Paranoia is ostensibly a thriller, but there’s nothing remotely thrilling about it. This slick, plodding bore is as exciting as watching somebody else tap out text messages.

Laughably bad dialogue and wooden acting.

It aims to match the mythic gravitas of “The Lord of the Rings” — even throwing in a nod to the Book of Exodus for good measure — and the results fall paint-by-numbers flat.

I guess I was charmed in spite of myself. I’m reminded of a quote from Alexander Pope I had to memorize as a kid, which gave me fair warning about the likes of Andrew Lloyd Webber and “Cats”: “Vice is a monster of so frightful mien / as to be hated needs but to be seen; / Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, / We first endure, then pity, then embrace.” Did I tear up a little? Maybe. Do I ever need to see “Cats” again? Nah, I’m good.

Writer and director Jeremy Leven’s film is meant to be a trifle, a status which it achieves, but it’s nothing more than that.

It's mindless entertainment with enough thrills and chuckles to make the time pass painlessly. Just don't examine anything too closely.

The makers of Wish Upon must love the “Final Destination” films, because they perfectly mimic the style, which is alternately nerve-wracking and slightly silly.

Once you start this film, you might not want it to end.

Unfinished Business is a jumble of half-baked ideas, none particularly interesting.

In Chernobyl Diaries, directed by Bradley Parker, stupidity is taken to extremes.

There's not a lot of humor here, just violence and more violence. The acting is fine enough - Whitaker, of the talented bunch, seems to be having the best time - but the slicing and dicing overpowers the cast, the story and everything else.

Director Michael Goi is big on jump shocks that get increasingly tiresome.

Johnson and Dornan retain the chemistry of two mannequins knocked into each other in a department-store storage closet; the actual sex scenes play more like aerobics videos than anything actually steamy.

Aside from the waste of talent, the frustrating thing about The Lazarus Effect is how it cheats. Good horror movies work on internal logic.

It's just kind of a mess, as unfocused and immature as the four mutant turtles at its core. Stuff happens, stuff blows up and this is probably a good time to mention that Michael Bay produced the film.

It's an ironclad rule for comedies: Stupid is fine, as long as it's funny. But if it's not? Well, then it's just . . . stupid.

For all its missteps and machinations, the film mostly achieves its goals. In other words, have some Kleenex ready at the theater.

Yes, it recalls “Turner and Hooch,” a movie Show Dogs references so many times you start to feel nostalgic for it. And when you find yourself longing for “Turner and Hooch,” things are very bleak indeed.

Individually they are all good here, though Hardy's skills don't necessarily translate that well to romantic comedy -- which could have been used to good effect, but McG doesn't have the touch to pull that off.

This is one of those movies you feel stupider just for having sat through. I think I'm already worse at math.

May walk like a comedy and quack like a comedy, but despite the absurd extremes to which it takes the squabbling-family formula, it inspires nary a chuckle.

The film, much like Willis' performance, never flatlines, but it never delivers the thrills you expect from this type of genre piece.

It's exactly what it appears to be: a funny-enough stoner comedy with a likable cast.

While the movie is a mess, it can be a fun ride as long as you first put your brain into "do not disturb" mode.

Could be fun, you might think. No. Bad acting and worse dialogue quickly put an end to that notion.

Blended is an Adam Sandler movie that isn't as bad as you feared it would be.

Director Jessie Nelson shoots it all like a Hallmark card that comes to life, which sounds like a cliche, which it is, which is the point.

A relentlessly unfunny comedy, it wastes the talents of Reese Witherspoon and Sofia Vergara as egregiously as one could possibly imagine, resorting to lame jokes, cliches and incompetent storytelling to pass the time.

A movie that makes little sense, is dumb when it's not being stupid and yet is still at times laugh-out-loud funny.

Some movies are kind of fake good — at first blush they seem to have all the ingredients in place to be successful. But on further inspection, it’s all a trick. That’s the kind of movie this is.

The film is based on a popular series of young-adult books (big surprise), but one figures only die-hard fans will enjoy the result. The movie is slow-witted and moves at a glacial pace.

Like nine out of 10 faith-based films, it lets the message crowd out the other elements of good art: character development, thematic complexity, even basics such as a compelling conflict.

Earnest in its ambition but dopey in its execution, Winter’s Tale never takes flight.

There are a few scares in Come Back to Me. They would be a lot scarier if we either hadn't seen them coming, or hadn't seen them before.

