It is funny at times – the teams for dodgeball break down into "popular" and "unpopular" – but Chicken Little is painful to watch for all ages.

Ghost in the Shell is a slick but plodding recycling of tired cyberpunk clichés that adds nothing new to the genre.

It seems nothing is left out, and the movie makes us begin to feel as though we've witnessed every swing the man ever swung.

Fans of the video game will doubtless love it all but for true fans of the gnashing dead – and we count ourselves among them – this is strictly second-tier terror.

A less cohesive action-comedy than its predecessor, Full Throttle is instead a freewheeling collection of random action sequences strung together with little or no discernible rhyme or reason.

Where Young's book was a slap in the face, this movie is a kick on the backside, all hokey humor and quaint lovability.

The finished product is as predictably dull as a newborn's soft spot.

The supernatural elements brush up against some heavy topics, some actual real-life horrors, but like any encounter with a ghost, Angelica is likely to simply leave you cold.

The film feels about as genuine and spontaneous as its evident lip-synching.

There's an interesting story here, but Joffe never firmly wraps his arms around it.

Busy and boring and oppressively computer generated, Justice League screams we’re back to business as usual.

So yeah, the great man is welcome on our screens any day. On the other hand, Carpenter's comeback packs very little of his usual cinematic flair. It's not even all that scary.

Sitting through the film was an exercise in confusion.

Remains little more than a briefly fascinating curiosity, a travelogue for those of us who can't actually attend.

Unlike its multifaceted director, the film never stretches its boundaries.

It's confused and confusing, by turns hilarious and off-putting. In short, it's awfully hard to love I Love You Philip Morris.

Unfortunately, after those first 10 minutes it’s all downhill for I Am Legend, as the film descends into a monster-movie malaise starring a horde of balding CGI monsters that look like refugees from a video game and that will scare absolutely no one, save those who worry that green-screening is ruining the movies.

It's fascinating how an innocuous film can suddenly flare up into offensive claptrap.

This might not matter so much to the youngest members of the audience, but for anyone over the age of 10, it’s strictly a colorful bore.

From the creature FX to the stilted dialogue, Sleepwalkers offers nothing new for horror fans to sink their collective fangs into.

House has a few moments that ring genuinely eerie, but the cluttered, unconvincing dialogue – not to mention Moseley's ongoing penchant for crazed overacting – make it more of a genre curiousity than anything the "Fangoria" gang would likely want to sit through.

Director Munroe (TMNT) is clearly a fan and attempted his best on an admittedly limited budget, but some things just don't translate that well. Throw this dog a bone? No need, he's already got a closetful.

Isn't teen heartache confusing enough without adding into the libidinal mix a bunch of buff scullers nicknamed the Queerstrokes?

It's a pleasure to watch, but I found myself wondering if having a story here even mattered to the director at all.

Learn from the Evers family: The Haunted Mansion is not worth the detour.

While this approach might make for an exciting celebration of the genre, it unfortunately leads to a rather lackluster and repetitive documentary unlikely to capture the interest of anyone other than devout followers of Christian music.

As cold and unseemly as that stiff found in the shower.

There is a new definition of the term, "critic-proof movie," and it goes by the name Pokémon: The First Movie.

This could be a pilot for the WB. Hollywood choreographer Fletcher makes the jump behind the camera but displays a greater aplomb for staging than drama, and the movie is as fleeting as the last weekend of summer.

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.

The Nines is the feature-film-directing debut from screenwriter John August (Go, Big Fish), but it feels much more like some Bizarro World collaboration between Jean-Paul Sartre and Charlie Kaufman, and not in a good way, either.

Flipper's story is a tired fish tale.

This film slips and sloshes around in such ways that you really can't figure out its take on the unfolding and ill-fated story.

How many screenwriters does it take to screw in this dim bulb? Five – no joke – and another one credited with “story by.”

Most of the actors seem to have been issued one facial expression at the beginning of the film, along with pain-of-death instructions not to change it under any circumstance.

