Rene Rodriguez

Four Christmases is sour to the point of curdling, a satirical look at the holidays a la "Bad Santa" that does exactly what that film avoided: come off as both off-puttingly misanthropic and gloppily sentimental.

Formidably stupid.

If you're going to direct a piece of crass, nonsensical junk, at least have the decency to release it straight to video, where it belongs.

Hitchcock spends too much time off the set of Psycho, where the real story was, and focuses instead on incidental matters that feel like outtakes. Mother would not have been pleased.

Tomb is the kind of movie you sit through dreading the expository scenes, because the acting is so bad and the dialogue so pointedly written to make sure the little ones in the audience can keep up with the plot.

It's not every movie that makes you wish Vin Diesel would run in and start blowing up stuff.

A hostage drama without any tension. It is a love story without any heat. It is as curiously empty a movie as we've seen all year.

Even a supporting turn by Vincent Cassell as Otto Gross, a fellow psychiatrist, cocaine addict and unapologetic adulterer, fails to enliven the movie: A Dangerous Method makes even a cokehead hedonist boring.

Man on a Ledge just made me think of an old Van Halen song: Jump.

Combined with the sluggish story line, Daylight becomes a chore to sit through: The only people who want to get out of the tunnel more desperately than the characters in the movie are the ones stuck in the theater. [6 Dec 1996, p.5G]

It takes a concerted effort to make a movie as relentlessly stupid and grating as 15 Minutes.

There is so much that is wrong with The Alamo that it is easier to begin with what the movie gets right: Davy Crockett. As played by Billy Bob Thornton.

An irritatingly contrived drama.

This is the kind of colossally misguided vanity project.

The talented actors are game, but they are done in by the shallow nature of their characters, none of whom behaves in a manner remotely resembling real life (they don't really seem to be related, either).

Emits a fishy odor, like a recruitment film for an obscure cult you'd rather stay away from.

I could tell you what Double Team is about, but life is short. Instead, I'll tell you that Van Damme and Rodman play the good guys, and that they trade lines like "You're crazier than my hairstylist!" and "You look like a carrot with earrings!" [5 Apr 1997, p.1G]

The movie even fails on a psychological level, never illustrating how, in a pressure-cooker environment and swept up by mob-think mentality, we are capable of committing acts that innately repel us.

You’re Next is built on such an enormous pile of guff, it’s practically insulting.

Bad enough to earn a rare spot on my hallowed list of ''The Worst Movies I've Ever Seen,'' An American Carol is testament that the country's culture wars are raging just as strongly within Hollywood as anywhere else.

Despite the actors' admirable efforts, everyone in The Door in the Floor is too affected, too fancifully written, to come off as anything other than conceits.

After a while, hearing Martin say ''Zee area eez zecure!'' doesn't cut it any longer, and that's pretty much all The Pink Panther has to offer.

For the story of a man who made his mark on pop culture by being a likable buffoon, the irritatingly arch Confessions of a Dangerous Mind takes itself way too seriously.

War is hell, and so are bad movies about war.

At the very least, Corman would have remembered to make the movie fun.

How can a movie as overstuffed with funny people as The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard be so listless and leaden?

The Edge was written by playwright/filmmaker David Mamet and directed by Lee Tamahori (Once Were Warriors, Mulholland Falls). Both excel at dissecting that complicated beast known as male angst, but both fall flat with this confused misfire that plays as a banal stranded-in-the-wild adventure for grown-ups. [26 Sep 1997, p.4G]

The best moments in director David Koepp's slight, dull movie are the scenes in which bike messenger Wilee pauses at busy intersections to figure out the path of least obstruction.

The movie's attempts at zaniness are flat, almost embarrassing.

Despite the movie's bouncy ebullience (courtesy of a terrific period soundtrack) and dashes of fantasy, the film quickly becomes an endurance test.

The action, which bookends the movie, is atrocious, defying all laws of gravity and physics and machine gun-edited into incomprehensible lunacy.

For most of its running time, Wes Craven's New Nightmare is simply a s-l-o-w- tease to a paradoxical, reality-bending shockfest that never materializes. [14 Oct 1994, p.G9]

An insufferably artsy, pretentious work, the sort of picture that gives art films a bad name.

With Kaboom, Araki takes a huge step backward from the maturity and restraint he demonstrated in 2004's "Mysterious Skin," his best and most-assured film to date.

No atmosphere, no tension -- nothing but Costner, flailing away. It's a buggy drag.

There’s exactly one good scene in all of The Hangover Part III, a hilarious bit of business halfway during the end credits that reminds you what made the original film so good.

Neeson is always compelling, even in a movie as ridiculous as The Grey.

