Rodrigo Perez

Outcome—and it’s bad scenes shot behind obvious blue screen and fake, manufactured sunsets—is terrible. But what makes it memorable is the queasy way the movie keeps collapsing into the very pathology it thinks it is exposing. It wants to mock the famous for living inside a bubble of privilege, paranoia, and vanity, yet it ends up sounding like it was made from inside that bubble.

For anyone who even gives even the remotest care about movies, god forbid you dare to waste your time with this utterly disposable discard.

Fountain Of Youth may feel superficially dynamic, and cinematically, it sure tries its best to trick you into thinking it’s a vigorous thing, but it’s just a cup filled with empty calories, sustaining nothing and ironically, only just wasting precious minutes off your life.

This pleasingly mellow portrait of a bunch of kids making movies is also an instance of defanged nostalgia — when it was an occasion to highlight the economic, political, cultural circumstances that made this kind of creativity possible.

With a weak script, no visual engagement, and limp comedy despite the comedic actors on board, Kinda Pregnant was always a sure-fire miss.

In the depths of the abyss below, The Gorge mostly turns into a high-concept action film that’s so dull, predictable and ugly to look at it’s extremely easy to tune out and have your mind go on autopilot while the otherwise charismatic Teller and Taylor-Jones are wasted.

Contrarian so-bad-its-good specialists with PhDs in advanced irony once hailed the “Venom” films as entertaining campy classics and tongue-in-cheek antidotes to the more conventional superhero genre, but you will not be surprised when none of those scholars pipe up in support of this grueling cinematic slog that further underscores just how bad the entire affair was all along.

This is a B-movie of the week at best, which should be starring also-ran actors looking for a paycheck, not some of Hollywood’s finest.

Atlas is rote and routine, using the concept of sci-fi and artificial intelligence in the most obvious way: A.I. runs wild, attacks humans, and becomes the central enemy of the entire world; the ultimate threat that humanity must face, battle, and hopefully defeat. But all of it is conventionally realized, uninspired, dull, and something you’ve seen done more inventively a thousand times before.

It’s maybe not excruciatingly bad, but certainly even less nourishing and satisfying than even the most fleeting and calorically empty of sugar highs.

Much like ‘A Child Of Fire,’ “The Scargiver” is exhausting, enervating, and exasperating, frantically flailing around with explosions, lasers, laser lightsaber-like swords, grenades, et al., but always failing to make you give a damn.

At this point, the Monsterverse needs the much simpler, dumb-fun, pleasurable joy of “Kong: Skull Island” because ‘New Empire,’ just ain’t cutting it beyond loud and senseless brawls that aren’t even a delight to watch.

The Greatest Hits is way worse than just a sophomore slump, more accurately, a long-the-works opus that should have just stayed in the vaults.

It’s all largely an ugly, vulgar, vacuous time that’s disposable and never as amusing as it clearly thinks it is.

The heroine of the film may not be in distress, but oh boy, is this movie in desperate need of saving.

“Rebel Moon” is nearly unwatchable and one of the most stunning misfires of this scale in quite some time.

No One Will Save You is a very bizarrely unremarkable, abnormally lifeless movie, seemingly starting right out of the gate in the second act and then trying to reverse engineer the audience’s sympathy—and everything else— for the unknowable protagonist.

Heart Of Stone purports to have characters made of sturdy, gritty, golden, unbreakable stuff, but that’s a tagline, not a movie or story; it’s really just flimsy work easily tossed off and broken as it tumbles into the ever-filling bin of barely-one-use Netflix movies.

It’s incredibly soulless, disposable, and as generic as they come.

As the clock ticks, the film asks, who can this qualified woman trust, but mostly, we’re just looking at our watch, waiting for the dull torment to end.

Given how poorly made, poorly written, and poorly crafted “The 355” is —with action that is casually visceral, but actually borderline incompetent and super sloppily staged—the final product reeks of superficial vanity project intended to “let girls be badass” rather than trying to circumvent, better, or elevate the genre (or women for that matter).

Never once does it carry any of the unclassifiable “It factor” charm that sometimes elevates a mediocre movie. Nope, “Red Notice” is just deeply unexceptional and pedestrian: a lot of lights shining on three worldwide-class superstars, with perfect white teeth with explosions and gloss all around them, and never once creating anything that resembles a captivating spark.

In doubling down on would-be humor, the already poor, perspiring, flop-sweat CGI mess of Venom actually gets worse and arguably even more incoherent, thanks to the unbearable, overweening quarreling between Brock and Venom and the vaudevillian crazy legs antics and presentation.

