Christina Applegate, of Eighties white-trash pinup fame, is a comic foil par excellence, delivering a snazzy, self-assured performance that lands the biggest laughs in a movie made mostly of hollow chuckles. She, in fact, is the sweetest thing in this sour, sucky film.

As for Legion, well, if you've seen one plague of flies and death and angels at war with each other, you've seen 'em all.

Although the plot is pretty bare-bones, it’s propped up by plenty of gratuitous dialogue and imagery that do nothing to further the story.

Alexander's script considers context anathema, leaving us to wonder, among other puzzlers, why these two jerks are friends to begin with – and, perhaps, on what bad breakup or neglected childhood one may blame the film's dispiriting misanthropy.

The presence of Lohan – a celebrity whose every move is tracked by the media like an endangered species of hawk – only serves to highlight the point that the truly fascinating story behind the murder of Lennon wasn't Chapman's madness (and certainly not his weight) but the depths of our celebrity mania and the influence we’re willing to concede to personalities larger than our own.

A Hallmark movie with a major dose of God thrown in, I’m sure there’s an audience out there for Redeeming Love. After all, 3 million people who bought the book can’t be wrong (they can, it’s trash). Think Little House on the Prairie on Cialis.

Proving once again that no matter how many times you remake a film it's tough to top the original.

Does not live up to its name. It's more like White Men Can't Box, Either.

Ends up as little more than a recursive footnote to the infinitely better up-all-night teen comedies of, you guessed it, John Hughes.

As witless and simpleminded as the irradiated humanoids that serve as the franchise’s bad guys.

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

Honestly, I could watch Goldblum and Gainsbourg – two of the most quirkily sublime multihypenate artists alive – reading phonebooks to each other and enjoy the experience thoroughly, but sadly even they seem wasted here.

G.I. Joe was not screened for critics, but that’s not because of its mindless action and nonsensical plot. It’s because G.I. Joe is the kind of movie that bludgeons the viewer into submission with its loud and constant barrage of sound and fury.

It boggles the mind that Saddam Hussein and assorted cohorts have finally won their rightful place in the global noose while various and sundry villains associated with this third entry in the Santa Claus franchise of flaccidly feel-good, winter nostrums will no doubt be allowed to walk the Earth with nary a qualm nor backward glance.

Bob Dylan might have been wrong when he sang that "there’s no success like failure, and failure’s no success at all." His new movie, although a complete narrative mess, is a thoroughly Dylanesque escapade.

Least Among Saints is a heartfelt if not exactly heartwarming story of two wounded males, but despite top-notch performances from all the leads, it never really brings anything new to a story that's already overly familiar.

Longtime World of Warcraft players should and likely will storm the cineplex gates, burn the castle down, and salt the earth (and screenwriters) from whence this abomination sprung. Me, I’m going to chill out and download 1982’s top-notch "The Sword and the Sorcerer."

It's not often you come across a film as unique as this, and while my taste for liver, lights, and sweetbreads isn't what it once was, this is still a fine post-Halloween aperitif, with guts to spare.

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

Everything about Agent Cody Banks 2 reeks of hurry-up and make this movie before its kid star Frankie Munoz loses his pubescent looks (it’s already borderline).

I came out of Beyond Borders with the gnawing feeling I'd just been subjected to some sort of ghastly prank, Punk’d by the director of "GoldenEye" with Lara Croft as his willing confederate.

It's all noise and flash and chaos, but it lacks virtually everything that made the original television series so memorable.

Not half as terrifying as Norwegian black metal, but still one of the better found footage-gimmicked sequels in recent memory.

The action is constant, often pointless, definitely gratuitous, and breathlessly fun.

Nothing here really works. Even a surprisingly flat score from horror master John Carpenter (who was originally slated to direct the '84 version) can't save Firestarter from being a colossal misfire.

This is a bad movie, but one that awakens your senses every so often with flashes of originality and abundant self-belief.

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.

The film is a TKO before it even had a chance to get off a decent hook.

Astonishingly dull. The leads have zero chemistry, the supporting actors are even worse, and the script is a lifeless, draggy thing.

This Godzilla is lacking both the awesome spirit of the original and the sublime silliness of the more recent Toho outings.