Hard Target is pretty much a bust from every conceivable aspect, except the visual -- it looks terrific, and one sequence, a shoot-out on the streets of New Orleans between Van Damme and a progressively larger number of bad guys, comes close to capturing the trademark frenzied, exhilarating feel of Woo's previous work. [20 Aug 1993, p.5]

The characters in Secretary never feel the least bit human. Their quirks, sexual and otherwise, are all on the surface. Inside, where it counts, nobody's home.

The River Wild is simply a procession of banal, dull situations that add up to nothing. [30 Sep 1994, p.G4]

With such a large cast, none of the actors is able to turn her character into a fully realized person.

There are several cameos in For a Good Time, Call… by famous actors portraying the girls' phone-sex clients, including Kevin Smith and Seth Rogen, but they've been clearly been left to improvise, and they don't put much effort into their routines.

The movie, however, is the sort of picture in which people run around doing everything except the most logical thing to do, because that’s the only way to keep the nonsensical plot spinning.

The lack of effort, right down to the unimaginative title, is dispiriting.

Looks exquisite, but don't bother digging deeper.

This Must Be the Place is as emotionally zonked-out as its protagonist, and just as difficult to warm up to.

There's a startling moment 10 or 15 minutes into The Adjustment Bureau - the only time, really, when the film achieves any level of surprise. The dispiriting dullness of this dreary misfire hasn't had time to settle in and thicken: The movie hasn't yet revealed its utter and thorough ineptitude.

This movie demands that the viewer -- and even its own characters -- turn into thumb-sucking 3-year-olds with no need for plausibility or logic, as long as there are lots of flashing lights and whooshing noises emanating from the screen.

It's more interested in enlightening than entertaining, and Kidron seems to go out of her way to sap the life out of every scene. It's a horribly directed movie. [08 Sep 1995, p.5G]

A stiff, unconvincing epic.

Aggressively, defiantly stupid.

Jurassic World gives you exactly what Howard’s character promises at the beginning — More! Bigger! Faster! — but you know there’s something deeply wrong with a film that expects you to shed tears over digitally created prehistoric creatures and rubber brontosaurus heads instead of rooting for, you know, people.

Even the most forgiving moviegoer will recognize this movie as the blatant cash-grab that it is.

Drowns in its own noxious fumes. Who knew being bad could be so dull?

The latest collaboration between Cohen and director Larry Charles proves the formula they created with "Borat" and then started to milk dry with "Brüno" has finally run out of juice. Time to move on, guys.

Neither as good nor as bad as you'd hoped it would be: It's just a mediocre exploitation picture with an inspired premise (succinctly spelled out by its title), loads of gratuitous gore, a dash of equally gratuitous nudity and enough inanities to make you wonder if Ed Wood rose from the grave to serve as a creative consultant on the project.

Men in Black 3 is so dull and empty, it's the first movie that has ever made me think "Thank God this is in 3D."

British satire loses something when it's handled by Americans: You miss the perspective that a foreign culture brings, so instead of wit and humor, you end up trafficking in self-congratulatory clichés and sentiment.

The saddest part about this whole affair is that it took Bugs and Co. 60 years to make their feature debut -- and this is what they get. At one point, Daffy Duck is discussing merchandising royalties and says, "We gotta get new agents -- we're getting screwed." In Space Jam , even the cartoons are in it only for the money. [15 Nov 1996, p.5G]

In Snow White and the Huntsman, this talented but woefully miscast actress (Stewart) is expected to rally an entire army of soldiers, even though she usually looks like she forgot the combination to her locker.

Shrill and sloppy film.

Patronizing, dull and offensive, this drama about a knight in shining white skin out to serve justice in the name of po' black folk is Hollywood at its sanctimonious, bleeding-heart worst: A movie made by people who are sitting so high up on their hills, they long ago stopped realizing they're looking down at the world. [03 Jan 1997, p.5G]

A Middle Ages "Rocky" that spares no cliche in its unduly long, 2 1/4 hours.

Laughable, contrived banality. You won't believe a second of it. [17 Sept 1996, p.25G]

A thriller boasting Mel Gibson's first starring role in eight years, elicits a gigantic wow -- as in ``Wow, does this movie suck!''

The times have caught up with Almodóvar, who is now 63: He thinks he’s still pushing the envelope, but he comes off as old-fashioned and outdated.

This tale of teenage witches run amok is silly, juvenile stuff, and it doesn't even have the decency to stick to its own ridiculous logic. [03 May 1996, p.6G]

What ultimately sinks The Visit is that Shyamalan, who had previously come up with new and ingenious ways to frighten us, resorts to familiar jump-scare tactics in which things suddenly pop into the frame, accompanied by loud sound effects. There’s no real sense of danger, no menace.