The premium placed on upmarket, glossy, muscular cars is so conspicuous that Fuqua scored buyback product placement cash. Elon Musk would surely be enamored. It’s essentially that kind of movie, “The Matrix” and Nolan-lite for dudes who check their bitcoin futures during the movie on their smartphones. Sick, bro.

Ultimately, put its questionable politics aside, Without Remorse, even as a simplistic action thriller is joyless and lifeless, an arid space of empty macho bullshit with a lead character who is the equivalent of a bulging forehead veins meme.

It’s just dull, deeply bland, and unsophisticated, with little to say about any of its themes of intolerance, fear, misogyny, and gaslighting, other than these feelings exist.

Look, America certainly needs relief, support, escape, and laughter, yes, but good god, ‘Barb & Star’ is not it.

Resembling a patched together sketch of an idea, and a thrown-together filmed play, set (mostly) inside a house, Locked Down should have just been terminated in the lab, instead of rushing out like a vaccine of entertainment that cured absolutely no one of their doldrums.

A movie that is fundamentally ill-conceived, poorly written, and missing most of the basic charms that made the original “Wonder Woman” such a delight (minus the last act). Directed again by Patty Jenkins, the film is also something of a nonsensical mess narratively, even by the most lenient and forgiving standards of superhero movies where fantastical, impossible things routinely occur. Suspension of disbelief is crucial to this genre, but ‘WW84’ is constantly breaking or conveniently upgrading its rules in ways that definitely break or at least always test your suspension of disbelief.

The now pat, unimaginative knock on McG was that he was the Guy Fieri of filmmakers, — loud, crass, garish, tacky, hacky, double fisted with Monster Energy drinks and reeking of Ax Body Spray. But you know what? Sadly, that shoe seems to snuggly fit and he seems more than willing to wear it.

The wandering, strictly bush league movie, unfortunately, cannot reprise the unbridled strut of Quintana’s ‘Lebowski’ braggadocio, suggesting perhaps we should leave the resurrection of beloved characters to the professionals.

The Dirt is ultimately supposed to be an unapologetic tribute to living the fast life, but in the end, it’s just painfully dated and pointless with zero depth or insights.

A superficial tale about the casualty at the center of the story, Extremely Wicked, rings hollow and false and is really just as interested in the sensational and salacious as any other reductive thriller.

Based on the story of a man beaten so mercilessly he had to construct a fantasy world in order to survive his great pain and suffering, Robert Zemeckis’ insipid Welcome To Marwen is a painfully schmaltzy misjudged disaster, and superficial retelling that dishonors a layered and agonizing story about trauma.

Venom isn’t sure what film it wants to be, and it makes for an unintelligible, queasy roller coaster ride.

Unexceptionally directed by Roar Uthaug (Norwegian hit “The Wave“), Tomb Raider is superficial even for a mainstream tentpole, clumsily and unpersuasively put together and tests and breaks suspension of disbelief at every turn.

Featuring a fittingly shallow funk-lite score by Christophe Beck, Gringo, is ultimately like a Taco Bell version of the ‘90s crime genre; tasteless, cheaply made and just as inauthentic.

Bright tries to create a unique and dynamic world with the juxtaposition of harsh police life, crime and modern life contrasted with this imaginary magical realm, but it’s contrived, unconvincing and most of all calamitously preposterous.

The Dark Tower is a tepid non-starter from minute one.

The Last Knight is like a Red Bull-charged Bay yelling “I regret nothing!” as he jumps out of a plane backwards with no chute, detonating a megaton nuclear explosive while firing Uzis at his skydiving pals above him because hell, dude, that sounds like a wicked fond farewell. [

The Mummy is a dated, empirically dismal, laughable excuse to kick off a franchise, and it should have remained entombed.

With no plot to speak of, a baggy tangent across Europe in the mid-section, and no forward momentum, War Machine soon descends into the quicksand of its own design and never recovers. From there it’s an enervating slog of two hours that invites sleep.

The film is not unlike a classic rock supergroup reuniting to play all the greatest hits, with the payday at the end as the only true motivation, rather than returning with something new to say about their work.

Bafflingly witless, The Clapper is an oblivious non-starter with myriad deficiencies. Artless and clueless at every turn, writer/director Dito Montiel’s inane movie is a one-note half-gag somehow stretched into a painful 90-minute movie.