Despite the filmmakers' efforts to humanize Wilson, however, Bill W. still dabbles in hagiography, valorizing the man while also painting him as a reluctant hero.

The obnoxious enthusiasm of Rise of the Gamers (which literally calls the day traders “heroes”) misses the point that those day traders are playing the same game as the big hedge fund managers.

3 Ninjas is basically harmless, but it's not entertaining enough to fully engage adults or the under-12 set -- especially once the popcorn and sodas have been polished-off.

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.

Like rocky road ice cream, The Rundown is chunky stuff, full of calories and easy to take in small doses. Also like rocky road, it’s bound to attract flies if you leave it lying around, and, more to the point, too much of it is likely to make you gag.

It's never wise to try to one-up a classic.

It's all rather clumsy and routine.

Shot with the creative energy of a mediocre sitcom, the scenes play out predictable plot devices with minimal creativity and even less risk.

Pixar this isn't, but neither is it "Mary Shelley's Veggie Tales." If only.

As scripted by Craig Titley, this first in a presumptive franchise is a dull, scattershot affair that owes much to both "X-Men" and Greek mythology, but which never seems to slow down enough to make any sense whatsoever.

Pleasant but dull formula film.

It's a botched job through and through, made all the more distressing by Bullock's recent announcement that she's throwing in the romantic comedy towel for a while.

The plot twists and turns on itself endlessly and incriminates everyone. It's as if the filmmakers are trying to incorporate all the plot details from all the classics they so obviously love. But love isn't enough either. You gotta have brains, baby, and a heart and soul would be nice.

It doesn’t work, however, and the end result is one long yawn of mediocrity, devoid of any genuine suspense, hobbled by incoherent plotting, and ending on a note of goofy what-the-fuckery.

That the audience for Ari Aster’s folk horror might find more pleasure in this Snow White than the average child is telling, since it’s almost impossible to work out who this version of the story is aimed at. Children will be bored, teens talked down to, and most adults will wonder where their Snow White is.

Grumpy Old Men is supposed to be about how love reinvents life and I'm not even really sure where it gets lost, but it ends up going nowhere.

The trailer for the film is more gripping than the feature itself.

It's exasperating watching so much top-drawer talent wasted in a film that wraps itself up with one of the most preposterous (not to mention obvious) endings the genre has ever seen.

The resulting film makes Sam Raimi's "The Quick and the Dead" look like a stone cold neo-Western thoroughbred.

The revelation of Little Ashes turns out to be none of the leading men but rather Gatell, a riveting actress cast as the girlfriend who is mystified by Lorca’s lack of sexual interest in her.

The real problem isn't that Anacondas is bad – it's just so bland, so unremarkable, so by-the-numbers, and so instantly forgettable that bad might be a step up.

At its core the film is as standardized as the exam it seeks to debunk, and nearly as tedious.

It’s not entirely clear what “generation” is the guilty one being examined in filmmaker Lauren Greenfield’s third full-length documentary, but it’s safe to say that we are now several decades into the decline of Western civilization (that Creem critic was right, you guys).

A hackneyed police story, rife with clichés, implausibilities, and weak performances.

Robin Hood isn’t as awful as all that, really. For one thing, it’s too singularly bizarre to be anything less than head scratchingly entertaining, and the action set-pieces are pulled off with much quivery panache.

Both Glenn Close and Mila Kunis are very talented actors, but Four Good Days gives them absolutely nothing interesting to say or do.

Not even the always reliable talents of McKean and Lynch can help pull this comedy out of its ironic slump.

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

There’s little here to convince the audience of boy and girl’s special chemistry, and nothing to attach the audience to them, either.

As for Zach Galifianakis, playing a dim-witted drunk – file his role under head-scratching.

Everything that made the original series so memorable and succesful - its heart, its weird wit, its adherence to the morality play model - is completely lacking.

If you're going to dig the same shallow grave for the thousandth time, at least have the verve of Eli Roth's shamelessly fun Thanksgiving – or at least make sure the entire cast knows if you're going for tension or comedy.