This was already tired stuff when cult fave "Sleepaway Camp" came out in 1983, and it’s downright comatose by now.

There are some great sequences of just Tom and Jerry that feel like Tom and Jerry. There's just so much else, too much else, going on, and most of it involves the cast staring at animated animals added in post.

Far from perfect and about as much fun as a holiday in Cambodia, this is lightweight yuletide fluffery, offensive neither in tone nor spirit but entirely unnecessary.

It's cheap and it's lowdown, and to those responsible for this exercise in devolution: Honestly, I'm not sure I want to know someone like you.

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

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.

Director Goldmann, who cut his teeth directing videos for Shania Twain and Faith Hill, never misses a chance to punch-up an emotional scene with a contrived, heart-melting music performance by one or more of his stars.

You watch and wait for this underachieving film to ignite, then grow more and more exasperated as you witness its many misfires.

Tepid, borderline offensive cyber-serial killer thriller.

What we have here is a film with no respect for the laws of nature, the laws of man, or the intelligence of the viewer.

With this latest thriller (comedy? My fellow audience members were laughing at scenes I highly doubt were intended to be funny) Perry implies that not only does she belong there, but she forged every link in her chains.

The acting's not bad, the skiing is great and the scenery is spectacular. Still, six bucks is a steep price to pay for a travelogue, especially to a place where extreme prejudice has become as threatening as any vertical drop.

There's precious little to like about the witless and decidedly tedious Black Knight other than the fact that it's unlikely to generate a sequel.

The collective charisma of Robert De Niro, Eddie Murphy, and Rene Russo is the only reason to slap down eight bucks for this limp action/comedy, but then, it's difficult not to want to avert your eyes out of embarrassment for the trio.

The result is about as memorable as an evening spent shitfaced at your local Applebee’s.

The film struggles to carve out a distinct aesthetic for its violence, alternating between crass comedy and cartoonish violence with no sense of how to combine these two into something sustainable.

Where has all the fun science-fiction filmmaking gone?

Even the should-have-been-triumphant revelation of the Boogeyman arrives as a CGI letdown of epic proportions.

If you loved "Wedding Crashers," then, for all intents and purposes, you've already seen Fired Up – because this new movie borrows from the 2005 Vince Vaughn/Owen Wilson hit with such utter shamelessness, you have to wonder if royalty checks are already in the mail.

A film that feels far too familiar for the likes of Wahlberg to juice up, hallucinatory valkyries or no.

Plenty of gore-slinging, wisecracking fun to be had, and yes, the repulsively convincing werewolf transformations and attacks still pack a breath-stopping wallop.

I’ve seen sick kids exploited for all sorts of reasons – usually as easy ploys to manipulate emotions but sometimes to sell things or encourage philanthropic outpourings – but Letters to God takes the cake (make that the holy wafer).

Never a filmmaker known for his subtlety, The Single Moms Club turns out to be one of Perry’s most distinctive efforts.

With a few standout performances and production design that imbues it with a good amount of period shine, it may yet find a receptive audience.

The biggest takeaway from the film is that the American foster-care system has failed us all. And that’s super sexy.

But let's face it. This whole movie is based on stereotypes.

This vehicle for hip-hop star Usher is no blinged-out Beamer rough-riding it over to Jay-Z's joint to wallop some cheeba up off'n the Zeezer's haid; it's more of a Yugo, as in "You go to this wannabe straight-to-video tripe, you deserve what you get."

Silent Hill's main attraction, for genre fans, certainly, lies not in its plot nor in its characters (you could place anyone in this particular township and whatever might happen, you could be sure it'd be unnerving), but in its relentlessly nightmarish imagery.

A Frankensteinian combination of "Flatliners," "Carrie," and just about any possession flick that comes to mind.

It’s a shame when a movie brings together so many underutilized thespians of color – even Ajay Naidu of "Office Space" is in here someplace – and gives them absolutely nothing to do.

Painfully lame and hamstrung by a viciously unfunny sense of humor.

Genre fans and newcomers alike should skip this monstrosity and go rent "Ginger Snaps" instead.

