Rex Reed

This is bargain-basement moviemaking, and looks it. Here's wishing Mr. Pierce a vigorous movie career, and better luck next time.

Rarely has Mr. Gere walked through any movie with so little energy and so much indifference. I've seen more fervor on the face of a man parking a car.

B-movie director Rob Cohen (The Fast and the Furious) hasn’t got a clue what to do with so much preposterous pulp fiction, so he wafts between sexy potboiler and psychological thriller with an uneasy lack of grace that brings out the worst in everybody.

Depraved, delirious, and downright stupid, Last Night in Soho is two hours of amateurish drivel by B-movie director Edgar Wright (Baby Driver, Shaun of the Dead) that pretends to be half-retro Swingin’ Sixties comedy and half-horror thriller.

It just seems exaggerated and silly. Maybe there’s an idea rattling around in here somewhere, but I’d like to see it in a better movie than Bushwick.

Even Helen Mirren on a bad day is better than nine out of ten American film queens polluting movie screens on any given Sunday, but really, this is one time she should have stayed in bed.

This is an unfortunate next step for Mr. Cooper, while Ms. Lawrence, who co-starred with him memorably in "Silver Linings Playbook" and "American Hustle," finds the third time far from a charm, more like a curse.

Stephen Dorff, a good actor who seems to have temporarily run out of luck, is back in a loopy and desultory “psychological thriller” without a single thrill and the psychology of a paperback called "Psychology for Morons."

The only reason to suffer through a grim wack job called McCanick is to see the late Cory Monteith in his last film role.

Slogging along from one slaughter to the next, a benign narrative unfolds about a family of savages hell-bent on their own self-destruction, with no redeeming qualities.

An unrecognizable Michael Keaton seems to have aged 40 years since the last time he appeared on the screen, but he’s still the best (i.e., only) reason to suffer through a miserable load of deranged, deluded crap masquerading as a black comedy called Birdman.

This anemic little so-called thriller is the next best thing to a prescription for 30 mg Dalmane.

Made and marketed for the sole purpose of shock and schlock. It succeeds as both, but the result seems psychologically bewildering and pointless.

It simply turns into another slash-and-dice horror flick, replete with enough screams for three more installments of the "Nightmare on Elm Street" franchise.

I certainly wish Ms. Johansson hadn’t shown up at all. She’s never less than interesting to watch, but Under the Skin is a big waste of her time.

Red Lights goes astray on so many levels that I gave up trying to figure it out before the end of the second reel.

Mr. Christensen the director betrays Mr. Christensen the actor too many times to count, but it’s worth noting that his eclectic tastes in source music includes Beethoven’s “Fur Elise,” Bizet’s “Habanera” from Carmen, and Billie Holiday.

Though the film has minor charms (the highly regarded actress can sing, and co-stars Tyne Daly and Scott Bakula are seasoned Broadway musical veterans) Basmati Blues is the kind of easily forgiven early career move that is best released on home video and forgotten.

These are neither good people nor interesting savages, and they're not worth caring about. Neither is the movie.

This lumbering trilogy of trash based on the books by E. L. James has so run out of blood and oxygen that it has varicose veins.

The original western won John Wayne a puzzling and undeserved Oscar for finally falling off his horse. Don't expect the same miracle for Jeff Bridges. In the numbing hands of pretentious filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen, history does not repeat itself in any way whatsoever.

Even for a third-rate farce with two stars who appear together onscreen for no more than a total of five minutes, it’s derivative and preposterous—worse than a rejected TV pilot, and about as romantic and funny as a root canal.

A pointless, pathetic and profoundly boring send-up of universally acknowledged anti-social author Philip Roth, Listen Up Philip is a juvenile experiment in pretentious idiosyncrasy by amateurish writer-director Alex Ross Perry. He calls his miserable protagonist Philip Friedman, but who’s kidding who?

I guess it claims to demonstrate how repetitive and routine the lives of professional assassins can be (yawn), but in my opinion, movies about them have an obligation to be juicier and more consistently fascinating than American Star.

This one is so bad it’s hilarious. Sheri Moon Zombie is no Mia Farrow, Rob Zombie is no Roman Polanski, and The Lords of Salem seems to have been made by people on the rubber bus headed for a rubber room with bars on the windows.

A filthy, pretentious, brutally violent and utterly pointless load of rubbish called Killing Them Softly.

Thanks to sluggish direction by Rachel Lambert and a screenplay by three entire people who fail to display the focused writing talent of even one, this is a slogfest from beginning to end.

The Moment is another in a long string of thrill-free psychological “thrillers” that fail from start to finish.

Unknown makes no sense at all, so you not only worry about Liam Neeson's judgment in movies, but you begin to wonder if he's forgotten how to read.

