Steve Davis

The dialogue is enough to make your hair stand on end.

No doubt, the under-10 crowd will love this bathroom vulgarity, even more so when their adult chaperones experience a flush of embarrassment.

Ultimately, one has to chalk up The Pink Panther to the good old traditions of Hollywood greed and chutzpah. Nothing this slapdash and badly executed is done for the love of movies.

The movie is as lifeless as a mannequin until Ferrell appears near the end as the absurdly coiffed villain Jacobim Mugatu.

It’s hard to take your eyes off Walker in his penultimate film appearance, cognizant of his mortality and the way he was gracefully aging much in the same way as another fair-haired, blue-eyed actor named Paul.

There will be blood in the ultraviolent Rambo, a movie that depicts both heinous acts and righteous reckoning with equal degrees of flying body parts and arterial sprays.

Whether you view it as intellectually dishonest or just plain sloppy, Deception is a movie that more than lives up to its title.

A white-trash riff on Little Red Riding Hood, the oddly titled Freeway is a road movie that hits a dead end.

A reprehensible movie from just about every perspective, Ransom tries to justify the behavior of its lead character as something grounded in principle, but make no mistake about it: This is the act of a man who can't bear the thought of losing, a man who will turn the tables on his enemy at the risk of a beloved's death.

Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey isn't much of a trip. In a word...NOT!!!

Allied is so full of itself it forgets to entertain most of the time. Here’s so not looking at you, kid.

At best, Goosebumps is a who’s who in the Stine literary oeuvre, featuring characters who were terrifying on paper but rendered toothless here.

All icing, with a few crumbs devoted to the notion that it is futile to resist the heart's desires.

For a movie focusing so intently on personal faith, it doesn’t much trust your independent capacity to find religious, spiritual, or other meaning in what is truly an amazing story.

Franco Zeffirelli's contrived autobiographical film about his youth in fascist Italy has little social grace -- it's embarrassingly awkward, like a dilettante playing the doyenne.

Given its can’t-miss potential, you’d think this would be one kick-ass movie. So why is The 15:17 to Paris such a trainwreck?

In short, there's nothing remotely real or appealing about it.

Nothing more than an extended version of the syndicated television program, with the unkempt Irwin spending most of the movie excitedly shouting at the camera as he taunts something venomous.

The Ten offers a brand of comedy for very particularized tastes, though everyone should appreciate the in-joke of featuring Ryder in the skit about the Eighth Commandment. For those of you less versed in the Bible, that’s the one that says thou shall not steal.

The only redeeming thing in Switch is Barkin's vulgar and adept physical performance of a man literally trapped in a woman's body. She's in a constant state of discomfort, whether it's trying to walk in high heels (a sight gag that quickly gets old), scratching her breasts, or sitting with her legs apart in a tight miniskirt. Her presence, however, is a small consolation in a movie that takes the battle of the sexes and turns it into a pointless skirmish.

As the bombastic musical numbers vie to outdo each other (in one scene, lovebirds Efron and Zendaya appear to be auditioning for Cirque du Soleil), the song-and-dance man gets lost in the scenery, his charisma overwhelmed by director Gracey’s misguided preoccupation with razzle dazzle at full throttle.

By the time the chorus of churchgoers end the film with a spirited rendition of Stevie Wonder’s rousing “As” following a demonstration of the healing power of forgiveness, you’re ready for a closing number. Hallelujah.

The handful of redeeming moments in Jayne Mansfield’s Car belong to Duvall in the role of a septuagenarian who finds himself more and more at odds with a changing world.

The entire plot exists for the sole purpose of the yawning revelation in the film’s last five minutes.

A movie designed without a proper foundation -- it feels as though it might crumble at any minute.

It keeps its distance in the emotional depiction of its relationships, particularly the friendships among the Valley Boy quartet.

Given its many failings, nothing short of an extreme makeover could save American Mary. Scalpel, please.

By the time The Statement comes to its inevitable conclusion, you'll be hard pressed to remember much about it, sadly enough. In other words, The Statement doesn't make much of one.

The movie feels out of whack, as if big chunks were excised to ensure its relatively short 90-minute running length. Clearly, Emily and Linda aren’t the only things that go missing in Snatched.

There’s only the faintest glimmer of Rock’s talent for piercingly funny humor here, a shortcoming for which the comic can only blame himself, given that he also produced and directed the movie.

Unfortunately, the filmmakers here have no earthly idea how to execute this nifty supernatural conceit (Barbara Marshall’s screenplay appeared on the 2015 Black List), teetering between cheap laughs and cheap thrills without doing either very well.

