that its lack of humor becomes a source of humor in itself. The acting is so primal that you’ll swear a porn sequence is about to break out.

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.

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

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

This Hellboy has story problems, with too much exposition and not enough character development. “Stranger Things” actor David Harbour, seemingly a perfect choice for his ability to project melancholy and a luggish humor, isn’t given enough time to do either of those things.

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

Assuming you can appreciate the high level of gore and assorted sadistic weirdness, the action is satisfying.

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.

Seriously lacks both romance and comedy.

Lots of people will leave screenings of this movie in disgust -- and laughter is the last thing they will hear on the way out.

A lot more enjoyable if you can leave your cognitive skills at the door.

Once you're done trying to conjugate the smurfs, there's a better movie than anyone could have possibly expected, thanks in large part to an honest effort by Harris in a thankless role.

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

Crossover has one redeeming quality: a heart that's in the right place. It's a bad movie with a good message -- but does anyone really want to pay $10 for an ABC After School Special version of "He Got Game"?

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

Through a stellar effort by Jennifer Garner and some well-executed revenge sequences, Peppermint just feels good to watch.

Zellweger takes an otherwise passable mainstream comedy and all but ruins it with her lack of effort.

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

An enjoyable movie not because of any special gifts by the filmmakers or emotional resonance in the script. It was more like destiny. Once someone jotted down the concept on a cocktail napkin and hired B-Boys who could actually dance, the movie pretty much had to turn out OK.

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

Has maybe a half-dozen moderately frightening scenes.

If only the projectionist could be persuaded to play the first 10 minutes over and over for two hours, this might be a satisfying movie. Unfortunately, the middle and the end feature a weak lead character, choppy fight choreography, humorless dialogue and computer-generated effects that look as if they came from the "Ghostbusters II" era.

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.

Any good will built up during the decent first half hour is quickly vaporized.

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.

Even the element of surprise isn't enough to save this film, which has too many slow parts and features an ending that's extremely tepid by 21st century horror movie standards.

A bunch of gags, most of which you've seen in the trailer, strung together by any means necessary.

Zoom is a C-list production in every possible way, from the actors and the special effects to the music and the script. Even the product placement is completely third rate.