You anticipate every scene before it happens and figure out every secret before it's revealed.

Written and directed by Garth Davis from a 2018 novel I never want to read by Iain Reid, Foe is not just a bad dream. It’s a colossal nightmare.

Instead of the feel-good comedy they intended, you are left with the suspicion that the movie is really about a man suffering from an undiagnosed mental illness for which there is no cure.

Clarkson has given many memorable, invigorating performances in the past, but in Out of Blue she goes through the motions of a hard-boiled cop with charmless brunette hair, off-the-rack clothes and convincing detachment like someone who is constantly being rudely interrupted from a long nap.

It’s annoyingly lumpy, shockingly pedestrian, and instantly forgettable.

Honey Boy is a dolorous example of an alarming trend in modern movies — the miraculous ability of an infinitesimal talent to raise money for an obnoxious, self-indulgent film about his own life designed to appeal to absolutely nobody except the arrogant subject himself. In this instance, the jerky centerpiece in love with himself to the detriment of everyone in the audience is Shia LaBeouf.

A lumbering bore called Inside is a crucially wooden and mechanical vehicle for the peculiar talents of Willem Dafoe that amounts to nothing more than nearly two hours of pretentious bilge.

In the 2014 annals of throwaway flops, save a special place for 95 wasted minutes of drivel called Reach Me.

It’s obvious that something got lost in translation.

Credulity is strained on every level in scene after repetitive scene. The shallow screenplay robs the actors of success whenever they strive for any kind of badly needed comic relief, which is probably why the acting seems so bland and unconvincing.

The direction is credited to somebody named Anne Fletcher, but no evidence of it survives.

The movie is nothing more than a labored series of skits that play like ideas from rejected TV pilots.

An unwatchable sci-fi creep-out by eccentric French director Claire Denis, it stars Robert Pattinson, who devotes himself these days to art films in an effort to live down his reputation as a sexy television vampire.

Salt is about as believable as a secret training program for military pilots consisting entirely of kangaroos in flight helmets. But it must be said that the star carries her load admirably.

The latest calcified bore by Sofia Coppola is less pretentious than "Marie Antoinette" but every bit as inertly stupefying as "Lost in Translation."

The 5th Wave is a typical example of the kind of dopey junk that passes for literature among today’s unsophisticated teens.

It’s good to have Demi Moore making a comeback after a prolonged absence from the screen, but not in a load of unmitigated crap called Corporate Animals. It’s never smart to make up lists of the worst movies ever made, because every time you do, something comes along that is even worse than what you saw before. But I think it’s safe to say that in the final top ten tally, this abysmal dreck will come in close to the top.

Pierce Brosnan’s charm and finesse haven’t been put to good use since "The Matador." That was years ago. Some Kind of Beautiful doesn’t improve his luck at all.

Described as a satire on Hollywood detective flicks, this bucket of swill is so amateurish and confused it doesn’t know what it is. It’s not a comedy, drama or anything in-between.

Avoid it at all costs if you value your sanity.

A disastrous catalog of flaws, all accentuated by dilated, out-of-focus cinematography. The coke-snorting, booze-guzzling and vomiting add up to nearly two hours of frustration, anesthesia and pointless, self-indulgent excess. They should have called it "I Vomit With You." There's plenty of that too.

Quite the most appalling piece of junk I have seen lately, Hobo With a Shotgun just lies there like an autopsy.

Gary Oldman, in the worst performance of his career, plays a one-eyed slum lord and master villain named Ezekiel Mannings.

With the corpse of a nightmare called Knight of Cups, I have finally given up on Terrence Malick. This dog of a film is as riveting and fascinating as a walk-in bathtub.

A benign thriller that fails to thrill is like a wet match that fails to light: frustrating and pointless.

The Neon Demon, which was booed off the screen this year in Cannes, is about jealousy, murder and cannibalism in the Hollywood modeling industry. If it wasn’t so stupid and preposterous, I’d say see it for the laughs, but trust me when I say you’re on your own — and I mean it.

The result is a twitching convulsion of vicious drivel passing itself off as a movie, which can be best appreciated by the kind of people who dig "Showgirls," the "Saw" franchise and Spike Jonze-Charlie Kaufman flicks.

The salacious sadism in Everly is nothing more than "Die Hard" meets Victoria’s Secret. That is not a recommendation.

In Cannes, one wag described it as “cinematic defecation” in print. I’d like to top that one, but as James Agee used to say, I know when I’m licked.

An idiotic bore called The Lovers has so little connection with anything professional that it’s hard to believe it was written and helmed by the same man. It’s so deadly and unintentionally funny (I hope) that it practically defies description.

The new year is not even a month old, but a hunk of junk called Serenity already qualifies as the worst film of 2019. Both moronically written and directed with shocking, amateurish ineptitude by Stephen Knight.