The don't-get-caught '80s and holier-than-thou '90s do battle in True Colors, a political drama of all-too familiar dimensions. The painstakingly obvious screenplay by Kevin Wade (Working Girl) plays like an eighth-grade civics primer: ethics and morality are good, greed and corruption are bad.

When teamed with her former husband, the director James Cameron, Hurd produced some of the most memorable action films of the Eighties, including The Terminator and Aliens. Her first collaborative effort with new husband De Palma, however, has produced one of the worst efforts from a major talent in a long while.

Purportedly a seriocomic contemplation on a civilization that's lost its way, the movie jabs at America's fascination with its false idols without ever hitting its target.

Whether it’s a case of miscasting is unclear, but without a willing hero to anchor this already dubious movie from start to finish, The Great Wall hits a brick wall.

It dispassionately plays like a video game with a high body count.

It sounds like great fodder for sensationalism and special effects, but Fire in the Sky is disappointedly earthbound.

Sure, Peeples has a nice (if unmemorable) voice, but the vapid storyline with fantastic overtones transports Jem and the Holograms into another dimension, one that’s utterly flat. Control. Alt. Delete.

To be fair, not even Meg Ryan’s nose-scrunch, Kate Hudson’s sass, or Julia Roberts’ million-dollar smile could jolt this muddled rom-com to life.

The most distressing thing is the complete lack of accountability for Tripp and Creech’s destructive joyride, which results in a significant amount of vehicular damage and possible human injury.

There’s no sense of trepidation in The Quiet Ones, because suspense requires a cogent storyline to either create or defy the viewer’s expectations. This lack of plausible narrative is either the result of lazy filmmaking or shortcut editing. Either way, you lose.

The mutilated, slobbering, howling possessed in Deliver Us From Evil crawl on all fours like animals, and furiously dig into surfaces until their fingers bleed, but they’re nothing more than a sideshow, freaks on display for your perverse enjoyment. It’s unsettling, but never terrifying.

The entire movie has a creepy aura of self-consciousness. In addition to the aforementioned definitions of aloha, the word also doubles as a coming-and-going greeting in the Hawaiian vernacular. Here, it regrettably signifies the possible goodbye to a once-promising career of a filmmaker who had us at hello.

A serviceable cast of unfamiliar actors (the exception: Thompson as the family matriarch, Marmee); a serviceable script that takes few if any chances, with occasional wordless montages of shiny happy people; and serviceable direction that gets the job done and nothing more.

Director-screenwriter Dearden, who wrote the script for Fatal Attraction, does a terrible job of making the pieces of the who's-he-going-to-kill-next narrative stick; jumping around with an unnerving frequency, this film self-destructs before your very eyes.

You could fault A Madea Family Funeral for its many other shortcomings. It runs about 30 minutes too long; the tempo of the numerous dramatic scenes is on par with drying paint; characters lack consistency from scene to scene; the dialogue sounds like a first draft that needs major editing; its occasional technical sloppiness; and so forth.

In the end, you feel like you’re the victim of a cruel bait-and-switch, lured into thinking Nobody’s Fool would be a crappy but nevertheless entertaining Tiffany Haddish movie, only to have it turn out to be a crappy but nevertheless crappy Tyler Perry movie. Talk about mixed feelings.

From the start, Need for Speed smells like a movie in search of a franchise. On that count, it’s somewhat fast but seldom furious.

Cassel’s feline visage, covered in a velvety layer of fur for most of the movie, doesn’t fare much better. At times, he resembles an angry cast member from Cats rather than the tormented fiend trying to find his human self once again. It’s beastly.

Movies like The Vatican Tapes are by nature sloppy and derivative, seeking to evoke a thrill that’s long gone.

The script is replete with filler inserted in the name of “real life”: bad jokes and silly riddles, spontaneous songs, and improvised scenes in which conversations go around in circles.

Certain scenes play as if Reiner forgot to show up on the day of filming, so the actors and cameraman just winged it. Perhaps his embarrassing (and pointless) turn as Leah’s clueless accompanist with the bad toupee distracted him from his principal responsibilities behind the camera. What a Meathead.

With the exception of Kroll’s gravelly-intoned Uncle Fester, the voicework is sketchy, with Theron’s Seven-Sisters elocution bordering on sacrilege.

Noble intentions, ignoble results.

The lengths to which a parent will go to save a child can be gut-wrenching stuff, but Waist Deep rarely hits you in the pit of your stomach. Blame it on the lame screenplay, which unwisely (and badly) gravitates more toward the crime-spree elements of "Bonnie and Clyde" than the fierce parental instincts of, say, "Kramer vs. Kramer" or "Lorenzo's Oil."

What hath "The Sixth Sense" wrought? These days, it seems as if every psychological thriller has a surprise finish.