Lacks the bite that can equal the Bruckheimer bark.

Torpedoed by its own overarching idealism -- the film targets the new star system, the media, the studios, digital technology, and pretty much everything else you might care to think of -- and not enough script to back it all up.

The film itself is an effective enough metaphor for out-of-control bullshit that frankly, Koepp aside, was part and parcel of King’s novella from page 1.

And next time around... show the courage of your lowbrow convictions and get back to the gonzo, unapologetically senseless mayhem that made this saga so much fun in the beginning.

Say what you will about comedian-turned-actor Cook, the man is a force of nature, a tornado of verbal gymnastics and physical contortions who will do anything for a laugh.

The characters are mechanisms who move along the plot arc from Point A to Point B. They’re not particularly memorable individuals.

The film squanders any potential it had to be a revealing look into female intimacy and instead uses broad-scale melodramatic strokes.

Bratz is way too long.

The kind of movie that gives "chick flicks" a bad reputation.

Less a traditional martial-artistry marathon than it is an exercise in filmic frustration, lovely to look at by small degrees, but a mud-spattered mess of a movie overall.

Molina and Weaver, who, most of the time, perform brilliantly, move through Abduction as if on autopilot.

The jokes just aren't there, which makes it very hard for the stars -- who are trying very, very hard -- to really make a dent.

Lehmann has dropped the ball -- or the pick, whichever the case may be -- again. Instead of playing up the inherently silly, goofy nature of heavy metal, he sinks to its level, offering nothing more than the occasional chuckle and some ratty old combat boots.

Collision Course is overstuffed with meandering, unnecessary micro-storylines, far too many new characters, and an obvious lack of focus, none of which should impact the movie’s target demographic, kids under 10.

Bait equals bad.

This South Korean pseudo-epic is some of the most ambitious cr-- I've ever seen.

I've had mosquito bites that were more passionate than this undead, unrequited, and altogether unfun pseudo-romantic riff on Romeo and Juliet.

An awful lot of good talent has been squandered in this by-the-numbers film.

You’d think the sordid history of the Winchester house would have inspired a more evocative or even entertaining haunted house story but the Spierigs rely far too much on the sort of shock-cut du jour that has become the lazy and boring norm for so many PG-13 “horror” films of the past 15 years.

Black and Blue is almost incoherently edited, dumping out chase scenes where characters round corners and enter rooms with absolutely no sense of spacing or location. That, plus a predictable number of digital squibs, prevents the film from connecting as either art or entertainment.

It’s a shame that Waititi’s return to Indigenous-centered filmmaking is marred by regressive narrative choices and lazy jokes. Otherwise, we might have had a real winner on our hands.

Apart from the fang-restraint of the nosferatu, however, there's precious little that's altogether new or for that matter shocking about this by-the-numbers thriller.

Another frivolous product of whiny male anxiety that's as funny as a sitcom but longer and more expensive.

Mortal plods along for most of its running time with the occasional helicopter chase scene and plenty of CGI fulminology: But ultimately Ovredal’s not-so-deep-dive into Norwegian mythos is a too-obvious let down.

There are no insights here, only lavishly budgeted cosplay.

This crass and hugely dumb aliens vs. multiple earthling navies should thrill the hyperactive 10-year-old inside you. Adults, on the other hand – and especially genre-fan adults – will be bored to tears and wishing Bay (or at least Jerry Bruckheimer) had something of their own on the marquee out front.

Blame screenwriters Akiva Goldsman, Jeff Pinkner, Anders Thomas Jensen, and Nikolaj Arcel (who also directed) for trying too hard to cram so much of King’s original into a film format.

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

Here’s the thing, though: Cats still makes no f.cking sense.

Relentlessly dull and curiously bombastic.

In this brightly colored world, Trost makes images pop and vibrate, making this latest in the beloved series easy to watch in a way that seemingly evades most modern multiplex fare. Sadly, that’s one of the few areas of clarity in Sonic the Hedgehog 3.