Despite its desperate efforts to justify the homicides, there’s nothing remotely innovative or even goofily satirical about it. The lousy actors, incompetent writer and clueless director remain nameless. That’s my good-deed Christmas gift to all involved, and better luck next year.

The result is the most idiotic excess of sex and bloodshed since "Only God Forgives."

Call this embarrassing dog’s dinner Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again or just call 911. Either way, it is nearly two hours of relentless, plotless, artless junk.

A trash wallow in sex, nudity, violence, cruelty to animals and the skewering of contemporary society, it will predictably appeal to kids and art house patrons who crave the cinematic roller coaster rides of outrage and chaos that lead to downright anarchy. Saner, more rational minds are advised to look elsewhere.

This one, by the jarringly untalented writer-director Shane Black, is merely violent, vulgar and stupid.

Nothing about mother! makes one lick of sense as Darren Aronofsky’s corny vision of madness turns more hilarious than scary. With so much crap around to clog the drain, I hesitate to label it the “Worst movie of the year” when “Worst movie of the century” fits it even better.

What some critics praise as astute and compelling, I find juvenile and fraught with hysteria. There's no arc here, no real pathos, and the direction is like watching snow melt on the side of a road.

The first thriller of the new season is a bomb called State Like Sleep, and it’s about as thrilling as a power failure in Antarctica. One of the January cast-offs that failed to make the cut in the 2018 year-end releases, it’s a good example of why January is always dreary, in more ways than one.

Ms. Sevigny is not called “the queen of the weirdo Bs” for nothing. (In fairness, she was a weekly television addiction as one of the polygamous Mormon wives on the hit TV series Big Love.) But not since she performed real-time fellatio on scruffy Vincent Gallo in the forgettable 2003 bomb "The Brown Bunny" has she stooped this low.

Crimes of the Future is a load of crap. I would like to find a more civil way to describe even a sick and depraved barf bag of a movie like this one, but it defeats every reasonable attempt to try.

It was written with empty-headed desperation and directed with minimal imagination by Guy Ritchie, one of the most incompetent filmmakers of the century.

We all know how rotten today’s movies can be, but even at the bottom of the slag pit, you won’t find a load of garbage any smellier than From Paris With Love.

V/H/S/2 is a diabolically psychotic, sub-mental and completely unwatchable disaster that I happily deserted when a man with a retinal implant scooped out his bionic eye with a sharp object, splattering blood all over the camera. Your move, and you’re welcome to it.

The movie is so clueless and time-warped it could be comprised of outtakes from "Father Knows Best."

The acting is uniformly dreadful. The level of incompetence in both writing and direction is a scream.

The result is 98 minutes of moronic stupidity already being labeled on the Internet as "the worst movie of the year."

We’ve seen it all before in dozens of low-budget slasher movies. This one just has a better cast — dismally wasted and left to seek better employment elsewhere.

Misguided and lethargic horror movie.

The worst film since Babylon, this surfeit of loud, obnoxious, violent junk audaciously claims to call itself a vampire farce, but there isn’t a genuine shred of originality anywhere in sight and it’s as witty as an ambulance with a flat tire.

Word to the wise: Start saving the vomit bags from your airplane flights. With movies like this, you’re gonna need them.

The Boogeyman, a pointless, misguided and totally incomprehensible waste of time, is yet another horror film that exists for the sole purpose of exploiting the endless desk-drawer doodlings of writer Stephen King.

If "Mother" is still the worst abomination ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting and undeserving public, Mom and Dad is at least the perfect companion piece.

It’s as scary as a pumpkin pie left in the oven too long. Instead of horror, it’s pretty funny.

A turgid, pretentious, and incomprehensible existential joke. What a star on the rise is doing in it is a question mark for the archives.

To quote the late, great Dorothy Parker, “What fresh hell is this?” I’m talking about Colossal, a delirious, moronic mess that landed with a thud at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival and now opens commercially, seven months later, with a head-scratching “Duh”.

Plotless and almost mute, To the Wonder is the kind of fiasco that keeps film-festival programmers salivating and discriminating audiences stampeding toward the exit doors. It’s a simpering yawn that makes "The Tree of Life" seem like an action thriller with Bruce Willis. It is about … nothing.

No need to get worked up about Outlaws and Angels, a vile, nauseating and incomprehensible pile of saddles-and-spurs gibberish sane audiences will undoubtedly avoid at all costs.

The result is 96 minutes of excessive eccentricity and unfocused gibberish that seems like 96 days at hard labor with no hope for commercial success. Color it gone.

This raunchy dreck, cut from the same disposable toilet tissue as the recent trailer-trash creepfest "Killer Joe," is a leap downhill from "Precious."