Seventh Son is recommended only for the most far-gone of fantasy addicts, for whom it will serve as a sort of methadone. It won't exactly satisfy, but it will tide you over until the next season of "Game of Thrones."

Picture Alan Alda in the title role of "Dirty Harry," and you have a good idea why Tyler Perry playing a hard-edged cop in "Alex Cross" doesn't work. [19 Oct 2012]

Jang and Odagiri are good as the rival runners and soldiers. But they are surrounded by over-the-top performances, which play out like a mugging contest.

You can’t help feeling as if Miller has missed an opportunity. Punk rock was all about manic energy, unbridled (and often unfocused) passion. CBGB plays more like a folk tale.

Not even the snickering juvenile who lives in the deepest gutters of your brain will get a cheap thrill out of these antics.

It's an unnecessary movie, with some funny parts and a few callbacks to the original, as if visiting Las Vegas for a bit might bring back some of the original magic. It doesn't, but at least this time it seems like they're trying. A little, at least.

Checking subtlety at the door, Monteverde goes for broke on the emotional-manipulation front. Perhaps that's OK as a device for illustrating a parable, but it doesn't make for much of a movie.

It's no surprise The Boy Next Door is junk. What is disappointing is that it's not fun junk. It doesn't even merit a good hate-watching, because the whole thing is so meh.

For the most part the jokes here are tired. William H. Macy is a welcome presence in the small role of Phil's offbeat-but- intense boss.

A clever, funny movie that will entertain kids and adults.

Dumb, lazy, obvious and largely pointless.

The resulting film winds up like a compelling story about an iconic civil-rights event buried beneath an avalanche of stereotypes and bad writing.

By far the scariest thing about director Stuart Beattie’s I, Frankenstein, a terrible would-be horror story that somehow roped in a couple of really good actors, is that the ending seems to suggest the possibility of a sequel. Now that’s horror.

The movie is a big disappointment, because ultimately Slender Man does not get the full-on creep-out treatment such an intriguing character deserves. Here he's just a generic horror bad guy, doing standard horror-bad-guy things. He could be anything, really, and therefore winds up, like the movie, being not much.

If you had to update the film for the Instagram generation, you could do a lot worse than what director Shana Feste (“Country Strong”) has come up with. She has crafted a stylish, evocative journey into overheated-teenager territory. For a good chunk of the time, it works.

The Erwins pound home their message, but they do with such skill and accomplished filmmaking the movie never becomes heavy-handed or too preachy.

It's stupid, then it veers toward the absurd, but with James at its center it remains sort of sweet throughout. You can't hate James or the movie; both are just sort of dopey but well-meaning.

There are some laughs here, but not many. Johnson and Wayans have a pleasant enough chemistry, but the best parts of the movie are when Johnson gives Ryan an unhinged quality.

I predict that within a decade, Mother’s and Daughters will be mandatory viewing at film schools across the country. There are precious few such perfect examples of how not to make a film.

You'd learn a lot more if you went out and, well, actually met a Mormon.

You know it's not working when you don't care about any of them. Sadly, that's the case with Answers to Nothing, Matthew Leutwyler's dud about a revolving cast of characters in Los Angeles.

Hot Tub Time Machine 2 is a movie that didn't need to be made, and certainly doesn't need to be seen — not when you can rent the original and still feel good about yourself afterward.

It’s cute and entertaining, in a Saturday morning cartoon kind of way, but this one is just for the kiddies.

A brittle, pompous drama.

There is a sort of unintentional campy fun to be had in places. Just don't go in expecting much, in other words, and perhaps you'll live happily ever after.

There might be a decent movie in here somewhere, if the focus had been on the right character.

Hector and the Search for Happiness is more like "audiences and the search for a good movie," and despite the effort of Pegg and the other actors, you won't find that here.

You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll be swept away — about as much as you would be by artificial roses. Movies like this may look like the real thing, but they're not.

Agonizingly stupid and painfully illogical.

There are no surprises here, just a by-the-numbers comedy that's better, and funnier, than it has a right to be, thanks to the efforts of the actors in it.

The title Acts of Violence has less to do with the storyline of the movie it graces and more about what’s perpetrated against the audience watching it.

Newbie director Aleksander Bach handles the project with a competent precision. The film doesn’t rise above the genre and the plot is muddled, but he pulls off the basic elements with a distinctly chilly European style.

