Peter Hartlaub

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.