The best bit, however, is not even in the movie, but in the film’s end credits: an expletive-filled parody of We Are the World in which a host of has-beens croon about their halcyon days as child stars.

Osmond is all teeth and no talent. You’d think that his presence here might provide an opportunity for some tongue-in-cheek humor at his expense, but Osmond plays the comedy so darn straight that it’s painful to watch.

As the robotic duo, Lundgren and Van Damme have found roles tailored to their acting abilities.

The improbabilities pile up on top of each other in Mrs. Winterbourne, an anxious-to-please romantic comedy about mistaken identity that sounds vaguely familiar.

As forgettable as a puff off a generic-brand butt: filtered, flavored, and ultimately unsatisfying.

It is truly one of the year's dumbest movies.

The snap of a twig, the rustle of a branch – that’s about as scary as it gets in The Forest, a supernatural horror movie afraid of its own shadow.

The ho-hum practical jokes the two inflict upon the other can be described as Home Alone lite: No concussion-inducing swinging paint cans or burn-inducing doorknobs inspired by Looney Tunes violence here. Which, of course, takes all the fun out of it.

The too-too-precious title flashes like a cautionary traffic sign. Warning: Pretentiousness and Pedantry Ahead.

Given the likely reception to this movie, it’s unlikely there will be a sixth wave anytime soon.

Aside from the committee-written script with no coherent perspective, the trouble with Like a Boss is that it never crudely outrages. It’s a bust in so many ways. The halfhearted gender and cultural political incorrectness of Hayek’s ridiculous character makes for halfhearted laughs, and that’s being generous.

You could drive an 18-wheeler through the substantial number of plot holes in Paranoia.

It appears that this franchise has hit a dead end, running on nothing but fumes.

The fishy smell that permeates Perfect Stranger comes from all of the red herrings flopping around this absurdly plotted Hollywood thriller.

Stupefyingly inane buddy-cop comedy.

This is one movie best left unattached.

Interminably unfunny, this holiday offering about how the three Firpo brothers learn the true meaning of Christmas from the inhabitants of the quaint small town whose bank they've robbed is something of a crime itself.

Nothing in the film remotely resembles any location between San Antonio and Dallas, the beginning and end points of its labored trajectory. For someone in Fresno or Akron, this may not be a big deal, but for those of us in these here parts, it’s a damned distraction.

While Lopez carries off the overdone damsel-in-distress schtick somewhat credibly, Guzman fails to step up to the trickier role of her seducer and stalker.

If only Bullock could have foreseen how bad Premonition would turn out to be, she would have spared herself (and us) a lot of agony.

It's a bad movie that only a parent could love.

It’s like being haunted by outsized chimney sweeps that never bathe. And for the most part, it’s about that scary.

While the somewhat indefatigable Stone may survive this misfire (she's survived plenty of others), Lumet may not.

The movie aspires to be an inspirational screwball comedy of sorts about the stresses of motherhood, but the situational humor lacks the spontaneity necessary for some crazy fun.

The movie simply trudges along, tirelessly making its rounds, just like its holy sister walking impoverished streets with grim purpose.

It had a little originality, unlike the other sequels, but not much.

There’s something earnest and forthright about the movie, despite its misguided execution.

It’s like watching a cartoon version of American Idol on an endless karaoke loop.

Avoid it like the plagues.

This mirthless comedy about a manly crew of smokejumpers helplessly babysitting a trio of rescued brats has more dead air in it than a radio broadcast hosted by a narcoleptic disc jockey.

Jawdroppingly bad, this adaptation of Michael Crichton's 1980 novel about a talking ape named Amy and a fabled lost city deep in the jungles of central Africa is as sophisticated in execution as a Jungle Jim movie.

A wretched experience from start to finish.

I give this the BOMB!

It's the kind of bad movie that gives bad movies a bad name.

It's like "Jackass," but with a budget and no midgets.

The laughs are few and far between.

A gruesome whodunit that's missing more than a few brain cells.

And the rest of the movie? Same screaming, same endless chases, same breasts, same blood, same axe, same lack of explanation, same ending primed for another sequel. Is there a pattern emerging here? In short: same as it ever was, same as it ever was.

I'll maim, chop, slash, and I'll kill, Just as I please.

Assure Patient, who has paranoid delusions about Jennifer Lopez being molded into the new M______ C_____, to rest easy because Lopez has never made a film as bad as Glitter.

It's the same old story, seven times around, you just can't keep a good corpse down. ’Spite a massacre the film before, To Crystal Lake, they keep coming more. And one by one, they end up dead – a sliitted throat; an axe in the head.

It’s McHattie’s bizarre turn as the beleaguered town’s mayor that steals this show. Taking his cue from another infamous Ontario public servant, he gives a performance that can only be described as bat-shit crazy. Fitting, eh?