Clearly, Zeroville is not a film for everyone. But if you love movies and you’re willing to experiment, it’s an enjoyable trip.

While some of the sequels have been entertaining enough, A Good Day to Die Hard signals that it may be a better day for John McClane to retire.

It's all silly and meant to be fun, except when Najafi tries to throw in some serious bits, which wind up being sillier still.

Director Enrique Begné, who helmed this year's winsome "Busco Novio Para mi Mujer," directs with an emphasis on action over comedy. Sometimes that feels misplaced; the stretches without laughs grow increasingly longer as the plot moves forward. But he keeps things enjoyably fast-paced, so it's hard to complain too much.

CHIPS is a miserable movie, an exercise in stupidity that takes whatever nostalgia one had for the late-1970s television series – this assumes anyone actually had nostalgia for it — and beats it to death on a bed of idiocy. The action scenes, though, are pretty well-directed.

Landais certainly brought little cinematic verve to The Aspern Papers, telling the story largely in turgid literary voiceover lifted directly from the original source material.

There is nothing about the movie that isn’t utterly predictable. You meet a character, and it’s immediately obvious what’s going to happen to him (or her). And then it happens. Maybe it’s meant to make you feel good about your deductive reasoning skills or something. But mostly it just makes you want to see something else.

I can give the filmmakers — director Dito Montiel and screenwriter Adam G. Simon — the benefit of the doubt on good intentions, but their approach doesn’t tug at the heartstrings so much as it pistol-whips the audience with its grandiose and (ineptly) manipulative storytelling.

Grovic knows all the tricks of the trade, such as keeping the lighting dark (often too dark), in an attempt to add atmosphere. But in the end it seems like a series of shortcuts.

A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III is a curious mess, a movie that doesn’t really seem to have any reason to exist, other than maybe to give writer and director Roman Coppola and star Charlie Sheen something to do for a few weeks.

The acting is so poor and the story so badly told that the viewer's feelings about Rand's novel - an epic ode to free-market fundamentalism - are almost immaterial.

A Madea Christmas, for all its narrative shortcomings, also has plenty of laughs.

The visual effects are impressive, and there is a certain kick to seeing the human characters dodging barrels in a life-size Donkey Kong. But we don’t really care about the humans; here, at least, Q*bert is more endearing than Adam Sandler.

It's entertaining enough to see once, just to say you've seen it. But it surely isn't for everyone. You've got to have a dark and dirty sense of humor.

Sex and the City 2 isn't a feature film as much as it is consumer porn. The audience is not asked to relate to the characters, or at least what we remember of them, as much as to their shoes, their bags, their apartments, their couture, their stuff.

It's bigger and louder and, if not longer (checking in at a mere two hours and 28 minutes), certainly stupider than ever before.

Simply put, it's a mess.

At first, it’s fun and shiny, then you’re left with a crumpled mess on the floor.

Mostly harmless, but the largely joyless exercise is a letdown after getting a glimpse of a re-energized Murphy in "Tower Heist."

Dolittle’s animals are easier to relate to, with their humanlike self-esteem and family issues, than the film’s central characters.

What grates is the lack of attention to details. There is a grating sloppiness to much of The Choice, both narratively and stylistically.

Strangely, almost everyone must have been in the middle of some weird creative dry spell. Some stories are pretentious, some are annoyingly whimsical and some are just out-and-out obnoxious.

It strains both credulity and patience in its attempt to be different, and it leaves you feeling creeped out as well.

Olivier Megaton (he helmed "Taken 2") starts things off at a sluggish pace and never picks up speed. Even the action scenes, which often are filmed in jittery fashion, don't generate thrills.

He (D'Souza) reaffirms many of the complaints against Obama, and when he sticks to the facts is much more persuasive.

Innocence is a misguided little horror film, reminiscent of one of those cheesy '70s made-for-TV movies that kind of, sort of seem scary when you're 9 but are just dopey at any other age.

Elvis Presley made some bad movies, but let's give the King his due: He never made anything as outright awful as The Identical.

Despite competent performances all around, you never feel much chemistry between the actors.

Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return lacks any sense of magic.

It's an unpleasant way to pass a couple summer hours.

It just feels desperate.

A by-the-numbers thriller that wouldn’t even have made for a particularly good hourlong episode of a weekly crime procedural, never mind an honest-to-God feature-length movie.