The McConaissance finds no purchase here. Mining for something adventurous and coming up empty handed, ultimately the dramatically-challenged Gold digs for something fiery and collects zero treasure along the way.

Labelling Live By Night a disaster is a little uncharitable; the baggy drama is perhaps more painfully mediocre than full-blown folly, but it’s close.

Get A Job is such a baffling endeavor the callow movie could conceivably come with its own milk carton campaign asking: “Where is Dylan Kidd and what have you done with him?”

Largely inert and undramatic, what you're left with is a tedious sentiment: “by the grace of god” this horrible crisis ended without violence, explosives, or spark. Congratulations?

A would-be but not-actually-inspiring movie about a landmark LGBT rights case that loses sight of the flesh and blood people at its heart, gets bogged down in tedious municipal politics and fails to find a way to compellingly dramatize an important story.

Ill-defined, overlong and wandering with unlikable leads (even Alan is too feeble and useless to sympathize with), The Mend would be a disaster if it weren't for the fact that the lack of vision is marginally absorbing in a kind train wreck, “will this movie ever reveal what the hell it’s about?”-like manner.

American Ultra hopes to leave you both shellshocked and blissfully stoned, but as perfect storm of aggressively repulsive choices, it’s a queasy bad trip worth avoiding at all costs.

Tiresomely told, uninteresting, and turgid, Electric Slide is as insipid as it gets — a meaningless movie about almost nothing at all.

Ultimately, Fifty Shades Of Grey is embarrassing and depressing, especially when considering the picture as a reflection of the quality of mainstream modern romance today.

Much more of an adolescent male fantasy than a relatable, genuine film about love or relationships, “5 To 7” is deeply naïve and has very few, if any real insights to the heart or human condition.

Campy and cartoonish, Burton’s Big Eyes is not the return to form many were hoping for. It is another phony and hollow piece of sugary kitschploitation masquerading under the guise of an “important true story” that places a nearly grotesque premium on style over any traces over substance.

When Horns thankfully concludes, relief sets in; this hellishly misguided effort concludes with an inferno and sequels are never sprung from the equivalent of a mouthful of ash.

Elusively told to the point of irritation, joyless and shot in chilly incarcerating rooms, War Story has the look and feel of an exhausted ashtray and borders on the pretentiously unclear.

Da Sweet Blood Of Jesus is, without question, bold, distinct, and idiosyncratic filmmaking with its own voice. Unfortunately, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good or in any kind of reasoned key.

The film is curiously schizophrenic. Brill’s screenplay mixes traditional rom-com generics with sporadically funny R-rated vulgarity and ludicrously dumb gags.

Need For Speed possesses eye-rolling, tone deaf dialogue, passable performances (unless you’re Dominic Cooper or Kid Cudi) and plotting so conventional, there’s not even one surprise U-turn anywhere.

Forgettable and only mildly entertaining, 300: Rise of An Empire seals its own fate at the initial story level by being so deeply invested in its own mythmaking and playing super safe.

The film plays nary a note of reprieve and the dank aesthetic does nothing to help the mood. “Low Down” is unequivocally a downer.

A major gaffe, God Help The Girl finds a great artist taking on a huge challenge and stumbling painfully on its ambition almost every step of the way.

Charlie Countryman opens up with an interesting first section, but only backslides deeper and deeper in its overwrought and incoherent second and third acts.

There’s some interesting ideas floating around about identity, manhood, and what it means to connect with someone in an over-connected world, but A Case Of You (named for a Joni Mitchell song that’s not actually in the film) never actively explores them. Instead, it delves into generic rom-com and ropey cliché to little comic effect.

Paradise is neither a good film nor is there any evidence it was a good script.

The cavernous emptiness of The Canyons cannot sustain itself, and it makes for a mostly flat, strained and uninvolving experience (not helped by the pace which makes 90 minutes, feels like a sluggish two hours).

Acerbic and purposefully vile, LaBute’s story is clearly self-aware of its various cruel manipulations of character and audience, but the formula itself -- taken from his early modus operandi -- is simply becoming more and more rote.

While stylishly capturing the verve, exotica, and free-spirited mojo of swinging '60s London, uber-prolific English director Michael Winterbottom's portrait of legendary U.K. smut impresario Paul Raymond is otherwise a shallow misfire.

Pain & Gain fails at being an entertaining and ridiculously fun Michael Bay movie and curdles into something much more tone deaf and obnoxious.

A Good Day To Die Hard isn’t dead on arrival because that would suggest it has a pulse.