The scattershot nature of the script, which feels as if it had been made up on the spot, leaves the actors looking like they're enjoying some private joke not shared with the audience. Self-indulgent does not even begin to describe it.

The Conspirator hits a new nadir for Redford: Sitting through this stage-bound, talky, stiffly-acted movie reminded me of having to endure the Hall of Presidents attraction at Walt Disney World (one of the few existing bits of proof that Disney had a dark and evil side).

Once the premise has been established, the film goes absolutely nowhere.

Whatever goodwill Stuart Saves His Family manages to work up disappears by the maudlin, dramatic finale. [14 Apr 1995, p.5G]

Director Stuart Blumberg’s movie, which features a surprisingly starry cast, comes off as superficial and trite.

But there's nothing in this amateurish movie that the opening credits of last year's "Go" didn't do better.

It is a grand-looking, grandly empty pageant.

Art School Confidential, the first disappointment from director Terry Zwigoff, is all glum, dour cynicism.

So I Married an Axe Murderer is a clumsy mishmash of Saturday Night Live sketches and a rambling comic-thriller plot that wastes the promise of twisted laughs presented by its '50s B-movie title. [30 July 1993, p.G7]

When Escape From L.A. isn't being ridiculous, it's merely dumb. It's no fun at all. [09 Aug 1996, p.6G]

There are frothy romantic comedies and then there is Jet Lag, a movie so thin it borders on nonexistence.

Does anyone openly admit to enjoying these things? Small kids may find Ernest's slapstick antics mildly amusing, but even the most fervent Ernest fan (if there is such a thing) will grow tired and annoyed very quickly here. [12 Nov 1993, p.E4]

Why does The Big Year's trailer intentionally hide what the film is really about? Here's why: Because bird-watching - or birding, as practitioners prefer to call it - makes for a stupefyingly boring movie.

Certainly a grand-looking picture. For a film that's filled with CGI effects, there wasn't a single shot that looked artificial, and the production design is tremendous. But it's a hollow, boring spectacle.

There is also a last-minute "Sixth Sense" twist, although it definitely won't make you sit through the movie again to see if the filmmakers cheated.

The movie has an undeniable visceral power. It is also a loud, grating wallow in dime-store despair, a cheap and hollow button-puncher.

So needlessly convoluted, so crammed with subplots within subplots, it simply forgets about its gangland "Romeo & Juliet" premise.

The Getaway is more of a carbon copy than a new take on the same story. This new version is a bit bloodier, considerably sexier -- there's one particularly steamy love scene here -- and just as dull and irrelevant as the original. [11 Feb 1994, p.G5]

The whole thing feels at least three summers too stale.

The stupendously stupid The Program purports to detail one season in the life of the football team of Eastern State University as it struggles for a college bowl berth, but the players must overcome such inflated melodramatic claptrap it's a miracle they ever make it onto the field at all. [27 Sept 1993, p.C6]

Chuck Norris is also in this movie, although you should know that he gets roughly five minutes of screen time, half of those devoted to his telling of a Chuck Norris joke. That is as funny as the movie's self-aware humor gets.

Timeline gives Gigli serious competition for worst film of the year honors.

Hellraiser III manages to make even the fearsome Pinhead himself seem like. . .well, a pinhead. Clive, it's time to give these characters a rest. [19 Sep 1992, p.E5]

For the most part, Tombstone is inept. Some of the performances are wincingly bad: Dana Delany, playing a touring actress with the hots for Wyatt, is particularly embarrassing. Director George P. Cosmatos (Leviathan) firmly cements his hack status: He takes nearly an hour to get things rolling, then fails to build any sort of momentum. [25 Dec 1993, p.F1]

Two for the Money, which was written by Dan Gilroy (Freejack, Chasers), is so badly constructed and illogical that its inanities manage to drown the actor (Pacino) out.

Every summer movie season usually has at least one spectacular, disastrous flame-out, and although the dog days of August still loom, I doubt there will come a big-budget blockbuster worse than Cowboys and Aliens.

The unrelentingly dull Where the Money Is tests his (Newman's) legendary charisma in a way no actor could overcome.

Demolition is so busy trying to be profound, the film doesn’t have much use for humor.

There is absolutely nothing in this prequel/remake that improves on the first film or negates it in any way. If you've never seen The Thing - and you really should - stick with the genuine 1982 article and skip this elaborate act of mimicry.

Singleton's sloppiest, laziest movie to date, springing to life in fits and starts, risibly mawkish and occasionally gripping, and often feeling like it was made up on the set.