A consistently workmanlike helmer, Liebesman (Wrath of the Titans, Battle: Los Angeles) keeps the pace brisk and the overall tone closer to that of the recent G.I. Joe vehicles, infusing this glorified toy commercial with an almost aggressively knowing sense of humor and exactly one fun action sequence on New York’s most conveniently located mountaintop.

The set-up, and indeed the entire film, reeks of yawn-inducing boilerplate plotting.

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

Your Highness is awfully vulgar fun when it works, which is much of the time (although it could've benefited from a few judicious cuts here and there).

The film is a mess, going all over the graveyard but never finding the grave. It's the work of a fan with too much time (and money) on his hands, eagerly awaited but best forgotten.

Surprisingly, Countdown works best when it operates less as a Nineties horror homage and more as a modern horror-comedy.

Stupefyingly inane buddy-cop comedy.

As far as pronoun horrors go, They can't hold a candle to Them or It, but as an anti-tourism ad for Seattle, it's right up there with The Ring in terms of overcast, glistening panache.

The resolute commitment to finding tiny sparks of hope in a pitch-black cosmos yields its own bitter and oddly warming reward.

It’s not that it’s unfunny or completely without charm: it’s that the script feels like an abandoned The Secret Life of Pets sequel into which Garfield has been crowbarred.

But Pine playing 1960s-era Shatner – sometimes subtly, sometimes not? That's a terrific gag. Really, it is. Totally inspired. It's just not enough to save this otherwise cookie-cutter bromantic comedy from being anything other than what it is: an inoffensive yawn.

If you expect That's My Boy to be the Bad Dad equivalent of Bad Santa, you'll be sorely disappointed. Sandler can't quite adopt that same cynical edge, instead favoring corny and sentimental resolutions to untenable predicaments.

Dull and unfunny claptrap.

A storyline that makes less sense than the current state of tech stocks on the Nasdaq.

For masochists only, and hardcore ones at that.

Most unforgivable, however, is the film's coda in which real Georgian victims pose for the camera with pictures of their loved ones lost in the five days of war. Using real people to impart the emotions that the entire film was unable to evince is simply cheap exploitation.

The new Death Wish is unlikely to spark similar controversy, simply because the filmmaking is not as compelling as in the original film.

Instead of putting the high in high school, this film is the kind of drug movie that gives pot smokers a bad name.

Ridiculous plot, dumb characters, foolish dilemmas. The only point to this movie is to make Macaulay a millionaire.

When Hellboy does succeed, it is glorious. Harbour and Jovovich understand this kind of inflated supernatural action, and when it's just them inhabiting the line between two worlds (such as Hellboy's trip to face the child-eating Russian witch, Baba Yaga), or when the narrative is given time to breathe, there's a sense of the movie this could and should have been.

Envy feels like a comedy in search of a drama in search of some sort of lugubrious existential meaning; it never quite seems to know where it's going to head next, and neither will the audience.

How much better this would have been had someone like Brian De Palma stepped behind the camera.

Life at least deserves a nod for supplying the mostly dramatic actress with her first starring comedic role.

Although the original Red Dawn was far-fetched, the remake offers little but vicarious thrills.

Stupendously dull and infuriatingly obtuse.

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

A solid, intermittently excellent, and extremely exsanguinatory take on what Stephen King famously referred to as the "Spam in a cabin" genre.

The laziness is what irks me most about Blended. Everything from the re-teaming of the two stars and their "Wedding Singer" director, Frank Coraci, reeks of moviemaking by checklist.

This is one movie best left unattached.

In the final analysis though, the only real thing being smuggled in National Security is unwitting patrons' admission fees.

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.

It’s a frustrating thing to unsnarl. Straddling the thorny fence of dramedy, Love the Coopers is a sometimes too serious, often not funny entry in this year’s tra-la-la movie sweepstakes.

Stick around through the credits for an extra closing scene that leaves the door of Heather's new home wide open for a sequel.

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.

An equally tired and wearisome buddy-cop movie that might as well be a forgotten leftover from the era of "Turner and Hooch." Now there's a film with classic Kevin Smith scrawled all over it.

Shue, to her credit, looks like she's trying to crawl out of her skin, but hey, anything to get away from this hell house, right? Right.