Peter Sobczynski

Although Pet Sematary is a largely dreadful film, it is slightly better and never as offensively bad as the first version.

Coming across as little more than a filmed adaptation of the first two-thirds of Neil Bogart’s Wikipedia page, Spinning Gold is a mess that even those with a keen interest in the subject will find both ponderous and uninformative.

When one considers how good this material might have been if placed in the right hands, to see it squandered this way makes it almost more painful to view than the typical Sandler stinker.

Even the most easily satisfied fans of Washington will be unlikely to find much of anything in this sadistic, stupid and sloppy sequel.

As a Neil Young fan who has cheerfully followed him throughout all the highways and byways of his singular career, I have always found him to be one of the most vital and fascinating voices in contemporary music, even at his weirdest. Sadly, the only thing that “Coastal” manages to accomplish is something that I would have usually thought impossible—it makes him come across as a bore.

A largely tedious cinematic lump of coal that unsuccessfully tries to stretch its one-joke premise out to 101 minutes in a tonally uneven attempt to position itself as a new alternative holiday classic.

A film that starts off on a reasonably restrained note but which quickly grows so ridiculously ham-fisted that it almost makes its predecessor seem reasonable and open-minded by comparison.

The Long Night wants to create a sense of encroaching fear and unease in viewers but cannot inspire much of anything other than boredom and apathy.

I could not see it as anything more than a giant bore that presents viewers with the most familiar plot devices imaginable but fails to present them in a way that makes them worth sitting through once again.

While I like the laid-back attitude the filmmakers apply to the theoretically devastating situation, it quickly becomes apparent that attitude is the only thing the film really has to offer to viewers. Although there are a few amusing moments here and there, the comedic situations are too droll for their own good and too often seem to waste potentially interesting ideas.

A depressingly rote piece of corporate product that has so little on its mind other than presumably making hundreds of millions of dollars that you half expect the ticket sellers to hand out copies of Comcast’s latest earnings report along with the 3-D glasses.

The problem with Samson is that while it cannot be faulted for its sincerity, it can be faulted for its sluggish pacing, inconsistent performances and lack of cinematic style that gives the proceedings a tacky feel throughout.

Even those who admired the “Raid” films for their style and heedlessness might find this to be little more than an accumulation of action movie cliches that they have seen enacted to much greater effect in other and certainly better films.

The end result is the kind of vaguely distasteful Yuletide concoction that viewers normally find playing on cable channels that they don't even realize that they have.

In the end, the biggest problem with Slumberland is its utter innocuousness. Because it is bright, noisy, and things are constantly happening, little kids might like it as a momentary distraction—but it certainly won’t inspire them to check out McCay’s original work for themselves.

Criminal is the kind of dunderheaded enterprise that leaves viewers reeling from the idiocies they have just endured, wondering how something like that could possibly get made in the first place.

Here is a film so devoid of thrills, excitement, or purpose that it seems to have been custom-made to play in empty multiplexes during the traditionally dead last weeks of summer.

An utterly lifeless and profoundly unoriginal animated effort that is desperately lacking the very thing in its title.

Lost Girls and Love Hotels is too vapid to work as a psychological drama, too silly to work as a passionate romance, and too tepid to work as a sexy guilty pleasure.

The problem with Pawn Shop Chronicles is not the fact that it is a clone of "Pulp Fiction." The problem is that it is a lousy clone.

More wearying than frightening, Rings is a total non-starter.

Director Nick Stagliano doesn’t help matters much by presenting the material with a poky pace that does not exactly bring the narrative to vivid life.

A potentially interesting premise is handled so badly that what might have been a provocative drama quickly and irrevocably devolves into the technological equivalent of the old anti-dope chestnut "Reefer Madness," squandering the efforts of a strong and talented cast struggling mightily to make something of the ridiculously trite material.

Although Vanquish is otherwise as forgettable as can be—that may be the closest thing that it has to a virtue—there's still one thing about it that I cannot immediately shake, and that is the presence of Morgan Freeman in a role that requires so little effort it's a wonder that Bruce Willis didn’t take it.

One of the dumbest variations of the weather-based action thriller subgenre that I have ever seen, you can be rest assured that I know what I am talking about.

Here is a work so cloying and ham-fisted in its attempts to move you that there is a point when you find yourself thinking that the only thing that Zemeckis hasn’t thrown into the mix is a needle drop of “Our House” and then he proceeds to do just that.

So yes, Fantasy Island is a terrible movie — this probably won’t come as a shock to most people — but more than that, it seems to have been made with absolutely no one in mind.

Not even the able actors that Glanz somehow managed to rope into his project can do much with the draggy story and the vapid characters that they have been given to play.