What one does not expect is a load of total trash full of gimmicks instead of ideas, stolen scenes from other movies instead of originality, amateurish posturing instead of professional performances, clueless meandering instead of organized screenplays, and pointless confusion instead of clear-eyed direction.

The movie sinks without a trace.

The longer it drags on, the sillier it gets. A preposterous narrative, illogical red herrings, trick endings, bad acting and—shazam! — Spike Lee turns into M. Night Shyamalan!

The target audience — people who waste their lives playing video games — might be amused by a movie about devices designed for the sole purpose of destroying everything in sight, but the serious audience the film industry wants to lure back to brick-and-mortar cinemas won’t find much substance here.

This is the most unwatchable horror movie masquerading as social comment I have seen this year.

Tammy is not just a celebration of everything vulgar and stupid in the dumbing down of American movies. It’s a rambling, pointless and labored attempt to cash in on Ms. McCarthy’s fan base without respect for any audience with a collective IQ of 10. And it’s about as funny as a liver transplant.

Not only disgusting and unendurable, but filthy and boring, too.

Cheap, preposterous and mind-bendingly dreadful.

With eyes closed and jaw firmly set, concentrating hard enough to break a blood vessel, I cannot think of a movie more incomprehensible, moronic, pointless or abominable than a load of trash called The Big Bang.

It leaves you feeling desperately in need of a hot bath to wash off the dirt that rubs off just from watching it. This mess is so bad that even the title is disgusting.

Bad movies are indigenous to summer, but rarely have I ever seen one as bad as Cold Blood.

This moronic parable inspired by Donald Trump’s treatment and attitude towards illegal immigrants is a disgrace, but so is almost everything else on the screen these days.

Jennifer Lopez can’t act, the meatheads responsible for the stupidest screenplay of the year can’t write, and I don’t know anybody with one hour and 43 minutes to waste in a busy holiday season, so a cinematic disaster called Second Act has nothing to recommend it, even as a temporary refuge from traffic gridlock.

There’s nothing to make your hair stand on end in The Shed because it’s not convincing. Despite walk-ons by a pair of experienced professionals, Timothy Bottoms and Frank Whaley, the actors are unknown for a reason, and despite familiar weapons of self-defense such as fires, shotguns, hatchets and chainsaws, the plot is jokey and the action defies all logic.

The only reason I wanted to see it at all is Kristen Stewart, but she is so wasted that she should have stayed in bed.

Nothing about I Still See You attempts to succeed on any level of logic, including the script, peppered with pseudo comic book mumbo-jumbo.

I haven't seen a movie this bad since "Battlefield Earth" and "Howard the Duck."

Melancholia is his latest pile of undiluted drivel, nauseatingly filmed by a wonky hand-held camera and featuring a crazy, mismatched ensemble headed by Kirsten Dunst, who won an acting award in Cannes last year for looking totally catatonic.

A long, incoherent German horror film called A Cure for Wellness is well on its way to late-night cable TV. If you’re a dedicated masochist looking for torture, look for it fast. It won’t live to see a re-release.

The 11th Hour is a bona fide stinker, only worse. To borrow one of Mel Brooks’ favorite lines, it stinks on ice.

Not only is it the worst movie I have seen this year, this dog is one of the worst movies ever made.

Vulgar, contrived and incomprehensible.

Dementedly written, and directed as though it was under the influence of something stronger than cough syrup.

Overrated, overexposed and overindulgent, James Franco is all over the place, like cow chips in the abandoned pasture of a derelict farm.

I call it cinematic freebasing. It’s tired, repetitious, superficial, dreary and done to death before, by the same director, movie to movie and—forgive me for the unpardonable pun — song by song.

Vile.

A guaranteed cure for insomnia, an abomination called The Whole Truth is a courtroom movie that looks like a colorized version of an old Perry Mason TV show, starring Renée Zellweger’s new face and Keanu Reeves, who has the charisma and animated visual appeal of a mud fence.

Even a guest appearance by Jamie Lee Curtis couldn’t bring this celluloid zombie to life.

A pretentious load of swill made in Portugal that should have been buried in a locked vault without a key.

Moronic drivel that truly qualifies as the worst movie of the year, it sinks amateurish moviemaking aimed at audiences with no taste to an alarming new low.

Lena Dunham makes a 98-minute home video seem like 98 days of hard labor.

Expect the dregs for weeks to come, but I can safely say with absolutely no trepidation that it is unlikely to get worse than a lurid, lewd and loathsome shockfest called The Divide.

A ponderous spoof of movie rom-coms that plummets stupidity to a new low even by Hollywood standards.

The resulting mayhem and slaughter is vile and disgusting.

Smutty and grotesque little sex parody.

Mojave is 93 minutes of gibberish with guns and phony literary pretentiousness about two thugs in a duel of weapons and words that goes nowhere fast.